Meeting Elvira

Read the first part here.

I answered the phone and spoke to Elvira's friend for about half an hour. She and Elvira were wondering where Nemo was that night. It was the first night in a long time that they hadn't heard from him. Of course, what a coincidence! It was the first night in months that Nemo was sleeping in our home.

She knew about Lucian, she knew about the divorce. (had been to the courthouse even to look up the divorce filing.) She told me things about Nemo's friends and family that I wasn't aware of. Like the fact that Nemo's brother and cousins not only were aware of Elvira, but hung out with her. I felt so betrayed, not only by Nemo, but by his family. They had been my family too. And the whole time I was pregnant, they were supporting his relationship with Elvira.

After we hung up, I went into the guest bedroom to confront Nemo. He wouldn't answer my questions and pretended to fall asleep. I tried to go back to bed, but I was wide awake.

At 3:00 am, my doorbell rang. That's 3:00 in the morning, in case you missed it. I went to answer the door. Nemo got up and raced me to the door. He cracked the door, and that's when I got my first look at Elvira. She said she wanted to speak to him. It was a bitter cold night, so I invited her in. (Nemo would later remind me that it was me, not him, who invited her in. He's the one who invited her into our lives, but he couldn't seem to grasp that. But my reasoning wasn't so she wouldn't freeze out in the cold, but that I wanted to hear what she had to say.)

She came in and sat at my kitchen table. She and Nemo just stared at each other, waiting for the other to start. She looked like she had been awake for days. I started the conversation by asking where they had met. She said - at a bar. It suddenly dawned on me, a lightening bolt if you will, and I asked her - are you a str*ipper? She nodded a yes. My husband left me for a str*ipper.

There's more to this part of the story, but this is all I can write for now. I feel the bile rising in my throat just like it did that night. It still seems surreal to me that a str*ipper arrived at my house at an ungodly hour telling me she had a relationship with my husband. I was wounded for weeks afterward.

I'm still wounded a year later.