My husband left me and our six children for a fitness coach – I didn’t even have time to think of revenge before fate caught up with him.

I should have hung up the phone.

‘Cole, what is this?’ My voice broke. I hated that my voice broke.

‘My phone, Paige,’ he sighed. ‘Sorry I left it on the kitchen counter.’

“I saw the message, Cole.”

He didn’t hesitate for a moment. He simply grabbed the orange juice and poured more into it.

‘Alyssa,’ I said louder. ‘Your trainer.’

‘Yes, Paige,’ he said, leaning against the counter. ‘I’ve wanted to tell you for a while.’

‘What do you have to tell me, Cole?’ I demanded.

He took another sip of orange juice as if he were watching sports.

I’ve wanted to tell you for a while.

“That I am with Alyssa now. She makes me happy! You let yourself go, and that is your mistake.”

‘Are you  with  her?’ I asked.

“Yes.”

The second ‘yes’ hurt the most, because it meant he had practiced this, and I was the last to hear that my own life had been replaced.

And that was it. No excuses, no shame. He spoke as if the truth was a minor inconvenience I just had to learn to live with.

Are you with her?

‘She makes me feel alive again,’ he said, as if he were auditioning for a monologue about a breakup.

Alive?

‘We have six children, Cole. What do you think this is, a coma?’

‘You wouldn’t understand that,’ he said. ‘You don’t see yourself anymore. You used to care about your appearance. About how  we  looked.’

I stared.

He kept going on. ‘When was the last time you put on real clothes? Or wore something that wasn’t covered in stains?’