Behind the Veil

Consider It Done

The sight of her grandson put a big smile on Melanie's face. She scooped the boy up. "Come here, Nelson. Grandma's got kisses for you."

I sat rooted in my seat, my eyes refusing to pull away from Helen. Nathaniel kept his affair on the down low until he decided to let her into my life.

They were a perfectly happy little family, but here I was, carrying Nathaniel's baby. "You promised me heaven and earth, and this is what I get out of it? Do you think it's fun stringing me along, Nathaniel?"

That robbed all the color from their faces. Helen held her child tightly in her arms; the look on her face was filled with nervousness.

"I don't mind suffering, but I won't let my child go through the same. He's Nathaniel's and this is his family. If this family refuses to acknowledge him, then he has no father!" Helen declared, as if I were the one forcing her to make a choice.

Then, she left with the boy. Nathaniel rocketed up from his seat and went after them. Melanie glared at me with enough intensity to burn a forest, then she hurled the contract in my face.

"One and a half million is more than enough to live on comfortably for the rest of your life! The boy will join the family, and you will not do anything to stop it!"

Melanie left as well. I saw them off, my mind in a daze. Then, I bent down and picked up the contract. There was only another condition aside from the handsome sum of money, there was only one condition. I was to pretend this affair didn't exist and do nothing to stop them.

Something wrapped its arm around my throat. I tore the contract into shreds. Nathaniel had kept the affair a secret for five whole years. That was something I didn't see coming.

…

It happened one night when I came home—three months had passed since our wedding. The first thing that greeted my eyes was a house turned upside-down. I saw torn clothes, undergarments, and questionable stains all over the ground.

I walked into my bedroom. That was where I found Nathaniel in bed, naked with another woman. The scene hit me like a sledgehammer.

An affair was something I couldn't forgive.

Nathaniel staggered out of the bed and went down on his knees. With a trembling voice, he pleaded, "Please, I thought she was you! I swear… I… It was the alcohol! I didn't mean to! I swear!"

Nathaniel desperately explained himself again and again, trying to convince me. "I'll never drink again! I'll do anything! Anything, if you just call off the divorce!"

The news of his cheating reached his mother's ears. The old lady slapped her son as hard as she could and as many times as she allowed herself to. Then she bowed deeply to me.

"It's an honest mistake, Ginny. I swear he still loves you."

I didn't care about his reasons or excuses. A divorce was the only thing on my mind.

When Nathaniel saw that my mind was set, he climbed up the windowsill. "If you're going through with the divorce, I'm jumping off this building! Life is pointless without you anyway!"

That made me relent. I couldn't possibly watch him take his own life if I could stop it, so I yanked him off the windowsill. "Fine, divorce is off the table, but there will be no second time."

Although I'd relented, the affair still left a thorn in my heart. He gave me the best the world had to offer to make it up to me.

Houses, cars, the company's shares, everything.

My friends envied me.

"You must be blessed to get a man like that, Ginny."

As time went by, the people around us got in and out of marriages. They started betting on how long we could stay married.

Nathaniel came home one day and told me he had to stay overseas for a year. "Company business."

We videocalled every day, and he'd come back to see me because he knew I was still traumatized from the affair.

The man kept telling me he couldn't abandon me just because of work.

I wanted to stay with him for the rest of my life back then. Alas, the work trips and the business were all excuses so he could care for his other family.

I gobbled up his story for five years like a complete idiot.

…

Tears blurred my vision further, but I wiped them away. I looked at the signed divorce papers on the table, then I picked them up. If this was what they wanted, then they could consider it done.