Free Second Wife by Unknown Page B

gently on the question. A moment later he opened the door on the
    driver’s side and moved in beside her. „First I’ll explain what was going on in my life eight months ago,“ he
    announced.
    Heather sighed and leaned her head back against the seat as Flynn turned the car out of the parking lot.
    She told herself she didn’t want to hear what was coming, but she couldn’t think of any easy way to avoid
    it. She sat in mute silence while Flynn began his explanations.
    „It wasn’t just the divorce that had me in a flaming rage at the time I met you, Heather. In some ways
    the divorce was a relief. Cheryl and I hadn’t been getting along well for a couple of years and things were
    getting worse rapidly. I can’t say I was pleased to learn about her affair with her instructor, but I wasn’t ex
    actly surprised, either. The divorce went through without a hitch. Neither of us wanted to contest it. What
    didn’t go through the way I had assumed it would was the matter of custody.“
    „You went to court to try to get custody of Jeremy?“ Heather asked in surprise.
    Flynn nodded in the shadows, his face grim. „I didn’t think Cheryl would ever bother to ask for him. He
    was the cause of a lot of our problems in the first place. She hadn’t wanted kids. I did. Like a couple of
    fools we hadn’t really discussed the matter before marriage. It came as a shock to me that she had no
    intention of having children. I guess it came as an equally strong shock to her that I wanted them. For the
    first couple of years of the marriage we could shelve the whole problem and pretend it didn’t exist. But as
    time went on, I started pushing her to agree to try for a baby. She refused. Everything we had going
    between us started getting very shaky at that point. She felt trapped and angry. I felt exactly the same way.
    Then she got pregnant.“
    „What a mess,“ Heather said with a sigh.
    „It was an accident. The precautions Cheryl had been using failed. After we realized what had hap-
    pened, she started talking about an abortion. I panicked and begged her not to go through with it. She finally
    gave in and decided to have the baby. To give her credit, I honestly think she tried to make the best of the
    situation. But after Jeremy was born it became clear that she had been right from the beginning. She wasn’
    t cut out to be a mother.“
    „Some women aren’t, just as some men don’t seem to be cut out to be fathers.“
    Flynn’s hand tightened on the wheel. „I know that now. Cheryl and I were mismatched from the begin-
    ning. At any rate, after Jeremy came things began going downhill rapidly. She hired someone to look after
    him all day, and then in the evenings she left him with me while she signed up for every night class she
    could find at the university. It wasn’t long before she fell for one of her teachers, although it took me a
    while to realize what was going on all those evenings when Jeremy and I were home alone. Nothing like
    keeping busy changing diapers and fixing bottles to prevent you from thinking about what your wife is doing
    behind your back.“
    Heather heard a trace of the old bitterness in his words and stirred uneasily. Perhaps divorced people
    never did get rid of all traces of the anger and resentment that came out of the breakup of a family. „Flynn,
    maybe we shouldn’t talk about this.“
    „No, it’s about time we did. Should have thrashed the whole thing out earlier. I finally got my head
    above the diapers and the bottles long enough to come to my senses. I confronted Cheryl and she admitted
    she was in love with someone else. She wanted a divorce. I told her to get out and that I intended to keep
    Jeremy. I didn’t expect her to go after him in court.“
    „Why not?“ Heather asked quietly. „It was the only way she could punish you. She knew you wanted
    him so she decided to take him from you.“
    Flynn shot her an appraising glance. „It was a totally irrational