CHAPTER EIGHTEEN #2
“We’ll take her to court if we have to,” I said. “We’ll just add this to the suit against her for misuse of the corporate card.”
“Oh, don’t be silly.” Mom waved a hand like it was nothing. “Any press is good press, right?”
Even Olive looked at her like she had lost it. “Did you not hear the news, Mom? They’re outing you as the mastermind behind trying to get her son to divorce his wife. This makes you look horrible! And what about Thatcher? They’re comparing him to Dad and saying our whole family is… awful.”
“What do you care?” Celia blasted her. “You were Mom’s minion in the whole damn scheme. You’re almost as much to blame as she is.”
Olive actually looked embarrassed, which was an emotion I didn’t realize she ever felt.
I turned to Mom. “Did you realize that Madison cheated on me all through college?” I asked.
“Or that she’s currently pregnant with another man’s baby and was trying to get me to sleep with her without a condom?
She wanted to trick me into believing the baby was mine so she and her lover could squeeze a ton of money out of me. ”
Mom looked a bit like a fish as her mouth opened and closed. Finally, she was able to get words out. “You’re kidding!”
“Not at all,” I said.
Both Mom and Olive looked disgusted. She’d not only conned me, but she’d also conned them, too.
“Just to let you know,” Bryce said, “I already signed a retired Atlanta Braves player to be the face of Caldwell Financial. He signed a three-year deal with us.”
“That’s more like what I had envisioned in the first place,” I pulled him in for a hug. “And now I need to do damage control and go try to fix my marriage.”
Mom tried to say something to me, but I cut her off. “And you? I don’t care if I ever see you again. What kind of mother tries to wreck her son’s marriage by manipulating him into thinking his ex-girlfriend never stopped loving him? You’re a monster.”
I heard her crying as I walked out.
Join the club, I thought, as tears stung my eyes. I was carrying my stupid gift bag full of divorce papers and wondering if Carrie heard the Madison rumors before they ever aired.
Maybe that’s why she’d left home. And if that was the case, I didn’t know if I’d ever get her back.
***
After the launch party, I went home and walked into an empty house yet again.
But I could have sworn I caught the faint scent of her perfume.
Had she been here or was it just wishful thinking?
I felt like if I could just talk to her, just once, I could change her mind about the divorce.
I wanted to convince her that we were good together once, and we could be again.
I would apologize for everything and beg her to go to couples’ therapy with me.
I would get on my knees and plead for her to take me back, to let me prove myself to her.
I paced the living room hoping to have some breakthrough idea of how I could get her to talk to me.
That’s when it dawned on me that the lingering scent of her perfume was more than likely not a good thing.
It wasn’t a sign that she’d been here and was thinking of moving back in or coming to see me.
It could mean that she’d come here to clear out her things. I hurried up the stairs to our bedroom.
I opened the door to her closet, my eyes immediately taking in the empty racks and shelves.
“No,” I whispered to myself, leaning against the closest wall.
Then I lurched towards her dresser and opened the drawers.
Empty. I rushed into the bathroom. Her side of our counter was cleared of her things.
The drawers were empty. Even her shampoos, conditioners, and soaps were gone.
She’d moved out while I was at the launch party.
She’d filed for divorce. She’d moved out. She wouldn’t return my calls or texts.
It was over. I’d lost her.
I walked downstairs in a daze. That’s when I noticed something I hadn’t seen yet. One of the recessed lights over the island in the kitchen shone down on a folder. Had she left me a letter? I was almost afraid of what it would say.
I walked over, my hands shaking a little as I flipped the folder open.
I sucked in a breath. The top page was a printout of all the texts between Madison and me over the past several months.
She’d even found the dummy app where I’d moved our text conversation once she got suspicious.
“Shit.” I flipped through page after page of damning evidence of the affair.
I cringed at how derisive Madison had been in texts about Carrie. Even worse? The fact that I hadn’t stood up for my wife. Not once. I’d changed the subject a lot, but I’d never once pushed back. I felt sick thinking about her reading them.
I kept flipping and saw she’d found the emails we’d sent each other.
They covered all sorts of subjects, from old times together to wishing we’d gotten married all those years ago to discussing how much we wanted each other.
I closed my eyes tight and slammed my hand down on the island.
Why? Why had I done this to Carrie? I sensed that I’d spend the rest of my life wishing that I’d figured out what Carrie meant to me and who Madison really was in enough time to save our marriage.
But I hadn’t.
I kept flipping and cringed. There was a printout of my personal credit card statements showing around six months’ worth of restaurant charges.
It was damning. She’d painstakingly gone through many of the charges and written beside them what I’d missed while eating out with Madison.
She listed things like her parents’ thirtieth wedding anniversary, dinners with friends, date nights, random nights where she’d ordered in nice food for us, the night I’d left the decorating party early, and, of course, the Orchid Ball.
All to spend time with Madison instead of my wife.
I breathed a sigh of relief at the next statements from one of my corporate cards showing hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry and gifts that Madison had bought herself. They were the same charges Bryce had already gone over with me. Those, at least, I could defend myself against.
If she ever gave me a chance.
I almost didn’t keep flipping, thinking the remaining sheets were more of the charges Madison rang up. I did, though, not wanting to miss anything else she wanted me to see. When I got to the last couple of pages, I had to hold myself up against the island.
Carrie had come to Caldwell Financial after the Orchid Ball.
She had personally witnessed me almost having tragically awkward sex with Madison Welles.
The last two pages were pictures of Madison naked while I sat on the edge of the bed shirtless.
My sweet wife had watched as I almost cheated on her when I should have been with her at the Orchid Ball, showing my support for what she’d accomplished.
Without saying a word to me today, Carrie had let me know she wanted a divorce in one of the most public and humiliating ways she could do it. I’d deserved it completely. Then she’d left the reasons why she wanted the divorce for me to find when I got home from the launch party.
I walked over to a chair and lowered myself into it. I sat there like that for a long time, just staring off into space and thinking. I knew now that Carrie wasn’t going to take me back. She’d been very clear about what would happen if I cheated on her.
Yet I’d done it anyway.
I deserved every bit of what I was about to go through.