5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

May

It had been a little over a month since I found out that my baby was a girl. One month since I sent the letter with the ultrasound photo in it, but only three weeks since it had been returned to me unopened. My heart ached when the home health nurse handed it over to me with a stack of my mother’s bills. When I broke down in front of her and had to explain, the woman shooed me to my car and told me to go cry it out at home and come back when I was stronger.

She stayed the weekend with my mother while I sobbed and told my daughter how sorry I was that her father didn’t want to know, that I had picked an awful man to be her daddy, and then I promised to be the best mommy possible to make up for it. Fuck Rich! That cowardly bastard didn’t deserve to be Janine’s father.

It was Monday again, and that meant trying to find something that fit and was business appropriate. It was past time for me to go buy some maternity clothes for myself, but I was loath to do it. Three weeks earlier, I swore to myself that my heart would never love another man and that meant I wouldn’t be having any other babies after Janine. She would be my one and only, therefore, I would never need maternity clothes again and it seemed almost wasteful to buy things for such a short time.

“Did you hear?” Bridgette asked me as she came through the office doors at the same time I did.

“Hear what?”

“We have a new employee starting. Seems that he’ll be taking over Tim’s position now that he’s retiring.”

“Ugh, good riddance to Tim.” That stodgy old bugger had been a pain in my butt since I started working for the firm. If he wasn’t leering at my chest, he tried to steal my ideas. Since he’d been there for a little over thirty years, he never was reprimanded for any of his shitty behaviors. The bastard.

Bridgette giggled. “He actually expected a retirement party when he left last Friday.” She rolled her eyes at the thought. “As if anyone wanted to wish him well. I would have thrown him a party if he’d left the day I started.”

I laughed at that. “You wouldn’t have known what a pig he was then,” I tried to defend.

“Nope. I’m pretty sure the first moment I laid eyes on him, I knew.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. There was no denying the creepy vibes that Tim put off – even in the beginning. “So, who is taking his place?” For a moment, I thought of Rich because the position would have been perfect for him to slide right into. It also would have meant that we would get to work on more projects together, and we were an amazing team. Granted, our personal lives kind of ruined that thought and I turned back to Bridgette who simply offered a quick shoulder shrug. She wouldn’t meet my eyes though, so I wondered if she knew and just couldn’t tell me. Cliff would have known as he would have been in on the hiring process.

It didn’t matter because the minute we got off the elevator on our floor, our CEO, Mr. Higgins, smiled at both of us and asked that we make our way to the large conference room to greet our newest team member. He then winked at me and powered ahead. I should have known to prepare myself, the moment his steps faltered when he opened the door to the conference room, but he didn’t stop me in the hallway and tell me not to follow. Instead, the man put his shoulders back and stepped inside, making way for Bridgette and me to do the same.

Everyone stared at me, some with mouths agape, others with horror clearly written in their eyes. Others simply looked at me as if I was the devil in their midst.

“What in the world?” I whispered quietly to Bridgette before Mr. Higgins stepped aside and I was able to get a glimpse of a family standing behind him with their backs turned to us. There was no mistaking who the man was. The man who had his hand possessively held against the blonde woman’s lower back as they fussed over getting drinks for their two children. A girl and a boy from the looks of them.

“Oh my God!” Bridgette whisper-hissed in my ear. “No!" She turned from the scene before us to Cliff and her eyes demanded answers. She might have known that Rich would be the new employee, but she certainly hadn’t been filled in about the family that would be here with him.

As if the room full of people holding their collective breaths finally registered with the couple, both Rich and the woman, who I now knew to be his wife, turned to see me standing there. Meanwhile, I held onto my pregnant belly like it was about to be ripped from my body.

Mel offered me a sad smile that told me everything I needed to know. She knew exactly who I was when we met at the doctor’s office. Rich’s shocked gaze hadn’t yet left my belly. Apparently, Mel hadn’t bothered to fill him in. She was still with him. So, I guess even knowing he cheated on her, and knocked up another woman, wasn’t enough to make her leave. Not that I wanted the lying bastard back, but I wouldn’t wish him on the woman I met at the obstetrician’s office either.

