Chapter 24:

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I didn’t believe it at first.

Vivian loved me. She’d loved me for years—decades, really. She wasn’t the type to just leave. She’d forgive me eventually. She always forgave me. That was who she was.

So when she handed me the divorce papers, I figured it was a test. A cry for attention. All I had to do was wait her out, show up consistently, prove I was serious about reconciliation.

I waited outside her parents’ house for three days. Brought flowers. Wrote letters. Stood in the rain looking pathetic.

She didn’t budge.

Then she let me in—finally—and I thought: This is it. She’s ready to listen.

“Take off your shirt,” she said.

I stared at her. “What?”

“Your shirt. Take it off.”

And I knew. In that moment, I knew she’d figured everything out. The hickeys. The scratch marks. The evidence written across my skin in Meredith’s handwriting.

I ran.

I literally ran out of her parents’ house, got in my car, and drove away.

𝓐𝓵𝔀𝓪𝔂𝓼 𝓬𝓱𝓮𝓬𝓴 𝓼𝓸𝓾𝓻𝓬𝓮 𝓪𝓽 𝗀ⲁ𝗅𝗇𝗈ν𝗲𝗅𝗌﹒𝗰𝗼𝗺

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Vivian was supposed to be understanding. Forgiving. The good wife who looked the other way. I had married her specifically because she was that type of woman—reliable, accommodating, too in love to ever actually leave.

I had underestimated her completely.

Meredith’s pregnancy changed everything.

Suddenly I was going to be a father. A real father, with a child I actually wanted, with the woman I’d loved since college. All I had to do was finalize the divorce, give Vivian whatever she asked for, and move on.

So I signed. Gave her the apartment, the savings, half of everything. Let her walk out of that courthouse looking like a woman who’d won the lottery.

The envelope she gave me—the documentation of Meredith’s infertility—I buried at the bottom of a drawer. Told myself it didn’t matter. Old records. Outdated. Medicine had advanced.

But the doubts grew. And when I started paying attention—really paying attention—I noticed things.

Meredith’s “doctor’s appointments” that never produced any documentation. Her reluctance to let me come along. The way she’d disappear for hours and return with vague explanations.

I hired a private investigator. Just to put my mind at ease.

He found her meeting her ex-husband at a hotel. Twice a week, regular as clockwork.

She wasn’t pregnant. Had never been pregnant. The whole thing was a performance designed to keep me locked in.

I confronted her. Demanded the truth. She cried, threatened suicide, swore she’d change. I’d heard it all before. This time, I didn’t bend.

“I want a divorce,” I said.

That’s when Meredith went nuclear.

She showed up at my office with handmade signs. CHEATER. ABUSER. BABY KILLER. She recorded videos and posted them online, accusing me of forcing her to terminate a pregnancy that had never existed. She rallied strangers to her cause, turned my name into a hashtag, made sure everyone in Marsten Bay knew Nathan Calloway was a monster.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. I had been unfaithful. I had treated Vivian terribly. But the specific accusations Meredith leveled were lies—and somehow, that made them sting worse.

My company “suggested” I take a leave of absence. Then they suggested I not return. My colleagues—people I’d worked with for years—filed complaints about my “disruptive presence.”

I was fired on a Tuesday. Walked out of the building with a box of desk supplies and nowhere to go.

Meredith was waiting on the sidewalk. Smiling.

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