My Ultimate Revenge To Get Rid Of My Cheating Wife!
Chapter 4
Two years passed.
I started consulting for businesses around Virginia, helping hotels and manufacturing companies improve security procedures. The work was less dramatic, but I slept in my own bed.
More importantly, I made breakfast most mornings.
I attended school plays.
I knew Lily’s teachers.
I learned which friends were good influences and which ones always seemed to produce mysterious quantities of glitter.
Carla and I eventually reached a civil relationship.
Not friendly.
Civil.
She apologized more than once, but apologies do not restore a marriage automatically. Sometimes they simply allow two people to stop carrying weapons into every conversation.
“I was lonely,” she told me during one counseling session we attended for Lily’s sake.
“So was I.”
“I know.”
“You had options.”
“I know.”
“You could have told me you were unhappy.”
“I know.”
That third I know sounded different.
For the first time, it did not feel like an argument.
It sounded like regret.
Lily also began rebuilding her relationship with her mother. I encouraged it, even when part of me resisted.
One evening, Sam asked why.
“You fought like hell for primary custody.”
“I fought to protect Lily.”
“And now?”
“Protecting her means letting her love her mother without feeling disloyal to me.”
Sam raised his beer.
“That may be the healthiest thing you’ve said in twenty years.”
“Don’t spread it around.”
Around that time, I met Elena Ruiz.
She taught environmental science at Lily’s school. She was divorced, had two grown sons, and possessed the unnerving ability to notice things I preferred hiding.
Our first coffee lasted forty minutes.
Our second lasted three hours.
On the fourth date, she said, “You scan every restaurant when you enter.”
“Occupational habit.”
“You also sit facing the door.”
“Another occupational habit.”
“And you change the subject whenever somebody asks about your marriage.”
I looked at her.
“Are you always this nosy?”
“Only when interested.”
That made me smile.
Slowly, I told her.
Not just about Carla.
About me.
About the rage outside that window. About how close I had come to letting betrayal turn me into somebody Lily would have lost along with her mother. About the fantasies of revenge that had seemed reasonable for several dark hours.
Elena listened.
When I finished, she said, “What stopped you?”
“My daughter.”
“That’s part of it.”
“What’s the rest?”
“You stopped yourself.”
I had never considered that worth anything.
For years, I had thought restraint meant I had failed to take revenge.
Elena saw it differently.
“You were angry enough to destroy your life,” she said. “You chose not to.”
“That doesn’t make me noble.”
“No. It makes you responsible for what you chose next.”
We married four years after Carla and I divorced.
Small ceremony.
Backyard.
Lily stood beside me.
Carla knew about it beforehand.
She sent a card.
I almost threw it away unopened.
Instead, I read it.
I’m sorry for the life I broke. I’m glad you built another one.
I folded the card and placed it in a drawer.
Not everything requires an answer.
