Chapter 22: The Divorce

On Saturday morning Ben drove me to Lake Drive and parked at the curb with the engine running.

"I'll be here," he said.

"I know you will."

I took the March envelope out of my clutch and went up the walk alone.

The front door was open. Alastair had left it that way.

The house had changed in two weeks.

There were boxes in the hall, taped and labeled in his handwriting.

The wedding photograph was gone from the wall.

He was sitting at the kitchen table.

It was the table where I had signed my name at two in the morning, seven months ago.

He had made coffee for two. He had not poured mine.

"Thank you for coming," he said.

"I said I would."

"Please sit."

I sat across from him and put the envelope down between the mugs.

It was soft at the corners.

I had carried it so long that the blue paper had gone pale at the folds.

"That's yours," I said. "It was always addressed to you."

He looked at it and did not touch it.

His lawyer's papers lay beside it, flagged in yellow where I had to sign.

"May I ask you something?" he said.

"You can ask."

"If I had come to you that night. If I had knocked on that bathroom door and gone in. What would you have said?"

I had answered this question in my head for six years, in the shower and the car and on the roof of the hospital.

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