Chapter 26: The Ring

"He knew that when he filed," I said.

"He's known it since the day he signed the prenup." Blair's father pulled at the hole in his sleeve. "Everybody at that table knew it."

"Then why today?"

"You'd have to ask him." He stood up. "I have a daughter to go and see."

Nathan was leaning on the truck with snow on his shoulders.

"Well?"

"He won't let me play it," I said. "And Mitchell filed for divorce at six this morning."

Nathan held my door open and didn't close it.

"Today," he said. "Two days before his board meets."

"Blair gets thirty percent."

"Of a company that might not have a CEO on Tuesday." He shut the door and walked around to his side. "He's cutting her loose before she sinks him."

My mother had started on the boxes.

Liquor-store cartons from the corner, and her whole kitchen wrapped in newspaper on the floor.

December thirty-first was written on the side of the first one in marker.

The baby was asleep in the bassinet under the boats.

Nathan sat on the couch with his laptop and pretended to work.

At four, somebody knocked.

My mother looked through the peephole and turned around with her mouth flat.

"It's him."

"Let him in," I said.

"Val."

"Let him in, Mom. I want to hear this one."

Mitchell came in with snow in his hair.

He hadn't shaved. He had a small white box in his hand.

He looked at the cartons on the floor. At Nathan on the couch.

"I filed this morning," he said.

"I know. Blair's father told me."

He flinched. "You went to Pendry?"

"He called me."

Then he walked into the middle of my mother's kitchen and got down on one knee on the linoleum.

My mother made a sound.

Nathan closed his laptop.

Mitchell opened the box.

The ring was a square diamond on a thin platinum band.

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