I turned and walked right back out of the room and across the hall to the employee break room. I needed a private moment to catch my breath before I passed the fuck out. This could not be happening. All those times that I wondered if he was cheating on me with another woman… A sob broke free as realization hit hard that I had been the other woman in this awful scenario. He had made me the awful destroyer of a marriage. Then again, he was at the office with his wife and children, so I guess my involvement had only caused harm in my own life. My daughter would grow up knowing that her father was a philanderer, and her mother was the harlot he cheated with. Tears burned my skin as they trailed their salty path down my cheeks to soak the front of my blouse.

A comforting hand touched my shoulder. I knew it was feminine by the small size and assumed it to be Bridgette until I heard my friend’s loud admonishments from the hallway, where she’d apparently pulled Cliff to chew him out for not forewarning her – or me.

A tissue was cast in my direction, and I took it gladly as the tears were becoming only a mild concern, second to the snot that was at play thanks to my uncontrollable blubbering.

“I’m so sorry that I didn’t tell you when we met. I honestly didn’t know until you said your name, and then it was only a guess on my part.”

“At some point you knew, though,” I argued despite my emotionally brutalized vocal cords making that difficult.

I turned in time to see her tear-blurred form nod. “When you told me your story. His birthday,” she choked back her own sob as she spoke. “I was the one who called. Cliff spoke to me on the phone. I had accused Rich of seeing someone else, and once again he smoothly lied away my concerns because he was able to put Cliff on to tell me they were out to dinner together.” She stumbled over the next words. “I told him I was pregnant and that he needed to come home because we had things to discuss.”

My eyes moved to meet hers. “I found out the next morning.”

She nodded, obviously remembering my story from the doctor’s office. “I’m so sorry, Aviva.”

“Why are you apologizing to me?” My voice broke at the end of that question and my legs wobbled, no longer able to hold me up. She grabbed a chair and helped me to sit. Obviously, she had more time to come to terms with our shared reality. The fact that she was helping me was unbelievable.

“You didn’t know he was married,” she told me simply. “To you – I’m the other woman he never told you about. To me – you’re the other woman, but you’re not that other woman. You know, the one who would purposely put us in this position. I knew that the moment I met you. When you told me your story, you even mentioned wondering if he was cheating on you.” She took my hands in her own and squeezed, the same gesture of reassurance she had offered in the doctor’s office a month ago. “How could I blame you when he’s the one who made this mess for both of us?”

I’m not afraid to admit that I became even more of a sobbing mess then. Knowing that the man I had been in love with – the father of my child – had been married and that his wife was the one attempting to offer me comfort. I didn’t know what to do with that.

“You’ve known she was pregnant since your appointment?” My head snapped around to find an angry Rich standing there, voice sounding as though he was accusing his wife of something. I glanced around to make sure his children wouldn’t overhear what was said.

“Now is not the time,” I admonished. “Your children are across the hall.”

“They’re not. Bridgette and Cliff took them down to the lobby.” He threw an accusing glare at his wife. “Apparently, their Uncle Brax is coming to pick them up.” He glared at Mel again. “You knew she was pregnant?”

“No way!” I yelled at him, jumping up from my seat. “You don’t get to yell at her for not telling you.” I stood, so that I was between the married couple then. “You would have known had you returned any of my calls or messages. The letter I sent to the office with the ultrasound photo in it – since I never had your home address – was returned to me, too. You had plenty of opportunities to find out that I was pregnant, but you were too much of a coward to deal with the mess you left behind.” It dawned on me then, the reality that hadn’t quite settled in yet. Rich and his family were here. He was the new employee taking Tim’s spot.

I felt as though my heart had been run through with a physical blade then. “All those times you grew impatient with me because I wouldn’t transfer to the smaller office to be with you…” I blew out a shaky breath as his plan hit me full force. “It was because you knew you had to get rid of me before your family showed up, wasn’t it? Were you just going to wait until I moved and then ghost me?”

He winced, but it was clear that had been his plan all along.

