The day before I had to tell my children that their father was never coming home, I saw him standing in my doorway.
I had known Andy for almost fifteen years.
I had loved him.
I had married him.
I had divorced him.
And somehow, after all of that, we had managed to become something I never expected.
Friends.
Best friends, sometimes.
We were parents first.
We had two children together, and no matter what had happened between us romantically, we both wanted them to grow up knowing that divorce didn’t mean their family had disappeared.
Andy showed up for his children.
He coached.
He played with them.
He called them.
He knew what was happening in their lives.
For years, that was the Andy I knew.
But when he stood in my doorway that day, I could tell something inside him had changed.
He looked exhausted.
Lost.
Almost disconnected from the world around him.
I remember looking at him and thinking, Something is terribly wrong.
I just didn’t know how terribly wrong it was.
Two weeks earlier, Andy had sat with me and told me things that frightened me.
He talked about his relationship with Nikki.
He told me he loved her.
