Professional, clean, no-nonsense divorce papers that laid out exactly what I wanted. Custody of our three kids, half the house equity, and absolutely zero responsibility for the baby she was carrying. I had James serve them to her at her office because I figured if she could make major life decisions without consulting me, I could return the favor. She called me that afternoon, sobbing so hard I could barely understand what she was saying.
"You can't be serious." She kept repeating it like saying it enough times would somehow make it true. "You can't be serious." But I was serious.
Dead serious. More serious than I'd ever been about anything in my life. "Melissa," I said, sitting in my car in the parking lot of a Starbucks because I couldn't have this conversation at home with the kids listening, "I told you exactly what would happen if you did this. You didn't believe me."
"That's not my fault." Even her boss got involved because apparently Charles Whitmore thought his money and influence extended to my personal life. He called me that evening, his voice dripping with that fake concern that rich people use when they're pretending to care about the little people. "Grant," he said, and I could practically hear the expensive suit he was wearing.
"I think there's been a misunderstanding. What Melissa is doing, what she's doing for Vivien and me, it's a beautiful thing. A gift. You should see this as something to be proud of, not something to run away from."
A gift. A beautiful gift. That's what he called the destruction of my marriage. "Mr. Whitmore," I said, using his formal title because screw his first-name familiarity, "let me make something clear."
"You hired my wife's body to carry your baby. You destroyed my marriage. That makes this your problem, not mine. Handle it."
And then I hung up on him because rich or not, boss or not, he didn't get to lecture me about my own life. That night, lying in bed next to a woman who was carrying another man's child, I realized something important. Betrayal doesn't always come with dramatic music and tear-filled confrontations. Sometimes it comes with a triumphant smile and a pregnancy test delivered over morning coffee like it's good news instead of the end of everything you thought you knew about your life.
You know what's funny about filing for divorce? It doesn't actually make your wife disappear. I mean, I knew that logically. I'm not a complete idiot.