Chapter 7: Clause Nine

Lawson steered me into the Aldous library and closed the door.

Ephraim was a step behind us, and Lawson held up one finger.

"Alone," he said. "It's a legal conversation."

"I'll stay," I said.

Lawson sighed and leaned on the desk.

He wasn't smiling now.

It was the face he used at home, the one that came on when the doors were shut.

"Page fourteen, Hal," he said. "Clause nine. You signed it."

"I don't remember a clause nine."

"Your lawyer's friend didn't catch it. It's very small."

He recited it.

"The equalization payment is forfeited if, within sixty days of the decree, the wife engages the paid companionship of any man."

My ears began to ring.

"That's not-"

"You just said it in front of forty witnesses. I have six videos already."

He held up his phone.

"'Every dollar. I paid for him.' It's lovely. You sounded proud."

I put a hand on the back of a chair.

"You wrote that clause before the divorce."

"I wrote it carefully."

"Why would anyone write that?"

"Because you're the kind of woman who'd do something stupid the second I let go." He shrugged. "I was right."

The room tilted.

One million two hundred thousand dollars.

It was every cent of what I'd earned in five years of keeping his house and his dinner parties and his secrets.

It was the deposit on any life I had left.

"There's a way out of this," Lawson said, gentler.

"Sign the release. The house, the piano, everything I built, goes to me, cleanly."

"And I'll tell my lawyer the clause doesn't apply."

"You'll lie."

"I'll be generous. It's the same thing, except one of us comes out ahead."

Behind me, Ephraim's voice was very quiet.

"You set this up."

Lawson's eyes flicked past me.

"I don't know what you mean."

"The photo," Ephraim said. "The bar. The hotel. You knew where she'd be, and who she'd be with."

"Careful, pal." Lawson's lip curled. "That sounds like a man who should keep his job description to himself."

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