“Of course the babysitter was frantic. She called Sam to see if I’d been in an accident or something.” Pamela wiped her eyes. “Or something … I got home that night after ten. McKale was in bed. Sam was waiting for me. He screamed at me for more than an hour. He said he had to cancel an important business meeting with a new client to pick up McKale. He told me that I was the most irresponsible mother on the planet—a horrible mother and wife.

“That was the final straw. I told him I was leaving. He said, ‘You can’t leave us.’

“I said, ‘Yes, I can.’ I went to our room, threw my things in a suitcase, and walked out to my car. Then I realized I hadn’t even looked in on McKale. I desperately wanted to see her. But what would I say? Sam wouldn’t have let me in anyway.” Her eyes welled up with tears. “I never said good-bye.” She wiped her eyes, then blew her nose into a paper napkin. “Jeremy and I were married a week after the divorce went through. We traveled. I told myself I was happy. But of course the marriage didn’t work. When you have an affair with someone, the affair itself becomes the core of the relationship. The secret of the affair fuels the passion and the excitement. But once it’s legitimized, it’s just reality like everything else. Less than two years later, Jeremy cheated on me. I wasn’t really surprised. It’s like they say, ‘If they’ll do it with you, they’ll do it to you.’”

Pamela sighed deeply. “Jeremy wasn’t a good man. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out, I mean, he was a cheater and he wanted me to leave my child. What more did I need to know? I guess I figured he was just like me.”

“Did you ever consider going back to McKale?” I asked.

“All the time. For weeks I’d skip lunch so I could drive to McKale’s school and watch her play at recess. I wanted to go back home, but the only way I could have gone back to Sam was on my knees. And he would have kept me there for the rest of my life. Maybe that’s what I deserved, but I knew I couldn’t do it. And what would that have taught my daughter?

“I eventually moved to Colorado to start a new life. But you can’t run away from yourself. I married again in Colorado. That only lasted twenty-nine months. James. He left me too. He sent me an email to let me know he’d moved on.” She laughed cynically. “I really know how to pick them, don’t I?”

I frowned.