Jack never missed work—not for the flu, not for food poisoning, not even when his mother died. So when he sat at our kitchen table one Tuesday morning, pale and coughing, and said he wasn’t going in, I knew something was off. While I scrambled to get the kids ready for school, Jack stayed behind, visibly unwell. But just as I opened the front door, I froze.
Standing on our porch was a life-sized statue of Jack—white as porcelain, eerily detailed, right down to the scar on his chin. Jack appeared behind me, speechless. He stepped outside, gripped the statue like a corpse, and dragged it into the house without explanation. I demanded to know what was going on. He told me only this: take the kids and go. He’d explain later.
As we drove away, our son Noah handed me a crumpled note he’d found tucked beneath the statue. It was from a woman named Sally. She confessed to an affair with Jack and demanded $10,000 to keep quiet. My stomach dropped.
After dropping off the kids, I sat in the car and cried. Then I wiped my face, looked up a divorce lawyer named Patricia, and was sitting in her office by noon—angry, heartbroken, but focused.
That night, after Jack had fallen asleep at the kitchen table, I searched his laptop. I found everything—emails to Sally, lies, guilt, secrets spelled out in black and white. I took screenshots and reached out to Sally. She responded quickly, shocked. Jack had told her he was already divorced. Their relationship had lasted nearly a year. She agreed to testify.
In court, Sally laid everything bare. The judge ruled in my favor: the house, full custody, and a court-ordered payment to Sally. Jack didn’t look at me once.
Afterward, he tried to speak—some half-hearted apology. I cut him off.
“You didn’t mean to hurt me,” I said. “You just didn’t mean for me to find out.”
Then I turned, got in the car, and drove away—leaving him behind with his statue, his secrets, and the shattered remains of the life he threw away.
