My Composure After Divorce Became His Greatest Torment novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Brass Letters
Thea finds a toddler's bed and C.A. in brass on the nursery wall, signs the divorce without a tear, returns the sapphire necklace and tells Harrison she may not keep the baby. A text in the car says 'Caleb won't sleep until you read the dinosaur book. Please come home.'
My husband gave me a Back Bay apartment with no mortgage because I didn't cry when I signed our divorce papers.
He thought the calm was shock.
It wasn't, because I had already seen something worse that afternoon.
I had come home early from the hospital pharmacy with a bag of saltines and a head full of baby names.
The door to the spare room was open, so I walked in.
Someone had been busy.
There was a small wooden bed with a quilt covered in rockets, and a low shelf of picture books.
A pair of tiny sneakers sat by the closet.
I was eleven weeks pregnant, and the baby would not need a bed for years.
I stood there smiling anyway, because I thought Harrison was planning ahead.
Then I looked up.
Two brass letters had just been screwed into the wall, still bright, with a pencil mark beside them.
C.A.
Not one name on our list started with a C.
Those were the initials of Celia Huntington, the woman Harrison was engaged to before me.
I shut the door and put the saltines in the kitchen.
That night he asked me to sit in the living room, and a folder was waiting on the table.
"Thea, our marriage is over," Harrison said. "I'm sorry."
I didn't ask why.
I didn't tear the papers up.
I signed my name on every flagged page and asked one thing.
"When do I need to be out?"
For half a second his face lost its polish.
"There's no rush," he said. "The apartment on Marlborough Street goes to you tomorrow. No mortgage."
I nodded once.
Harrison couldn't stand quiet, and I had learned that in three years of marriage.
So I gave him all the quiet he could hold.
I stood, closed the folder and said, "I'll sleep in the guest room starting tonight."
He caught my wrist as I passed him.
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"You haven't asked when Celia and I started seeing each other again." His voice was low. "You aren't crying. You aren't shouting."
"If I shouted, would you change your mind?"
His fingers went stiff around my wrist.
Then he let go and looked at the floor.
"No."
"Then there's no point."
The pendulum clock ticked through the whole minute that followed.
At last Harrison said, quietly, "I know this isn't fair to you. I'll see that you're generously taken care of."
I reached up and undid the sapphire necklace at my throat.
His mother had fastened it on me herself on our wedding day.
Only the Rutherford matriarch was allowed to wear it.
I laid it in his palm and folded his fingers over it.
"All right," I said. "I trust your generosity."
The next morning his lawyer phoned.
"Mrs. Rutherford, there's an addition. Mr. Rutherford has set up a trust in your name, irrevocable, and you're the only beneficiary."
"Please thank him," I said.
A necklace for a trust fund.
He thought the necklace was a keepsake, and his mother was going to ask where it was.
That afternoon I was leaving the lawyer's office when Harrison called after me from the sidewalk.
"Have lunch with me at the club."
In three years he had never invited me anywhere without his assistant booking it first.
"No," I said. "That wouldn't be appropriate now."
He frowned.
"We're divorcing, Thea, not becoming enemies." His eyes dropped to my stomach. "And you're carrying my child."
"I've had terrible morning sickness. I can't stand the smell of restaurants."
He stopped.
It was plain he had forgotten.
"I'm sorry. Take the car home."
This time I said yes.
Refusing him twice in one day would start a fight.
I wanted him guilty, not watching me.
We drove along the Charles, and Harrison started to speak twice and stopped both times.
I spoke first.
"Now that we're divorcing, I'm not sure I can keep this baby."
His head snapped toward me.
"What did you say?"
"You and Celia will want your own life. A child could make it difficult."
"Pull over," Harrison told the driver.
The car stopped hard, and I looked at a man I had never seen before.
His face was dark, his eyes bright with anger.
"Who gave you the right to decide that?"
"Isn't the family name what matters most to you?" I asked. "A child born into a broken home, and everyone talking?"
He took my wrist again, harder this time.
"Thea Rutherford, are you telling me you won't carry the Rutherford heir?"
I didn't answer, because his phone lit up on the seat between us.
I read it before he could turn it over.
Celia: Caleb won't sleep until you read him the dinosaur book. Please come home.
Home.
Harrison let go of my wrist.
So I opened the door, stepped out onto the river path, and walked.
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