His question surprised me; I thought he’d ask about my tears, first. But then...maybe he was afraid to know. I told him, “I had some things I had to take care of. A report I had to read.”

He hesitated for a moment as if he were waiting for me to tell him more. When I didn’t add anything, he said, “I tried to call you; Clyde was here with the papers, did you forget?” There was no anger in his tone, even though I knew $8 million meant so much to him.

“I did forget.” I left off the part where I would normally apologize. Because in the past, I would have been sorry. Today, I was not.

He couldn’t hold back his curiosity any longer. “Are you all right?”

I shook my head.

Again, he stepped toward me as if he thought whatever was bothering me needed his embrace. Before even one of his fingers touched me, I moved out of his reach. “We need to talk.”

He searched my eyes for some clues, I guessed. “Oh...kay.”

“Where are the kids?”

“I just checked on Jasmine. She’s falling asleep and Jayden is playing video games; I told him he had thirty minutes left on his clock.”

I nodded. “I want to go someplace where the children won’t hear us.”

He peered at me as if he was trying to figure it all out and for the first time, I had a thought — did Jeremy know about his son? Had he been taking care of him during these past months? Had he been there for his birth? Had he gone to visit since?

“Oh, God,” I moaned.

“Babe?” He sounded like he was on the edge of hysteria. “What’s wrong?”

It didn’t matter where I talked to Jeremy because our children were going to find out. They would know in the next few hours. So I moved with unsteady steps into the living room. Jeremy followed and I didn’t have to turn to him to know that all of his concern was etched on his face.

“Ginger,” he whispered my name.

I dropped my bag onto the carpet and sank into our sofa. I held my head in my hands wondering how it had come to this.

Jeremy lowered himself onto the couch next to me and when I finally looked up, the first thing that surprised me was the civility of this. I could have walked into our home, grabbed a couple of plates, glasses and knives and used Jeremy’s head as my target. But I had two children upstairs. I always remembered them and I always remembered that I’d been raised by Valencia and Theodore Allen. I’d been raised right and wanted to do the same for my children.

So instead of TV drama, we were going to talk like two adults, though one of us was an adult who lied and cheated.