Chapter 12
Gone in a day.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“No.”
He sounded broken.
A cruel part of me enjoyed it.
A larger part simply felt tired.
“She lied to me.”
I almost said, Now you know how it feels.
I didn’t.
He already knew.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“That seems to be your problem.”
“Michelle.”
“What?”
“I know I don’t have the right to ask.”
“Then don’t.”
He ignored that.
“Is there any chance we can slow down the divorce?”
“No.”
The answer came so fast it surprised both of us.
“None?”
“No.”
“But this changes everything.”
“No, Jason.”
I stood in our kitchen.
The folder he had brought was still on the counter.
“It changes Kayla.”
Silence.
“It doesn’t change what you did.”
He cried then.
I had seen Jason cry six times in fifteen years.
Our wedding.
Emma’s birth.
His father’s funeral.
My mother’s funeral.
When our old Labrador died.
And that phone call.
For one dangerous second, my body remembered how to comfort him.
That frightened me.
“I have to go.”
“Michelle.”
“Goodbye, Jason.”
I hung up.
The divorce took seven months.
Not ten minutes.
Nothing truly ends in ten minutes when two people have been married fifteen years.
There were accounts.
Furniture.
Taxes.
Insurance.
The house.
Retirement.
Photographs nobody knew how to divide.
Christmas ornaments.
A set of expensive knives.
A kayak Jason claimed he had purchased before marriage even though I had a photograph of him opening it on our tenth anniversary.
Ordinary things became evidence.
That may be the most undignified part of divorce.
Lena handled the money.
I handled myself.
Mostly.
Jason fought hardest over the house.
Not because he wanted to live there.
Because he could not afford to buy out my share and hated admitting it.
The apartment with Kayla had drained more money than I originally realized.
He had paid the security deposit.
First month.
Furniture.
Childcare for Noah twice.
A vacation deposit to Key West that never happened.
Nearly forty-three thousand dollars in total disputed spending.
Some came back to me through the settlement.
Some didn’t.
Money became the least important loss.
Jason asked twice if we could try counseling.
I refused both times.
Not because counseling could never have helped.
Because I had learned something from the envelope.
Even if Kayla had never lied about Noah, Jason would still have left me.