Them Girls

As Brittany left her therapist's office with a whole lot of nothing but soggy tissues and mascara-stained cheeks, she walked past a stationary store. Something caught her eye, a little black book. In today's counseling session, her doctor suggested a journal to write down her feelings each night so they would get out of her head, and onto paper, possibly allowing her to sleep for the first time in months.

She didn't really buy into the whole journalling fluff and put it in the same box as meditation, gemstones, and energy healing, but Brittany knew there was nothing she wouldn't do to stop her from feeling better.

Jace and Brittany were newlyweds and had just moved into a beautiful infill in Kensington. Within weeks, she happily discovered she was pregnant with their first baby. When she told Jace, his eyes went blank and his face went white. Brittany couldn't understand his reaction to the exciting news and spent weeks trying to put pieces of the puzzle together. Jace was fairly private and his social media led to nowhere, his phone had nothing but work numbers and emails. As a last resort, she hired a private investigator, "how is this even my life right now?".

The private investigator cost more than what she was making at her job, so she started writing stories and selling them online. She got lots of great feedback and started gaining a following in the writer's community. She linked that to a bank account, one that Jace didn't have access to, and made sure to cover her tracks. What the investigator uncovered was the most unbelievable, gut-wrenching reality. Jace had multiple lives and families. She discovered that he was in a business deal with a private donor clinic, and this clinic was not regulated, nor legal. Because of this, Jace had access to all the women who had birthed children from this donor clinic. His children.

There were Sonya and her son Jacob, the spitting image of Jace. They lived in the East Village and Jace would spend every Tuesday morning with them. Meanwhile, telling Brittany he had client meetings.

There were Julie and her daughter, Elle, who had beautiful, curly blonde hair and bright blue eyes, exactly what Brittany imagined her daughter would look like. They lived just outside of the city, and Jace would visit them Wednesday evenings for dinner, and tell them he worked out of town the rest of the week.

And then there was Indie and her two sons, Jace Jr, and Henrick. This family of Jace's seemed the most serious, as the investigator shared pictures and there was a huge diamond ring on her left hand. Jace spent several weekends with them while he told Brittany he was on business trips.

Brittany crumbled.

Jace came home after work the day Brittany discovered his entire story. She didn't cry. She didn't tell him. She embraced him in a huge hug and welcomed him home. Quietly, she made plans to leave. She booked a moving van. She rented a little place in Nanaimo. She continued on with life as if nothing had happened.

Her work started going viral, she started writing about this insane experience she was going through and people were hooked. They would check in daily and ask for updates. She grew a massive fan base that was all cheering her on to leave Jace and lifting her up as a community. They gave her power, they gave her permission.

Finally, the day came. She woke up on August 3rd, made Jace coffee, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and sent him on his way. She hugged him, and it took everything in her to not cry because even though Jace had broken every piece of her heart, the heaviness of saying goodbye to what she had known for years weighed on her like nothing she had ever felt. Even though she wasn't sad to say goodbye to him per se, she was devastated at losing what she thought was the rest of her life. Her future as she knew it was a total mystery and she felt empty inside.

Brittany peered through the window as the car pulled away and got to work. The moving truck arrived, and she tossed her clothes, her office furniture and computer, and a few pieces of her most loved home decor into the truck. She wrote a note and left it on the table for when he came home. All it said was "I know everything. Don't try and find me. You are not the person I married. Have a wonderful life with your three families, although they may not appreciate this arrangement as much as you do. They know as well."

She locked the door and never looked back. She drove to her new home and started settling in. The next day Brittany ended up walking to the little coffee shop down the street, the one with fresh lavender growing outside and white shiplap walls. She ordered a chai coconut latte and sat down. Brittany lowered her shoulders which had hovered up near her ears for days and told herself to breathe. She pulled out her little black book and started to write when she felt a tap on her shoulder. Brittany whipped around, and saw a beautiful, middle-aged woman, in a mint-green skirt suit carrying a sable brown leather laptop bag, smiling at her.

"Brittany? Is that you? From SnapWriters?"

Brittany looked at her, confused, "yes, that's me."

The woman extended her hand to shake Brittany's and introduced herself "Hi, I am Shelly, I have been following along with your story the entire time. I can't believe I am running into you here. I work for a publisher here in Nanaimo and they have been on the hunt for their newest best-seller, the market has been a bit dry lately. I know this sounds strange, but I am running into the office right now, and, well, if that little black book contains the inner workings of this story of yours, I would love to buy it off of you for publication."

Brittany was stunned. She blurted out "$20,000 and all the secrets are yours!". Shelly asked her to hold tight for just a minute as she stepped outside to make a call. Brittany's heart was racing. Here she was, in a brand new town, newly single and about to have a child on her own and a stranger was about to pay her first year of rent.

The little brass bells above the coffee shop door jingled and Brittany stood up. Shelly walked up, smiled, and extended her hand once again "consider it a deal". Brittany cupped her hands over her mouth while she gasped and shrieked "are you serious?!". Shelly nodded, and air-dropped her a simple contract, and exchanged her business card for the little black book.