Chapter 5 - Two Women, One Story
I met Brooke in a quiet coffee shop across from the hospital.
She looked younger without makeup.
Tired.
Ashamed.
For several minutes, neither of us knew where to begin.
Then she placed her phone on the table.
“You should see all of it.”
The messages confirmed Garrett’s pattern.
When Brooke asked why he still wore his wedding ring, he said it prevented questions at work.
When she worried about my pregnancy, he described me as emotionally unstable and obsessed with preserving appearances.
When she asked whether he truly planned to leave, he sent photographs of the coastal house he intended to buy.
The purchase deposit was supposed to come from the loan against my studio.
Brooke had not known that.
Her face changed when I showed her the forged transfer.
“He said the business was his.”
“It isn’t.”
“He said you didn’t work anymore.”
“I worked until the morning he crashed.”
We sat in silence.
Neither of us was the woman Garrett had described to the other.
I was not the dependent wife trapping him.
Brooke was not a calculating mistress trying to steal my marriage.
She was a woman he deceived into building a future around assets he did not own.
That did not make her innocent of every choice.
She knew he was still legally married.
But she had not known the marriage was active, loving, and expecting a child.
She began crying quietly.
“I thought the accident was the worst thing that could happen.”
“So did I.”
Then she opened one final message.
Garrett had written it the morning of the crash.
After the baby comes, everything will move quickly. Natalie signs papers without reading when she’s overwhelmed.
May you like
I did not cry.
I took a photograph of the screen.
