Chapter 2 - The Family That Chose Her
My mother finally looked at me.
“Emily, your father didn't mean it that way.”
“What other way is there to mean it?”
“Everyone is emotional.”
I stared at her.
I had just discovered that my husband had been sleeping with my sister for almost six months.
My sister was pregnant.
And somehow everyone was emotional.
“When did you know?”
Neither parent answered.
That silence was different from shock.
It was coordination.
My stomach tightened.
“When did you know Lauren was seeing Mark?”
Mom put down her mug.
“Emily—”
“When?”
My father sighed.
“Your mother suspected something.”
“How long?”
“That's not important.”
“It is to me.”
Dad stood.
That was his old strategy. When conversations became uncomfortable, he moved around the room as though motion transformed avoidance into authority.
“Lauren came to us because she was frightened.”
“Of me?”
“Of what would happen.”
I laughed once.
“So she slept with my husband and needed protection from my reaction?”
“Don't twist my words.”
“I don't have to.”
Mom finally spoke.
“She told me about the pregnancy three weeks ago.”
Three weeks.
Three weeks during which my mother had called me four times.
She had asked about work.
Asked whether I wanted Thanksgiving at their house.
Asked whether the clinic had given us any encouraging news.
Once, she had actually said, Don't give up hope.
I stared at her.
“You knew she was pregnant while you asked me about fertility treatment?”
Tears appeared in Mom's eyes.
I felt nothing.
Not yet.
“Lauren is my daughter too.”
“And I'm what?”
“That's unfair.”
“No. What's unfair is that apparently everyone gets protected except me.”
Dad folded his arms.
“We're asking you not to make decisions while you're angry.”
“My husband impregnated my sister.”
“The baby is innocent.”
There it was.
The baby.
A person who hadn't even been born had already been recruited into the argument.
“I never blamed the baby.”
“Then think about what happens next.”
I looked from my father to my mother.
“What happens next is I get a lawyer.”
Mom stood abruptly.
“Emily.”
“What?”
“You don't have to destroy Mark.”
I almost couldn't believe what I'd heard.
“He destroyed our marriage.”
“You're hurt.”
“Yes.”
“You're not thinking clearly.”
For the first time since entering that bedroom, anger finally arrived.
It didn't make me scream.
It made me calm.
“I am thinking more clearly than I have in years.”
I picked up my purse.
Mom followed me toward the door.
“Where will you go?”
“A hotel.”
“You can stay here.”
I looked at her.
The family photographs behind her suddenly seemed like evidence from somebody else's childhood.
“No.”
“Emily, please.”
“If Lauren walks through that door tonight, will you let her stay?”
Mom didn't answer.
That was my answer.
I left.
By midnight, I had checked into a small hotel across town.
Mark called twenty-three times.
Lauren called twice.
My mother sent nine messages.
My father sent one.
Don't do anything you'll regret.
I blocked them all.
Then I sat on the edge of the hotel bed and cried until sunrise.
Not elegantly.
Not quietly.
I cried for my marriage.
For my sister.
For every injection.
For every negative pregnancy test.
For every dollar I had spent trying to build a future with a man who had already begun building another one behind my back.
At seven in the morning, I opened my laptop.
At 7:14, I searched for divorce attorneys.
At 8:03, I sent an email requesting an emergency consultation.
At 9:40, an attorney named Rebecca Shaw called.
She listened without interrupting.
When I finished, she asked one question.
“Do you have access to your financial records?”
“Yes.”
“Download everything today.”
“Why?”
“Because people who lie emotionally often lie financially too.”
That sentence saved me.
I logged into our joint accounts.
At first, nothing looked unusual.
Mortgage.
Utilities.
Insurance.
Clinic payments.
Then I found transfers.
Small enough that I had never noticed individually.
Eight hundred dollars.
Twelve hundred.
Nine hundred fifty.
Two thousand.
All going into an account I didn't recognize.
I downloaded twelve months of statements.
Then eighteen.
The transfers had begun before the affair.
Much earlier.
My hands turned cold.
I called Rebecca.
“How far back should I look?”
“As far as you can.”
By afternoon, I had found more than twenty-seven thousand dollars moved from accounts containing my income.
Mark came to the hotel that evening.
I knew because reception called.
“There's a gentleman downstairs asking for you.”
“Tell him I'm not here.”
“He says he's your husband.”
“Tell him that title is temporary.”
I hung up.
Five minutes later, a message arrived from an unknown number.
It was Mark.
Please. We need to talk.
I deleted it.
Another arrived.
Lauren is scared.
I stared at those three words.
Not I'm sorry.
Not Are you okay?
Lauren is scared.
I blocked the number.
The divorce filing began two days later.
That's when my parents chose their side publicly.
My mother called Rebecca's office and left a message asking whether I could “slow things down for the baby's sake.”
My father told relatives I was reacting vindictively because of my infertility.
Lauren moved into my house before the divorce papers were even served.
And Mark changed the locks.
That mistake cost him.
The house was partly mine.
Rebecca obtained an order preventing him from disposing of marital property.
For the first time, Mark seemed to understand that I wasn't coming back.
Then something stranger happened.
Three weeks after I left, I received an envelope at work.
No return address.
Inside was a photocopy of a bank transfer.
Mark had moved $18,000 into a company I had never heard of.
At the bottom, someone had written four words in blue ink:
LOOK AT YOUR FATHER.
I read them five times.
My father?
I wanted to dismiss it as cruelty.
Then I looked at the company name.
Hawthorne Development Holdings.
May you like
My father's middle name was Hawthorne.
And suddenly the betrayal inside my bedroom looked much smaller than the one beginning to emerge outside it.
