Reunion on the Fifth Year of Divorce

1
Five years after my divorce from Rovan, I saw him again.
I was working at a preschool when he, the man who had fought me tooth and nail in court, walked in with a little boy who looked uncannily like me.
He missed his mom, Rovan said, his voice calm and natural, as if no time had passed at all. "I brought him to see you."
I remembered the warning he had given me when we divorced.
With the same calm I had learned to master, I replied, "You've got the wrong person. I'm not his mother."
In the next instant, the boy hiding behind Rovan's legs ran to me, his small voice choked with tears. "Mommy, please don't leave me."

"Don't say that," Rovan murmured, his eyes downcast. "Leo is your son, after all. You'll break his heart."
His tone was gentle, a world away from the cold indifference he'd shown me five years ago. I can still hear his words from that day, a permanent echo in my mind: Clara, from this day forward, the child has nothing to do with you. If you dare to even try and see him, I will call the police and get a restraining order. I'll make sure you never see him again.
And now, here he was, telling me our son missed me.
I looked down at the weeping boy clinging to my leg.
"Does Victoria know you brought him here?" I asked quietly.
Victoria. His former assistant. His new wife. The boy's mother on paper.
The woman for whom Rovan had destroyed our marriage, the woman he had protected while sending me to hell.
Rovan's lips parted, but no words came out. After a moment, a look of stunned surprise crossed his face.
"Clara... you can... you can talk?" He quickly corrected himself. "I mean, you can speak in full sentences?"
I've had a severe speech impediment since I was a child. Words would get stuck in my throat, and it could take me ages to form a single coherent sentence. Many people just called me 'the stutterer.'
To communicate with me, Rovan had bought me a special journal. For the urgent things, write them down, he'd said. For everything else, I have all the patience in the world. Just take your time and tell me.
But later, when he confessed that he'd fallen for another woman and wanted a divorce, I had tried to ask him why. I got one word out before he cut me off, his face a mask of irritation.
"Clara, you might as well be mute. Do you have any idea how exhausting it is to come home after a long day and have to summon the patience to listen to you struggle?"
"You want to know why I love Victoria?" he'd continued, his voice dripping with cruelty. "Because it's easy with her. I talk, she responds. She understands my stress, she knows how to help me. And what about you?"
He'd completely forgotten his own words from years before: Clara, no matter what, you will always be the one and only Clara to me. He knew my speech was my deepest insecurity, the source of all my shame. And he had used it as a weapon to gut me for another woman.
I didn't answer his question now. I gently pried the little boy's hands from my leg.
"Take him home, Rovan," I said. "And don't come back."
Without another glance, I turned and walked toward my office.
Behind me, I heard Leo's desperate cry, tears flooding his big, watery eyes. "Mommy, don't go! I want my mommy!"
I faltered for a half-step, but I didn't stop.
When I entered my office, my best friend, Maya, looked up from the teaching materials she was organizing.
"Clara, I heard someone was looking for... hey, why are you crying?"
I lifted a hand to my cheek. It came away wet.
Before Rovan and the boy had shown up, I thought I was over it. I thought that if I ever ran into them, I could smile like a polite stranger and say, "Do you remember me? I used to hold you when you were a baby."
But it turned out I wasn't over it at all.
I pressed my lips together, forcing down the wave of emotion that threatened to overwhelm me. "It was Rovan," I whispered, my voice trembling. "He brought the boy."
"What?" The name, unspoken for so long, ignited a fire in Maya. "That bastard! What is he doing here? Hasn't he hurt you enough? Where is he? I'm going to kill him!"
She yanked open her desk drawer, pulled out a fruit knife, and started for the door. Then she froze, a new panic on her face. "Wait, they didn't bring the police, did they? This doesn't count as you seeking him out, right? It won't cause any trouble?"
The day after the divorce was finalized, our nanny had called me. She said Rovan and Victoria were out celebrating their anniversary, and our son had a high fever. The nanny had a family emergency and couldn't stay. She asked if I could come.
The moment I heard "high fever," I panicked. I rushed over, took my son, and went straight to the hospital.
As he was being examined, Rovan and Victoria arrived. With two police officers.
Before I could say a word, Rovan's voice, cold as ice, cut through the room. "Clara, you have violated the court order by taking the child without permission. I am filing for an emergency order. You will never see him again."
My son was still burning up in my arms. I tried to tell Rovan he needed to see the doctor, but he snatched the boy from me and handed him to Victoria.
"Remember this," he said, his eyes like steel. "Victoria is his mother now. He has nothing to do with you."
He had the police escort me away. He said he wanted to teach me a "profound lesson."
He had me locked up for three days.
Maya was the one who picked me up, her face streaked with tears. She looked at my empty eyes and sobbed, "Clara, let's leave this city. Let's start over, okay?"
For five years, I never set foot in Crestwood again. I thought if I stayed away, I would never have to see the man who had been my angel, only to become the demon who cast me into hell.
"No, don't worry," I told Maya now, my voice more confident than I felt. "We won't be seeing each other again."
I believed it. The Rovan who had patience for me was long gone.
But I was wrong.
The next day, after work, he was there again. With the boy.
"Clara, it's Leo's birthday today. His only wish is for you to have dinner with him. For his sake, will you please consider it?"
Rovan looked at me, his eyes full of a desperate hope, as if there was so much more he wanted to say. Little Leo stood beside him, mirroring his father's pleading gaze.
Then, out of nowhere, Maya appeared. She was holding a bucket of water, which she promptly flung at Rovan.
"You bastard! How dare you show your face here? Get out! She doesn't want to see you!"
