Page 8 of The Homewrecker's Fate

Still, finding out that the baby was a girl somehow made everything feel more real than it had before. I listened to her heartbeat, watched her wiggle her tiny little fingers, and saw that she was missing the parts that would determine a different sex. Rich might not be answering my calls, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t still send a message.

When I got home, before I went into see my mother, I sat down and wrote a letter to Rich explaining that we were expecting a daughter around September 12th, then I enclosed one of the ultrasound pictures and addressed the letter to his work address before placing a stamp on it and taking it out to the mailbox for pickup.

“Aviva?” My mother called out in the slurred way she now spoke.

“I’m home. Sorry, had to mail something.”

“That man deserves more than a letter,” she insisted. If I hadn’t been used to the way she spoke, I wouldn’t have understood.

“Momma, ifthat manhadn’t left and ghosted me, he would already know about his daughter.”

“Daughter?” She asked with a twinkle of something wonderful in her eyes. I nodded and moved forward, so that I could hug her. The beautiful woman threw her good arm around me and gave two quick squeezes that seemed to be lacking in strength too, which concerned me. Another thing to inquire about when she saw her doctor again.

“I’m having a little girl, Mom.” I kissed her cheek as I pulled away and showed her the images. “I’m thinking about Janine Marie.” Her eyes misted immediately. “Jane Marie Acker belongs to you. Since she’ll have our last name, I want her to have something of her own while also carrying a part of you with her.

“Janine is beautiful. You are beautiful.” While the words didn’t come out sounding perfect anymore, the sentiment sure did. I felt my mother’s love in every awkward syllable.

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.

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