My Husband’s Driver Warned Me Not To Get In The Car. I Followed Him To A Secret House And Found Him Playing ‘daddy’ With Another Woman. How Do I Take Him Down?
The Confrontation
The journey back was a blur. She didn’t remember getting on the bus, how she got back to her city, how she opened the door to her apartment. She just sat in the kitchen, staring at the cold kettle, and waited.
Art returned three hours later. He came in whistling. He dropped his keys on the entryway table. The same sound that had always meant his return home.
“Carol, I’m home,” he called from the doorway. “Guess what? The seminar ended early. I bought a cake.”
He stopped short as he entered the kitchen. Carol was sitting at the table, motionless. She didn’t even turn her head. Her coat was still balled up on a nearby chair, stained with dirt at the hem.
“Carol, what’s wrong with you?” A note of unease crept into his voice. “Did something happen to Ashley?”
Carol slowly raised her eyes to him. There were no tears in them, just an infinite leaden exhaustion.
“I saw her, Art. Her and the girl, Lily.”
The silence that fell over the kitchen was thick, vibrating. Art turned pale instantly. The cake box slipped from his hands and fell to the floor with a dull thud, but he didn’t even flinch.
“You… You were in Oakridge,” he whispered.
“She has your eyes,” Carol said in a flat, lifeless voice. “And your locket, the one you lost.”
Art collapsed into the chair opposite her. All his confidence, all the polish of a successful manager vanished like a shell. He covered his face with his hands.
“Carol, forgive me. I didn’t want this. I didn’t know how to tell you.”
He began to cry. Not the way a man cries from grief, but pathetically sobbing, smearing tears across his face.
“It was an accident, really. 7 years ago. I… I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I love you, Carol, but I couldn’t abandon them. Lily is just a child.”
Carol looked at him and felt nothing. Not pity, not anger, just disgust. She looked at this man with whom she had shared a bed, a table, and a life, and she saw a coward.
“You didn’t want to hurt anyone?” she asked quietly. “You’ve been lying to me for 7 years. Every day, every minute.”
Trudy’s Ultimatum
Just then, the front door opened. The sound was authoritative, confident. Trudy, Art’s mother, walked into the hallway. She had always had her own keys and came in without knocking.
“What is going on here?” Her voice cut through the air like a knife.
She scanned her tearful son, the crushed cake on the floor, and the motionless Carol.
“Art, stop your sniveling. Get up.”
Art sniffled but obediently straightened up, wiping his face on his sleeve. Trudy slowly pulled off her gloves, placed them neatly on the table, and turned to her daughter-in-law. There was not a trace of compassion in her gaze, only cold calculation.
“So you found out,” she stated calmly, as if discussing a broken cup. “Well, it’s about time. It was foolish to hide it forever.”
“You knew,” Carol wasn’t asking. She was stating a fact.
“Of course I knew,” Trudy sniffed. “Who do you think helped Art buy that house on his salary? Don’t make me laugh.”
She walked to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down, straightening her back majestically.
“Listen to me, Carol. You’re a good housekeeper, a faithful wife. But you couldn’t give my son the most important thing: an heir.”
Carol felt the blood drain from her face. “We have a daughter, Ashley.”
“A daughter is wonderful,” Trudy replied with a dismissive wave. “But a man needs a son, someone to carry on the family name. After Ashley, you couldn’t have any more. And Victoria… Victoria is young, healthy. She’s already given him a daughter, and she’ll give him more. Perhaps a boy.”
“You… You introduced them.” Carol couldn’t believe her ears.
“I helped my son get what he needed.” The mother-in-law cut her off sharply. “And if you were smarter, you would have understood it yourself. You saw how he was suffering, how he wanted more children. But you were silent. You buried yourself in your work, in your garden. You stopped being his wife, Carol. You became a convenient roommate.”
Trudy’s words hit where it hurt the most. Carol remembered the nights Art tried to talk about a second child and she, exhausted after her shift, would brush him off. “There’s no money, Art. How would we manage? We can barely raise Ashley.”
She remembered how she had stopped wearing makeup for him, how she had stopped asking him what he dreamed of. She thought she was protecting the family, saving her strength and money. But it turned out she herself had opened the door for another woman.
“I’m not justifying Art,” Trudy continued, seeing her daughter-in-law crumble. “But you’re no saint either. Now for the important part. You can’t get a divorce. Art has a career. Elections coming up. A scandal is not good for him, and not for you either. Where would you go? To a shared apartment on your store clerk’s salary?”
Carol was silent.
“Everything will stay as it is,” Trudy decreed. “Art will live here and visit Victoria, say, on weekends. You will keep up appearances, your status as a married woman, the apartment. Ashley will finish school peacefully. Everyone’s happy.”
“And if I don’t agree?” Carol’s voice trembled.
“And who’s going to ask you?” Trudy smirked. “The whole town knows who Art Miller is. And who are you? Think about your daughter. Do you want her to be pointed at? The daughter of the woman who was left for someone younger?”
