Part 3My Daughter Died While You Were Cheating

Reid and I married right after he graduated.

But reality was far harsher than his dreams. He worked himself to the bone to earn money, coming home exhausted every night, collapsing into sleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

To ease his burden, I learned to cook, clean, and manage the house. I had never realized how much labor was involved in keeping a home. The endless cycle of meals, laundry, and cleaning. They were all small things, but stacked together, they were enough to drown me.

By the time the financial pressure finally eased, our daughter, Skye, was born.

I named her Skye, wanting her to be calm and serene. But she was a whirlwind of energy, always crying and restless. Every night, I had to walk the length of the living room, holding her, for hours until she finally drifted off.

By the time I slipped into bed, Reid’s hand would be reaching for me.

“Honey, it’s been too long since we…”

Despite my physical and emotional exhaustion, I dutifully submitted. But the moment of climax was always ruined by Skye’s first whimper.

I’d instantly push Reid away, scrambling naked off the bed to comfort her.

I never saw the look of pure annoyance on his face as he lay behind me.

Life had successfully chipped away at the clueless princess, turning me into a killjoy of a housewife.

For my birthday that year, Reid brought home the most expensive set of oil paints.

I glanced around the house. “We’re out of diapers,” I said flatly. “You should have bought diapers.”

Meanwhile, Blair was carving a bloody path through the corporate world. She and Reid joined the same firm, and she clung to her old rivalry, fighting him at every turn.

And she was still losing.

Once, she prepared a flawless presentation, grinding on the pitch for weeks, but the CEO still chose Reid’s plan.

Blair called me, sobbing hysterically.

“Why can’t I ever beat him, Sierra? Why? After all these years, can’t I just win once?!”

I shot Reid a dirty look, preparing to go comfort her. But Skye wrapped herself around my legs, refusing to let me go. I resignedly sent Reid instead.

“She’s a woman drinking alone at a bar; it’s not safe. You caused this mess; you clean it up.”

Reid’s hands paused on the remote. He looked at me, a searching quality in his eyes.

“Are you sure you want me to go?”

“Of course.”

Reid looked like he was making the most momentous decision of his life. “Fine,” he said.

He turned back and looked at me several times before walking out the door.

I didn’t sense the earthquake coming. I was just there, cooing at my daughter, telling her silly stories.

The true catastrophe began that night. Reid never came home.

When he finally returned the next morning, I was already cooking. He mumbled some excuses about Blair being a drunken mess and how he'd been so exhausted getting her back to her place that he just passed out on the floor.

His tone was calm and believable. Blair was my best friend. I accepted the lie easily.

In the days that followed, Reid’s “overtime” and “business trips” became more frequent. At first, I assumed the company was just busy.

Then, I started to notice things.

A foreign hair on his jacket. A strange, sharp perfume that wasn't mine.

Finally, when I found a discarded, opened condom wrapper in his pants pocket, I knew. He was cheating.

Shattered and enraged, I drove to Reid’s office and staged a scene. I cried, I screamed, I lay on the floor, demanding he name the woman.

Reid’s face was pure disgust.

“Sierra, I provide for you! I put a roof over your head! I let you be a homemaker so you didn’t have to worry about a thing, and this is how you repay me? By making baseless accusations?”

He pulled out his phone, flipped on the camera, and pointed it at my face.

“Look at yourself! What do you look like right now? A hysterical shrew!”