Chapter Twelve: The Confession

Three weeks after the papers had been served, Ernest got a call from an unknown number.

He almost didn’t answer.

“Ernest? It’s Jessica Miller. Kelly’s friend.”

His defenses went up immediately.

“What do you want, Jessica?”

“I need to talk to you. Not for Kelly. For me. Can we meet for coffee?”

Against his better judgment, he agreed.

They met at a neutral cafe downtown — one he’d never been to with Kelly. Jessica looked terrible. Tired. Drawn. Guilty.

“I need to apologize,” she said before he’d even sat down. “For my part in all of this.”

Ernest waited. Said nothing.

“Kelly told you she stopped loving you a year ago. That’s not true. Or at least it’s not the whole truth. She was happy, Ernest. Really happy. But I —”

She paused. Her hands shook around her coffee cup.

“I got divorced two years ago. Messy, awful divorce. But I walked away with a hundred twenty thousand dollars in settlement money. And I made the mistake of telling Kelly about it.”

Ernest felt something cold settle in his stomach.

“I didn’t mean to plant ideas. But I was bitter. I’d been married to my ex for seven years, supported him through law school, and when he made partner at his firm, he left me for his paralegal. I felt like that settlement money was the only good thing that came out of those years. And I think — I think I made Kelly start seeing her marriage to you through a financial lens.”

“She’s an adult,” Ernest said quietly. “She made her own choices.”

“I know. But I encouraged her when she’d complain about you. And honestly, Ernest, they were normal complaints. You leave dishes in the sink sometimes. You fall asleep during movies. You’re not the most romantic guy. Normal stuff. But I’d say things like, ‘Well, at least he makes good money.’ Or, ‘You’ve put in four years. Might as well see it through to five.’ I turned her into this — this calculating person she wasn’t before.”

Ernest studied Jessica’s face. Looking for deception.

All he saw was genuine remorse.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because Kelly’s falling apart. She’s lost weight. She’s not sleeping. She’s barely working. And I realized that I helped destroy something that might have been fixable if I hadn’t been pouring poison in her ear for the past year. She wasn’t a gold digger, Ernest. She became one because I taught her to think that way.”

“That doesn’t change what she did. She still hired that attorney. She still made those calculations. She still stayed with me while planning to leave.”

“I know. And she should face the consequences. I’m not asking you to take her back or anything like that. I just — I needed you to know that the Kelly you fell in love with was real. The person she became — I helped create that. And I’m sorry.”

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