Then Elena shook her head.
“You know what’s pathetic?” she said. “For years, I thought I was the other woman.”
I looked at her.
“So did I.”
That was somehow worse.
Mark flinched.
Good.
He deserved to.
I slipped my wedding ring off and pressed it into his hand.
The gesture seemed to age him ten years.
“We’re done.”
I slipped my wedding ring off.
“Please,” he whispered.
“No.”
His eyes filled with panic.
Not grief.
Not remorse.
Panic.
Because for the first time, he understood what he’d lost.
His eyes filled with panic.
Not one family.
Both.
Elena stood beside me.
Neither of us touched him.
Neither of us raised our voices.
We didn’t have to.
Elena stood beside me.
The truth had already done all the damage.
Mark stood alone in the middle of the parking lot while the two women he’d lied to walked away in opposite directions.
And for the first time in seven years, he had nobody left to go home to.