“Did you ever even care about me at all?” I asked, voice nothing but a husky whimper.

“Avi, I fell in love with you,” he admitted. I turned to see Mel’s reaction to his admission, but it didn’t seem to be news to her. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Panic mode set in, and I thought maybe we could just reverse the order a bit and still see one another.”

“You thought you could have me move 600 miles away from my crippled, ill mother, so that you could change positions with me and still hide your family? And you thought I would still be interested in seeing you when I realized what an underhanded, conniving asshole you were?” I huffed. “You had to have known that someone in this office would inform me that you were married with children once you got here.”

“I told you, I panicked. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Obviously. You were never thinking about anyone but yourself in this whole shitshow. Even now – today – you completely humiliated not only me, but your family at your place of work. This is my job! How could you do this?”

Mel’s hand rubbed circles on my lower back, a gesture of comfort that I did not deserve from her.

“What’s going on?” Rich asked as he realized the two women in his life were standing shoulder to shoulder against him.

“I stayed long enough to see how this would play out, and if you would at least respect the woman you claimed to have fallen in love with,” his wife answered. “It’s obvious to me now that you don’t respect anyone. You don’t love anyone but yourself, and that will never change. So, you need to find a new place to stay. Legal papers will be sent to you here at work. Until that happens, I do not want to see you near the family home. Cliff can come pack stuff up for you, since he wanted to be your alibi.”

“You can’t assume that you get to keep the house. You cheated, too!” He yelled at her.

“I have proof, and I think maybe even a first-hand witness here, that will tell the courts that my one-night stand happened a month after I found out you were having an affair with a coworker whenever you traveled.”

“Whatever you need,” I told Mel. It was the least I could do.

“So, now suddenly the two of you are best buddies?” Rich scoffed.

“It seems we have a lying, cheating bastard of a man in common. That tends to bond some women,” I informed him.

“Avi, don’t do this,” he begged, changing tack as if I wouldn’t see through his bullshit.

“You’re really going to stand there and ask me for the compassion and care you never showed me? You ghosted me, after trying to get me to uproot my life, so that you wouldn’t get busted for cheating, and you expect me to fall for your shit again?” I asked, not bothering to hide the derision in my words. Rich’s shoulders slumped, finally showing defeat in this impossible situation he created.

Mr. Higgins popped his head in the room. “I understand this is a difficult time, but I’m going to have to ask that all parties take this elsewhere. Richard, Aviva, take the rest of the day. You both will need to report to Human Resources in the morning.” When he watched my face fall, Mr. Higgins offered me a kind smile. “It will all be okay, Ms. Acker, I promise. No need to worry yourself further. Stress isn’t good in your condition.” He cringed a bit when he noticed that Mrs. Thomlinson was in a similar condition.

“Richard, why don’t you come with me to my office and give the ladies a chance to head out first?”

“I’m going home with Aviva. We have things to discuss.”

“No, we do not. You haven’t been welcome there since you cleared your belongings out back in March,” I informed him.

“Richard, I’m afraid I have to insist. This can’t continue here.”

“Fine,” he grumbled as he reluctantly followed Mr. Higgins to the elevator. The CEO had an office suite one floor above us.

I turned toward Mel then and patted her belly and mine. “What are we going to do?”

“We are going to go grab some lunch and have a nice little chat amongst friends.”

“I’d love that.” As we moved to leave the break room I stopped and grinned at her, face pulling tight where the tracks of my tears had dried. “This is weird though, right?”

“This is survival, Aviva.” She sighed deeply and it was the first time I realized her hands were shaking as well. “We have both been wronged by the same man. Let’s commiserate and plan together. No one else will ever understand what each of us is going through better than the two of us.”

“You are a beautiful soul, you know that?” I asked, and I truly meant it. This woman, for all intents and purposes, should hate me. She should at least want to hate me. Not only had I been in a relationship with her husband, but I was having his baby, too. The fact that she could even be respectful, let alone friendly toward me, was so very telling of the type of person she was. It made me hate Rich a little bit more that he could have ever betrayed her.