Divorce Before Valentine's

Chapter 4

(Caroline’s POV)

"When I was pregnant with Charlie," I continue, my voice getting stronger, harder, "when I was sick and tired and scared, you were already sleeping with my husband. You were carrying his child and lying to my face about it. You let me comfort you. You let me take care of you. And the whole time you were screwing my husband."

"I didn't mean—"

“Oh, shut it! Don’t give me that innocent act!” I snap, slapping her across the face. "You didn't mean to sleep with my husband? You didn't mean to get pregnant with his baby? You didn't mean to spend five years lying to me? Which part didn't you mean, Hailey?"

She's crying now, real tears, shrinking into herself as I step closer. But her tears bounce right off me. I feel nothing but rage and disgust and a pain so deep I think it might kill me.

"I trusted you," I whisper. "I loved you. You were supposed to be the one person who would never hurt me."

“I—”

I can’t stand it. I slap her again, the mere sound of her voice ticking me off. “From today on, you’re dead to me, Hailey Smith. I no longer have a friend like you.”

"Caroline—" Samuel tries again.

I turn back to him, giving him another slap across the face. My palm tingles from the force of the blow, but the physical pain grounds me, giving me a momentary distraction from the pain in my chest. “I told you not to take my name with your filthy tongue. Which part of that did you not understand?” My voice is ice.

“You—” He starts, breathing hard. But the second he sees me raising my hand again, he flinches back, snapping his mouth shut.

"I want a divorce Samuel Daves. I want you to sign the papers and get out of my life. I will not spend another second with a scum like you.”

"You can't be serious." He actually has the nerve to look offended. "Over this? Caroline, you're overreacting—"

"Overreacting?" I laugh again, that same broken sound. "Not only are you having an affair with a woman I once considered my best friend. But you are also the father of her five-year old daughter. You’ve been cheating on me from the start of our marriage. Which part of all these am I overreacting to, Samuel?"

"We can work this out. People make mistakes. We can go to counseling, we can—"

"I don't want to work it out. I don't want counseling. I want a divorce, and I want custody of Charlie. And that’s final."

I turn and walk out of the study before either of them can say anything else. My legs feel like they might give out, but I force them to carry me down the hall to Charlie's room.

He's still sleeping, peaceful and perfect. His little chest rises and falls with each breath, and he looks so small in his bed, so innocent. He has no idea what just happened. No idea that his father hates him, that the man who's supposed to protect him sees him as a defect.

But I know. And I'll never forget.

I gather Charlie into my arms as gently as I can. He stirs but doesn't wake, just curls into me the way he's done since he was a baby. I grab his favorite blanket, his special stuffed dinosaur, and I look around the room one last time.

The Christmas stocking is hanging on his bedpost, the one with his name embroidered on it that my aunt Jasmine made. I take it too. Everything that matters, I'm taking with me.

A second before I reach the stairs, a thought flashes through my mind, and I go back to Charlie’s room, digging through a bag I shoved under his bed to find the pinhole cameras I bought to monitor him in the early discovery of his autism.

Turning them on, I carry Charlie down the stairs, and Samuel appears in the hallway, his shirt still untucked, looking panicked now.

"Caroline, where are you going? It’s in the middle of the night. You can't just—"

"Watch me."

I don't look back. I don't stop. I get Charlie into his car seat, buckle him in, and slide behind the wheel.

As I back out of the driveway, I see Hailey standing at the front door, her face a blank mask in the porch light.

I don’t know what she’s thinking. Maybe she feels guilty. Or regretful. Or gleeful even, that I’m finally out of her way.

Either way, after today, we’re over.

Our relationship will never go back to the way it was before.

She betrayed my trust for a man. Well, now, she can have that man. I…can’t stomach two-timers.

The drive to Aunt Jasmine's house is a blur of streetlights and stop signs that I barely see through the tears I refuse to let fall. Charlie is still asleep in the backseat, his blanket clutched against his chest, completely unaware that his entire world just shattered.

I'm grateful for that, at least. That he can sleep through this. That he doesn't have to see his mother falling apart at the seams.

My hands are white-knuckled on the steering wheel, and I realize I'm gripping it so hard my fingers are going numb. I force myself to loosen up, to breathe, but every breath feels like broken glass in my lungs.

Wendy is much cuter.

She's your daughter after all.

The words keep playing in my head like a song I can't turn off. Over and over, until I think I might scream just to drown them out.

By the time I pull into Aunt Jasmine's driveway, my whole body is shaking. The porch light flicks on before I even turn off the engine, and then she's there—my aunt, my second mother, the woman who raised me when my parents died—standing on the front steps in her bathrobe with her hair in a messy braid.

She takes one look at my face and her expression shifts from confusion to alarm.

"Caroline?" She's down the steps before I can even open my door. "Sweetheart, what happened? Is Charlie okay?"

"He's fine. He's sleeping." My voice sounds strange. Hollow. "I need—can we come in?"

"Of course. Of course, honey." She's already opening the back door, carefully unbuckling Charlie from his car seat. He stirs a little, makes a small sound, but settles back to sleep when Aunt Jasmine lifts him into her arms. She's always been good with him, patient and gentle in a way that Samuel never was.

Samuel. The thought of his name makes me want to vomit.

I can’t believe I spent years sharing a bed with him, while he was screwing Hailey.

As a clean freak, I can already feel the psychological trauma of this discovery setting in.