The assistant came later — though of course she had been there all along, I only learned the shape of it later.
Her name was Sloane, and she was Damon’s executive assistant, and it began, as these things do, with messages that arrived too late at night to be about work.
Then the weekend business trips that did not quite need him.
And at last a photograph, sent to the wrong number by mistake, that ended every question I had been afraid to ask out loud.
The divorce moved quickly after that.
Damon wanted it quick; I understood, later, exactly why.
I remember standing in a courthouse hallway and overhearing him say to his own attorney, not troubling to lower his voice, that being married to me had been “a waste of the best years he had to start a family.” I remember the particular way that landed — not as cruelty, exactly, because cruelty at least takes you seriously enough to aim.
It landed as dismissal.
As accounting.
He had spent his best years on a bad investment, and he wanted his money back, and the money he meant was me.
I signed the papers he wanted.
I did not fight him for anything.
What Damon did not know — what no one knew — was that four days before I signed, in a pharmacy bathroom with shaking hands, I had learned I was pregnant.
Chapter 4 — The Secret I Kept
