Chapter 18: Signed

I signed the papers on the first of December, in Eleanor's kitchen.

It was the table where she had once floured a pie crust and asked me to forgive her grandson.

It was Scott's thirty-fourth birthday.

Nobody had mentioned it.

Eleanor sat at one end of the table with her glasses on, acting as witness.

Scott stood at the counter by the window with his hands behind him.

Between us lay forty pages and a pen.

"The settlement is on page nine," he said. "The penthouse, the foundation shares I hold personally, a trust fund. It's all in your name."

"I know. I read it."

"You'll want to read it again."

"I've read it twice." I turned to page nine. "It's very generous, and I don't want any of it."

I took the pen and began to cross out the lines.

The penthouse.

The shares.

The monthly allowance for the next ten years.

My pen went through each of them in a straight line, and the sound of it was the only sound in the room.

Eleanor took her glasses off and watched with her mouth pressed tight.

"Marcella," Scott said. "You earned that. Three years."

"I earned my salary, and I already have it."

"Take something."

"I'm taking my mother's stethoscope, which I've had since I was twenty, and my name. That's all I came with, and it's all I'm leaving with."

I crossed out the last line.

I signed my name at the bottom of the last page, and my hand did not shake.

Then I slid the pen across the table.

Scott picked it up.

He stood there with it for a long moment, looking at the page.

I understood that he had been bracing for this for three years and had never once pictured it.

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