So, yeah. Okay. Pretty much covered it. "Melissa," I said, setting my mug down and turning toward the stairs, "you made your choice three months ago. Now I'm making mine."
I went upstairs, got dressed for work, and kissed each of my kids goodbye like it was any other morning. Jake was trying to eat his cereal while simultaneously playing some game on his tablet. Emma was having a meltdown because her favorite shirt was in the dirty laundry. And Sophie was sitting in her high chair painting her face with yogurt.
Normal chaos. Beautiful, normal chaos. That was about to get a whole lot more complicated. Melissa followed me to the front door, still in that damn bathrobe, still holding the pregnancy test like it was made of gold.
"Grant, we need to talk about this," she said, and the desperation in her voice almost made me feel sorry for her. Almost. "No," I said, grabbing my keys from the bowl by the door. The ceramic bowl Emma had made in second grade that was supposed to look like a flower but mostly looked like something you'd find at the bottom of a pond.
"We really don't." And then I left. I drove to work, sat in my cubicle, and spent eight hours entering numbers into spreadsheets while my marriage imploded in slow motion. Around lunchtime, I pulled out my phone and called James Holloway, a divorce attorney I'd gone to high school with.
We played on the same baseball team junior year. He was a decent shortstop, terrible at math, and apparently great at destroying marriages for a living. "Jim," I said when he picked up. "It's Grant Walker. I need a lawyer."
There was a pause, and then he said, "Jesus, Grant, what did you do?" "It's not what I did," I said, looking around the office to make sure nobody was listening. "It's what my wife did. She's pregnant with her boss's baby."
Another pause. Longer this time. "Come again?" "She's a surrogate for her boss and his wife."
"I told her not to do it. She did it anyway. Now I need to know what my options are." "Holy hell, man. That's... wow."
"Okay. Can you come in tomorrow morning? We need to talk about this in person." Two days later, I had divorce papers drawn up.