On My 35th Birthday, I Found My Husband Had Been Playing House Next Door for 108 Days novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: The Mediation
The mediation room smelled of burnt coffee and carpet glue.
My lawyer sat on my left with a legal pad she never wrote on.
She was sixty-one, with short silver hair, and she had told me in the elevator, "Say as little as you can. I'll do the rest."
Across the table, Dalton wore a navy suit I had picked out for his father's funeral.
His lawyer sat beside him, a man with a tan and a very expensive pen.
At the end of the table, the mediator folded her hands.
"This is not a trial," she said. "Nobody wins here. Let's hear the petition."
Dalton's lawyer cleared his throat.
"Mrs. Whitlow left the marital home last Saturday night with no notice."
"I left with my mother's plates," I said.
My lawyer touched my sleeve.
"She has since stayed at a friend's house," he went on. "She was filmed at a public event, in a public state of distress. She has concealed a pregnancy from the child's father for at least a week."
"Ten days," I said. "I found out the Friday before last."
"Monica," my lawyer murmured.
"My client is deeply concerned," the man said. "She is under strain. A pregnancy at thirty-five, after years of failed treatments, is high risk. He simply wants to be involved, and he wants the court to see that she is not well."
Dalton looked at the table with the face he used on the parents of divers who had missed the podium.
It was sad and kind and reasonable, and I had loved it once.
"I'm worried about her," he said. "That's all this is."
"Mrs. Whitlow?" the mediator said.
My lawyer lifted the pad she wasn't using.
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