Father's Day will NEVER meant he same for me. 2 years ago, is when I first suspected my husband was cheating on me. When I did find prof 2 weeks later of AP#3 (I didn't know about the others though yet) it was because I found the necklace on Father's Day that she gave him.
I blogged this morning about it.
Two years ago on Father’s Day my husband received a gift from someone who had no right to give him a gift. That day she gave him a crucifix necklace, sprayed with her perfume, telling him that it meant a lot to her and she wanted him to have it. She told him that he’d always been so nice to her and she appreciated his kindness. She was flirting with him, acting shy but coy. He thanked her, and gave her a hug for the gift.
Later that evening, after closing, she made sure that she was the last employee remaining with my husband. After a day of looking at each other, smiling, exchanging long glances, my husband thanked her again and hugged her. When they started to pull away, she looked up at him as one does when they want to be kissed. My husband kissed her. She kissed back. I guess the necklace warranted a special kind of thank you.
After kissing for goodness knows how long, she had to leave, to get home to her HUSBAND and her FOUR children. She asked MY husband to put the necklace in a special place so she could see it, so she knew he was thinking of her. She asked him to hang it on the rearview mirror of his car. He did.
He then came home to me.
The next morning, we both woke up and I told him that I was going to go to 7-11 for coffee. I took his car…
As soon as I opened the door to his car I was hit with this overwhelming smell of perfume. And as I sat down, I saw it. The necklace. It was cheap. It definitely wasn’t some sacred family article or anything. So I highly doubt it was very meaningful to her.
I was confused. I had no idea where it had come from. Why did his car smell like perfume. There HAD to be some explanation for this, right? I drove the five minutes to get coffee and back, with each mile the fear becoming stronger, the urge to vomit overwhelming.
When I arrived back home, I unwound the necklace from the mirror and brought it inside with me. I put the coffee in front of him, gave our kids donuts that I’d gotten them and told him that he needed to come and talk to me in the bedroom RIGHT NOW.
He followed me down the hallway and into our room. I shut the door, showed him the necklace and asked what is this? My body was shaking. I was standing in front of him, with tears running down my face, shaking from head to toe. He said it was nothing. It was a gift from a guest at work whose mother had died and wanted him to have it. It seemed so far-fetched. But, guests had given him gifts before. I asked him why his car smelled of perfume. He said he had no idea. That the weekend had been graduation and a lot of graduation parties had gone on at the restaurant and people had hugged him. My husband did not hug people he didn’t know. Or so I thought. I told him to go out to his car and smell how overwhelming the perfume was. Had he had anyone in his car? He said no.
He went outside, and I went to our laundry basket to smell his clothing from the day before. They did not smell of perfume. There was no way someone hugged him and that his car smelled that much from a hug. I then smelled the necklace and realized where the smell came from. He returned and told me he couldn’t smell anything in his car. I asked him how the guest gave him the gift. Was it in a box, a bag, or did she just hand it to him? He didn’t answer. I asked how the mother of the guest died (she was supposedly a regular), did he know when she died, was he invited to the funeral? I mean if she liked him enough to give him a gift, surely…he’d know all of that right?
He swore up and down it was a gift from the guest. I even gave him an out, I said to him, I thought perhaps an employee had given him the necklace and he was embarrassed to tell me, and he said no, it was from the guest. (I would have believed the employee angle much more.) He insisted on his story.
I wanted to believe him so badly. He apologized for scaring me, for not telling me. He reassured me over and over again that it wasn’t from another woman, that he’d never ever cheat on me. He reassured me all day long. That should have been a clue. Later on I realized the necklace was not where I had laid it. He moved it. He told me he threw it away. He hadn’t, he hid it. So he could put it back in his car every day and put it around his mirror for HER. He would remove it before he got home.
This was the day that I realized my life as I knew it began to unravel before my eyes. Just a couple short weeks later I would find proof that my husband was cheating on me. Even then I had no idea the scope of the destruction that would come out over the next year as I got hit with not one, but two DDays a year apart.
Father’s Day. It no longer holds a good meaning for me anymore, but rather triggers me into a place of terrible memories.
