Page 32 of Destroying My Ex

That’s another thing, he doesn’t argue, but he’s a sneaky little thing. I’d sometimes think that I won an argument because of his silence, only to have him do the exact thing we’d been arguing about. Or that I was arguing about, at any rate.

For instance, I wanted two and done. I got the boy and then the girl; that should’ve been it. I was convinced that since I was breastfeeding, there was no chance of me getting pregnant, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Neither of us wanted me to go back on the pill since I was nursing the baby, so he was supposed to wear condoms.

And what did he do? He seduced me when my daughter was three months old, and now I’m six months pregnant with baby number three. Okay, so I was the one who told him to take off the condom because I missed feeling him inside me, but couldn’t he have kept a clear head?

I have a company to run and four old people to keep out of trouble because I don’t know what happened to my sensible family, but ever since Grayson and I took over, it’s like they’ve reverted back to their wild, untamed youth and is running all over the place getting into trouble.

My grandmothers went zip lining while their husbands were jumping out of planes. There ought to be a law against people over fifty doing certain things so that their loved ones don’t die prematurely from heart attacks.

I try to keep them home where I can keep an eye on them, but then that becomes a problem because my kids can do no wrong in their eyes, and they let them, especially my son, get away with everything so that by day two I’m ready for them to go throw themselves out of moving vehicles just to save my sanity.

“Devon, is that your pet frog?”

“Yes, daddy.”

“What is it doing out here?” He put our son down so he could retrieve his vermin from the grass, and the little scamp ran off again.

My daughter, who had only just learned how to walk, was pushing to get down and join her brother, her little grubby fingers reaching out for him to give her his pet. He’s no fool; he knows what happened the last time he did that. That frog didn’t last ten seconds in Daddy’s little angel’s hand.

She squeezed the poor thing until it exploded, then after she got over being startled, she laughed and rubbed the goo between her fingers. So tell me, isn’t this our penance for what we did more than four years ago?

My grandparents love to tell that story every time the whole family gets together, which is often because my husband likes to cook and feed this bunch as if they don’t have chefs on their payroll. That suck-up learned how to make Persian dishes as well as Mediterranean food, and my grandparents think the sun shines out his ass most days.

My mother has become someone else entirely. It’s as if Dad’s arrest and subsequent sentence had released her from something because she has a new man in her life, and I see her through my computer screen more often than not these days.

She’s radiant, positively beaming, and when she floats in laden down with gifts, her grandkids go nuts for their grandma. I’m happy for her, really I am, but she needs to get back here and wrangle her ex-in-laws, her parents, grandkids and son-in-law so I can get some peace.

“I’m going inside to take a nap. You and your cohorts are not allowed on the third floor until I say otherwise.”

“Second floor, and you’ve got a deal.”

“Why can’t I go up to the third floor?” I almost stomped my foot because I sensed another one-sided argument brewing.

“I know you like the playroom I made you, but you’re about to pop; no more extra stairs, I mean it. If you take one step, it’s going to be your ass.”

See what I mean? “I’m six months, oh, never mind.” He really would come and drag me back down, so what was the point? I’ll take what I can get.

* * *

GRAYSON

* * *

The fallout from our wedding day coup d’état was far-reaching and still reverberates through the financial world to this day. Both our fathers are in jail, serving twenty-year sentences. They tried to blame each other and others for their crimes, but my evidence was too airtight for them to wiggle their way out.

I’d been collecting evidence since my last year in high school. I’d bugged my Dad’s home office as well as the conservatory where he and Mom like to hang out in the evenings and have their meaningful conversations.

I guess he never thought he had to keep anything from me because I was so well trained that sometimes he’d discuss certain things in front of me, all of which I pretended to ignore while filing the information away for later use.

All those late nights I stayed back at the company office when everyone was commending me for being a hardworking young man fresh out of college, I was actually hacking into their system. Papers that were earmarked for shredding were saved and poured over for anything that could be of use to bury them.

I gave it all to the authorities. The case dragged on for a while but in the end, they ended up being sentenced to more time than even I expected. Mom tried to get Dad charged with statutory rape because she was convinced his affair with Lacey had started way before they were exposed.

He denied it, of course, but when the truth came out that he’d started when she was sixteen, there was nothing they could do because the age of consent in our state just so happens to be sixteen. There was talk that he might’ve groomed her, but those who knew her swear it was the other way around, that she went after him.

Apparently, she used to brag about the older man she had seduced but never gave up a name. When that didn’t work, Mom went for a divorce, but too bad for her, all of Dad’s assets were frozen until the trial was concluded, and since she never expected anything like this to happen, she wasn’t prepared financially.

She tried calling me a couple of times, all of which I ignored. She had no problem subjecting me to a life of misery so she could keep her cushy lifestyle, and I can’t find it in me to care what happens to her.

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