With that she walked out of the room, leaving Alana to sob about something she wasn’t old enough to fully understand. Arabelle had tried her hardest to keep the family together, erasing strangers’s numbers from the caller ID, distracting her mother when she was on the verge of figuring something out, and most importantly, breaking up the fights that occured constantly between her parents.
Technically, she never could have prevented her father from being the unfaithful, vain kind of person he was, but Arabelle knew that she shouldn’t have covered up so many of his careless mistakes. She sat down outside on the porch swing, watching as water dripped from the eaves.
Soon it became obvious that Matt had wanted his wife to find out he was cheating on her. He took her jewelry to give as presents, he left notes from the other woman by the phone. After months of keeping his secret, he slipped a neatly folded letter into his sleeping wife’s hand and left without a word.
More silent tears slid down Arabelle’s cheek.