He traded me for a baseball team. Not in so many words, but in every decision he made for a year.
Our anniversary dinner was the third time he'd cancelled that month. He’d forgotten, again, his mind already on the stadium lights and the minor-league roster that was consuming his life. His new family. His father handed him the team, and Anders handed over our marriage to pay for it.
I became the nagging wife. The one who didn't understand the pressure he was under. The one his mother, Isolde, quietly suggested was holding him back from the legacy he deserved. She saw a brittle socialite for her son, a woman named Fiona who understood the game, the business, the life. I was just the woman he came home to, when he came home at all.
The final line item was the lockbox. He’d used our shared savings, the money we’d saved for a house, to cover the team’s payroll. He told me over the phone while I sat in our dark apartment. He didn't even realize he’d crossed a line. To him, it was all for us. For our future.
So I bought the stadium out from under him. I changed the locks while his team was on the road.
Is there a line that, once crossed, you can never come back from? And if you do, what's left of the person you were on the other side?
There is no cheating in this book.
