Anastasia

Chapter 4

Monday came by very quickly, and by 6am, Anastasia heard a loud banging on the door. She rushed over to the door and felt relieved when she saw it was just her kids with their father.

“I know you resume work early, and I wanted them to eat breakfast with their mother today.” John explained. Anastasia raised an eyebrow, she doesn’t resume work until eight, he could have brought them in by 7am.

“Bridgit refused to cook?” She asked, she knew John and kitchen are not friends, he could not cook to save his life.

“Bridgit travelled.” He responded.

“Uh-uh.” Anastasia nodded.

John was about to leave, but Anastasia felt a little pity for him, he was going to go to work without breakfast, and it was the most important meal of the day, so she invited him to eat breakfast with their children.

“Daddy daddy! See what I can do with my food!” Jane yelled as she stuck her finger into her food to make a shape.

“Jane! No playing with the food.” Anastasia corrected, Jane turned to her father with pouty eyes, pleading with him to allow her play with her food.

“Your mother is right Jane, food is for eating, not playing.” Jane felt betrayed her father sided with her mother but got over it soon and started playing with her sister as they finished their breakfast.

After breakfast, Anastasia and John did the dishes together, and they had a little awkward conversation, but they caught up a bit on their lives. Anastasia learnt that John had changed his career, and was now an IT specialist, and John learnt about Anastasia’s promotion, and how she had been coping with the kids.

“Anastasia, I’m really sorry. I did a lot of thinking these last three years, I ruined your happy family didn’t I?” John apologized, as he dried the last cup. John was sincerely sorry for what he did to her in the past, he had conflicted feelings and didn’t handle it well.

“You can’t ruin my happy family, and that is because I didn’t leave you in charge of my happiness. John, what you did hurt me a lot, and it is sad to see that my kids parents are divorced, but that was not my fault was it?” Anastasia was sick of his apology, the last time she heard it three years prior, what followed it was that he was in love with another woman.

If he wasn’t going to go back to the past to stop them from getting married, or stopped himself from cheating on her, then she wasn’t interested in helping him overcome his guilt, if it were up to her and she could make the guilt worse, she would.

“Anastasia…”

“John, I don’t want to hear it. You were here to drop the kids off, and I invited you for breakfast because I felt pity for you, not for you to apologize to me. Don’t make it worse for me than it already is.” John kept quiet.

“Kids! Say goodbye to your father.” Anastasia yelled, and the kids ran downstairs to hug their father goodbye.

Looking at the sight of her kids hugging their father, Anastasia smiled sadly, and although she regretted getting with their father and marrying him, she didn’t regret having them, they were too precious.

After hugging his kids, John left Anastasia’s house and headed to his place of work, and Anastasia headed to hers after waiting for the nanny to arrive.

A month passed by in a blur for Anastasia, John picked the kids every weekend, but didn’t bring Bridgit along with him, so that was a relief for Anastasia, mostly because she didn’t want to have to be dealing with Bridgit every weekend.

Alexander visited her kids frequently, and Travis picked him almost all the time. Anastasia still hadn’t spoken to him about Alexander, but that was mostly because she didn’t want to offend her Boss’ son, but it doesn’t mean the relationship between Travis and Alexander didn’t bug her.

Anastasia always struggled whenever it came to John, and in the past month, she had already had three erotic dreams about him, and him coming over to pick the kids and sometimes spending time with them in her house wasn’t helping her at all, so she decided to search for a new partner, with the thought that if she fell in love with another man, she would be able to get over John fully.

Since John was picking up the kids every weekend, Anastasia finally had the weekend to herself where she could socialize with her coworkers and go out to events with them, and she did, and found men that were interested in her, but she never found any she was interested in.

“Mummy! I’m hungry!” Jane yelled to get her mother’s attention. Anastasia was spaced out making cereal for the kids.

“Sorry, hold on darling, I’m almost done.” Anastasia poured the flakes into the milk and handed the cornflakes to her daughter.

Jane collected her food from her mother and ran upstairs. Anastasia yelled at her to be careful so she wouldn’t trip on the stairs and finished making the cereal for Alexander and Judith. The other two collected their food and followed suit upstairs.

Anastasia sighed, the kids had food about two hours ago, but they just had to bother for a cereal.

Anastasia turned on the Television, and glanced at her wall clock, it was 9:00pm, she knew Travis should be arriving soon.

She had been doing a lot of thinking and had been observing how Alexander acted around his father, each time Travis came to pick Alexander up, she noticed that he was extra obedient, and always had a frown on.

To her it seemed like the environment the boy was living in was so formal and lacked love, and it bothered her a lot, so she decided that she was going to speak with his father, Travis, when he showed up.

Soon, there was a knock on the door.

“Speak of the devil.” Anastasia muttered and went to open the door, it was Travis.

“Please enter, before I get Alexander, I need to speak to you.” Anastasia said and directed him to a couch. Travis took a seat.

“What do you want to talk about?” He asked, getting straight to the point, he was extremely busy and wanted to quickly get back to his work.

“Alexander.”