Not bad for a hillbilly graduate from a little Christian college.
It was pathetically easy. She went to see him at his office two days later. He invited her to lunch, which lasted for four hours. Two nights later, she texted him and they met for lunch again. Oh, it was easy. “You look tired, Bradley,” she said at the restaurant. “Is everything okay? I know we just became friends, but you seem a little . . . sad.”
She led him down his already forged path of middle-aged discontentment, seeding in a few lines about how consuming Lillie’s work must be, how it could be hard to be with a woman who was so focused on other women, who lost herself once she became a mother. Once they had sex, it was a done deal, and a month after they’d met, Bradley informed her he’d be leaving his wife when their son went to college.
Bing, bang, boom.
CHAPTER 9
Lillie
The thing about divorce is that it shatters your family. It breaks everything you thought you knew and affects everyone in your radius.
Two weeks after our son landed in Montana, Brad and I set up a Zoom call with Dylan. I let Brad do the talking, turning off the computer camera to wipe away tears so my son wouldn’t see.
“Mom and I will always love each other,” Brad lied, “and we have absolutely loved raising you. But our paths are diverging now, and we’re finding our joy separately.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Dylan asked, also crying. After a few minutes of snarling at his father, he said, “Mom? What happened?”
I couldn’t lie to my son. “Well . . . this has come as a total surprise to me, honey. But I’ll be okay. I’m fine. I’m sorry, honey.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. Dad, I can’t believe you’re such an idiot! You’ll never find anyone like Mom!”
“Now, son,” Brad said. “People get divorced all the time. Your mother and I have had a great marriage, but it’s simply time to start a new journey. We have different needs and hopes.”
“Is there someone else, Dad? Is that it?”
It was gratifying to see Brad’s face flush with shame. “Your mother and I have been growing apart for a while, Dylan. That’s all.”
Liar.
“You’re an asshole, Dad,” Dylan said, and left the call.
Since then, he’d called every day, sometimes crying to me on the phone because he couldn’t believe what his father had done, sometimes barely speaking.
I understood. Our wonderful boy had been thrust into the ugly task of reenvisioning his father, his family, and home.
“I’m actually glad to be so far away,” he said one night, his voice bitter. “I can’t imagine home without Dad. And I hate him at the same time. I can’t wrap my head around this, Mom! No more family game nights? What about Thanksgiving? What about Christmas?”
Oh, God. Dylan would probably have to split holidays. Or would he? He was eighteen. He could choose, right? “I don’t know, sweetheart. I know it seems like a disaster right now, but we’ll get through it.”
“I don’t want to get through it! Why did Dad leave you? Did you do something?”
I hadn’t expected that, and felt a gut punch. “No! I just . . . No. I had no idea he wasn’t happy.”
“He sure seemed happy.”
“I know.”
“It’s not fair!”
I closed my eyes, his voice tearing my heart in half. “I don’t know what to tell you, honey.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I know this is worse for you.”
My sweet, sweet boy. “You’re allowed to feel angry and sad and anything else, Dylan. We’re in this together, okay? You can always talk to me. You’ll always be my first priority. That will never change.”
Dylan hadn’t called his father since the Zoom call, and Brad didn’t want to talk to Dylan when our son was angry. Brad wanted him to be happy about this. For a therapist, he had no clue about the human soul.
A few days after we dropped that bomb, I was heading home from Hyannis Hospital after a long night. The mama, who hadn’t been my patient for prenatal care, had been stunned by the force of the contractions and begged for an epidural, which was fine . . . unmedicated birth was not appropriate in every case. After two hours of pushing, her baby boy had been born, healthy and robust, and she nursed him right away, smitten and amazed.
Thinking about them made going home to an empty house that much worse. For the first time in my life, I was lonely . . . and a little scared. With a sigh, I got in my car anyway and headed for Wellfleet.