“And yet he wanted to fight the divorce. After months of assuring me he’d leave you to be with me, that we’d make a life together, he wouldn’t do the one thing I’d begged him to do.” Sadness filled her voice.

Sarah found that she did have some sympathy for the other woman, though it was more for her gullibility and believing in a man who’d cheat on his wife.

“Sean needed me to save the company. That’s all.” It hadn’t been because he’d loved her or wanted to salvage their marriage. She was a means to an end.

“Even the pregnancy didn’t persuade him.” The admission held a lot of sadness.

Sarah wondered if Trish got pregnant on purpose to force Sean’s hand, but didn’t ask. Instead, she gave Trish another dose of reality. “He barely spent time with his sons because he spent all his free time with you.”

“I know. And I’m sorry. They must miss him terribly.”

“They miss the idea of him. Because let’s face it, Sean didn’t care about them. He only cared about himself.”

Trish sighed again. “I know that now. I realized it in the moments before the crash. After, when he was gone, I tried to understand why I grieved but also felt . . . relieved.”

Shocked by the admission, Sarah took it in and thought it through. “You realized you weren’t the most important thing in Sean’s life. Neither was your child. You played out what life with Sean would really look like. Him fighting to keep me at the company by using the boys as leverage. Him making promises to you again and again and again and hardly ever keeping them. Him appeasing you all the time just so you’d do what he wanted.”

“Him ignoring our child the way he did his sons,” Trish added.

The line went quiet as they both remembered Sean for who he was and their lost hope that he’d ever be the man they’d wanted him to be for them.

Sarah hated that they had that in common. It made it hard to hate Trish when they’d both fallen into the same trap with the same man.

“He was so angry that night in the car, ranting that you’d demanded the divorce and how he wouldn’t give it to you without a fight. I didn’t know about the trouble with the company. Well, some of it, yes, but not that he’d taken money from it and could end up in jail. He let that slip that night. When I told him he could turn things around without you, that we could live a good life together, he turned on me. He said I didn’t know what I was talking about, that you were the only one who could save him, and all I was good for was a fuck.” Trish’s words held the strain of threatening tears. “I know he was upset, drunk, not thinking clearly, but those words cut deep, and I realized that he’d been using me as a fun distraction and that he really didn’t have any deep feelings for me.”