Free Back In the Game by Holly Chamberlin Page A

had come, they were gone. I looked around the circle of the Women of Divorce. No one was nodding sympathetically. No one was smiling encouragingly. The woman named Heidi looked angry.
    I was puzzled. Weren’t we here to talk things through, even if we didn’t make complete sense?
    Finally, Sally offered a practiced smile. “That’s—nice. But let’s get down to business.”
    â€œI’m sorry?” I said.
    A woman named Ellen spoke. “What Sally means is, what did your nasty ex do to you? Mine left me for my sister. He destroyed my family and tainted my past. Just so you know.”
    â€œMine developed a cocaine habit.” Diane snorted. “So retro! We lost the house and I barely got out with the few pieces of antique furniture I’d brought to the marriage.”
    â€œYou won’t believe this,” a woman named Aggie said. Her eyes glittered with anger. “My creep of an ex-husband had a second wife and kids in New Hampshire. Evil bastard.”
    Oh. I felt my shoulders slump just a bit. I folded my hands on my lap. What had my nasty ex-husband done to me?
    Matt was obsessed with football. He didn’t laugh much. He spent too much time at the office. But you couldn’t blame the end of a marriage on sports or a poor sense of humor or even workaholism. Could you? I shot a look at Sally, who seemed to be the leader of this gang.
    â€œSo?” she urged. “Tell us.”
    Here it was. The moment of truth.
    â€œWell,” I began, looking at no one in particular, trying for a casual, yet not a flippant tone, “actually, the long story short is that I . . . I had an affair. When I told Matt, he demanded a divorce. So . . . we got divorced.”
    There was dead silence. Really, everything felt dead, heavy. And then the woman named Ellen leaned forward, her neck stretched like that of a starving baby bird, eyes blazing.
    â€œWhat gave you the right?” she demanded. “Here we are, so many women being betrayed by their husbands and you have a perfectly fine husband and you cheat on him!”
    It took a moment for her words to sink in. “Um,” I said finally, “are you saying that because you were unhappy, I didn’t have a right to be happy? That’s like saying . . . That’s like your mother telling you to eat all your vegetables because there are starving kids in Africa.”
    â€œIt’s about being grateful for what you have,” Aggie snapped. “You should have been grateful to have a husband in the first place. You should have been grateful he wasn’t a jerk.”
    I felt a surge of anger like a wave of boiling oil in my head. I probably should have left the room right then rather than subject myself to further abuse, but I was far beyond sensible thinking.
    â€œFirst of all,” I said, voice trembling, “you know nothing about me, not really, so how dare you lecture me on my personal happiness! And how do you know my husband wasn’t a jerk? For your information he was a jerk, just like every other man can be a jerk. And, and, I should have been grateful? What is this, the days of Queen Victoria? A woman has a right to be happy, not just grateful.”
    Eyes rolled but no one argued my point.
    â€œWhat did he ever do that was so bad?” the woman named Aggie suddenly challenged.
    What, indeed?
    â€œHe changed the access code to one of our joint accounts to CHEATER ,” I said. “That was uncalled-for.”
    Sally glared at me. “You are a cheater. He was just telling the truth.”
    Clearly, she hadn’t accepted Jesus as her personal savior. “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
    My self-preservation instincts kicked into higher gear.
    â€œYou’re preaching pick-and-choose morality,” I said, fixing Sally with a glare of my own. “If I had been an abused wife, no one would blame me for cheating. Are you saying it’s