Chapter 16
“She feels excluded.”
“She told me to sign a document saying I'd received money you spent on Paige. We need to talk about that before pretending we're fine.”
He looked away.
A month after Paige's visit, she sent a short update.
The specialist had identified a small heart defect and arranged monitoring. There was a plan for further checks and for the baby's care after birth.
I wrote that I hoped everything went well.
I didn't ask about Garrett.
Later, Paige told me she had ended the relationship.
She had accepted his explanations until she began comparing them with what he told me.
Once she started asking for dates and documents, he told her she was becoming just like me.
“I thought about that for a while,” she wrote.
I understood why.
When she moved to her sister's home, the apartment obligations remained. Garrett stopped making the agreed payments, and the leasing office contacted Doreen under the guaranty.
Paige forwarded the notice because Celia needed the rental figures clarified.
Doreen's name was still there.
For once, she could not explain away what she had signed.
The divorce didn't finish in one dramatic afternoon.
There were disclosures, revisions, and meetings. There were weeks when I wanted to ignore every envelope on Mom's kitchen table.
I returned to work after the leave I had planned, with a schedule my supervisor helped me arrange.
Mom watched Lucy two mornings a week. I paid for childcare on the other days.
We put Mom's availability on the calendar alongside mine.
Helping me didn't require her to surrender her own life.
When the condo sold, there was enough equity to resolve the property division and give me a practical start.
The agreement charged the documented $28,600 against Garrett's side of the settlement before the remaining property was balanced.
I received the share we agreed upon and kept a reserve for housing and childcare.
Lucy would live primarily with me. Garrett would have a specific schedule, shared responsibilities, and a child-support obligation.
When Paige's son was born safely later that summer, his parentage was established too.
Garrett had another child to support.
He asked to speak to me after one of our final meetings.
We stood outside the attorney's office, a few feet from the parking lot.
“I was scared,” he said.
“Of what?”
“Everything changing. Being somebody's father. Getting it wrong.”
I looked at him.
He had been frightened of fatherhood while preparing for it with two women.