Love After Layoffs novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Mediation

The mediation floor of the county courthouse annex was a long hallway with twelve glass rooms and a lawyer in every one.

Couples sat on benches outside the doors, not looking at each other.

I sat on the bench by room six with my lawyer, a brisk woman in a navy suit who ate almonds out of her purse.

Yvonne sat on my other side, knitting something purple.

"No yelling," my lawyer said. "Not even the fun kind."

"I never yell."

"You told a ballroom of three hundred people your husband had a key card in his pocket."

"That wasn't yelling. That was volume."

Justin came down the hall at five to ten in his gray suit.

His lawyer walked on one side, and his mother walked on the other.

I had not seen Justin's mother since our wedding.

She was small and heavy, in a church coat and a brooch the size of a coaster.

She looked at me.

"There she is," she said, loud enough for the whole bench to hear. "The woman who threw my son out on the street."

"He took the furniture, ma'am."

"He needed a place to sleep."

"He left me a sleeping bag."

"You ran off with a rich man the minute your husband's back was turned!"

A man on the next bench lowered his newspaper.

Justin touched her arm.

"Mom."

"No, Justin. I'm going to say it."

"I'll say it very nicely," she told the hallway. "My son carried that house on his back for six years."

"And she repaid him with a divorce and a scandal in the newspaper."

Yvonne's knitting needles stopped.

"Ma'am, there's a ladies' room down the hall," she said sweetly. "You look like you need to sit."

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