When my ex-wife invited me to her wedding, I knew exactly why she wanted our son there. What I didn’t expect was how far I’d go to keep her from humiliating us again, or that the woman I hired for one fake night would see through everything the second we arrived.
When Monica’s message lit up my phone, I stopped breathing for a second.
I was standing in my kitchen, rinsing spaghetti sauce off a plate while my ten-year-old son, Liam, sat at the table with his homework spread around him. My phone buzzed again. Her name stayed there on the screen, bright and ugly.
I opened it.
There it was. The real reason.
“I’d like to invite you to my wedding. Bring our son with you. It would mean a lot if we could show everyone there’s no bad blood. How will I look in front of my fiancé’s family if my own son isn’t there with me, right?”
I read it twice.
There it was. The real reason.
Not Liam.
Not me.
“She wants us at her wedding.”
How will I look.
Liam looked up from his math sheet.
“Was that Mom?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“What does she want?”
“She wants us at her wedding.”
He didn’t ask if she missed him.
He stared at me.
“Why?”
“Because she wants to look good in front of people,” I said.
He looked back down at his worksheet.
“That’s dumb.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”
I thought hard work could fix anything.
He didn’t ask if she missed him.
He had stopped asking that years ago.
Monica and I got married right after college.
Back then, I thought love meant choosing each other and keeping that promise.
I thought hard work could fix anything.
I thought loyalty was obvious.
