and I realized how angry I was that she’d abandoned us. I confronted her about it, and she made a bunch of excuses about how she couldn’t deal with the way my dad treated her anymore.” I sighed, shaking my head. “And I just lost it. Told her if she knew what an asshole he was, she shouldn’t have left us with him. Like, okay, leave him if you need to, but take us with you, for Christ’s sake.”
“Seems reasonable to me,” Will said flatly. “What did she say?”
I laughed bitterly. “She made some excuses. Said he was a terrible husband, but he was a good dad, and we should be grateful he was taking care of us as well as he did. Because apparently living with her while she was struggling would be the worst thing ever, but living with my dad, who had money…” I sighed. “They both sucked as parents, let’s put it that way.”
“Sounds like it.” Will sounded totally sincere. Not the least bit patronizing.
“The thing is,” I went on, “My dad didn’t want kids so he could be a dad. He wanted kids so people would see him as a respectable family man. And my God, when my mom left?” I huffed bitterly. “I think he was pissed at her at first because suddenly he had to step up and be a parent. Not that we were little or anything—I’m the youngest, and I was eleven, so it’s not like any of us were toddlers. But then he realized that he could gain all kinds of sympathy by playing the poor guy whose wife abandoned him and their kids.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Will muttered. “He was that kind of parent.”
“You’ve met parents like him?”
Will gestured up as if to indicate the bedroom where Aaron was asleep. “One of the partners at his old law firm in Chicago.”
“Really?”
“Oh God.” He groaned, rolling his eyes. “That fucker. Everything he did was for his image. Every. Thing. He literally almost married a woman with a disabled child just to be a fucking martyr.”
My jaw fell open. “You can’t be serious.”
“Hand to God. Aaron told me one day he thought it was weird how Jerry went from one trophy wife after another to a woman who was perfectly average by anyone else’s standards, but he’d have described as ‘frumpy’ before. Plus she was a single mom, and almost immediately, Jerry was talking about how devoted she was to taking care of her daughter, how much work it was, how draining it was…” He rolled his hand. “Like right off the bat he’s putting her up on this pedestal and making it sound like she’s a saint for taking care of her daughter. And then it started shifting from ‘she does all these things’ to ‘we do all these things,’ and after a while, ‘I do all these things.’”
“Ugh. Gross.” I made a face. “What kind of person exploits a family like that?”
“This asshole, that’s who. Fortunately the woman got smart. Even though he was one of those really manipulative charmers, she saw through him after a while.”
“Dumped his ass?”
“In glorious fashion.”
I perked up. “Oh?”
Will chuckled. “He proposed at the firm’s New Year’s party. Everyone was there, and he made a big spectacle of it.”
I put my hands to my mouth, and I was grinning as I said, “Oh no…”
“He does this big speech, he pulls out this ridiculously huge rock, he gets down on one knee…” Will laughed. “And she just looks him right in the eye and tells him her daughter is a person, not something for him to use to get virtue points with all his admirers. Then she says she hopes everyone here can see him for the exploitive asshole he is, and she walks out without a backwards glance.”
“That’s… Oh God. That’s Biblical.”
“I know, right? The best part was when he tried to make a scene and follow her. Several of us made sure he didn’t leave the party until we were sure she was gone, and one of the junior partners walked her out just in case.” His smile turned a little fond. “When that junior partner proposed at the Christmas party the following year?” Will nodded. “She said yes.”
“Aww!” I touched my chest. “That… Wow. That was a surprisingly sweet ending.” I paused. “But wait, wasn’t that awkward at the next party? With her asshole ex being right there?”
Will shook his head. “He rather abruptly moved to Houston a few months later. You