Page 27 of Trading Up
I felt so small. I felt like the kid who wasn’t picked for a team in gym class. I was gimpy with one arm in a sling, trying to play with Cece one-handed. This would take some getting used to, and as much as I didn’t want to, I would need to rely on myparents for a lot until I was healed. When the group on the other side of the curtain left, Mom finally spoke.
“She’s really with…him? Do you think—”
“No.” My voice was sharp as I stopped her from saying anything more. “No, Mom. Sarah was always faithful. I…” I swallowed past the guilt and regret lodged in my throat, “I was the one who fucked up. I never should have gotten involved with Paloma.” I shook my head, tears forming. I hated showing people my emotions, growing up to be exactly how my parents were with theirs.Fucking constipated. Emotions and feelings were something we never talked about. If something was wrong, you sucked it up and moved on. Keep a stiff upper lip. Boys don’t cry. All that shit they told us.
I know I could have been a different person if I hadn’t grown up with my parents the way they were. If at least one of them were open with their emotions, I think I would have been able to handle and process emotions instead of pushing everything deep in me like an overstuffed suitcase that is barely staying zipped. I felt ready to burst and let the contents fly.
“I love Cece, and I can’t see life without her. But, Mom.” I searched her eyes for something, anything. I don’t know what I was looking for, but it wasn’t there. My voice came out, a hoarse, watery whisper, “She should have been mine with Sarah. I get where she was coming from. She was with the kids all the time. I never gave her a break, like Paloma never gives me a break. It was like, as soon as Cece was past the cute infant stage, she was over being a mom. Like she was putting on a show, letting me think I was seeing everything I wanted. She was fake.”
I watched as my little girl ate her snacks sitting at the end of my bed. She would smile up at me, hold out a goldfish in one hand and a very slobbery PB&J sandwich in the other. She had afew teeth, could kind of walk, and had the brightest personality. I don’t know how I missed all of this with my sons. I don’t know how I let Sarah do all of the heavy lifting by herself. I don’t know how I thought going to work and bringing in a paycheck, coming home, and eating the food she cooked was all I had to do.
“Mom?” I said, keeping my eyes on Cece.
“What, honey?”
“I want to get therapy. I want to figure out why I am the way I am. I want to be a better dad to the child I still have. And I want you to get therapy.” I finally looked at her. She looked taken aback. Horrified was probably a more accurate description.
“Wha-I don’t needtherapy, William!” She hissed like it was a dirty word. But her supporting my affair and sneaking around on my wife and family wasn’t good. She should have called me out. She should have tried to stop me. But she just went along with it. I didn’t need people like that in my life if I wanted to do better. Not for Sarah. She made that abundantly clear.
“Did you ever think that my affair with Paloma was wrong? Did you ever once think you should tell me?” I asked, and watched as her face fell, and then the mask slipped back into place.
“You were going to make your own decisions anyway. You’re a grown man, Will.”
I nodded, getting her thought process, because it’s all I’d grown up with. But…I couldn’t unhear the truths I’d been delivered yesterday. I needed to change. For myself. For Cece. She needed one parent who wasn’t a total fuck up. It definitely wouldn’t be Paloma. She had pulled a gun on Sarah and me. Shewas going to do jail time; there was no way around that. I had listened to Devereaux and Sarah. They were pressing charges and suing her for harassment. They offered me a deal. If I agreed to press charges against Paloma, they wouldn’t pursue any of the harassment lawsuit they had ready to go.
So, I did the reasonable thing.
I pressed charges and called a therapist.
I knew I needed to go. I needed to figure out how to unclog myself. I needed to know why I did what I did. I needed to make sure I never fucked up like that again, and that I could be a better father than mine.
I had moved out when Paloma was asleep. I had packed essentials for myself and Cece and left in the middle of the night. I was terrified that Cece would be in danger if I left her there. I was worried Paloma wouldn’t take care of her, but I was also worried about the mental state she was in over the last few weeks. She’d been drugging me, logging into my banking apps, and trying to move money around. Thankfully, I didn’t do online banking with the business. Something my father always told me.
“They’ll always know who you are in person,” when online banking first became popular.
It was also a blessing that we hadn’t already gotten married. Six months ago, I was thinking she was the woman I wanted to spend my life with, but now? I didn’t know who she was, or if anything she showed me was real. Mom took Cece home to watch her until I am released tomorrow. After that, I’d be hiring the nanny back, full-time, and the maid part-time. Devereaux slid me his lawyer’s information. The man who drew up the paperwork I signed, giving my boys away, was going to help me keep my daughter away from Paloma.
A knock at the door pulled me from my thoughts.
“Gentlemen. Detective Scarnsdale. I just wanted to let you all know, she’s been arraigned and entered a plea of not guilty by way of mental disease or defect. She’s going to be undergoing a psych eval. If there’s anything either of you wishes to tell us, that would be helpful.”
Devereaux went first. Filling the detective in on what he saw and experienced. Then I filled him in on everything. All the crazy things she pulled, the way I feel I can’t trust her with Cece, I spilled it all, and what led to her mental state. I was to blame for part of it. More than part of it.
T W E N T Y-S E V E N: Walk.
Sarah’s POV
Two months later…
They say that time changes things and can heal all wounds, but that last one was a crock of shit. Time can just ensure that we are prepared for anything else that could come from these two. Will had basically disappeared from our lives. He had reached out once to apologize to both of us and to extend an apology to the boys. He asked Devereaux to raise the boys as his own and to raise them better than he did. He promised he’d keep the same number if the boys ever wanted to talk to him, and promised that he’d be there. He said he was starting therapy, that my words pushed him to be better.
Devereaux’s shoulder was finally getting back to normal, but both of us were still messed up from the shooting. His physical scars remained as a reminder, but the mental scars were still ever-present. I couldn’t seem to stop reliving losing him over and over again in my dreams, seeing him being shot, watching him fall, seeing him bleeding beneath my fingers. I was trying to keep it together, to ignore the nightmares, while Row had become incredibly clingy and needed to know where I was every second of the day.
He was always calling or texting me, his parents, and the school. He admitted he wanted to start therapy, that he was having extreme anxiety about the safety of me and the boys. He was still having panic attacks and worried that, even though Will said he’d stay away, and that Paloma had been arrested and sent to a psychiatric facility, they’d come back to hurt us.
When Paloma was arrested that night, she claimed not to know what had happened or how she got there. She kept pleading that she didn’t know what happened, that she must have had a mental break. That she didn’t do it on purpose. She was just trying to get Will to talk to her. She said that was her goal of going to the party that night. In the end, Paloma hadn’t been released on bond or bail; she was sent to a psychiatric facility for treatment to determine if she was competent enough to stand trial.
I knew Row and I would both feel more comfortable if she were behind bars, but we weren’t the judge; we had no real say in what he decided. She had been transferred and there for the last six weeks, according to police officers and the psychiatric hospital staff. However, the security cameras and doorbell camera Row installed in our new place we moved into last month said something completely different. We called everyone we could think of. We called the DA, the police, Jenson, Petey, the facility she was supposedly at.
