“I just can’t deal with this, Zack.” She looks down at the suitcase, sighs, and briefly closes her eyes. “No; the truth is, I don’twantto deal with it.” She draws in a breath, and when she looks at me, her gaze is sure and steady. “I want out.”
“What?”
“I want a divorce.”
She’s just being melodramatic, I think.She’s saying this to shake me up. “Jessica, you’re upset. You don’t mean that.”
“Yes, I do. I really, truly, sincerely do. I’m done.”
“This isn’t something to decide in haste. We should go to counseling.”
She shakes her head. “I’ve given this a lot of thought. Counseling won’t change the situation.” She puts her hands on her hips. “The situation is this, Zack: I didn’t sign up to watch you co-parent another woman’s children. I don’t want that in my life. Besides, we’re not really a couple anymore. We want entirely different things. We don’t even want to live in the same city. So let’s just cut our losses and call it a day.”
I’m on one side of the bed, and she’s on the other. I stare acrossthe mattress where we’ve slept and made love for the last three years. “Look, I know it’s been hard on you, finding out about Lily and Quinn and the baby. And maybe I wasn’t as sympathetic or involved or whatever as I should have been with your infertility procedures. I’m sorry for anything I’ve done or haven’t done that’s made you feel bad. But you don’t throw away a marriage just because something happens that you don’t like.”
“This is way beyond something I don’t like.” She picks up the remaining folded clothes on the bed and puts them in the suitcase. “This would have been a deal breaker if I’d known about it before I married you. This is a circumstance I refuse to live with.”
“Jessica, you’re overly emotional right now. Why don’t you take some time and we’ll talk later.”
“I’mnotoverly emotional. I’m an appropriate degree of emotional. And I’m tired of taking time and talking later, only to get another knife in the heart.” Her voice quakes, but her tone is solid steel. “Besides, there’s nothing to talk about. You don’t really want to move, and I refuse to stay.”
“We can work this out,” I say. I truly believe this. I negotiate things for a living.
“I’m not willing to try.” She fixes me with herI’m donelook, a look that says further discussion is futile. “The truth is, Zack, I don’t love you enough to take this on.”
The words pour over me like a bucket of ice, chilling my blood, coldly echoing in my head.I don’t love you enough to take this on.“You don’t mean that,” I say.
“I do. I’m sorry.”
Later, I’ll realize the regret in her eyes should have convinced me.
“It makes sense to settle this now,” she says. “There’s no point in you leaving your job and moving to Seattle.” She snaps her suitcase closed and hoists it to the floor. She picks up her purse from the bedroom chair and pulls it on her shoulder.
I realize she’s about to walk out the door. “Wait. Where are you going?” She can’t be leaving town; she has an important meeting inthe morning, plus the hotel staff is giving her a going-away party the following afternoon.
“I’m staying at the hotel tonight.”
This strikes me as a fatal blow. If she stays at the hotel, everyone in her corporation will know by morning that she’s got marriage problems.
“You don’t have to do that! I can find a place to stay tonight, and you can stay here,” I say.
“I’ve already got it set up. The hotel will comp my room.”
Of course they will. That isn’t the issue.
The issue is that she’s already made up her mind.I don’t love you enough to take this on. She wants out, and she doesn’t care if the whole world knows it.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Jessica
Wednesday, June 5
BRETT IS DRIVINGme to a dealership to see about leasing a car on Wednesday afternoon when my phone rings. I ease it out of my purse and look at the screen. Every muscle in my body tightens as if I’m braced for impact.
Brett pulls his eyes from the road and quirks up an eyebrow. “Is it him?”
I nod.
