My Mother Told Me To Stay Behind While She Took My…

And just like that, he was gone. The front door closed behind him with a soft click, leaving the whole house feeling hollow. Mom came home about an hour later.

When I told her Dad had left, she did not seem surprised. She only nodded, like she had been waiting for it. “Good riddance,” she muttered.

“Mom,” I said, unable to believe what I had just heard. “How can you say that?”

She turned toward me with cold eyes. “Your father betrayed me, Lauren.

More than once. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

That night, everything felt different. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to Mom talking on the phone in her room.

She was laughing, sounding happier than she had in months. I wondered who she was talking to, but I was too tired, too hurt, and too confused to care. Just when I thought life could not become any more complicated, Mom hit us with another surprise.