I thought back to some of his emails and they always said from R. That made me decide to look in the R’s to see if I found his name. Sure enough, about halfway through the R’s I found ’s name and next to it said “& Amanda.” I swear my heart stopped beating and all my blood drained to my feet. It felt as if someone had just impaled me with a blazing sword. A few minutes had passed and I still sat there shocked, unable to blink, unable to move, unable to cry or scream, barely able to breathe. My world came crashing down upon me in millions of slivers and shards. Eventually, I lost consciousness.


When I awoke, the girls were back in the room watching TV. I hoped it had been a nightmare. I opened the phonebook again and saw the words burned into the page “Reitz, Erick & Amanda.” I took it a lot better that time. I couldn’t fall apart in front of the girls. By then my defense mechanisms kicked in and I was certain it was a misprint. Erick had told me about an ex named Amanda. He told me lots of stories about how she had wronged and hurt him. I convinced myself that it was an old phonebook, there was no way Erick would have lied to me for the last 8 months… or would he?

I circled the listing and ripped the page out. I put it into my purse and kept trying to convince myself it was wrong and that this man that I had grown to more than I loved myself or anyone else really was this perfect guy that he appeared to be.

The next morning, before we checked out I told the girls about my discovery. wanted to go hunt him down and kill him. She was so angry with him. At that point, I was still making excuses. I desperately wanted to talk to him and hear him tell me that it was some horrible mistake.

We checked out and got something to eat. Then I found myself looking for the address the phonebook had listed. We found the house and his car was there. I didn’t have the nerve to go up to the house. We found a motel (the Husker Inn) less than a block away and it was really cheap (which we needed) so we checked in.

Tori and I went for a walk after we had gotten settled into the room. We walked past his house, his car was gone, but there was another car in the driveway. I remembered him telling me that his sister from out of town was visiting. I prayed it was her car. It was dark so Tori went up to the car and looked inside and there was a baby seat.

My heart shattered. I was utterly devastated. I didn’t know what to do. I fought the urge to knock on the door and find out who the hell that car belonged to. I kept myself from doing it because I needed to hear the truth directly from Erick. It was still a couple hours before he got off and Tori and I was restless.

We decided to drive up to his job. We went there and I wrote a note and left it on his windshield telling him we moved to a different hotel again and gave him the room number and asked him to stop by after he got off work. I didn’t say anything about what I had discovered. I wanted to wait to do that in person.

We parked across the street and waited for him to get off work. I wanted to make sure he got the note. We followed him most of the way to his house, but it was late and the roads were dead and we didn’t want to give it away. I let him get ahead of me. After I thought he had enough time to get home and get inside, we drove by his house again. He was still outside and we thought for sure we had been seen.

We hauled ass back to the motel, within 5 minutes of us parking and getting back to the room, his car was pulling in from the other entrance. He had driven around the block in an attempt to throw us off. When I realized that, I knew that he hadn’t seen us.

I was so scared how I would react to him and what Tori would do. I had made Tori promise she wouldn’t say anything about it. I told her it was my place to do it. She relented. He walked up to our room and the three of us stood outside talking for a bit. I knew I didn’t want to have the confrontation there in front of the girls, so I asked him if he wanted to take a walk.

We walked to the park (the one the girls and I hung out at) that was about 3 blocks away. We stayed there talking for hours. I kept putting the confrontation off because we were having such a great time. There were many perfect moments that we could have kissed. I’m talking about like movie perfect moments. The one I remember the most was when we had gotten soaked by the sprinklers and we had walked over to the fountain. I stood on the ledge and he stood in front of me and we wrapped our arms around each other.

We stood there looking into each other’s eyes for what seemed like an instant and an eternity all at once. His head was nestled into my breasts and he looked up into my eyes with his beautiful shining eyes. His eyes were filled with love for me. I saw that as clearly as a reflection in a mirror. I was overcome by my love for him and I told him that and he told me he felt the same way. I had no doubts he meant it. We had been there three hours when he said he needed to get home and get some sleep. I knew at that moment that it was now or never.

To be continued…

On this day..