Chapter 4 The Confrontation

~ Next Day ~

"Are you completely sure about this?" Sam asked over a bad connection just outside the gates to the Walton mansion. My home, my prison."

"Totally sure." The minute I said that, I squeezed the phone until my knuckles were white. "If I don't go and face him now, I never will."

"Call me the second you are through. I don't care when. If I don't hear from you in two hours, I will come looking for you."

"Yes, dear mom." It was a feeble attempt at humor that died the moment it left my lips.

"I mean it, Aria."

"I know. I'll call."

I hung up, punched in the gate code and the heavy wrought iron gates pained in protest as they opened just wide enough to let me squeeze through. The driveway stretched out before me, lined by precisely trimmed shrubs that Elizabeth had insisted on being pruned twice a week. Nothing less than perfection for the Walton estate.

I gripped the steering wheel tightly, my hands shaking as I drove up the long driveway. Twenty-four hours ago, I had bolted from this place as if it were on fire. Now I was walking back into the fire.

The door opened just before I reached for my keys, and there stood Michael, looking messy in a way I had never seen before. The white shirts and perfect hair that had been Michael's shield since the day I met him were now disheveled. The hair was sticking up at odd angles, and his T-shirt looked as if he had slept in it.

"Aria." That name on his lips sent a fresh wave of pain within me. "Thank God."

I pushed past him into the marble foyer, further into distance. The smell of the house-lemon polish and fresh flowers-now seemed sickly sweet.

"I'm just here for my things." I kept my voice flat, refusing to look at him directly.

"Please, can we talk? I've been trying to reach you-"

"I noticed." I headed for the stairs. "I'm uninterested in hearing anything you have to say."

His hand caught my arm. I flinched away like his touch burned.

"Don't." The word came out like a glass shard.

Michael stepped backward, hands raised. "I'm sorry. I just... Aria, please. What happened with Jessica was a mistake-"

A rough laugh ripped from my throat. "A mistake? Is that what we're calling it now?" I turned to face him fully. "Did you accidentally fall on top of my sister? Repeatedly?"

He flinched. Good.

"It wasn't like that. It only happened once-"

"Save it." Up the stairs I went. At the end of the hall lay our bedroom-no, his bedroom now. I'd need suitcases. Boxes. How does one pack up five years' worth of a life?

Michael followed me, always six feet away. "Please, let me explain. We've been trying for a baby for so long with my family's pressure-"

I spun around. "Don't you dare lay the blame for this on our fertility issues."

His face fell, crumpled. "I'm not. I'm trying to explain what was going through my head."

"I don't care what was going through your head." I yanked the bedroom door open and headed straight for the closet. "I was under the same pressure, Michael. I was the one taking hormones, tracking my cycle, being poked, and prodded by doctors. And somehow, I was able to keep my legs closed to your brother."

"I made a terrible mistake." He broke on the last word. "I love you, Aria."

I yanked the suitcases, crashing them down from the top shelf. Gun salvos echoed through the room.

"This is not love." I pointed violently in between the both of us. "My sister? With my sister, Michael!"

He was hanging his head in his hands while sitting on the edge of the bed. "I know. It's unforgivable."

"At least we can agree on something," I said, pulling clothes from the hangers, tossing a few folded ones into the first suitcase.

"What can I do? What can I do to make it up to you?"

I hesitated, holding a silk blouse in my hand, one I had worn just last month on our anniversary. My mind filled with the memories of that night: his words of commitment, aspirations of the future, and I almost lost it.

"You can't fix this." The blouse dropped. "Some things are just beyond fixing."

Michael just stood, watching as I packed. His eyes were red and swollen. He looked terrible. A part of me was glad.

"Where are you going to stay?" he asked, probably expecting me to tell him.

"None of your business."

"Aria, quit."

"With Sam." I slammed the suitcase. "Doesn't matter to you anyway."

I walked to my jewelry box and stroked the velvet insides. Most of these pieces were from Michael-little tokens of apology after missed dinners, working weekends, family events where his mother had humiliated me. I left them all behind except for the sapphire earrings my grandmother had given me before she passed on.

"Your mother will be glad," I said as I zipped up the second, smaller bag. "She finally got what she wanted."

"My mother doesn't know about this. No one does, except-"

"Except Jessica." The taste of her name was venomous. "Where is she, by the way? Has she moved in on my half of the closet?"

Michael stood up suddenly. "It's not like that. I told her to leave right after you... after you found us. I haven't spoken to her since."

I laughed, a sound as hollow as my heart. "How noble of you."

I continued to the bathroom and started gathering toiletries. Five years of marriage and I could fit everything I owned into two suitcases. What did that say about our marriage?

"We can go to counseling," Michael called after me at the bathroom door. "I want to work through this."

I looked at his reflection in the mirror and into the despair in his eyes. For a moment-only a moment, really-I remembered the man I had fallen in love with. The man who walked with me through my father's funeral, who helped make a gingerbread house on Christmas Eve because it was my family tradition, who looked at me like I had hung the moon.

Now the man was gone. Or possibly he never existed.

"I am over and done with this," I shoved past him and dragged my bags toward the stairs. "I want a divorce."

He stepped back as though I had physically hit him. "No. Aria, please. It was just a mistake-"

"With my sister!" I stopped at the top of the stairs, ringing marvelously through the high-ceilinged foyer. "Do you have any idea what that feels like?"

His face brightened up a bit. A door cropped behind him. I stopped; praying that it did not belong to Jessica. But it was worse.

Elizabeth Walton stood in the guest room doorway, her silver hair perfectly coiffed, her expression a mask of cold calculation. She had been there the entire time. Of course she had.

"Aria," she said, voice heavy with false concern. "I thought I heard your voice. Michael has been beside himself."

I bit off the long string of poison threatening to spill from my lips. Fighting with Elizabeth would only delay my escape.

"I was just leaving," I said, still hefting my bags.

Michael reached for them. "Let me help you-"

"Don't touch my things." I jerked away from him, almost losing my balance at the very top of the stairs.

Elizabeth's thin smile did not reach her eyes. "Perhaps this little... incident... can be kept private. For the family's sake."

My laugh teetered on the edge of hysterical. "For the family's sake? Your son was screwing my sister on his office desk, Elizabeth. But let's keep that precious Walton name intact."

I went downstairs with my suitcases bouncing from step to step. Michael tagged behind me, each of his steps not so much followed as it was hurried behind me.

"Aria, please don't go like this."

I set down my bags at the foot of the stairs then reached into my purse. I found my wedding ring-three carats of diamond that had always felt too heavy on my finger-and then placed it on the marble-topped entry table.

"Divorce," I repeated, stronger this time.

At the top of the stairs stood Elizabeth, flushed with rage for my defiance; meanwhile, a pendulum of expression swung back and forth as Michael stared from her to me.

He stepped in closer to me now, lowering his voice. "Aria, please. It was only that one time-"

I held up my hand. "Save it for someone else."

Then, I whisked my luggage off the beaten path and went straight for the door. The effort it took was steep in resisting the urge to turn around, much less to see whether he would follow or remain with his mother.

"This isn't over," Michael called after me, voice breaking. "I'm not giving up on us."

My hand stalled above the doorknob. I turned back again at the last moment, my cool gaze piercing his desperate one.

"It ended the moment you cheated on me with my sister," I said, steady, in spite of the earthquake overhead and in my chest. "I want a divorce."