Page 59 of Second Chances
“We had a lot of pressure, Alex, but everyone does. We could’ve talked about it. I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for what you did to me, but I can thank you.”
“Thank me?”
“I’m free. I’m living a life that I never thought possible. You hurt me, but you also set me free to become who I really am. So, thank you, Alex.” Megan was surprised by the words that were flowing from her mouth, at the kindness she was showing her ex-husband.
Alex looked up and his eyes were brimming with tears. “You were, are, a good woman, Meg. I didn’t deserve you. I was a piece of shit.”
“Yeah. You were.”
“Meg. I’ll give you half. You deserve it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The tears were flowing freely down Alex’s face.
Megan had spent the past few months fantasizing about how she would take revenge on Alex, what she would do when Margot Meyer found all his money, how she would ruin him, how she would ruin his new perfect life. But now she could see that he had done all of that himself. He had taken what she thought that she needed to be happy, and given her the greatest gift, he had given her herself back.
She stepped out and wrapped her arms around Alex, embracing him as he wept. She was so wrapped up in the drama unfolding on Charlotte’s front porch that she didn’t notice the truck approach and then speed away from the driveway.
She pulled back from Alex. “Thank you for the money, Alex. I really do hope that you find happiness, but I think that you need to go now.”
“Meg. There’s one more thing.”
Something in the tone of his voice held a darkness. “You may not be so forgiving when you hear this,” his voice shook, “but you deserve the truth.”
Megan didn’t believe him. What could be more damning than what he had already done?
Not only was his voice quivering, but Megan noticed that his hands were shaking. “I never thought it was me.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“All those years, all those tests that you went through, the fact that we couldn’t conceive. I never thought that it was me. I thought that the tests were wrong, I thought that it was you.”
Megan gripped the handle on the door and could feel the redness rising on her neck, the stress from all of those years creeping back into her body. “But you went through those tests too Alex.”
“No. I didn’t.”
“What do you mean you didn’t?” Megan was trying to stay calm.
“I just didn’t think that it could be me.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that Alex. All of those years I thought that there was something wrong with me. That there was some reason why I couldn’t conceive, that the universe was playing some god-awful trick on us. And you didn’t even go get the tests done?”
Alex stood a little taller. “Meg, I never really wanted to have a family, but I knew how badly you wanted it. When it wasn’t happening, I was relieved. I didn’t want to get poked and prodded.”
Megan steeled her eyes on the man in front of her. The man she thought that she knew. “So how do you know now?” She knew what he was going to tell her but wanted him to say it out loud. To her face.
“I was starting to get the feeling that Roberta’s baby wasn’t mine. I went and got tested and found out that I’m sterile. It was me, Meg. Not you. There was never anything wrong with you.”
Megan prided herself in being calm and collected in all situations, but within her, she held some pent-up rage in a vault deep inside. She must have held it there for years, and it brewed like a volcano, churning and bubbling, waiting for enough pressure to make it explode. She took a deep breath and then as calmly as her voice would allow it seethed at Alex, “You make me sick. I thought that I knew you, but it looks like I never knew you at all. You’re a vile, disgusting man, and everything that’s happening to you. You deserve it.
That’s when he smirked.
“You think that this is funny?”
“You know what Meg? That money is so well hidden, not even the best lawyer in the country could find it. I tried to do you a favor and tell you the truth, but it looks like you’re just an angry sad old woman.”
Megan stepped out onto the snow-covered pathway in her sock feet, reared back and brought the bouquet of flowers down hard over Alex’s head, the roses exploded in a cloud of petals, spilling down on the white snow, and Megan kept hitting him with the stems and screaming at him, raw, guttural, primal screams that she didn’t know she was capable of making.
Alex scurried down the pathway as Megan kept pummeling him with the thorny stems until he jumped into his car and sped away down the road. She tossed the fractured stems into the snow, and stood at the end of the driveway, breathing clouds of heavy anger, like a bull, drops of blood from the thorns dripped from her fingertips punctuating the white snow with the story of her fury.
**
