Chapter 9: The Space After
The annulment took eleven weeks.
My solicitor, a brisk woman named Patricia who wore the same pearl earrings every time I saw her and never once used more words than necessary, told me it was moving quickly.
"Misrepresentation cases can drag," she said at our second meeting.
"He's cooperating.
That helps."
"He said he would."
"Men often say they will." She signed something and slid it across the desk.
"He actually is.
That's rarer."
I signed where she indicated.
Rick and I spoke twice more during those eleven weeks.
Both times brief, both times about paperwork.
He didn't try to change my mind.
He didn't ask to meet in person.
He answered questions and said goodbye and that was all.
The last document was signed on a Tuesday in March.
Patricia called me at half past two.
"It's done," she said.
"Legally, as of today, the marriage is treated as though it never existed."
I was standing in the car park outside the supermarket when she called.
I had a bag of groceries in my hand.
Bread, milk, the good coffee Anna liked, a bar of dark chocolate because it had been that kind of week.
"Thank you, Patricia."
"Take care of yourself," she said, which was the most personal thing she had ever said to me.
I stood in the car park for a moment after I hung up.
The sky was overcast.
A woman pushed a trolley past me.
A child in a red coat ran ahead of his father and was caught and lifted and swung around, laughing.
I put my groceries in the car and drove home.
Anna was in the kitchen when I came in, working on a university application she'd deferred while everything fell apart.
She looked up when she heard the door.
"How'd it go?"
"It's done."
She set her pen down.
"Done done?"
"Done done."
She stood up and crossed the kitchen and hugged me.
A real hug, both arms, the kind she used to give me when she was small and had just woken up from a bad dream.
"Okay," she said into my shoulder.
"Okay."
I held on for a moment.
Then I pulled back and held up the grocery bag.
"I got your coffee."
She laughed.
It was a real laugh — sudden and unguarded — and it was the best sound I had heard in months.
We made dinner together that evening.
Nothing complicated.
Pasta, a simple sauce, the good bread torn into pieces and eaten straight from the board.
We talked about her application, about the university she was most excited about, about whether she wanted to stay local or go further out.
"I was thinking Edinburgh," she said.
"That's far."
"I know." She twirled pasta around her fork.
"But I think I need somewhere new.
A place that's just mine."
"Then Edinburgh," I said.
She looked at me.
"You're okay with that?"
"I'm not okay with it," I said honestly.
"But I think it's right.
And those two things can both be true."
She smiled.
It reached her eyes.
After dinner, I washed up and she dried, the way we used to when she was in secondary school and we had a routine and the world was smaller and more manageable.
The radio was on low.
Something old, something with a piano.
When the last dish was put away, Anna folded the tea towel and hung it on the oven handle.
"Mom?"
"Mm."
"I'm glad we're here.
Like this.
Just us."
I looked around the kitchen.
The clean counter.
The two mugs drying on the rack.
The grocery bag folded and tucked beside the bin.
Everything in its place.
"So am I," I said.
I turned off the kitchen light.
We walked upstairs together, and for the first time in a very long time, I fell asleep before midnight — not because I was exhausted, but because there was nothing left to dread.
The house was quiet.
The rain had stopped.
And somewhere in Edinburgh, there was a university my daughter was going to love.
---
Some people enter our lives wearing the face of what we've always hoped for.
The hardest thing isn't discovering they weren't who they said they were — it's learning to trust your own judgment again afterward.
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