Rebecca, I know this might sound strange, but I hope you’ll come. The children need to see both parents moving forward. Both happy. No hard feelings. Best, Garrett.
No hard feelings. She read it three times. Each time the words made less sense. No hard feelings about the affair, about the divorce, about him taking everything in the separation while she was left with seven hundred reais a month and weekends with the children.
She checked the date again. She needed to be sure. June 15th.
Her breath caught in her throat. June 15th, their wedding anniversary. The day they got married, twelve years ago. The day she wore her grandmother’s veil and promised to love him forever. He had chosen their anniversary for his wedding to someone else.
The invitation slipped from his fingers. It fell face up on the table.
A memory struck her.
Four years ago, almost on the same day, Garrett had arrived home early from work. She was in the kitchen. The children were four years old, playing with building blocks, constructing towers and knocking them down. Laughing. She was making dinner. Spaghetti, his favorite.
He stopped at the door, loosened his tie, and looked at her with eyes that held nothing back.
“We need to talk,” he said.
Those four words changed everything.
I want a divorce.
Without explanation, without warning, without a chance to fix whatever was broken. She remembered dropping the wooden spoon. Red sauce splattered on the floor, on her blouse.
— What? Why, Garrett? What are you talking about?
— I met someone. Someone who understands me. Someone who understands my ambitions. Someone who isn’t… that.
He gestured vaguely in her direction, toward the kitchen, toward their life.
Someone younger. More beautiful. Someone who isn’t exhausted from taking care of small children.
“Who?” she whispered.
— Tessa.
Your friend. The woman who was at their wedding party. The woman who came for their vow renewal three years earlier.
Rebeca shook her head, pushing the memory away, but the memories came back anyway. The divorce proceedings. Garrett’s lawyer was a shark in a suit. Rebeca’s lawyer had just graduated from college. Cheap. The only one she could afford.
Garrett got everything. The house, the savings, the retirement funds. His lawyer argued that Rebecca had no career, no income, and no assets in her name. She had been a full-time mother. That had been her choice.
She received seven hundred reais a month in child support, weekends with the twins, nothing more. The judge barely looked at her when he delivered the sentence.
Rebeca opened her eyes. She was still in the kitchen, still holding the cold coffee.
Four years of struggle. Two jobs that barely covered the rent. Visits to the food bank that she hid from the children. Birthdays she couldn’t afford. Four years of Garrett’s mother, Patricia, calling to say things like, “If you had taken better care of yourself, maybe he wouldn’t have gone astray.”
Four years seeing Evan and Emilia every weekend, missing bedtime, school plays, and losing her first baby teeth. Four years of becoming invisible.
She picked up her phone, opened the photos, and went back to that moment. The wedding day. She was twenty-seven years old, wearing a white dress, flowers in her hair, smiling so much it must have hurt. She didn’t recognize that woman. That woman had dreams. That woman believed in happy endings. That woman was an idiot.
Rebeca put her phone down on the table and looked at the invitation again. *No hard feelings.*
Something hot and sharp twisted in his chest.
Her laptop beeped. Another email from Juliano. She opened it.
Rebeca, I know you need space. I understand. But I’m here when you’re ready. Always, J.
Juliano. Patient, kind Juliano. The man she met eighteen months ago when she spilled coffee on his laptop in a coffee shop. The man who laughed instead of getting angry. The man she didn’t know was a tech billionaire until their fifth date, when someone recognized him.
Juliano, who accepted that she needed to keep the relationship a secret, that her ex-husband couldn’t know. That the children couldn’t meet him yet. Juliano, who never complained, who never pressured her, who simply waited.
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