The Last Straw

I was speechless.  Larkin was very quick to respond that Miller's statement was false.  He said that they were with an old football buddy and his wife and that he had given the wife a hug.  He said that he didn't know why Miller would be saying anything different.  The subject was dropped, there were a lot of people around and Harriet and crew were packing their things getting ready to leave. Before I knew it, we were headed to bed.  But Larkin made one last effort to clarify what had happened.  He asked me to come to him, where he was talking to Miller.  He kissed me and said "Miller, what was that?"  "A kiss," Miller said.  Then Larkin gave me a hug and asked Miller the same question and Miller responded "a hug". Larkin said "what did daddy do to his friend?"  "Gave her a hug," Miller responded.  I'll never truly know what happened that night.  But I don't need to.  All I know is that kids are brutally honest.

The next morning, Miller woke up and took a bath.  Larkin was outside packing things up so that we could head back home.  A thought occurred to me...

I had seen a photo of Reagan on her Twitter account.  (Apparently she had blocked me from Facebook a long time ago.)  The photo was of her and her two daughters.  I could just show Miller the photo and see if that was one of the "friends" that he saw last night.  Something felt a little bit wrong about that, but after all that I had been through, there was no way I could trust Larkin's word. Of course, Miller had no idea what had been going on between Larkin and Reagan, so I figured he would take it as just another discussion about what they had done the night before. I went for it.  I asked Miller a few more questions about the game, and mentioned the fact that they had to go back and get his fidget spinner.  Larkin had told me that it was left in the Letterman's club, so I was pretty specific with my question - "so you and dad had to go back to the stadium to get your fidget spinner?".  "No," he said.  "We went to that car." I had to keep my composure.  "What car?"  "That car where we went to eat cake."  I had no idea what he was talking about, but I continued anyway.  "Who was at the car, Miller?"  "Just some of dad's friends," he said.  I showed Miller my phone screen and asked, "Miller, is this one of daddy's friends that was there?"  He responded, "yes, but she didn't have those two girls with her".

I walked out of the bathroom and outside where Larkin was packing up.  It's hard to explain the emotion that I had. Obviously, he could tell that something was wrong by the look on my face.  "What's wrong," he said.  I responded by saying "it's amazing what you can learn from your 7 year old that your husband of 12 years is too afraid to tell you".  Larkin didn't respond.  I said to him "why, why in the world are you doing this to us?"  I walked away and before I knew it, we were packed up and ready to leave.

The ride home was terrible.  There was silence between us, and not too much chatter from the kids.  They were entertained by movies and I pads.  But that ride home was when I made up my mind.  It was over.  The decision that I was struggling with for the past months suddenly had become so clear to me that I wasn't even second guessing myself.  It was an easy one to make once I realized that Miller had been exposed to the woman who helped destroy my family and Larkin didn't even have the decency to be honest about it. 

We got home that afternoon and I told Larkin that I was going to Mom & Bruce's and that he would need to get the boys settled in. 

I walked in their house and lost it.  I had explained to Mom what had happened and what my plans were. She cried with me.  Bruce was at church, but Mom sent him a text and told him that he needed to come home, so he did. 

The thought of telling Bruce was almost more than I could handle.  But I didn't have to.  He walked in the house, put his hand on my shoulder and said "You're going to be okay, and the boys are too."