His Cruel Allowance Game Cost Him His Wife and Heir novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Four Months Later

The divorce became final at four o'clock on a Friday in August, and Camila was four and a half months old.

The judge signed it in less than a minute.

Rodrigo did not contest anything.

He stood at the respondent's table with a lawyer I had never seen and said, "No, Your Honor," to every question, and he did not look at his mother once.

Soledad was not in the courtroom.

Her lawyer had told the court she was unwell.

Emiliano had spent four months on the file.

He had found the Lund and Pryor partner who signed the form, a retired man who cried in his deposition.

He had frozen the Aldama household account with a court order, and the bank had begun to count what was missing.

I had not yet seen a dollar of it come back.

That night my seventy-eight-year-old neighbor took Camila for the evening, with a bag of bottles and strict instructions.

I went to Emiliano's house with a bottle of wine and a pan of bakery pastries.

It was small, in Montrose, with a porch swing and walls of books.

He opened the door in a clean shirt, and I could see he had been standing behind it.

"You didn't have to bring anything," he said.

"It's a celebration."

"Of what?"

"I'm single," I said. "And you're my lawyer, and the case is not over."

"No."

I walked past him into the kitchen and set the pan down.

I turned around.

He was standing in the doorway with both hands in his pockets, and I saw that he was making himself stay there.

"You said something once," I said. "At my kitchen table. Lawyer and client, nothing else, until the divorce is final."

"I did."

"It was final at four o'clock."

He did not say a word.

I crossed the kitchen, took his face in both hands and kissed him.

He made a sound low in his throat, and for one second he stood perfectly still.

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