was in California. And I most certainly did not cheat on him.”
Eduardo muted the television, then wrapped an arm around her waist and eased her to his side. “I’m sorry, Claire.”
“That was an American network, wasn’t it? That means my parents will see it. That’s the last thing they need. He was atrocious to them.”
“With any luck, they’ll tune it out. They know the truth about you.”
She cast a sideways look at him. “You believe me.”
“Don’t doubt it for a moment.”
“Thank you.”
He set the remote on the coffee table and urged her to take a seat beside him on the sofa. “Would you care to give me the nutshell version of the story? I’d tell you about my marriage, but there have been books written on it. If you aren’t sick of hearing about it, you should be.”
She laughed at that. He had a way of putting her at ease, even under less-than-ideal circumstances. “The nutshell version is that marrying David was a huge mistake. We met in college. He flirted, sent flowers, said all the right things. He loved that I worked hard and had ambition, because he did, too, at least at first. But we didn’t know each other well enough to be married. I knew he liked to go to bars with the guys on the weekends to watch sports, but I had no clue how much he drank or that it was more than just the weekends. Not until we were married and moved in together. I kept finding empty bottles in the bottom of our trash bins and jammed beneath the seats of his car. I worked long hours and he was doing well at his job, which made it easier to hide his addiction. When I confronted him, he lied about it. Then he insisted it wasn’t a problem and that I was being a killjoy. Gave me a whole spiel about how he needed an outlet from a stressful job and that he was simply getting adjusted to working full time and being married.”
Claire took a deep breath. She hated digging up the past, but she didn’t want it to affect her future. “Anyway, I told him it was over unless he got help, so he agreed. One afternoon I picked up a gas receipt he’d dropped in our carport. It was for a station on the far side of town and was time-stamped for when he’d told me he was at therapy. That’s how I discovered he was sleeping with an ex-girlfriend. Her apartment complex was across the street from that gas station. He confessed to it when I handed him the receipt and told me it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been such a nag about a drinking problem he didn’t have. I moved out the next morning and filed for divorce as soon as I could find an attorney. We were legally married for two years, but only lived together for six months.”
Eduardo shook his head. He didn’t need to say anything. Claire knew from his expression that he understood how stressful that phase of her life had been and that he wasn’t judging her for it.
“What did he do to your parents?”
“He called them continuously starting the day I moved out. Told them I had taken money from him and that they should do the honorable thing and repay him. I hadn’t, of course, and they knew it. They quit answering the phone, so he sent a friend to their home in New Mexico to ask for money. The guy went away when they refused, but having someone show up on their doorstep scared them. I got a restraining order against David and my parents did the same. Thankfully, he gave up and we never heard from him again. He didn’t even show up for the divorce hearing.” She folded one leg under her and turned on the sofa so she faced Eduardo. “I felt guilty for quite a while afterward. I hated that my lapse in judgment caused grief for my parents. And deep down, I’d always thought of marriage as forever. I knew I’d made the right decision to leave, but it still felt like a personal failure. On the other hand, the experience made me both more cautious and more perceptive. Eventually, I decided that if my worst mistake in life was a poor marriage that I got out of relatively unscathed, I was doing all right.”
He put a hand on her knee. “The story