Chapter 4 - THE CLIENT DINNER
I did not care who Derek had dinner with.
At first.
I assumed it was actually a client.
Then his work calendar entered discovery.
Not because adultery was automatically relevant to everything.
Because Derek had told his employer that he needed to leave early that Friday due to:
Family medical event — wife in labor.
He left the office at 4:30.
So what was the seven o’clock client dinner?
There wasn’t one.
His corporate calendar had no dinner.
Expense records showed none.
His supervisor later confirmed:
“We expected him to be with his wife.”
I stared at the statement.
Then where did he go?
The answer was less dramatic than an affair.
And somehow more infuriating.
He went to his mother’s house.
Patricia was hosting a retirement dinner for Derek’s uncle.
Seventeen relatives.
Steak.
Wine.
Cake.
Photographs.
Derek was smiling in all of them.
At 8:07 p.m., while my contractions were less than five minutes apart, my husband stood beside his mother holding a glass of bourbon.
Why call it a client dinner?
Because even Derek understood how ridiculous the truth sounded.
He had chosen a family party over his laboring wife.
Patricia later told him:
“You could have left once things got serious.”
They were serious before he arrived.
She knew I was in labor.
Derek had told her.
She replied in a text:
First babies take forever. Megan is always anxious. Eat first.
First babies?
Emily was our first child.
And apparently my pain was an inconvenience everyone felt qualified to schedule.
That text mattered to me emotionally.
Legally, probably not much.
I kept it anyway.
May you like
Not everything has to become courtroom evidence to become part of the truth.
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