“Kind of.”
Kelly pursed her lips and stared down into her tea. “I found myself pregnant with Tyler two months after I met Brody. I had just turned twenty. By then I was already so much in love with him, I couldn’t think straight when he was around.” She paused and cleared her throat. “Anyway, we were both living in separate dorms, and because of our situation, we were kind of forced to move in together off campus. Not that I felt forced. The idea of living with Brody sent me over the moon.”
“But you think he felt forced?” Elisa asked.
The other woman exhaled a deep breath. “I think if I hadn’t ended up pregnant, the idea of living with me wouldn’t have occurred to him.”
Elisa studied Kelly closely. And for the first time, Elisa saw the signs of old hurts that Kelly had probably been carrying around with her for a long time. She’d fallen in love with Brody, gave him a son, married him, and yet he never truly loved her back. Or so Kelly seemed to think.
“Because we weren’t living in college housing,” Kelly continued, “we both had to work longer hours to pay bills.” She lifted her gaze to Elisa’s. “It wasn’t easy. Going to school full time, working full time, being pregnant. Hardly ever seeing Brody because our schedules were opposite. He went to school during the day and worked nights, and I took night classes so I could work as a receptionist during the day. But somehow we made it work.”
“How did you manage all that after Tyler was born?” Elisa couldn’t imagine juggling such a full plate. And Kelly had done it at a young age, when most other twenty-year-old girls were living carefree.
Kelly fingered the pearl earring adorning her ear. “By then we were already living in Trouble. Brody graduated right before my due date, and we moved here so he could go to work for his father.”
“You didn’t graduate with him?”
“No,” Kelly said with a shake of her head. “I still had two years left. But we both knew we couldn’t stay where we were. Brody needed to make good money so he could take care of us, and I could stay at home with Tyler. I had never been to Wyoming and I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of moving here. But as his wife, it was my job to support Brody in whatever he wanted to do. His father offered him a job with really good starting pay. Plus Brody wanted to be close to his family.”
Elisa stared back at the woman. “So you gave up your degree and moved here. And didn’t you miss your family?”
Kelly nodded and picked up her glass. “Oh, I missed them terribly. That’s why this thing with my mother hit me so hard. I feel guilty that I wasn’t there for her when it happened. Anyway, I basically dropped out of school. I was five semesters short of graduating. Then I had planned on getting my graduate’s degree.” A wistful smile broke across Kelly’s face. “I’d always wanted to be a relationship therapist.”
“But you never got to be one,” Elisa concluded. She’d never realized how much Kelly had given up, how lonely she must have been. “And you never had the opportunity to finish school?”
Kelly shook her head. “Not really, no. After we moved here, Brody worked long hours to support us. I stayed home with Tyler, and I knew there was no way I could go back to school and get my degree. I kept thinking, maybe sometime in the future when Tyler got older, but… things started going downhill in my marriage.”
Kelly stopped talking suddenly and took a long sip of her tea. She gulped the drink down and closed her eyes briefly. This was like opening an old wound for her. Elisa sensed the other woman’s discomfort and anguish. Then she remembered Brody’s words from the other day.
There are things I’ve never told anyone before.
“How long has it been since you’ve talked to anyone about this?” Something told Elisa that Kelly had been virtually alone during her divorce from Brody. Chances were she didn’t have anyone to confide in.
“I’ve never talked to anyone about it. No one knows what really happened. Not even Colin.”
Elisa placed one of her hands on top of Kelly’s in an attempt to comfort her. She was still hurting. “Tell me.”
The other woman’s gaze remained on her tea. “I gave up so much for him,” she said, as though she didn’t hear Elisa. “I sacrificed everything. I left my home, moved away from my parents, gave up the opportunity to have a career, quit school, and he—” She stopped and licked her lips, then pulled in a shuddering breath. “And he’s being so difficult about this situation with my mother.”
“What else did he do, Kelly?”
“I loved him more than I had ever loved anyone,” she said instead of answering Elisa’s question. “Clearly Brody hasn’t told you anything about our divorce, and I don’t think he’d appreciate me telling you this.”
Elisa was curious about the comment regarding her mother. But right now, she felt the need to get to the bottom of Kelly’s troubling words. “Whatever you tell me won’t affect whatever relationship Brody and I might have. You obviously need to talk to someone about this, and I’m here to listen.”
Kelly’s distressed green gaze lifted to hers. “I’ve buried this so deeply, and there were times I told myself it never happened.” She tucked a short strand of hair behind one ear. “Toward the end of our marriage, during the last weeks when things were really bad, Brody went to stay in his brother Noah’s guest house. I felt like it was a good idea for him to leave because all the fighting was starting to affect Tyler. I also felt like it would be good for us to spend some time apart. He’d been gone for three weeks when I realized I didn’t want to be apart from him. I just wanted some things to change.” Kelly twisted her wedding ring around her finger. “One night I’d left Tyler with some friends so I could go see Brody and talk some things over.” She paused again, twirling that ring around and around. “But when I got there, he wasn’t alone.”
A sick feeling settled in the bottom of Elisa’s stomach. It felt like her heart actually stopped beating for a moment. “Oh God, Kelly.”
“We weren’t even legally separated and he’d slept with someone else.”
FIFTEEN
ELISA NEVER THOUGHT JUST LISTENING to someone tell a story could leave her so exhausted and mentally drained. Nor had she listened to something so heart-wrenching in her whole life. Because of Kelly’s story, Elisa had new understanding for the look of resentment on Kelly’s face when she walked in on her with Brody. Seeing that must have stirred old memories Kelly had worked so hard to keep buried.
Heading away from Kelly and Colin’s charming home, Elisa felt as though her heart had been carved out with a spoon.
You wanted to know, didn’t you? Well, now you do.
How heartbreaking that must have been for Kelly, being so in love with a man, giving up everything for him, then finding him in the arms of another woman. How would she feel if she stumbled across Brody locked in a passionate kiss with another woman? Most likely the same way Kelly had felt all those years ago.
Filing the divorce papers didn’t make me stop loving him any less. I just had too much dignity to be with a man who clearly didn’t feel the same way about me.
The same way Kelly couldn’t love him less, Elisa couldn’t love him less either. Even knowing the unforgiveable thing he’d done, she was still very deeply in love with him. At the same time, she couldn’t fathom the Brody she knew doing something like that. Had something driven him to it? Had he done it out of loneliness? Kelly hadn’t offered much explanation. Elisa had a feeling telling the story was draining enough, and the other woman hadn’t had anything left in her. Or, maybe, Kelly had no idea what had been going through Brody’s mind.