Aaron came home at 8:42 that evening.
I knew the time because I was sitting on the bedroom floor, sorting through the last of my clothes, when the front door slammed hard enough to echo through the house.
His footsteps came up the stairs.
Then I heard my name.
“Claire!”
I kept folding the sweater in my hands.
He appeared in the doorway wearing yesterday's white shirt. His tie was gone, his hair was untidy, and his face looked as though he had spent the entire day arguing with people who refused to give him what he wanted.
I had seen Aaron angry before.
He could be frighteningly calm when an employee made a mistake or a competitor challenged him. He had a way of making people feel they had disappointed him personally.
Tonight, he looked different.
There was anger in his eyes, but something else sat beneath it.
Fear, perhaps.
“What were you thinking?”
I placed the sweater inside the box.
“About which part?”
He stared at me.
“Don't play games with me.”
“I'm not.”
“The Slack message, Claire.”
“Oh. That.”
He took a step into the room.
“That?”
“You saw it, then.”
“Half the company saw it before anyone could tell me what was happening.”
I reached for another shirt.
“More than half, technically.”
His jaw tightened.
“This isn't funny.”
“I haven't laughed.”
He looked at the boxes behind me.
For a moment, I thought he might finally ask whether I was all right.
Instead, he said, “You made me look like an idiot in front of my entire company.”
There it was.
Not the nights he hadn't come home.
Not the woman whose name I had spent months trying not to think about.
His reputation.
That was what mattered first.
“I didn't make you look like anything,” I said. “I told people what I was doing.”
“You publicly implied that I was having an affair with an employee.”
“I thanked Jasmine for taking care of you.”
“Stop twisting my words.”
“Those were my words, Aaron.”
He stared at me as though he couldn't understand how the woman who used to smooth over every awkward conversation had suddenly stopped helping him.
I stood and folded the top flaps of the box.
“I'm divorcing you.”
He went still.
He had heard the words before, perhaps through his mother or his lawyers, but I don't think he had believed them.
“You're actually serious?”
“Yes.”
“You brought my clothes to the office.”
“I thought you'd need them.”
“You left a settlement proposal with reception.”
“I assumed your attorney would prefer to read it.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
For once, he seemed to have no prepared response.
His gaze moved around the bedroom.
The boxes were stacked against the wall. My suitcase stood near the door, and the closet had begun to show empty spaces where my clothes had been.
I had spent years arranging this room according to his preferences.
Now he was looking at it as though someone had changed the furniture while he was away.
“You hired a lawyer?”
“Nathan Brooks.”
His expression changed immediately.
“Brooks?”
“Yes.”
“You went to Nathan before speaking to me?”
I looked at him.
“I spent three years trying to speak to you.”
“That's not what I meant.”
“I know.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“This is completely unreasonable.”
“No. It's late.”
He stared at me again.
“You don't end a marriage by sending a message to a company channel.”
“I didn't end our marriage with a message.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Accepting that it ended before I was ready to admit it.”
He looked away.
I had expected him to argue. I had even expected him to threaten me with the financial consequences of divorce, although I wasn't sure why I had imagined that.
What I hadn't expected was how little he seemed to understand.
For months, I had wondered whether Aaron and Jasmine were more than colleagues.
Every time I asked, he told me I was reading too much into ordinary interactions.
Every time I noticed how quickly she responded to him, he reminded me that she worked for him.
Every time I mentioned a dinner or an overnight absence, he made me feel as though I had turned a harmless scheduling problem into a personal accusation.
Now he stood in our bedroom, furious that I had stopped accepting his explanations.
“You think you know something you don't,” he said.
I looked directly at him.
“Then tell me what I don't know.”
He hesitated.
It was a small hesitation.
I had learned to recognize them.
“Aaron, were you with Jasmine last night?”
He looked toward the hallway.
“We were talking.”
“Until three in the morning?”
“Claire.”
“Were you with her?”
His shoulders dropped slightly.
“Yes.”
The word landed between us.
I had suspected the truth for months, but hearing him admit it was different.
I waited.
“Did you spend the night with her?”
He said nothing.
I felt my fingers tighten around the edge of the box.
“How long has this been happening?”
“Don't do this.”
“How long?”
He turned away from me.
“It doesn't matter.”
I let out a short, disbelieving breath.
“You stayed away from home with another woman, and you think the length of time doesn't matter?”
“I'm saying that whatever happened between Jasmine and me doesn't excuse what you did today.”
I stared at him.
Even now, he was trying to make my reaction the central problem.
I sat down on the edge of the mattress because my legs had begun to feel unsteady.
For months, I had asked myself the same questions.
Was I jealous?
Was I insecure?
Had I become so accustomed to being Aaron's wife that I expected too much of his time?
Perhaps I had misunderstood their friendship.
Perhaps he was right, and I was making a problem out of nothing.
I had repeated those explanations until they almost sounded like my own thoughts.
“I spent months believing there was something wrong with me,” I said.
He didn't answer.
“I watched you search for her when you walked into a room. I watched her know where you were going before I did. I watched you laugh with her while you barely looked at me.”
“Claire—”
“Every time I asked you about it, you made me feel foolish.”
His expression shifted.
“I never wanted you to feel that way.”
“You never cared enough to notice.”
“That isn't fair.”
I looked at him.
“Tell me what I was drinking at the Foundation gala in December.”
He blinked.
“What?”
“What was in my glass?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“What color was my dress?”
He looked increasingly irritated.
“Claire, this is ridiculous.”
“Who took me home that night?”
He had no answer.
I remembered the evening clearly.
I had left the gala early because Aaron said he needed to introduce Jasmine to a potential business contact from New York.
