Page 1 of Serendipity

Prologue

LEAH

Why isit that during the day I can stay alive and go through my routines and do all the things but the second I lie down in bed, my mind won’t shut down? I can do the laundry and clean the floors and argue with teenagers over asinine things and sit on my front porch and drink coffee. All these things are done with ease. But sleep? I’m sure God is laughing right now.

I thought I had life all together.

Everything was perfect.

Or it seemed that way.

At the very least, life was a solid seven point five out of ten most days.

I should have known that it wouldn’t always be that way. I’d become so sure of myself. Of our lives. Cocky, even. When others would complain, I’d nod and listen, commiserate with them. But I couldn’t relate because as far as I knew, my life was still perfect. I’d really thought I had it all. Even the extra twenty – okay, thirty – pounds didn’t bother me. Why would it? My husband Brett still loved me after over twenty-five years together, twenty-three of those married. My children were relatively normal. Or as normal as teenagers can be. My home was always warm and welcoming, the safe place for said teenagers to land.

My cockiness came back to bite me in the ass, though.

The minute I heard the words: “I want a divorce”, my world turned on its axis and I free fell into a pit of darkness.

During the day, I’m still Leah.

At night, I’m Leah, divorcee, discarded wife, confused soul, and alone.

My bedroom reminds me of him. Because we shared it for twenty-three years.

There are times where I can still smell his cologne.

On the worst nights, I can feel his hands ghost across my skin.

I wasn’t prepared.

I didn’t know he no longer loved me.

I thought he was happy but I missed the clues he’d been giving me.

Too busy with the kids and my own life to pay attention to him. That’s what he told me, anyway. If I’d been listening and watching, I would have seen the signs.

I would have noticed that he no longer loved me.

Maybe never did.

That he felt unloved, unwanted, unneeded. And as a man, feeling unneeded was worse than anything else. At least, according to him.

Somewhere along the way, he said I’d become a stranger.

Turns out, he simply fell in love with someone else.

Someone who loved him back the way he wanted to be loved.

I should have seen it coming.

But the fact is, I didn’t.

We had sex the night before he asked for a divorce.

Good sex, in fact. Okay. Boring sex but that wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for us. We’d gotten into a pattern in the bedroom with the same position and running through the motions. He never looked at me like he was attracted to me. He never complimented me. He seemed to still want me, but I wonder if that was because he just wanted sex in general and I was there. Convenient. In the moment, I didn’t think anything of it. I thought it was good because I got myself to orgasm but it wasn’t anything spectacular.

We had gone out for a date night three nights before. I hadn’t looked at my phone once because we were having fun and our focus was on each other. We had sex that night, too. A little more exciting than the sex the night before he asked for a divorce, but not by much.

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