But what plays on a loop in my mind are the nights I stayed awake, waiting. All the dinners where Colin never came home.
Me, lying in a cold bed alone while he was God knows where… doing things he never should have.
I have no idea where I found the strength to face him and say everything that had been trapped in my chest. For a moment, I doubted I'd even be able to do it.
When he came home—calling out my name, the kids' names, frantic and desperate—I had a knot in my throat so tight I could barely swallow. I used the time he spent searching for us upstairs to pull myself together. To steel myself. To finally let go of everything that had been suffocating me these past few weeks.
I avoided him in every way I could, at every possible moment. Afraid that if I opened my mouth, I'd either scream and spill everything that was eating me alive... or collapse into his arms, crying, begging to know why.
Why he did this tome? How he could do this tous?
The way he danced with me in our living room. The way he tried to summon our memories.
It only reminded me how far he’d fallen from grace. The Colin who danced with me on our wedding night no longer exists.
I felt soweak. Sopathetic.
Needing to be nearhim. Needing tofeelhis body close to mine one last time. I couldn't bring myself to kiss him… or to let him touch me in any other way.
But I let him hold me in his arms. I let my head rest against his chest, and for that one night, I pretended everything was exactly as it used to be. Because in the morning, nothing would ever be the same again.
I don’t recognize him in those images, those receipts, those texts.
And that last photo… his lips touching hers in a closed-mouth kiss. Somehow, even after everything I’d already seen, it hurt anyway.
Because it felt intimate. Tender. Caring.
All I could think was,that's not the man I love.Loved.
That's the cruelest part. The split between reason and this foolish, aching heart. Knowing I shouldn't love him, yet powerless to let it go… as if an eraser could simply wipe love away.
Part of me wanted more time. Time to process everything.
But the days kept passing, and instead of feeling more prepared, I felt the opposite—because the truth had already settled. I knew what I had to do.
And yet, all the years we spent together sat heavy, weighing on me as I waited for the moment to finally put an end to it.
Then Ethan came to me and told me about the phone call he'd overheard. And in that moment, I knew my time was up.
"He was on the phone, alone in the kitchen, talking in a low voice… ordering chocolates and flowers, with a birthday card. And they weren't for you, Mom. They were for someone else."
His voice faltered. I could hear the anger threaded through it, but beneath that anger was something denser. A deep, aching sadness.
"I didn't know how to react at the moment, and he left soon after. I don't want to hurt you... but I felt like I had to tell you."
I hugged him, holding back my tears, and told him it was all right. That he had done nothing wrong, and that he didn't need to say anything to his father. That he didn't need to carry that burden.
I asked him to trust me. And my boy did.
In the days that followed, when he started spending more time away from home whenever he wasn't at school, I said nothing. Not even when he refused to go to the dinner Colin had arranged the night before his trip. Our last dinner together.
I let him process it in his own way.
Ethan will always be my boy, but I know he's no longer a little child. He already has some sense of what's happening.
How am I supposed to tell him? To lay out the truth without shattering his heart in the process?
As much as he and his father are at odds, I know a part of him still loves his dad. Still misses him.
