Chapter 1

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

Megan was my high school sweetheart. She was the true love who stayed with in a long-distance relationship during college, and the woman who became my wife three years earlier. But there she was, sitting across the kitchen table telling me she was leaving.

“Megan, what’s going on? Where’s this coming from?”

“Ben, I said I’m leaving and I’m filing for a divorce.” Her voice was mechanical, as though she had she spent a lot of time rehearsing how she would say this. Her eyes stared down at the table. She squirmed in her chair like it was getting uncomfortably hot. A dark curtain of silence hung between us for uncomfortable quiet moments.

“Why?”

More silence. More squirming.

I tried to process every thought and emotion as they boiled within me. It felt like someone hit me in the gut with a baseball bat. My head was throbbing. My heart was pounding and my stomach threatened to reject whatever was left in it. Tears were quickly building up and starting to overflow. It was Friday, and I just walked in from a horrendous week at work. And now the woman I completely trusted and adored was hitting me with the worst sucker punch I could imagine.

More silence. She just kept looking down, refusing to meet my eyes. Seconds felt like hours while every emotion within me started to erupt. My self-control was pushed to the limits.

“DAMN IT!” Megan jumped in her seat and shriveled into herself. “Look at me and tell me what’s going on!” I shouted. I had never yelled at her before.

She looked desperately afraid of me. I never thought I’d have cause to make her feel that way. Even now and in these circumstances, I would put my life on the line to be sure she never experienced fear. But she put my limits to the test. I loved this woman with everything that word means. I stood by and believed that our promises and vows were real and could not be compromised. I thought she believed the same, but it seemed I was very wrong.

I saw her tears dripping on the table as she continued to stare down. I could see she was forcing herself not to sob, but her eyes wouldn’t cooperate. I got up and turned to lean on the counter, both to give her some space and to hide that my eyes weren’t cooperating at holding back my own tears.

I had never felt so overwhelmed and helpless. I was being torn in half without any warning. Nothing prepared me to deal with this life-shattering pain. I strained for clues. I never saw anything in her change. Nothing changed in our communication. I shared everything and thought she did the same. Had I stopped being attentive? I still held the door for her, held her hands when we walked together or rode in the car. Our physical love life was still frequent, and every indication pointed to her feeling loved and satisfied. Even that past weekend we played and experimented in bed. She seemed more than excited for those intimate times. Was that all an act? Was it a lie? It had to be. It felt like whatever was going on has been brewing for a long time and I was none the wiser. I realized I’ve been a fool. I’ve been played.

But why?

I tried to soften the tension. “Megan ... did you ... did you ever ... love me?”

She choked back a sob and shivered in fear. “Yes.”

It seemed I might start to get some answers if I kept my back turned and spoke very softly. She wouldn’t, and maybe couldn’t, look me in the eyes.

“Megan, do you still believe I love you?”

“Yes.” Her response was quick and almost challenging.

“Do you still love me ... or is that gone?”

She began to sob more openly. I heard her get up, so I turned as she slowly walked toward the side door that led out to the driveway. She stopped facing the doorway, trying to gather the strength to answer my question.

“Yes, but it’s not that simple.”

“What can you possibly mean by ‘not that simple?’ What are you trying to tell me?” I fought to calm my voice. She was clearly scared and wanted to dart out the door.

“Are you having an affair? Have you slept with someone else?” I feared this answer more than anything.

“No.”

I wanted that to be good news, but it still didn’t answer why. My patience was holding on by a thread. I needed clarity. I needed answers. Still, I fought to stay calm.

“Then why do you suddenly want to rip us apart? No discussion? No option for counseling? No recourse? Why today, two weeks before Christmas no less, you just want to throw us away?”

I tried to remove any sense of threat in my voice. I kept my distance hoping it would give her a feeling of security and freedom to give me answers. I was grasping at straws trying to find some way out of this that ended with her flying into my arms to take it all back.

Her sobbing grew in intensity. “Ben, I knew I wouldn’t be able to tell you everything face to face. I’ve packed and I’m going to my sister’s tonight. The answers you need are in this letter.” She dropped an envelope on the counter by the door. “I’ll talk to you in a few days.”

“The door closed with a sudden finality as she scrambled away.”

I stood there in a stunned silence. “This has to be a nightmare,” I thought to myself. I watched through the window as she flew into her car and race off almost as if she thought I’d be chasing her.

I paced the kitchen trying to wrestle with my thoughts. My emotions were in overdrive. My knees were weak.

I had to sit ... My adrenalin was putting a strain on my whole body. My stomach was tumbling and turning like laundry in a clothes dryer. Sweat poured from me, caused by an internal furnace of anger and hurt. Composure seemed out of my reach.

Gaining enough control of my gut, I felt able to retrieve the letter although I was dreading what it contained. Would it tell me I messed up? Did I deserve this somehow?

Reaching for the letter was like reaching into a fire. I had never experienced pain like that. I was anxious to read it, and yet I was deathly afraid of what it may reveal.

Part of me wanted to tear it up and chase after her to get the answers face to face. At least she told me where she was going. But she thought this course of action through for a reason. I gently picked it up as if it carried the plague. I walked to our—well—I guess it was just my bedroom. Whatever secrets it contained had me panicked. The walls were closing in. I was caged.

