Page 92 of The Last Time

I can still remember how it felt to be missing her so much that I could hardly breathe. I was in our bed as our eleven-month-old daughter was napping in her crib, asking God why he would take a mother away from her baby.

I opened her nightstand drawer to pull out her perfume. I wanted to spray it on her pillow so I could feel like she was still next to me.

Instead, I found her cell phone. I thought reading her messages would make me feel close to her.

I was wrong. Opening up her phone, reading her messages, it changed me forever.

The man who once trusted and loved openly became bitter and resentful. I became someone who never knew who was capable of hurting me.

In the end, I figured it was everyone. Everyone held the power to hurt me.

So, I closed my heart off from every person in my life. The only one who it opened up for was Brielle. And for the longest time, I was okay with that.

I felt safe with that plan.

Now, with Charlotte in my life, it feels like I can no longer ignore the pain that was caused by her indiscretions. I deserve my chance to say what I want to say.

I walk down the long line of gravestones. The numbers continue to get higher, pointing me in the direction of the stone toward the end.

I stop in front of it. Hands in my pockets, my head hangs low as I read the stone.

Lauren Williams

Devoted wife and mother.

I shake my head, remembering how angry I was when I had to pick out the gravestone. It was months after she had passed, and I had just found out about her affair.

After delaying for too long, her mother eventually told me what to write. She thought I was just too deep in my grief to get anything done.

But I couldn’t find it in my heart to tell her the truth. Mainly for Brielle’s sake. I never wanted her to grow up in a world where her mother’s name would be tarnished.

She will already have to deal with growing up without her mother. Adding that to her life just seemed unnecessary.

No, it was my cross to bear. And bear I have for the last two years.

I glance back down at the words that will forever sting.

Devoted wife. I couldn’t get over how that was going to be on her stone forever when it wasn’t true.

“How could you do it?” I ask as I feel my body flood with anger but, most of all—sadness.

“It wasn’t even one time. Not a drunken mistake. Not a momentary lapse in judgment. Those text messages went back six months before you were sick, and they didn’t stop until the day you found out you were sick.”

I close my eyes as images of her with another man flood my brain.

“Just because you ended it when you found out you were sick doesn’t absolve you from your mistakes. You spent three months knowing you were going to die, knowing you could’ve told me the truth, and you didn’t.”

My body begins to shake as I realize tears are now spilling down my cheeks. It dawns on me that I’ve never cried over her betrayal. The anger gripped me like a chokehold, not allowing me to move on.

I squat down to get closer to the ground, letting my hand trace over the word wife. My tears threaten to choke me as I gasp for more air.

“What did I do wrong?” I cry. “Why the hell would you do that to me? To our family? We just had a baby together. Who the hell does that?”

I think back to the times she ran out to “get more diapers” or “needed a girl’s night out.”

Was she with him?

While I was rocking our baby girl to sleep, she was out with another man. Part of me has always wondered if she was dealing with some postpartum issues that she didn’t know how to deal with. She seemed different after our baby arrived. I just figured those nights out with the girls were gonna help her get back to who she was before.

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