I introduced them.
“Brent and I went to school together.”
He shook my hand.
“Craig! You’re still working here? That’s awesome. Somebody has to keep the place running, right?”
Laura laughed at his joke.
Eight months later, she stood in our kitchen with a suitcase beside the door.
“I’m in love with Brent.”
I remember holding a dish towel.
The boys were asleep upstairs.
I couldn’t move.
“Laura, we have two children.”Hire Babysitters
“I know.”
Then she said Brent could give them things I never could.
A house on the lake.
Private schools.
Real vacations.
Not some inexpensive cabin without air conditioning.
“They like the cabin.”
“They’re children, Craig. They don’t know any better.”
Then she looked at me with something worse than anger.
Pity.
“You’re going nowhere in life.”
She told me I would spend the next twenty years repairing other people’s cars for ordinary wages.
That I would never make real money.Browse Art Prints
Never become anyone important.
Then she picked up her suitcase.
“I deserve more.”
She left.
I sat on the kitchen floor until sunrise.Browse Art Prints
The divorce took almost a year.
Laura had Brent’s lawyers.
I had an inexpensive attorney who occasionally forgot my sons’ names.
Laura got primary custody.
I got every other weekend and Wednesday dinners.
Then I lost my job.
Brent’s father owned the dealership.Shop Kitchenware
Six weeks after Laura moved into the lake house, my manager called me into the office and announced a “restructuring.”