Walking into the bedroom I immediately noticed her closet and drawers were empty. The master bath looked void of feminine occupancy. Her pillows were gone while mine remained. She’d had it planned. She must have been preparing from the time I left for work.

Again, I wondered how long she thought of this. Only two nights ago we had made love. It was long and tender and, I thought, very loving. We cuddled afterward. I made some stupid comment that we were getting really good at the practice sessions, maybe we should think about making babies for real. I remembered her turning away mumbling something about not tonight.

Then a memory from that night sent a chill of fear down my spine. I remembered saying goodnight and that I loved her. All she said was goodnight. She never failed to return sentiments of love.

Oh my gosh. “Was that night her goodbye to me?” I asked myself out loud.

I tore the envelope open, unable to help noticing how thick it was. “What the... !” I pulled out the contents and found it had twenty-one pages. They were numbered. “How cruelly organized,” I thought. How could she fill that many pages of secrets without me having a clue about what they were?

My hands shook as I took it all in.

In summary, the letter said that while we were in college she had an affair. I guess when she answered “no” to that question earlier, she chose only to count our married years. I always thought that, like me, she never slept with anyone else in her life. A new pain of betrayal grabbed me by the heart. A wedding night memory surfaced like a blow to the chest. She seemed a lot more skilled in bed that I would have expected of a virgin. I should have seen it!

She never named him. He was a year ahead of her in college and was always open with her that he was taking a position with a global company. They planned on sending him to their Singapore office. He moved to Asia the week after graduation. About a year earlier he moved back to work in the Chicago office and had contacted her.

A year? He had been pursuing her for a year and I had no clue? Am I that clueless?

Her letter was adamant that they had not had sex since his return. She took three pages to say that in multiple ways. It almost didn’t matter. Just talking with him was betrayal as far as I was concerned. Everything she tried to explain appeared to be an attempt to ease my mind, but instead the knife in my heart was sinking deeper with every hollow sentiment.

She further explained in great, over-complicated detail that they knew their love was, and I quote, “A true love that could not be denied.” She agreed a month earlier to leave me and marry him as soon as the divorce was final.

So she met with him for a year, and had her mind made up to leave me for the past month? I felt like an ignorant fool. Work had been especially rough, but I made sure I didn’t let that impact our relationship. What clues did I miss?

I was only fifteen pages into the letter when I read that last part and a panicked thought struck me. I ran to the computer tripping over the side chair and opened our checking, savings, and investment accounts. Nothing was touched. Everything was there. Wow! I was both surprised and relieved. I would deal with changing all the accounts during business hours the next day, but I still had more pages to read of her tome of betrayal.

I should have been more patient with my reading. Her letter explained that her “true love” was well paid, and the company was generous after his Singapore assignment. She said she felt bad enough for what she had to do to me so she didn’t want any of our money. The momentary relief from financial concern didn’t take away the pain and even increased my sense of.

The depressing declaration of her departure continued. She wrote page after page of worthless sentiment with claims of how she really did love and care for me. Her words were like a slap in the face. They were empty words that rubbed lemon juice into my raw wounds. I sensed some sincerity in her profession of continued love. She was deeply emotional during her departure. But she still made a choice. Love doesn’t make that choice. She made a self-centered, selfish decision.

“True love?” I thought. She said several times in her letter. “Isn’t that what we had?” I laid back on the bed and couldn’t hold back the tears.

I couldn’t face this alone. Bobby and his wife Sarah were our—well—I guess my best friends. Collecting myself as much as possible, I called Bobby’s cell.

“Hey, Ben. How ya doin’, old buddy?”

“Hi. Uhhh ... could you guys ... can you come over?”

“Geez. Are you okay?”

“Can you come?”

“Hang on. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

We had never needed to knock on each other’s doors. They walked in and saw me on the couch. I completely lost it. They didn’t have a clue what was wrong. They just sandwiched me in a supportive hug while I emptied what tears I had left.

Sarah kept asking for some shred of information. “My God, Ben! What’s going on? Where’s Megan? Did something bad happen to her?”

I started to calm down a bit. Not sure I could speak, I picked up the letter and just handed it to her. Bobby came around next to her to see what it was. They only needed to read the first sentence or two to understand, and Sarah turned to me without a word and just held me.

Bobby got up. “Crap! I can’t believe she could do this!” He shuffled to the fridge, grabbed a beer for each of us, came back and sat in the chair across from the couch as he plunked three bottles on the coffee table.

Sarah just kept hugging me from the side. Neither said a word while they waited for me to open up. Sarah eventually reached for her beer and handed me mine, which provided enough of a mood breaker for me to start communicating.

I could only utter a few quiet words. “Just scan the letter for the whole story. See if you can make any sense of this.”

I took my first guzzle of beer and noticed Bobby moving back next to Sarah and they started to read. Sarah was dumbfounded. She quietly mumbled to herself but loud enough for us all to hear.

“Megan is my best friend ... how did I not know?”

Bobby quickly decided to let Sarah read the details. She would summarize it for him later.

“Ben, why don’t you join me in the kitchen. We’ll late Sarah read it and she can summarize ot for me later.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

We sat at the kitchen table and glared at our beer as if the bottles held the answers.