The water soaked his tall frame, but little Leo, standing right next to him, was perfectly dry.
Rovan's lips tightened, but his dark eyes remained fixed on me. He said nothing.
Maya sneered. "What, are you trying to cook up another charge to use against her? Let me tell you, I did this. All me. You won't use me to threaten her again!"
When Rovan first demanded the divorce, determined to build a new life with Victoria, I had refused. I wouldn't sign the papers, and I wouldn't give up custody of our son. I still held on to a sliver of hope that his infatuation would fade, and he would come back to us.
How naive I was.
When Maya found out he was trying to take our son, she lost her mind. She stormed into his law firm, found Victoria, and screamed at her in front of everyone, calling her a homewrecker and slapping her across the face.
In response, Rovan and Victoria sued Maya for assault and slander.
As a top divorce lawyer, Rovan knew exactly how to operate without leaving a shred of evidence against himself. All I knew was what he wanted me to know. When my lawyer asked for proof of his affair to countersue, I had nothing. He was too smart, too careful. His phone's screen saver was a picture of me and our son. His texts with Victoria were all about work. They were never seen alone together in public.
I had no proof.
I knelt on the floor and begged him, head to the ground, to drop the charges against Maya. There was no pity in his eyes, only the cold condescension of a victor. "You have one option," he'd said. "Agree to the divorce and give up custody. Otherwise, I will make sure Maya pays."
The stress was unbearable. I couldn't sleep. I started taking sleeping pills just to get through the night.
And on the day of our divorce hearing, he used it all against me.
He presented photos of me taking the pills. He showed the court a video of me on my knees, sobbing and begging him. He told the judge I was mentally unstable, a housewife with no means to support a child, and therefore unfit for custody.
My speech impediment, always worse under stress, became a complete blockage. I stood in the defendant's box, the eyes of the entire courtroom on mepitying, confused, impatientand I couldn't get a single word out. I looked at him, pleading with my eyes.
He looked away.
Then, he delivered the final, crushing blow. He produced the journal he had given me.
"Clara is functionally mute," he said, his voice steady and calm. "This is the journal she uses to communicate. If she can't even speak, how can she possibly be a mother?"
The person who knows you best knows exactly where to stick the knife. He twisted it, again and again, in my deepest wound. And I couldn't even say a single word to defend myself.
The time allotted for my testimony ticked away. I remained silent.
I lost. Completely.
As we walked out of the courthouse, Rovan and Victoria approached me, holding our one-year-old son. Victoria's face was glowing with triumph. "Don't you worry, Clara," she said with a sweet smile. "I'll take good care of him. Rovan and I will raise him as our own."
Rovan looked at her with the same tenderness he once reserved for me. "I trust you," he said. "He'll be better off with you."
Then, he turned to me, twisting the knife one last time.
"Don't blame me for taking him, Clara. You wouldn't want him to be asked at school why his mother is a stuttering mess, would you?"
He had taken everything, and then told me not to blame him. The sun was warm that day, but I felt like I had been plunged into an icy abyss. I cried, asking him over and over why he was doing this to me.
My only answer was the sight of their retreating backs as they walked away with my son.
Now, standing in front of me, Rovan said nothing as Maya berated him. But little Leo, his voice small and hesitant, spoke up.
He looked at me with a mixture of hope and fear. "Daddy said... that the day I was born was a really hard day for Mommy. So... today is my birthday, but it's also Mommy's day of suffering. I... I saved all my allowance. I wanted to buy Mommy dinner."
The day Leo was born.
Rovan was out of town, handling a divorce case. We were both from the foster care system; we had no parents to help us. I was in the delivery room, waiting, my body wracked with pain. I cried his name, over and over, terrified, praying he would get back in time.
He couldn't. He called me on video instead. The Rovan from back then, the one who still loved me. I could see him pacing a hallway, his voice trembling as he tried to soothe me. "It's okay, Clara, don't be scared. You and the baby will be fine. I'll be home soon. Let me tell you a story, okay? Please don't cry."
He started telling me a fairy tale, but his own eyes filled with tears, his voice cracking. "No more," he'd choked out. "Clara, after this one, we're not having any more children."
Little did we know, his words would come true in the worst way possible. After Leo, there was no "us" anymore.
Because what no one knew... was that the story of Rovan and Victoria also began that day.
While I was in agony, giving birth to our son... he was getting drunk and falling into bed with Victoria.
When I called him to tell him our son was born, safe and sound... he had just finished a night of passion.
The next morning, he texted me that he had just woken up from a drunken stupor.
But that text... Victoria had sent it from his phone.
He was torn between guilt over his betrayal and his attraction to the vibrant, cheerful woman who was not his wife. And from that day on, his patience for me began to fray.
Often, I'd start to say something, and he'd cut me off. "Just write it down. The baby's a light sleeper, you'll wake him."
But when Victoria called him in the middle of the night, upset about something, he could stay on the phone with her for hours. When she expressed her ambition to be more than just a legal assistant, he broke his own rule about not taking on apprentices and brought her under his wing. He let her, an unlicensed trainee, sit in on his biggest cases.
He gave her all his favor. When others questioned it, he would simply say, "Because she's worth it."
Only he knew why. But as a partner at the firm, no one dared to challenge him.
Now, hearing Leo's sweet, innocent words, a cynical smile touched Maya's lips.
"You're right, kid. The day you were born was the day her suffering began. But do you know who caused it?"

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