Love Gone: Regret Too Late
Brian Stanton was the definition of a textbook husband in everyone's eyes.
He left work on time every single day, rain or shine, and whenever he traveled for business, his video calls arrived like clockwork to report his whereabouts.
If a dinner involved even a single female colleague, he would call me first to ask for my explicit permission. Even the honey-ginger tea he prepared for me during my periods had never skipped a single month in half a decade.
Yet, the better he treated me, the more it felt like I was serving a life sentence.
Five years ago, his assistant had shown up at our wedding, her heavily pregnant belly protruding as she begged me to let them be together.
Brian had violently dragged her away. When he finally returned, he was covered in blood, collapsing before me and trembling. "Honey, I was wrong. I've taken care of her. She won't ever show up again."
He hadn't slipped up once since then. In fact, he had been so flawless and so completely beyond reproach that I thought it was finally time to forgive him.
I went to his company, hoping to ask him out for lunch. But a child's voice drifted out from inside his office.
"Dad, it's Mom's birthday today. Let's go home and celebrate with her."
"Okay."
In the next instant, my phone screen lit up with an incoming message.
[Honey, I'm working late tonight. Will be home later.]
Peering through the narrow crack in the door, I looked at the father and son, who looked as if they had been cast from the same mold.
All at once, I flashed back to the moment when his assistant begged me, her belly so massive she was on the absolute verge of giving birth.
The pregnancy test result I had been clutching so tightly in my hand slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor.