She Left With His Secret Child And Built Her Own Throne novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Papers
Lachlan comes home three hours late to their anniversary with divorce papers; Imogen refuses to sign that night and finds a photograph and a note behind the last page.
My husband came home three hours late to our fifth anniversary dinner, and he brought divorce papers.
The candles on the dining table had burned down to stubs by then.
I had put on the long green dress at five o'clock, because his sister Cordelia told me to.
Her text had come in that afternoon. Wear the long green dress tonight. Lachlan has something planned. Don't tell him I said.
I thought it was a ring. Five years married, and I stood in front of the mirror thinking it was a ring.
By nine I had called him until his phone stopped ringing and went straight to voicemail.
Daphne sat on the arm of the sofa and watched me wear a path in the rug.
She had lived in our guest room since March, when her lease ended and her boyfriend left. I had known her since college.
"Sit down, Imogen," she said. "You'll ruin the hem."
"He has never once been late without telling me," I said. "Something happened to him."
"Nothing happens to a man like Lachlan." She patted the cushion beside her. "He'll be home by ten."
I wanted to believe her, so I did.
At ten the front door opened.
Lachlan stood in the hall with his coat still on and his keys still in his hand.
I crossed the floor and put my arms around him.
His arms stayed at his sides.
"Where were you?" I said into his shirt. "I called you all night."
He took my wrists and moved me back from him.
"We need to talk," he said. "Upstairs."
Daphne had already slipped out of the room. I didn't see where she went.
I followed my husband up the stairs, and I shut our bedroom door behind us because he waited for me to do it.
He walked to the window and looked at the street.
"I've been pretending for some time," he said. "I'm done."
"Pretending what?"
"That I love you."
I laughed once, because it made no sense. This morning he had kissed me in the kitchen and told me to wear something nice.
"I told you what you wanted to hear," he said. "Today I'm telling you the truth."
He crossed to the bed and picked up a large manila envelope I hadn't noticed on the quilt.
"Divorce papers," he said. "They're drawn up. You sign, and you leave with a settlement that will keep you comfortable for the rest of your life."
"Tonight is our anniversary."
"I know what tonight is."
"Where were you for three hours?"
He didn't look away. "In the car, in the driveway. I couldn't make myself come in."
So he had sat outside our house for three hours working up to this, and I had stood inside it in a green dress.
I took a step toward him.
"What did I do?" I said. "Whatever it is, tell me, and we'll fix it."
His face went hard.
"You know what you did."
"I don't."
"Then there's nothing left to say." He held the envelope out. "Sign it, Imogen. I'm filing in the morning."
"Lachlan, please."
"Sign it tonight." His voice rose. "Or I take this to court, and you walk out of this house with nothing. Not a cent, not a day of my name."
Nobody had ever shouted at me in this house.
I felt the tears coming and I did not let them fall.
"We might as well end it on the day it began," he said, more quietly. "Five years to the day."
That was the cruelest thing he had said, and he said it in a flat voice, with no change in his face.
I took the envelope from his hand.
I didn't open it.
"No," I said.
He frowned. "No?"
"I'm not signing on our anniversary, at ten at night, because you've decided it's convenient." My voice shook, but it came out. "I'll read every page. My lawyer will read every page. Then I'll answer you."
"You have until Friday."
"Then I'll take until Friday."
A muscle moved in his jaw.
He looked at me for a long moment. For a second I thought he might say he had made a mistake.
He said, "Don't make this longer than it has to be."
He walked out and shut the door.
His steps went down the stairs, and the front door closed, and the engine started in the driveway.
I stood alone in the bedroom with the envelope in my hand and the dress he had never noticed.
I sat on the edge of the bed and opened it.
The papers were thick. Every page was flagged in yellow where I had to sign.
I read the first page and the settlement figure on the second. It was more money than I had ever imagined owning.
I wanted none of it. I wanted him to come back up the stairs.
I turned to the last page.
A photograph was tucked behind it.
It showed a hotel terrace in the afternoon, and a woman in a gray coat with a man's arm around her shoulders.
The woman was me.
The man was my old painting teacher. He is seventy-one years old, and he had hugged me goodbye that day because I had finally shown him my paintings and he had cried.
Cropped tight like that, it looked like something else.
I turned the photograph over.
Someone had written on the back in square blue capitals: THURSDAY, 4:15.
I had told no one about that Thursday.
Not Lachlan. Not Daphne. Not anyone.
Somebody had stood across the street with a camera and watched me for a long time before my husband ever found the nerve to come home.
I put the photograph in the pocket of my green dress.
Then I put the papers back in the envelope, unsigned.
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