I don't care

Part 14

Stevie left Lindsey's house after she'd gotten all the answers she needed from Maria. She felt a burning rage and a freezing sadness battling inside her as she tried time and time again to call Lindsey, but he wasn't answering her calls or hundreds of messages.

She sat in her living room on edge. In-between trying to get ahold of Lindsey to scream bloody murder at him, she had called Leelee a thousand times. The only person she'd managed to get through to was Will and he didn't have a clue where his sister was but he said he'd call if he heard from her. Stevie couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe any of it.

All her life she'd imagined Lindsey being the perfect father. The way he talked about his children to her, it made it sound like he loved them so much. And when Will and Leelee were younger he did love them so much. She saw it with her own eyes. He doted on them. When they were little she was Aunty Stevie and Kristen seemed not to mind that Lindsey brought their children to visit her all the time. They'd play with them for hours in her living room, Leelee would fall asleep on her lap all cuddled up to her and she'd stare at her precious face, she'd go to Leelee's ballet lessons with him and watch her learn how to dance, secretly holding Lindsey's hand. Kristen never took Leelee and the other parents at the class thought Stevie was Leelee's mother. Stevie suddenly began to realise how strange it all was. Did Kristen have a drinking problem all along? Were Lindsey and Kristen having problems even then? If she was Kristen she'd have never let her children spend so much time with her husband's ex-girlfriend. Was Leelee right? Was Kristen just a gold digger from the beginning?

She remembered when Lindsey came to tell her that Kristen was pregnant. At the end of the dance. They'd fallen deeply in love again and were ready to make a real go of it together. To have a real relationship. She'd even thought about them trying to have a baby together. She'd been completely devastated and cried for weeks about it. Cried for years about it. But now she was remembering Lindsey's face as he told her. He was perhaps even more devastated than she was. They held each other and cried together before he stoically told her he was marrying Kristen. Taking responsibility for his baby. And Stevie just nodded. Accepting it. Never asked him to stay. Never asked him not to marry her. Never asked him so many things. So many important things. She didn't even know how he met Kristen until she heard it in a documentary a few years ago.

After Will was born Lindsey brought him over to meet Stevie one day, completely out of the blue and that one hour together started their affair. He couldn't live without her, he'd said. He wanted her involved in his sons life. She found that strange now too, thinking back on it. But at the time it sounded perfectly reasonable. And she'd just nodded again. Accepting it. She hardly ever questioned anything he told her if it wasn't concerning them, their relationship. Did he really love her? Was he just using her? Did he really still think she was beautiful? These were the things she questioned. Nothing else. And for the first time in her life she felt shallow. And so so selfish.

She'd never questioned him about his wife, about his home life, whether he was happy. Why hadn't she? It had played on her mind for years. Why was he having an affair with her when he had the story book life? Now she knew.

The day had moved around Stevie and her contemplation as she stared at her cellphone. Willing it to ring. Somehow it was 11pm when she looked up and her house had fallen into darkness without her noticing. She got up and switched on her lamps. She grasped the phone tightly in her hand and went into the kitchen to make herself some coffee, then went back to sitting in her living room. Waiting. The waiting is the hardest part... She sang to herself as silent tears ran down her face again. All her life she'd spent waiting. Waiting for a husband. Waiting for children. Waiting for love. She had none of those. The love between her and Lindsey wasn't real. Not when he'd done this. When she'd sacrificed everything to give him a happy ending and he threw it away.