The Burning Road to Divorce After the Fire novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Two Hundred Thousand in an Envelope

Pearl's attorney drove up Cedar Grade at eight with a cough drop in his cheek and one typed page on his passenger seat.

"It's a termination notice," he said. "Paragraph nine, word for word. You sign, and the aircraft comes home within twenty-four hours."

"Is that all?"

"That's all. The lease was written by a woman who didn't want lawyers in it."

I laughed, because it was exactly like Pearl.

I signed my name under hers at the bottom of the lease copy, and the pen did not skip.

Kurt stood on the barn steps with his coffee and watched me do it.

When I looked up, he was not looking at the paper.

He was looking at my hand.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing," he said, and his ears went red, which on him was a loud thing.

I took the notice and the pen over to him anyway.

"Hold this."

I put it flat in his scarred left hand and closed his fingers over it with mine.

I left my hand there one second longer than I needed to.

His whole arm went still.

"Go on," I said. "I know you want to say something."

"Not in front of counsel," he said.

The attorney coughed into his fist and looked hard at the sky.

That was when a silver sedan turned off the burned road and came slowly up the grade.

I knew the car before I saw the pearls.

Brent's mother got out in a cream suit and heels, and she picked her way across the ash with her nose wrinkled.

"Lainey, dear. Might we speak alone?"

"No."

"Then I'll say it in front of the help."

She took an envelope from her purse and held it out.

"A cashier's check for two hundred thousand dollars."

"For what?"

"You will withdraw that silly notice, and you will stay home on Saturday." She smiled at me with all her teeth. "Brent will sign your divorce without a fight. You'll keep the land. Nobody has to be embarrassed."

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