The Imperfect Marriage novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Her Terms

I wrote my terms on the back of a rehab schedule.

I did it at the kitchen table on Lake Avenue at midnight, with my father snoring through the wall.

On Sunday afternoon I drove to Park Point and knocked on the door of the house where I was still legally a wife.

Ross opened it in a grey sweater, and I saw him make himself keep his hands at his sides.

"Is the paper in the executor's drawer?" I said.

"Yes."

"Good. I didn't come for the paper. Sit down."

He sat at the kitchen table.

I stayed on my feet with the schedule in my hand.

"I have terms," I said.

"All right."

"If you can't meet them, say so now and I walk out and nothing is owed."

"I'll meet them."

"You haven't heard them."

"I'll meet them," Ross said.

I took a breath.

"One. I get every paper. The folder, the drawer, the lawyer's file, whatever the executor sent. No page two ever again."

He got up without a word.

He went to the study and came back with the leather folder and a second box, and set both in front of me.

At the bottom of the box lay a cream envelope, sealed, with his name on it in an old woman's handwriting.

"What's that?"

"My grandmother's letter. It came with the will."

"You didn't open it."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I was afraid it said I'd failed her," Ross said.

I pushed it across the table.

"Open it. Now. Out loud."

He turned it over twice in his hands.

His thumb shook as he broke the seal.

He read the letter standing, and for a moment he said nothing at all.

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