Chapter 32

 

 

 

 

Finn

Three years ago

Kelly is eight months pregnant today. And she’s not only still pregnant, but the baby is doing great. Grace. That’s the name I picked out because she’s a girl. Kelly is pregnant with a girl. Part of me is relieved that it’s not another boy, because I wonder if we’d always compare him to what Logan could have been.

By the time we went to see the OB, she was already twelve weeks along.

Just goes to show you how busy and preoccupied I had been. I hate that. I hate that she suffered through her fears about being pregnant alone. That’s why it took her so long to take the test. That’s why she hid it from me.

Today is Christmas. And Logan would have been two years old today.

It’s so bittersweet. I miss my son. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about him. Wonder about him. Would he have had Kelly’s blonde hair and brown eyes or my brown hair and blue eyes? What sorts of things would he like. Elmo? Mickey Mouse? What would be his favorite books? Favorite toys?

Kelly was upset with me that I had to work today. Last year, I was still in school and I was on break. So we sat together and mourned him. We couldn’t do that today.

I tried to get the day off, but I’m an intern and it’s practically impossible to take a day off, especially a holiday. But I was able to switch the last of my shift so now I’m on my way home to Kelly.

I bought her things. So many things. For her. Just for her.

I can’t stop buying things for Kelly.

One of the things is a diamond necklace. I remember her eyeing it in a store window we passed on one of our walks a few weeks ago. So I bought it.

I want to buy things for Grace, but Kelly says no. She says it’s bad luck.

Fine. I can wait.

I smile the entire ride up the elevator and once I’m unlocking the front door, I smile even bigger at the Christmas tree I put up. We didn’t do one last year, but this year feels like hope.

That is until I hear the sound.

It’s the sort of sound that has you freezing in your place so that you can ensure you heard it correctly. But once I do, I know something is wrong. Kelly is groaning. And screaming.

Oh God. No!

My keys slip out of my hands and my bag falls to the floor next to them. I sprint across the apartment until I burst through our bedroom door. And then I freeze again. Because Kelly is in fact screaming. But it’s not in pain. It’s in pleasure.

She is naked, her head thrown back, her eyes closed and her mouth agape. Her large round belly is slick with a sheen of sweat. Beneath her…well, I haven’t even gotten that far.

Because my world just stopped.

My heart is breaking as I stand here watching my pregnant wife fuck another man in our bed on the anniversary of our son’s death.

“Kelly?”

Her eyes open and her chin drops and her eyes find mine, wide and unblinking. “Oh no, Finn.”

The guy beneath her jumps back, covering himself with my four-thousand-thread-count sheets. I can’t look at him, though I’m positive in the brief half second that I did, I recognized him. “What the fuck?” I yell.

Kelly gets on her knees, covering her large naked body with the blanket and then her head drops. “I’m sorry, Finn, but it’s probably better you find out about this now.”

“Find out?” I’m baffled. None of this makes sense to me. “How long has this been going on.”

“A year.” She can’t even meet my eyes. A year? How is that even possible? How is it possible for Kelly to have been fucking another man for a year and I not know about it? “I’m so sorry, Finn.”

I want to tell her to stop saying she’s sorry because the words are meaningless, but all I can think about right now is Grace. Yet, I can’t bring myself to speak her name, so instead I stammer, “The baby?”

“Is not yours.”

I jolt back. Like I’ve been shot. Because that is exactly what this feels like. Searing, agonizing pain right through the center of my chest, spreading throughout my entire body. “How do you know that? How can you possibly know that?” I scream at her.

“I had a test,” she whispers contrite. “I had that needle test.”

“A chorionic villus sampling?”

“Yes,” she says slowly, her eyes finally brave enough to find mine.

How did I not know about this? How could she have hidden that from me all this time?

What the fuck is happening right now?

“So you’ve known about this since you were what? Fourteen weeks?” She nods and my vision sways in and out. Instinctively I reach back, grasping onto the door. I don’t know how to make sense of this moment. All of my moments are with Kelly. “Grace,” I say her name and my heart splinters, shattering into a million tiny pieces. “You let me name her, Kelly. You let me go with you to every doctor’s appointment I could. I sat there for the ultrasound and held your goddamn hand when we found out she’s a girl. I painted her room. I built her crib. You let me fall in love with that baby, with being her father, and you knew she wasn’t mine?”

Kelly is crying now. And the piece of shit who was fucking my wife in my bed on the day my son died is just sitting there, silently watching us.

He’s the father of my baby.

I want to kill him, but he’s not the problem. Kelly is. Because she just took everything I’ve ever loved away from me. Everything I had left. I had nothing before her. She gave me herself and then Logan and Grace. And now they’re all gone and I have nothing again.

“How could you do that to me?”

“I’m so sorry,” she says again.

“Stop fucking saying that!” I bellow at the top of my lungs. “How could you lie to me for eight months? For a year? How could you let me believe she was mine? That you were mine?”

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” she sobs. “You were so excited about the baby and every time I tried, I just…lost my nerve.”

Lost her nerve? What the motherfuck?

“When were you going to tell me? After she was born and I was holding her in my arms? Were you going to wait until the moment you saw just how much I love her and then kill me for good?”

Kelly had done so much to heal me after my childhood. After my father. Our marriage had been my rock. My one stronghold against it all. The one thing I clung to. Especially after we lost Logan. And now?

Kelly just cries and cries and the guy actually moves to comfort her. Like she’s the one who needs it right now. He’s one of the lawyers she used to work with, I realize. And this almost makes me want to laugh. Because this piece of shit is the father of my child. He’s getting my wife and my baby and I’m losing everything.

I lost my son. I’m losing my wife and my daughter.

Kelly lied to me for a year. She’s been screwing another man for a year. She became pregnant with his baby and allowed me to believe it was mine.

I have nothing left in me.

Thank you, Kelly. Thank you for reminding me that love is a fallacy, happiness an illusion and trust a misconception.       

I will never make the mistake of believing in any of them again. Never.