Gabriel Cross was having an affair with my best friend, Sienna Price. After it came out, my dad beat Gabriel so badly he was blinded in his left eye.
My mother grabbed Sienna by the throat and choked her until she passed out.
When Gabriel threatened to press charges, I begged him to spare my parents. He gave me two conditions.
“First,” he said, “I’ll end things with her and come back to you. But you can never bring up divorce again.”
“Second, you can only see your parents once a year. No contact with them the rest of the time.”
I agreed. For the next three years, I only saw my parents at Christmas.
This Thanksgiving, Gabriel said he had to travel for work again.
I bought a pumpkin pie and planned to sneak over to my parents’ house in Bellevue.
I was standing just outside the glass door to their backyard when I saw my father playing chess with Gabriel.
“That punch I threw was too hard,” my father said, looking at Gabriel’s left eye. “It’s a damn shame about that eye.”
Gabriel just waved it off.
“It’s fine. Without you two running interference, a woman with Mags’s temper would have divorced me for sure.”
“This is much better,” he continued. “Your house has become our little safe house. A place for me and Sia to meet. No one suspects a thing.”
Just then, my mother appeared at the door, her arm around a visibly pregnant Sienna. She called the men inside for dinner.
They looked like a family.
Whatever hope I had left died in that instant.
Gabriel had probably forgotten. When we got married, he’d signed a postnuptial agreement. All it needed was my signature to be executed by a lawyer.
He Cheated With My Friend My Parents Helped Chapter 38 I had already carried that loss, and left it a long way behind me. Thomas and Laura still inquired about me through my lawyer before Christmas each year. The lawyer only ever told them that I was doing well. They never came to Boston again.
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He Cheated With My Friend My Parents Helped Chapter 37 Two years later, the project I was leading secured long-term funding. The day I signed the documents, I used my portion of the divorce settlement to establish an emergency assistance program. It would provide short-distance transportation and temporary companionship for women who had to go
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He Cheated With My Friend My Parents Helped Chapter 36 [Why are Margot’s parents commenting all over your Thanksgiving photos from back then?] At first, Sienna tried deleting the comments. Then she shut down her account completely. I didn’t look again. When it was my turn to go on stage, the auditorium lights washed over
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He Cheated With My Friend My Parents Helped Chapter 35 Sienna resurfaced on the day my project’s final results were announced. She didn’t come to Boston. Instead, she posted an old photo on Instagram. In it, she and I were in our college graduation gowns, with Gabriel standing between us, all of us beaming. Her
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He Cheated With My Friend My Parents Helped Chapter 34 This year, Julian stood beside me, seriously comparing the ingredient lists on two different brands. “Which one do you like?” “Either is fine.” “No, either is not fine,” he said, feigning seriousness. “This is our first Thanksgiving together.” I took the box from his left
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He Cheated With My Friend My Parents Helped Chapter 33 When Thomas contacted me through my lawyer, it had been six months since we’d last seen each other. He didn’t ask for a meeting. He only asked if he could transfer the money from that cashier’s check into an account of my choosing. “He said
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He Cheated With My Friend My Parents Helped Chapter 32 The slow-blooming smile on his face made me smile, too. On our first official date, there were no flowers, no expensive restaurant. He took me to the coffee shop near campus where we used to study. More than a decade ago, he had always sat
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He Cheated With My Friend My Parents Helped Chapter 31 For the first month after the protective order took effect, I still woke up in the middle of the night, my heart pounding. Whenever the wind moved the curtains, I was sure someone was standing on the balcony. Julian suggested I move. I shook my
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He Cheated With My Friend My Parents Helped Chapter 30 “Neither of us has the right to ask for her back.” Gabriel stood on the steps below, looking hollowed out. Thomas shoved the suitcase at him. “The court ordered you to stay away from her. Stop trying to destroy the new life she’s built.” After
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He Cheated With My Friend My Parents Helped Chapter 29 After returning to Seattle, the first place Gabriel went was my parents’ house. The lock code had been changed. Sienna’s birthday no longer worked. When Thomas opened the door and saw him, his face hardened. “What are you doing here?” “I came to get my
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