Page 195 of Over the Line

Ally’s eyebrows flicked up. “Grandpa… abandoned her?”

“Not entirely. But he didn’t prioritize her anymore.” I shifted in my seat, rotating my coffee cup between my fingers. “The first time she and I talked about separating, she told me she was afraid of you kids drifting away from one of us.”

Ally drummed her nails on the table, the sound echoing in the mostly silent kitchen. “But Grandpa abandoned her. That’s not drifting away.”

“No, but she hadn’t realized at that time that that’s what he’d done. She thought being apart as much as they were had caused their relationship to fade away.” I exhaled. “She didn’t put the pieces together about his other family until a few years ago. And by then, the damage to our family was done.”

“So she should’ve started seeing a therapist earlier.” It wasn’t an accusation or a question. Just a sad statement of fact.

I nodded. “I should’ve too.”

That caught her off-guard. “You… see a therapist?”

Another nod. “I saw one for quite a while after the divorce. It’s… It was something I should’ve done years ago. Something Mom and I should’ve done together. I thought I needed help navigating being estranged from my kids.” I winced. “Turned out I needed help sorting out all the reasons my kids justifiably wanted nothing to do with me, and I should’ve started going long before we got to this point.”

Ally pushed out a ragged breath, staring at the table between us for long, painful seconds. When she finally spoke again, her voice was threadbare and unsteady. “What about you? How did Grandma and Grandpa’s divorce mess you up?”

I thought about that for a moment, gathering the truth into the right words. “Their marriage was messy and the divorce made things worse. They fought a lot. It never got violent, but it wasn’t pretty. And after they split, it just became clear they hated each other. They never missed a chance to take a potshot at the other, or to talk about how horrible they were, and…” I waved a hand, the gesture heavy with the fatigue of this miserable subject. “I think, on some level, Mom and I thought we could and should tough it out because we could be civil with each other. We could live together. We could co-parent. We just… didn’t want to be married.” I exhaled hard and ran a hand through my hair. “Our parents’ divorces were tough on us, and neither of us wanted to put our kids through it. We were wrong, but we thought that since our marriage wasn’t that terrible or volatile, then keeping our family together was better than splitting it up.”

Ally’s expression was unreadable. Her features were taut and her eyes were full of too many emotions to parse. “You cheated on Mom. Why?”

I lowered my gaze into my coffee cup. “I was miserable, too, and instead of talking to her or getting counseling or—literally anything productive, I let the resentment get to me.” I ran a hand through my hair and exhaled as shame pushed down on my shoulders. “I was angry. I was miserable. And I was so damn selfish.” I chanced a look at her, meeting a hard, closed off expression. “I have a lot of regrets in my life, and that one is definitely at the top of the list.”

She watched me silently for a moment. “So you did it because you were miserable and you resented Mom.”

I nodded. Some part of me wanted to mention that my ex-wife had cheated, too—that I’d suspected she was cheating even before I’d stepped out myself—but I’d vowed to take that secret to the grave. It would only hurt my kids more than they already were. They didn’t deserve to watch both of their parents fall from grace.

Ally’s chin quivered slightly, and her eyes welled up. “If you were that miserable, and the resentment was getting to you so much that you cheated…” She threw up her hand. “Did you really think we were blissfully ignorant and happy?”

The gut punch made my balance waver, and I pushed out a breath. “I… You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I…” I shook my head and swallowed against the lump trying to force its way up. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Honestly, I am. I know what I did was wrong. I knew it before I came clean to your mom. And staying together when we couldn’t stand each other—we were wrong, and we made the worst possible decision we could have made.” I had to work to swallow again, and my voice wasn’t completely steady as I added, “I just want you to know we were trying to do the right thing by staying together.”

She dropped her gaze and stared down at her wringing hands. For a long time, she said nothing, though I could tell there were wheels turning in her head. Maybe she was weighing whether or not to take me at my word. Maybe she was trying to pull her own thoughts together so she could tell me… something. I just waited silently, bracing for whatever she finally said.

After a while, she looked me right in the eyes. “Did you know I almost married Mark?”

The question came so far out of left field, my brain record-scratched. She and Mark had dated from her junior year in high school until—well, until sometime after her mother and I divorced. I’d heard from my other kids that they’d split up, but nothing beyond that.

I cleared my throat. “Did you?”

She nodded slowly, and as she spoke, the anger started to close in at the edges of her voice. “I was so miserable with him. So fucking miserable, Dad.” She tightened her grip on her coffee cup. “Do you know why I stayed with him?”

My mind reeled, searching for the connection I suspected she wanted me to make. I ran through the memories I had of the two of them, and…

My heart sank.

They’d seemed happy at first, same as any teenagers who’d just gotten together. They’d been a cute couple. Before long, though, the honeymoon phase had ended and the cracks had started showing. Any time I saw them together, they were irritated with each other. Whenever someone mentioned his name, Ally’s jaw would work and her mood would dip. She talked about going out with him the way people talked about going to the DMV or the dentist’s office.

Here in the present, I struggled to hold my daughter’s gaze, but I didn’t let myself look away. “You saw how your mother and I were. And you thought you and Mark—that that’s how relationships were supposed to be.”

The anger in her expression hurt, but the tears gathering cut right to the bone. “I thought that was just how couples were,” she said. “I thought about breaking up with him so many times, but then I’d look at you and Mom and think—” She paused, swiping at the tears sliding down her cheeks. “I mean, if that wasn’t how it was supposed to be, then why were you still doing it?”

My chest hurt as her words sank in. “Baby. I am so sorry. I… God, no wonder you were so angry at us.”

“Of course I was!” She wiped away another tear, leaving a faint, muddy streak in her makeup. “You raised me to think that’s how a relationship should work, so I stayed with a man who was an absolute dickhead for—Christ, so long! I wasted years with him because I thought that was what relationships were.”

I hadn’t thought it was possible to find another reason to feel guilty for how we’d handled our divorce, but there it was. All I’d ever wanted was for my kids to be happy, and I’d hoped they would all grow up to find partners who treated them like gold.

And what had I done? Set my daughter up to not recognize when a relationship was miserable and she needed to get out.