Read The Color of Heaven for Free Online Page B

seemed so
    far away now. It was another lifetime. I was thirty-six now, and so much had happened since those early days of dining out and making love on the
    living room carpet.
    He was right. I was no longer the woman he married. I wasn’t a rising star in the New York publishing world anymore. I didn’t wear skirts and heels.
    Instead, I was an emotional y battered, grief-stricken, stay-at-home mother who wasn’t even a mother anymore, because I’d just buried my daughter
    in the ground.
    We both knew we were no longer connected. We didn’t share the same feelings, and our ideas about the future were vastly different.
    We were no longer in love.
    “Maybe we just need a little more time,” I dutiful y suggested, making one last attempt to save our marriage, for I had never been a quitter, and quite frankly the notion of any more loss in my life made me want to throw up. “It’s only been nine months.”
    He shook his head. “Things were off kilter before that, and you know it as wel as I do. I don’t think there’s any way to fix this.”
    “But I don’t want to just give up,” I argued. “Do you real y believe that you’d be happier on your own? We were a team once. Maybe we can be like
    that again.”
    He was sitting forward with his elbows on his knees. He gazed down at his hands, rubbed the pad of his thumb over his palm.
    “I’m not going to be on my own,” he explained. For a long time he was quiet, then at last he looked up and met my stricken eyes. “I’m in love with
    someone else, Sophie, and she’s pregnant.”
    My vision blurred for a few seconds, and the whole world went white, then slowly came back into focus.
    Sitting back against the leather seat cushions, I inhaled a deep breath and let it out, while I tried to comprehend the fact that there was nothing I could say or do to save my marriage. It was too late. It was dead. Michael was having a baby with someone else. He had moved on after Megan,
    while my heart was stil cloaked in black.
    So much for being a fighter. I had no more fight left in me. At least not when it came to holding onto my husband.
    The divorce, however, was another matter entirely.
    I sat forward, too, rested my elbows on my knees and looked him square in the eye. “You better not try to screw me over, Michael. If you do, I swear
    I’l wipe the floor with you.”
    He considered that for a moment, then stood up and nodded at me. “I don’t doubt it. And I’m sorry, Sophie. I real y am.”
    With nothing more to say, he walked out.
    o0o
    In the end, Michael proved himself to be very generous and highly accommodating in the divorce. Not only did he give me our house in Washington
    Square, but he also awarded me a large cash settlement, which I used to buy a new car (because he kept the BMW), as wel as a monthly alimony
    check for as long as I remained unmarried.
    I suppose he felt guilty for cheating on me while I was taking care of our dying daughter.
    I didn’t bother to appease him. I let him keep his guilt.
    o0o
    I was driving in my new car, running errands one bright sunny morning, when I saw them together – Michael and his lovely young fiancée, strol ing
    along Seventh Avenue. They were holding hands and looking abominably happy.
    Her name was Lucy Wright. She was a young associate at the law firm. She had bouncy blonde hair and wore a knee-length sundress with yel ow
    splashes of brown-eyed Susans printed on the skirt, and high wedge sandals.
    She was exceptional y attractive. There was no denying it. She had that certain spark. It was the same spark I once had myself, before the
    exhausting, debilitating col apse of my world. It’s what attracted Michael to me in the first place.
    As I drove past them, her round bel y registered in my brain, and I was suddenly overcome by a firestorm of jealousy. Not because she had taken
    my husband from me and was now sharing his bed. It had nothing to do with Michael, and I knew in that moment that I was over