“Steve,” she said through her tears. “I’m so sorry, I never wanted to hurt you like this.”
“Sorry?” my laughter came out bitter, hollow even. “You destroy our family, and you’re sorry?”
A close-up of a crying woman | Source: Pexels
The room suddenly filled with the sound of our son’s crying, his body shaking in the living room doorway. Seeing him — a witness to our crumbling lives, broke through my anger, replacing it with profound sorrow.
“Come here, buddy,” I said softly, reaching out to hold onto him.
“Why, Mom?” he asked. “Why did you do it?”
An upset teenage boy | Source: Pexels
Jackson’s voice was muffled against my shirt, his question simple yet loaded with confusion and hurt.
It turned out that he had walked in when my mother was confronting Laura; his initial response was that something had happened to Laura because of her crying. He wanted to protect her. But then, his grandmother had taken him into the kitchen and made him a sandwich, telling him the truth.
A person making a sandwich | Source: Pexels
Laura knelt beside us, her hand reaching out, but I pulled him closer to me.
“Sometimes, people make terrible mistakes,” she said, her voice breaking. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you both.”
“But it does mean that things can’t stay the same,” I added quietly, the reality settling in.
I couldn’t believe that my wife had cheated on me. It made me question everything, including the paternity of the baby that Laura was carrying.
A man holding his head | Source: Pexels
As we sat there on the couch, Laura reached out to me. She went on about promises and wanting to make things right.
But I didn’t see how we could move past it and be okay. I wanted Jackson to live in a home with two parents who loved and trusted each other, but after this — I didn’t see a way through it.
A couple sitting on a couch | Source: Pexels
Later that evening, I took Jackson out for dinner. We needed to escape our home and the uneasy atmosphere that had taken over. We needed a break.
“Will you move out?” he asked me as he dug into his burger.
“No,” I reassured him. “Mom and I need to figure some things out, sure, but I’m not going anywhere.”
He nodded at me.
A burger and fries on a plate | Source: Pexels
“I thought that Mom wasn’t okay,” he admitted. “When I got home from school, Gran was trying to get Mom to come out of the bathroom — she kept calling and Mom just kept on crying. I didn’t know that there was another man in the house.”
“Where was he?” I asked, cracking open a beer.
“He was sitting on your bed, or so Gran told me,” Jackson said.
A person holding a beer bottle | Source: Pexels
After dinner, we just didn’t want to go home. There was a disconnect between our home and the reality of the situation. But I was grateful that I had Jackson with me.
Much later that night, when I went home, Laura was sitting on the couch biting her nails — something she did whenever she was stressed.
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