My stomach dropped so fast I had to grip the edge of the couch.
“I want a divorce.”
He promised he’d be a good father, pay child support, and show up.
“I’ll still take care of them,” he said. “I’m not walking away from my kids.”
“I just don’t love you anymore,” he added.
The way he said it was almost gentle, as if he thought that made it kinder.
“You don’t love me,” I repeated. “Or you don’t love the responsibility?”
He didn’t answer that.
“Is there someone else?” I asked.
Silence.
That silence should’ve told me everything.
“You don’t love me.”
No matter what I said, Tyler refused to change his mind.
When the divorce was finalized, I signed the papers with one hand while balancing Emma on my hip.
My lawyer avoided eye contact when he explained the child support calculations.
Two months later, Tyler and my cousin Gabriella, my father’s niece, announced their engagement.
They didn’t even have the decency to tell me privately.
Tyler and my cousin Gabriella announced their engagement.
They told me at my aunt Denise’s backyard barbecue.
I only showed up because I refused to hide in my house forever.
Tyler stood beside the much younger Gabriella as if he’d won something. She held out her hand, flashing a diamond that looked bigger than practical.
“We didn’t plan for it to happen like this,” she told a group of relatives. “But when it’s right, it’s right.”
…flashing a diamond that looked bigger than practical.
Our family was split down the middle. Some were shocked, but most shrugged and said, “The heart wants what it wants.”
I wanted to scream that hearts shouldn’t want married men with newborn twins.
But I was shattered.
However, I didn’t collapse in public. I saved that for the shower at home, where no one could hear me.
Only my younger sister, Hannah, and my mom stood firmly beside me.
I was shattered.
