Chapter 24: Received With Thanks

I read page forty twice, standing on the terrace with a tamale going cold in my hand.

Around us the crew had gone back to their plates, politely, and my mother was not even pretending to cook.

"You've written yourself a lease for life," I said.

"I've written myself a tenant," Wyatt said. "You're the landlord. You can refuse it."

"What happens if I refuse?"

"I pay the dollar anyway, and I keep walking up to your door."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

A lawyer's courier had come up the drive that afternoon with a thin envelope for me.

It lay at my elbow on the end of the nearest table, with a pen clipped to it.

I opened it and took out the page I had waited five years to see.

It was the final judgment of divorce, signed by a judge on Friday, with a line left for my name.

I looked at it for a long moment.

I felt light, and nothing else.

I signed it with the pen from the envelope.

Then I turned to page forty of Wyatt's lease, and under his block capitals I wrote in my own hand:

Landlord accepts. Tenant may not leave.

I signed that too.

Joaquin was already holding out the order for the new labels, and a printer's proof with one name across the cream paper.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Day I Divorced Him, I Became His Landlord from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.