He rubbed his face with both hands. “You stopped paying attention to me,” he said, his voice gaining a defensive edge. “You’re always with the kids, or at your book club, or working on your projects. I felt invisible.”
I stared at him. “So this is my fault?”
“I’m not saying that,” he backpedaled.
“You literally just said that.”
From downstairs, our daughter’s voice floated up. “Mom? Can we have popcorn?”
I took a deep breath, forcing the tremor out of my voice. “Sure, honey. I’ll be down in a minute.”
Kevin stood up. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Can we at least talk about this? Really talk?”
I looked at him. This was the man I had known for twelve years. We had been married for ten. We had bought a house, raised two children, built a life. And in that moment, looking at his pleading face, I realized I didn’t know him at all.
“Get out of this room,” I said.
“Where am I supposed to go?”
“I don’t care,” I said. “The apartment, maybe. I’m sure Felicity would love to have you.”
He hesitated, then turned and left. I heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs, the front door opening and closing, and finally, the sound of his car starting in the driveway.
I sat there on the bed for a long time, staring at the glowing screen of his laptop. Then, I went to work. I started taking screenshots. Every email. Every text. Every receipt.
I created a secure folder and saved everything. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do with it, but I knew one thing for certain: I needed evidence.
My daughter appeared in the doorway, clutching her worn stuffed rabbit. “Where did Daddy go?”
“He had to run an errand, sweetie,” I lied.
“Is everything okay? You look sad.”
I forced a smile onto my face. “I’m fine. Just tired. Did you want that popcorn?”
She nodded and slipped her small hand into mine. We went downstairs together. I made popcorn, the kernels popping rhythmically in the microwave, while she and her brother argued over which movie to watch next. I sat between them on the couch, pretending everything was normal, while my entire world silently collapsed around me.
That night, after I finally got the kids to sleep, I went back to Kevin’s laptop. I dug deeper. I found the lease agreement for the apartment. It was in both their names: Kevin Hamilton and Felicity Morrison.
They had signed it eight months ago. That meant he had lied about the timeline earlier. It wasn’t eleven months; it had been going on longer.
The rent was $2,400 a month. I quickly checked our joint bank statements. There were no withdrawals for that amount. That could only mean one thing: he had a separate account.
I went into the home office and pried open his filing cabinet. Hidden in the back was a folder containing statements for an account at a different bank. He had been depositing money there for over a year. Small amounts at first, siphoned off from his bonuses, then larger transfers. The current balance was over $18,000. Money that belonged to our family, hidden away for his escape.
At midnight, I called my sister. She answered on the first ring. “I’m sorry,” she said immediately. “I should have told you.”
“How long have you known?” I asked.
“Six months,” she admitted. “I ran into them at a restaurant downtown. Kevin told me you two had separated but were keeping it quiet for the sake of the kids. I believed him.”
“Why didn’t you ask me about it?”
“I don’t know,” she sighed. “I guess I thought… if you weren’t talking about it, you didn’t want to discuss it.”
I hung up without saying goodbye.
The next morning, Kevin came back. He looked terrible, his eyes rimmed with red, like he hadn’t slept at all. He probably hadn’t.
“Can we talk now?” he asked, standing awkwardly in the entryway. “The kids are at school.”
“You have until I pick them up at noon,” I said coldly.
We sat in the living room, a vast distance between us. I took the couch; he took the armchair.
“I ended it,” he said.
“When?”
“Last night, after I left here. I went to the apartment and told Felicity it was over.”
“How did she take it?”
“She was upset,” he said, looking at his hands. “But she understood.”
“Did you tell her about Brandon? About how everyone found out?”
He nodded.
“What did she say?”
“She said she knew this would happen eventually. That I’d never actually leave you.”
“Were you planning to leave me?” The question hung in the air.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “Maybe. I hadn’t decided.”
“You signed a lease with her,” I said, my voice rising. “You set up a joint bank account. You spent almost a year building a parallel life with her. But you ‘hadn’t decided’?”
“It was complicated.”
“Stop saying that!” I snapped. “Nothing about this is complicated. You cheated on me. You lied to me every single day. You made me look like a fool in front of everyone we know. Those are simple facts.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“For what, specifically? For cheating? For lying? Or for getting caught?”
“All of it.”
“That is not good enough.”
He leaned forward, desperation in his eyes. “What do you want me to say? I screwed up. I know that. But we can fix this. We can go to counseling. I will do whatever it takes.”
“You think counseling is going to fix the fact that you had an entire secret life?” I asked incredulously.
“People get through worse.”
“Name one thing worse than this.”
He couldn’t answer.
I stood up. “I want you to move out.”
“Where am I supposed to go?”
“You have an apartment, remember? Or did Felicity change the locks already?”
“I told her I was ending it. I can’t go back there.”
“That sounds like a ‘you’ problem,” I said.
“Be reasonable,” he pleaded.
“I am being reasonable. You are the one who decided our marriage wasn’t enough. You made this choice. Now you get to live with the consequences.”
He started crying then, actual tears running down his face. “Please don’t do this. I love you. I love our family.”
“You should have thought about that before you signed a lease with someone else.”
I walked out of the room before I could falter. I went upstairs and started packing his things. Clothes, toiletries, shoes—I threw them into four suitcases and two cardboard boxes. I dragged them all downstairs and set them by the front door.
“You have until noon to get these out of here,” I told him. “After that, they go on the lawn.”
He looked at the luggage, then at me, then back at the luggage. “You’re really doing this?”
“Yes.”
“What about the kids? What are we going to tell them?”
“You can tell them whatever you want,” I said. “I am going to tell them the truth. That their father decided he wanted a different life, and now he’s going to have one.”
“They’re too young to understand,” he protested. “They’re eight and six.”
“They are old enough to know when someone is lying to them.”
I picked up my purse and keys. “I’m going to run errands. When I come back, you better be gone.”
I drove to the bank first. I withdrew exactly half of everything in our joint accounts. Then, I went to a lawyer’s office. I had spent the morning looking up divorce attorneys and picked the one with the highest rating in town.
Her name was Patricia. She was a woman in her fifties with kind eyes but a firm handshake that meant business. “Tell me everything,” she said.
So I did. I told her about Brandon’s drunken revelation. The apartment. Felicity. The secret bank account. The eleven months of lies. I showed her the screenshots I had saved.
She took notes while I talked, her face unreadable. When I finished, she looked up. “You have a very strong case.”
“For what?”
“For whatever you want. Divorce, obviously. But also, depending on state laws, you might be entitled to more than half the assets given the level of financial deception. The secret account alone works heavily in your favor.”
“I don’t want his money,” I said, feeling exhausted.
“Then what do you want?”
I thought about it. “I want my kids to be okay. I want to stop feeling like an idiot. I want to move on with my life.”
“All of those things are possible,” Patricia said. “But you need to decide how to proceed. Do you want to file immediately, or give him a chance to ‘make things right’?”
“Can things be made right after this?” I asked.
She leaned back in her chair. “I’ve been doing this for twenty-eight years. I’ve seen marriages survive worse. I’ve also seen marriages end over much less. It depends on what you can live with.”
“I don’t think I can live with this.”
“Then we file.”
She drew up the paperwork while I waited. Petition for Dissolution of Marriage. Temporary custody arrangements. Division of assets. It was all very clinical, very official, and very final. I signed where she pointed. My hand shook, but I got through it.
“What happens now?”
“He gets served,” Patricia explained. “Then he has a set time to respond. If he contests anything, we go to mediation. If he doesn’t, we move forward. How long it takes depends on how cooperative he is. Could be six months. Could be a year.”
