When I Discovered Husband Was Billionaire, I Divorced Him

While I sat there staring at my phone, Jamie toddled over on tiptoe, reaching for it.

He was practically bouncing: "Who's that next to Daddy?"

I panicked, locked the screen, and pressed the phone against my chest. My throat tightened.

"...Go tell Grandma and Grandpa dinner's ready."

Jamie ran off obediently. I moved through the motions mechanically -- setting out the food, fixing plates, coaxing my son to eat.

But the images I'd just seen kept flashing through my mind.

Four years.

I had always felt like I owed Derek's parents. I took on every household chore without being asked.

Shortly after he left, I discovered I was pregnant.

My first instinct was not to keep the baby. We were in no position to raise a child.

But Derek came home, held me, and wept. He said he felt useless for not being able to save my father. He begged me to keep our child. He swore he would work himself to the bone to give us a good life.

Once again, his tears and his sincerity moved me. I kept the baby.

Believing he was out there from dawn to dusk doing deliveries, I couldn't bring myself to spend the few thousand dollars he wired home each month.

Once Jamie was a little older, I started picking up odd jobs while looking after him -- washing dishes, waitressing, working the register. I tried everything.

I thought if we could just save up enough, I'd open a small shop, and he could come home, and we'd finally be together again.

We were almost there...

That night, after I got Jamie to sleep, I sat alone in the pitch-dark living room and opened that account again.

"Sunny Side." That was her username.

I scrolled to the very first post and started reading.

It was from exactly four years ago.

"Celebrating Derek's graduation!" In the photo, she was making a silly face, holding a cake up to a man who was grinning from ear to ear.

So on the day my father died -- the day Derek said he was at a hospital out of state searching for a donor and couldn't make it back in time -- he was celebrating.

The third post from the bottom was at a nightclub.

"Mr. Sterling's feeling down tonight. We're not going home until we're wasted."

The photo showed the reflection in a cocktail glass, his profile barely visible.

The day I was pregnant and we were supposed to go to the courthouse for our marriage license -- the day he said he'd come down with a terrible flu and slept through the whole day -- he'd been out drinking.

A post from three years ago, at an upscale restaurant.

"Mr. Sterling finally popped the question! He says I'm the only woman he'll ever want to marry."

The photo showed the woman's radiant smile, her hand extended to show off a massive diamond ring. In the background, Derek's profile was faintly visible. He was cutting a steak with effortless elegance, like something out of a movie.

And on the day Jamie was born -- the day Derek said he'd gotten into a bike accident while rushing to the hospital and couldn't make it -- he was on one knee for someone else.

All these years, I had only been a footnote in his life.

He came back to play his part when he needed to, and went back to his real life when he didn't.

All the warmth I thought I'd found in our suffering, all the support I thought I'd found in despair, all the devotion I believed we shared in poverty -- it was all just a fantasy I'd constructed on my own.

His world held so many things I never knew about.

His timeline was filled with moments that made a mockery of everything I'd felt.

Tears dripped onto the screen.

The further I scrolled, the colder I became.