“What? No, of course not! I have seen her twice. I met her at the zoo with Mark one day and yesterday when I picked Mark up from school. He was with us all the time both times of course.”
“Oh, of course,” I said.
“What are you implying, Holly?”
“I’m implying that you’re sneaking around with your ex-wife and leaving me to look like a fool.”
“I’ve told you everything. It was all about Mark. It was always about Mark.”
“She’s using him to get at you, and I think she burned our son on purpose too. And then the worst part of that is you left to go be with them, instead of being with your baby in the hospital.”
Aiden jumped up off the couch then and said, “Are you crazy? I told you already, Cecile would never harm an innocent child. What would her motive have been for doing something like that? And don’t you think I already feel bad enough about not being able to be at the hospital? I couldn’t leave Mark stranded with no way home.”
“You want to know what her motive might be, Aiden? To make me look bad,” I said. “She’s been going out of her way to make me look like a bad mother.”
Aiden snorted and said, “Leaving hot coffee that close to your son helped you do that on your own.”
I don’t recall ever being so angry in my life. I stormed out of the room to keep from doing something terribly wrong. I got my things for the night from our room and ran into Aiden in the hall.
“What are you doing?” he asked me.
“Going to bed in the guestroom,” I told him. He shrugged like he couldn’t care less and stepped aside and let me pass. I wanted to slam the door to show him how angry I was. Sometimes having a sleeping infant in the house was so inconvenient. I locked it instead so that he would hear it click and know I meant business. Then I leaned up against it. My whole body was shaking from being so mad. My knees buckled and I slid with my back to the door down to the floor. Sitting there on the carpet, I cried my eyes out.
I don’t know how long I sat there, but it was cathartic to get it all out. When I pulled myself up, my body still felt like it was convulsing. I couldn’t control it. I went in and took a long, hot shower, which helped, a little. I took the baby monitor and climbed into bed then. I laid there staring at the ceiling for the longest time, once again on the verge of tears. This was my first night sleeping alone since Aiden and I had been married. I thought back over the events of the night tonight…Cecile was so obviously trying to worm her way back into Aiden’s life. I didn’t understand why he seemed to not be able to see it. Unless maybe he was okay with it? What if he’s decided now that she’s free again, he wants her back? Would he really just kick me and Eric to the curb?
No, he would never kick Eric to the curb. After our talk tonight, I wasn’t so sure about me though. Every time I thought about him passive-aggressively accusing me of being a bad mother to our son, I wanted to cry all over again. Cecile had set this whole thing up, and in doing so she had planted that seed in his mind. I cried again, burying my face in the pillow and sobbing. I didn’t know what I was going to do. What I did know was that no matter what, I loved my husband. I didn’t want our life together to end. I didn’t believe he was cheating on me…so far I think he was only guilty of being emotionally manipulated by his ex-wife. She was using that poor little boy to manipulate him…again. And of course he was guilty of his lies. He shouldn’t have lied to me, for any reason, and he owed me a great big apology for that. If we got through this, it would be a long time before I’d be able to trust him again. The rest of this was Cecile’s manipulation and I found the fact that she was using her own son as a pawn to be disgusting.
I promised myself that I was finished with the tears. Starting first thing in the morning I was going to figure out what to do about Cecile and one way or another I was going to make her understand that continuing to try and take my husband would be a very bad idea.
Holly Rayner