I Gave Him Freedom, He Came Crawling Back in Tears novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Break Room
Willa walks in on Dexter and the intern, has the divorce drawn up and signs him free; she came to tell him something and doesn't.
On Tuesday at ten past four, I opened the break room door on the ninth floor and found my husband with his hand against the intern's cheek.
They were in front of the mirror by the coffee machine.
Her cardigan was on the floor.
His tie was around her wrist.
Neither of them saw me.
I had a clinic folder under my left arm and a cup of tea in my right hand.
I did not drop the tea.
I stood there long enough to see that he was not drunk and not confused.
Then I closed the door very quietly and walked to the elevator.
I didn't scream, and I didn't take a picture.
I went down to the third floor, to the legal office, where my friend the legal secretary was eating crackers over her keyboard.
"I need a divorce agreement," I said. "Uncontested. Everything goes to him. The house, the accounts, the cars."
Marla Finch put the cracker down.
She looked at my face, then at the folder, then at my face again.
"Willa, honey, sit down."
"I'm fine. Can you type it now?"
"Do you want to tell me what happened?"
"My husband is on the ninth floor, and he's busy."
Marla was quiet for a second.
Then she pulled the template up on her screen and started typing.
It took her twenty minutes.
I read every page twice.
I took a pen from her desk and signed the last one on the spot.
"You should keep something," Marla said. "A year of the mortgage. Your car."
"I don't want it."
"Willa."
"I want to be out of that house by the end of the week with my own things, and I don't want to hear about it from anybody. Please."
She printed a second copy and didn't argue again.
I carried the pages up to Dexter's office on the ninth floor and sat down in his chair.
I put the folder on my knees and did not open it.
It was a gray folder with the Riverside Cancer Center logo on the front.
I had picked up the results that morning.
I had planned to say something to him tonight, over dinner.
Forty minutes later the door opened.
Dexter came in first, with his tie knotted and his collar crooked.
Tatum came in behind him.
She was twenty-two and had started in his office in June.
She wore her cardigan buttoned wrong, and her eyes were wet.
Dexter stepped sideways until he stood between her and my chair.
He put one arm back and held her by the elbow.
"Willa," he said. "I lost control. That's on me, not on her."
"All right."
"Whatever you want, tell me. Just don't go after her. She's a kid. She has her whole career."
I looked at the way he was standing.
One arm out, shoulders square, jaw set.
Ten years ago, he had stood exactly like that in my parents' kitchen.
I had been twenty-two, bald and gray in the face, in a coat that no longer fit.
My father had said the treatment was a waste of money on a girl who wouldn't live to thank us.
Dexter had shouted at him that he'd pay for it himself.
He sold his car that week.
Then his guitars.
Then his father's cabin on the lake, the only thing he had left of him.
I had married him the spring I got my first clean scan.
Now he was standing the same way, for someone else.
"I'm not going after anyone," I said.
I turned the agreement around on his desk and slid the pen across.
"I had Marla draw it up. You keep the house, the accounts, the cars. I want nothing."
Dexter stared at the pages.
"What is this?"
"It's your freedom. Sign it."
Tatum made a small sound behind him.
Dexter read the first page.
Then he flipped to the last one and looked at my signature.
"You're serious."
"I'm serious."
"Willa, you can't just..."
"Dexter. You told me last month that I should stop going to those check-ups."
I watched him not remember.
"I'm giving you what you've wanted."
He took the pen.
He signed on every flagged line without turning another page, and it took him less than a minute.
When he finished, his shoulders came down.
He looked relieved.
"Thank you," he said. "I mean it. You've been very decent about this."
Tatum was crying quietly into her sleeve, and he put a hand on her back.
I stood and picked up my copy.
I picked up the folder.
I had come to his office to tell him something, and now I understood I wasn't going to.
"Good luck," I said, and I walked out.
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