Four years earlier, Garrett came home early. I was in the kitchen making spaghetti. Our twins, Evan and Emma, were four, building towers out of blocks on the floor.
He stood in the doorway, loosened his tie, and said the four words that split my life in two.
“We need to talk.”
Then, without warning, “I want a divorce.”
I remember the wooden spoon slipping from my hand. Sauce splattered across the tile.
“Why?” I asked.
“I meet someone. Someone who understands me. Someone who gets my ambition.”
Someone younger. Someone prettier. Someone who wasn’t exhausted from raising toddlers.
Her name was Tessa—my friend, a woman who had stood beside us at our wedding.
The divorce that followed was brutal. Garrett’s lawyer was polite and ruthless. Mine was cheap and inexperienced because that was all I could afford. Garrett kept the house, the savings, the retirement accounts—everything carefully arranged so that on paper, I had almost nothing and he had very little more. I’d been a stay-at-home mother, and her side argued that I had no career, no leverage, no real claim.
The judge barely looked at me.
I got crumbs.
Afterward, at cocktail hour, he approached.
“You came,” he said.
“You invited me.”
His eyes flicked to Julian. “I didn’t know you were bringing anyone.”
“You said the kids should see both parents moving forward. This is what moving forward looks like.”
