I couldn’t believe this.
I should, with our history, all he’d done that I’d turned a blind eye to and all he’d done that I eventually couldn’t. Nothing should surprise me. And I was hanging on to a slim thread of hope that it still did. That I could be surprised. That I hadn’t lost that ability. That I still believed that people could be decent. Even Aaron.
I hated to admit it but I figured I would soon lose the ability to believe Aaron could be decent. Especially after he just hung up on me.
I couldn’t reflect on this.
My lip was quivering and I bit it to make it stop, but I didn’t try too hard to hold back tears as I stared at my car.
I’d cried a lot the last year and a half. And I will admit, no matter what this made me, I often cried to try to get my way. This always worked with my dad. For a long time it had worked with Aaron.
A year and a half ago, it stopped working. At least with Aaron.
But I needed to cry. I had my little boy with me, his little fist twisted in the platinum chain of the necklace my dad gave me the Christmas after Mom died, his other hand banging my shoulder, completely oblivious (thank goodness) to our dire situation. I didn’t know what to do with him if I tried to change the tire myself. I didn’t think it was safe to leave him in the car. Traffic was crawling but I was still on a busy interstate.
What if something happened?
I fretted, bit my lip and blinked away tears as I ran through my options.
My dad was in Nebraska looking after my grandma. He, obviously, couldn’t come and help.
He also didn’t need added evidence that I’d made a hideous mistake spending ten years of my life at Aaron Neiland’s side, eventually accepting his ring, his vows to honor me in sickness and health until death did us part (all lies, obviously). All this before finding myself pregnant with Aaron’s child while he was cheating on me (again), this time with a model. Then me confronting him, after which Aaron told me we were through and he was marrying his model.
No, Dad didn’t need that.
Further, I didn’t have any friends. I’d never truly had any real friends, but I hadn’t known that until it was proved true when Aaron and I fell apart and they (all of them) went with Aaron.
And I didn’t have any time to make new ones. I had a baby. I had a full-time job as a grocery store clerk. And I had an ex-husband who was a lawyer who seemed, along with his father and all their colleagues, to have made it his mission to make my life a misery.
He was succeeding.
I knew what he wanted. He wanted me to step aside, give him my son so he and Tory could raise Travis, and Aaron could forget he broke my heart, shattered my soul, destroyed my dream, and ruined my life.
Aaron didn’t like reminders of his failures. Due to his father being driven, and driving Aaron, my ex-husband did his best not to fail. But should that rare happenstance occur, he obliterated any memory of it so he didn’t have any indication in his life that he was any less than perfect.
I was a flaw. I was a fail. I needed to go away.
I wasn’t going to go away.
I just didn’t know how I would do it. After I got my divorce, I received a settlement (that I now knew was so small it was a joke) and child support (since Aaron’s income was far more than mine) and nearly full custody of Travis (since he was only two months old at the time).
This was good.
It was good until Aaron took me back to court and made it bad. Since Aaron had been born into the good ole boys network of the legal world of Denver (his father being a judge), he’d managed to win (or connive) partial custody and a lowering of child support.
Then he took me back again and won half custody with no child support.
We’d been officially divorced for six months, the decree coming through two months after I pushed out our son (alone, since Dad was driving from Nebraska, and Travis came out quickly). In that time, I’d been to court twice and I knew Aaron was looking for any little thing that he could use to prove I wasn’t fit to look after Travis or that I’d broken our arrangement so he could get me into (more) trouble.
I had long since run out of money for a lawyer. Dad sent a bunch but I stopped asking after the second trip to court. He worried about me. He was all I had left (except Travis), but all I could think about was that Travis and I were all he had left too and he’d been through enough. I couldn’t drag him through this with me.
I could, however, get a new attorney.
The one I’d had was expensive and we’d gone over things before I had to let him go. It was clear he was concerned about his ability to defend me considering the firepower at Aaron’s back.
But when I begged (and okay, cried), my attorney had told me I could pay installments.
However, they just racked up (I was still paying them off). I couldn’t afford more. I needed a new car. Eventually, I’d need more than a one-bedroom apartment and preferably one that was in a much better neighborhood. I needed to find time and money to go to beauty school so I could learn how to do hair. I was good at hair. I had a natural talent. I’d spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I was good at, what I could do, and that was the only thing.
And stylists at nice salons made huge tips.
I needed huge tips.
I pretty much needed everything.
So I’d tried to find a less expensive attorney.
Not many were willing to take me on (this, I feared, was Aaron and his father’s doing too), but I’d found one. And he’d be really less expensive, if, in his words with that oily smile on his face, I got down on my knees (repeatedly) while he battled Aaron for me.
I didn’t need him to explain what getting down on my knees meant. I also didn’t need to explain verbally why I got up from my chair in his office and walked out.