I had waited for him to tell me he would be late.
I had waited for him to ask whether I had arrived home safely.
Neither had happened.
I had gone to bed alone, still wearing the dress I had chosen because he once told me he liked the color.
“I went home by myself,” I said. “You stayed because Jasmine needed you to meet someone.”
“I had work.”
“You always had work.”
“I run a global company.”
“I know.”
I stood and picked up another stack of clothes.
“Apparently, running that company also required you to spend the night with Jasmine.”
His face hardened.
“This conversation is pointless.”
“No. It's the first honest conversation we've had in months.”
He turned toward the door, then stopped.
“What do you want, Claire?”
I looked at him.
“What?”
“Money?”
The question was so unexpected that I almost laughed.
“If this is about the prenup, we can discuss it. If you think the agreement was unfair, I can have Mark review it. If you want the Marblehead house formally protected, that's fine. If you need money immediately, we can work something out.”
He paused.
“But you don't need to destroy my reputation to get what you want.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing.
“You think I'm doing this for money?”
“I think people don't hire Nathan Brooks unless they intend to fight.”
“I hired him because I know you will.”
He shook his head.
“I don't want your money.”
“Everyone says that at the beginning.”
Something inside me went quiet.
“Get out.”
“This is my house too.”
“Then stay downstairs. I'm packing.”
“Claire—”
“Leave the room.”
He studied me for several seconds.
Then he walked away.
I heard his footsteps cross the hall and descend the stairs.
The front door slammed again.
I waited until the house became silent before I lowered myself to the floor.
Then I cried.
I cried for the woman I had been when I first met him. I cried for all the times I had swallowed a question because I was afraid he would accuse me of being difficult.
I cried because I could still remember the man who had made me laugh in the rain outside a little Italian restaurant in Cambridge.
He had held his jacket over my head while the two of us got soaked anyway.
He had laughed so hard that he could barely speak.
I had loved that man.
I wasn't sure when the person standing in our bedroom had replaced him, or whether the difference had always been there and I had simply refused to see it.
I only knew that leaving didn't make the memories disappear.
My phone buzzed beside the box.
A message from Margaret Prescott appeared on the screen.
CLAIRE, CALL ME NOW. THIS HAS GONE TOO FAR.
Another followed.
You have created a serious problem for the company. Whatever has happened between you and Aaron should have remained private.
I stared at the words.
Not once had she asked whether I was safe.
Not once had she asked what her son had done.
I knew she would call again, so I answered when the phone began ringing.
“Hello, Margaret.”
“What on earth were you thinking?”
She didn't bother with a greeting.
“I don't want to discuss my marriage with you.”
“You've already discussed it with five hundred employees.”
“I made a statement.”
“You accused my son of having an affair with a member of his staff.”
“Did Aaron tell you the accusation was false?”
She went quiet for a moment.
It was brief, but I noticed.
“Whatever may or may not have happened,” she said, “you should not have handled it this way.”
“I handled it privately for months.”
“You should have come to me.”
I looked around the bedroom.
At the open boxes.
At the clothes I had folded so carefully.
At the life I had been trying to keep together.
“Why would I come to you?”
“Because I am his mother.”
“Exactly.”
She sighed.
“You're upset, Claire. You're not thinking clearly.”
I almost smiled.
Six months earlier, that accusation might have sent me into another round of self-doubt.
I would have wondered whether I was being emotional, whether I should apologize, whether I had made a mistake.
Now I looked at the packed suitcase beside me.
“I was upset six months ago,” I said. “Tonight, I'm making arrangements.”
“Do you understand what a divorce from Aaron will mean?”
I knew what she meant.
The house.
The Prescott name.
The invitations, the dinners, and the places where people knew Aaron before they knew me.
She expected me to fear losing access to his world.
“I'm aware of what divorce means.”
“I don't think you are.”
I smiled faintly.
“Perhaps not.”
“Come to dinner tomorrow. We can discuss this properly.”
“No.”
“Claire.”
“Good night, Margaret.”
I ended the call.
For a few minutes, I sat without moving.
Then I heard a car outside.
My parents had arrived.
My father came upstairs and wrapped his arms around me without asking a single question. I held on to him longer than I intended.
Mom walked into the bedroom, took off her coat, and looked at the boxes.
“Which closet?”
I pointed toward the wardrobe.
She started packing.
That was how my mother helped me leave my marriage. She didn't demand an explanation or ask me to defend a decision I had already made.
She simply helped.
Dad carried the last box downstairs about an hour later.
Mom found me sitting beside the bed, looking at the empty space on Aaron's side.
“You know you can change your mind,” she said.
I looked up.
“About the divorce?”
“About what happens next.”
She sat beside me.
“You can leave tonight and decide tomorrow that you want to try again. Or you can leave and never return. You don't have to decide the rest of your life before you walk out of this house.”
I felt tears gathering again.
“I don't think I want to come back.”
“Then you don't have to.”
I looked around the room one final time.
I remembered returning from our honeymoon, when Aaron had wrapped his arms around me and said that the house finally felt like home.
I had believed him.
Somewhere between those first happy months and the fifth night he stayed away, I had stopped feeling that I belonged there.
Maybe it hadn't happened all at once.
Maybe I had been leaving in small ways for a long time.
I switched off the bedroom light and followed my parents downstairs.
The marble foyer looked exactly as I had designed it.
For the first time, I didn't wonder whether Aaron would approve.
I walked through the front door and left the house behind.
Source: kaylestore.net
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: The House by the Sea Was Mine Before the Wedding, and My Husband’s Lawyers Were About to Learn What He Had Never Asked
At 3:17 in the Morning, I Finally Stopped Waiting for My Husband to Come Home
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