chapter
5
Thoughts of divorce had consumed me all night. My parents had divorced. My grandparents had divorced. I had prayed that I would be able to break the cycle.
I was wrong.
Because there was no way a couple could survive this kind of betrayal.
Was there?
After meeting with Yvonne yesterday, I’d retreated to the bed and had let the sun set, then rise on my heartbreak. I pulled myself up against the headboard, the silence of the hotel room surrounding me, my best friend’s words from yesterday lingering in my head.
Darius was evil and sadistic. Clark is not.
No, I could be as angry and hurt as I wanted, but my mind wouldn’t even let me call Clark evil. What he did was evil, but the man that I’d met back when I was a sophomore in college and trying to stay out at the local hangout simply because I could, was anything but evil. The man who I had dated while he went to grad school and I began my career working as a reporter in Lawton, Oklahoma, was a God-fearing, devoted man. I fell in love with his caring heart. I watched him with those kids at the Boys & Girls Club and knew he was one of those special men that comes along once in a lifetime.
Boy, I couldn’t have been more wrong. At the end of that perfectly painted picture, he was just a man. A cheating man.
As I sat in the bed, my mind replayed what had driven me to this hotel.
“Dawn, I need you to stop crying.”
Normally, I wouldn’t have paid my husband’s voice any attention. Clark was always over at Dawn and Rob’s house, so there was nothing unusual about seeing his car there when I first pulled up. But the hushed tone he had, and the fact that he was at Dawn’s house when he was supposed to be at work, made my antenna rise.
I did as I usually did, walked around the side to come in on Dawn’s back patio. For as long as I’d known Dawn and Rob, they never answered their front door—at least, for friends. We normally just came around to the back and tapped on the patio door, which led into their family room.
I had originally been on my way to meet my photographer to cover a story nearby when I decided to kill some time and detour to Dawn and Rob’s. Clark had been friends with Rob since they played little league football together in southwest Houston. And after Rob’s death, Clark had been a beacon of strength for Dawn and their four kids. So I wasn’t thinking anything as I made my way down the side of the house, around the back, and toward the patio.
But the hushed tones halted my steps.
“I just feel so bad,” Dawn said.
That made me inhale and then hold my breath as if I didn’t want them to hear me breathing. I peered around the corner to see my husband holding Dawn in his arms. Again, normally, that wouldn’t have bothered me.
But when he pulled away from her, he said, “We know that it will never happen again.”
Those words ignited a sick flame in my stomach.
“It shouldn’t have happened now,” she said.
His voice cracked with pain. “I know. But it did. It’s just that we can’t look back. We have to look forward.”
She moved away from him as my eyes remained riveted. I was peering around the corner like a child spying on her parents.
“I just can’t believe we did this to Savannah, to Rob. Oh, my God, what if Rob is looking down?” she cried as she buried her face in her hands.
“Dawn, we can’t do this. We can’t torture ourselves,” Clark said. “We made a mistake, but we can’t beat ourselves up about it. We have got to pull it together.”
She looked up at him, her eyes red with tears. “What am I supposed to do the next time I see her?” Dawn gasped. “Am I supposed to just pretend that I didn’t sleep with her husband?”
I held on to the wall to keep from toppling over. Then I did the only thing that was left to do. I stepped out and let my presence be known. Dawn spotted me first. And when Clark turned, their gasps were as one.
I stood, staring at both of them in disbelief.
“Oh, my God,” Dawn said, horror blanketing her face. “Savannah, I’m so sorry.”
I couldn’t look at her.
The woman I thought was a friend.
The woman I confided in.
The woman I’d held up after her husband died.
No, I couldn’t focus on Dawn Simmons right now. She hadn’t made a vow before God to me. My husband had.
“Savannah . . .” That was the only word my husband could find.
“How could you do this?” I don’t even know how I managed to find my voice.
“Babe, oh no. I . . . It’s not . . . I’m so sorry. Let me explain,” he stammered.
In the movies, when a woman catches her husband cheating then flees, I was that one who always talked about her not doing that. I was from Houston’s Third Ward, where women didn’t cower and run, where we administered beatdowns to side pieces. I had yelled at countless movie screens on what I’d do in that situation. But now that I was in that spot, the only thing I could think to do was turn and run.
Clark, of course, took off after me, calling my name as I bolted toward my car. But I must have channeled my high school track star years, because I was inside my Jaguar and peeling off by the time he made it to my car. And just like a scene out of a movie, he banged on my window as I backed out. I swear I wished there was a way that I could run him over. But I wasn’t thinking clearly. And so I did the only thing that I could. I sped away as if my life depended on it.
Now here I was, in a hotel room, trying to figure out my next move. Whatever that move was, I knew that it would involve finding the strength to move on from the man I had spent the last twelve years of my life married to.
I’d lost so much of my life to pity parties. I didn’t know how I was going to pick up the pieces. I didn’t know when. But I couldn’t go back to that dark place I’d been in after the accident, and the only way I’d be able to do that would be to get out of this bed and find my strength.
I threw the covers back, got up, opened the blinds, and began the seemingly impossible task of getting my life together.