I’d been deployed overseas for eight months when I finally got approved for two weeks of leave.<\/p>\n
It had been a difficult deployment. We’d lost people, and I was exhausted in ways I couldn’t really explain.<\/p>\n
All I wanted was to see my husband, Brandon.<\/p>\n
I decided not to tell him I was coming home three days early.<\/p>\n
I even stopped to buy his favorite takeout on the way.<\/p>\n
When I opened our front door, the house was strangely quiet.<\/p>\n
Then I heard a woman laughing.<\/p>\n
I walked into the living room and found Brandon sitting on the couch with a woman I’d never seen before.<\/p>\n
They were holding hands.<\/p>\n
He looked at me and said, “You’re not supposed to be here yet.”<\/p>\n
I couldn’t believe those were his first words.<\/p>\n
The woman stood up.<\/p>\n
“Brandon, who is she?”<\/p>\n
He didn’t answer.<\/p>\n
I told her I was his wife.<\/p>\n
She looked completely confused.<\/p>\n
Then she said, “You told me your divorce was finalized in February.”<\/p>\n
That was five months earlier.<\/p>\n
Brandon had apparently been telling people we were separated while I was deployed.<\/p>\n
He’d even moved her belongings into our bedroom.<\/p>\n
She grabbed her purse and left.<\/p>\n
I didn’t scream. I was too tired.<\/p>\n
I went upstairs, packed a bag, and called my sister.<\/p>\n
Brandon kept saying we needed to talk.<\/p>\n
We did, eventually.<\/p>\n
But that night, I needed somewhere I could sleep without wondering what else he had lied about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’d been deployed overseas for eight months when I finally got approved for two weeks of leave. It had been a difficult deployment. We’d lost people, and I was exhausted in ways I couldn’t really explain. All I wanted was to see my husband, Brandon. I decided not to tell him I was coming home …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10604"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10606,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10604\/revisions\/10606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}