Chapter 3
He stared at me.
“You’ve already thought about this?”
“No.”
“Then how—”
“I know our finances.”
“You know our finances well enough to decide this in ten minutes?”
I looked at him.
“Who do you think handled them before we could afford an accountant?”
He had no answer.
I walked inside.
That night, we slept in separate bedrooms.
I didn’t sleep.
I remembered meeting Julian when we were twenty-one.
He was broke, stubborn, arrogant and hopelessly in love with me.
When he first kissed me, his hands actually shook.
“I’m going to build you a life nobody can take away,” he whispered.
He kept the promise.
He simply forgot that I had helped build it.
The next morning, movers arrived.
Margaret, our longtime housekeeper, nearly cried when she saw my suitcases.
“Mrs. Mercer, where are you going?”
“I’m leaving.”
“For a trip?”
“For good.”
Her hand flew to her mouth.
“Does Mr. Mercer know?”
“He will when he sees the truck.”
“Mrs. Mercer…”
I hugged her.
Margaret had been with us for nine years. She knew which flowers I liked in the breakfast room and which nights Julian would forget dinner because he was working.
She also knew when not to ask questions.
“I’ll be all right,” I told her.
She didn’t look convinced.
At ten that morning, Julian and I filed the divorce paperwork.
Because of our businesses, properties and investments, the documents took hours.
Our attorneys spoke in calm voices about assets, valuations and disclosures while I sat six feet from the man who had once slept on a hospital floor because I had pneumonia and he refused to leave me alone.
Thirty days.
That was the waiting period before everything became final.
Outside the courthouse, reporters were already gathering.
Julian touched my elbow.
“Where are you staying?”
“I have somewhere.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“No.”
“Claire.”
“I said no.”
I called a taxi.
Before closing the door, I looked at him.
“See you in thirty days.”
I went to Pine Hollow, a cottage I had secretly purchased years earlier in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Secretly sounded more dramatic than it was.
I hadn’t bought it because I expected my marriage to fail.
I bought it because I needed one thing in my life that wasn’t Mercer.
No board meetings.
No photographers.
No staff.
No marble floors.
Pine Hollow had two bedrooms, a stone fireplace, an old porch and a vegetable garden that was more weeds than vegetables.