My Husband Replaced Me, My Lawyer Claimed Me.

(Lena) I had been home since Tuesday with the flu. Three days of lying on the couch with a blanket over me, drinking water I barely wanted and watching television I wasn't really paying attention to. My name is Lena Calloway and I am not the type of woman who stays home from work easily. I had called my assistant twice that morning just to check on the two projects we had running. Both clients were fine. Everything was moving. But I still felt guilty for not being there. That was the kind of woman I was. The kind who felt guilty for being sick. I worked for myself. Hart Interiors had been my company for four years and I had built every part of it from nothing. My clients were in Atlanta and some as far as Savannah and I was proud of what I had made. Before I married Brad I was Lena Hart, and Hart Interiors carried that name on purpose. It was the one thing that was fully mine. Brad, my husband, always said he was proud of me. Six years of marriage and he still told people at dinner parties that his wife ran her own business. I used to love hearing that. I was on my third cup of tea when I heard the front door open. It was a little past two in the afternoon. Brad worked at a logistics company downtown and he never came home before six. I sat up on the couch and pulled the blanket off me. "Brad?" "Yeah, it's me." His voice came from the hallway. I heard two sets of footsteps. Not one. He walked into the living room and stopped near the doorway. He had his work bag on one arm and his jacket folded over the other. He looked tired, or maybe nervous. I couldn't tell which. Then the woman came in behind him. She was young. Maybe twenty four or twenty five. She had her hair in braids and she was wearing a yellow dress that sat over a very round belly. She was far along. Seven months at least, maybe more. I looked at Brad. He looked at me and then looked at the floor. I sat there on the couch I had picked out for this living room, in the house I had designed room by room, and I waited for him to say something that would make sense of what I was seeing. "Lena," he said. "This is Jade." "Okay," I said. "Who is Jade?" He set his bag down near the chair by the door. He didn't come any closer. Jade stood behind him and said nothing. She looked around the room like she was trying to get a feel for the place. "She's been staying with a friend," Brad said. "But that didn't work out. She needed somewhere to go." I looked at him. "Why is she here, Brad?" He ran a hand over the back of his neck. "We've been seeing each other. For a while now. And she's pregnant." The room went quiet. Not the kind of quiet where nothing is happening. The kind where everything is happening inside you and none of it has words yet. I had been married to this man for six years. Six years of building a life in this house, in this city, with this person. Six years of trying to have a baby with him. Year after year of negative tests and doctor visits and one specialist telling me that my blocked fallopian tube was the reason I wasn't getting pregnant. I had cried in that office. Brad had held my hand. He had told me we would figure it out together. And now he was standing in my living room with a pregnant woman behind him. "That's your baby," I said. "Yes." I nodded. I picked up my cup of tea from the table and held it with both hands because I needed something to hold onto. "And you brought her here." "She has nowhere to go, Lena. I couldn't just leave her out there." "You could have put her in a hotel, Brad." "She's pregnant." "I can see that." He moved a little closer and lowered his voice like Jade wasn't standing right there in my living room. "I need you to be reasonable about this. She's going to stay here for a while. Just until we figure out the next step." I put the cup back down on the table. "She is going to stay here." "Yes." I looked at Jade. She met my eyes and then looked away. She hadn't said a single word since she walked in. "Brad," I said. "This is my house." "It's our house." "I picked the land. I designed it. I paid more than half the money that built it. It is my house." "You're sick," he said. "You're not thinking clearly." I almost laughed at that. Almost. "I'm thinking very clearly," I said. He sat down on the chair near the door and leaned forward with his arms on his knees. He had the look on his face that he got when he was about to explain something to me like I was a child. I had seen that look before over the years but never like this. Never for something like this. "Here's what I'm thinking," he said. "You're home most of the time anyway with your clients and your projects. Jade is going to need help. She's pregnant and she doesn't have family here in Atlanta. You could stop taking on new clients for a while. Be here for her. Help her through the pregnancy." I heard every word. I understood all of them. But I needed a moment to believe he had actually said them out loud to me. "You want me to quit my business," I said. "To take care of her." "Not quit. Just pull back a little." "And take care of your pregnant girlfriend. In my house." "Lena." "No." He looked up. "What?" "No, Brad. The answer is no." I stood up from the couch. My legs were fine. My head was the clearest it had been all week. "I am not pulling back from my business. I am not taking care of her. And she is not staying in this house." He stood up too. "You're being selfish." "Get out." "Lena, listen to me." "I want both of you out of my house today. Whatever you need to sort out with her you sort it out somewhere else. I am not doing this." He started talking again but I walked past him and went upstairs. I went into the bedroom and sat on the bed and stared at the wall. I could hear him downstairs, his voice going up and down, still trying to make his argument to a room I was no longer in. He talked for a long time. When the house finally went quiet I was still sitting in the same spot, but something in me had already moved. Six years. Six years of loving that man, building with him, grieving with him every single month the baby didn't come. And this was what those six years had brought me to. I was not going to cry about it in this room. I reached for my phone on the nightstand and opened my browser. I had never needed a divorce lawyer before. I didn't even know where to start. But I typed the words in anyway. Best divorce attorney in Atlanta. The first name that came up was Cole Harmon.