As Adam walked out the front door, he glanced over and caught her eyes looking right at him. He quickly looked back to the items he was carrying in his arms, hoping that she hadn't seen how broken and devastated he actually was. As it was, he had turned his head just in time to hide the first couple of tears starting to run down his cheek.
Whatever you do, do not show her any weakness, he told himself. He found that he was reminding himself to avoid showing any signs of weakness for quite a few months now. He had to hold it all together. His job. His marriage. Being a good dad. Oh, and his affair too. Sure having an affair was not part of his life plan, but once it materialized, he had to add it to the list of things to handle. Handle your business. And don't show any weakness.
It was too late for Adam to worry about showing weakness. He had shown just how weak he was, to basically everyone who knew their family. Being exposed as a drug addict who was carrying on an affair with a co-worker will do that for a guy.
It was the world that told him that weakness wasn't acceptable in the first place. And then it was echoed by the girl he decided to marry just four short years prior to this. She grew up with a deadbeat for a father, and so ever since the day they got engaged, she would remind Adam every so often that he needed to be stronger than him, in every single way.
He couldn't blame her for needing him to be strong. Not when he could understand what it must have been like to grow up without a father. And when they decided they wanted to get married, it was a source of pride for Adam, the fact that he was a better man than her father. But the entire script had been flipped in the last eight months. From a source of pride to a constant source of shame and guilt.
Shame and guilt were beating him down, little by little, day by day. He had become a broken man. He felt lost inside. He didn't know what he truly wanted for his life now.
Some days, all he felt like doing was running to Nora's house, knocking on her door, and declaring his undying love for her. Other days, he was committed to doing whatever would be asked of him by his wife to save their marriage.
He had always been so sure of himself. He had always been rock solid. He had always been a guy who people could depend on. When did he start failing to be that kind of man, he thought to himself. He wiped more tears from his cheeks, as he stacked the last box into the bed of his truck.
It felt like just a month ago, their marriage had been solid. I mean, solid enough. No marriage is ever 100% solid. And now he was being thrown out of the house. Or, more accurately, he was voluntarily moving out so that they didn't have to argue so damn much. The kids were aware of their arguing, of course. But Adam felt terrible for forcing this situation on his two young daughters. It wasn't fair, any way you looked at it. Dylan's parents were still married, so he didn't know what divorced parents felt like. Seeing the kind of pain his choices had brought into his daughters' lives was a heavy burden.
Carrying this burden was taking its toll on him, both mentally and physically now too. He had started to have trouble getting a normal night's sleep. The burden was heavier to carry than the guilt he had of seeing how he had broken his dear wife's heart, if he was being honest with himself.
Now that he'd been caught cheating and the drama of finding this information out, he would have done almost anything on Earth to save his marriage. And not necessarily because he wanted to stay married to Sarah. But if saving their marriage would prevent an ounce of extra pain from being felt by his girls, he would have paid that price, a million times over. He would have dealt with living in Sarah's doghouse for as long as it took, if it meant that his daughters could be spared from the pain of being children of divorce.
