Chapter 10: What Came After
The divorce took seven months.
Andrew did not fight the forensic accounting.
His attorney advised him not to, and he listened.
The forty thousand dollars was returned to the marital estate.
The settlement was fair.
Carol made sure of that.
He moved into an apartment twenty minutes away.
Close enough for Nicole.
Far enough for me.
The first time Nicole came home from having dinner with him, she stood in the kitchen doorway and looked at me carefully.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Yes.
How was it?"
"Weird.
But okay." She dropped her bag on the chair.
"He asked about you."
"What did you tell him?"
"That you were fine." She paused.
"Are you?"
I thought about it honestly.
"Getting there."
She nodded.
She seemed to accept that.
Daniel called once, about two months after everything came out.
He left a voicemail.
He said he was sorry.
That he should have told me.
That he had thought about it many times and hadn't known what to do.
I listened to it twice.
I didn't call back.
I didn't block him either.
I just let it sit there, unanswered, which felt like the right amount of response for what he had done.
Andrew's mother came to the house one afternoon in the spring.
She knocked.
I opened the door.
She had a casserole dish in her hands.
"I don't expect you to forgive me," she said.
"I just wanted you to know that I'm sorry.
And that I love Nicole.
And that I hope—" She stopped.
"I just hope you're all right."
I looked at her for a moment.
Then I opened the door wider.
"Come in," I said.
"I'll put the kettle on."
She came in.
We sat at the kitchen table.
We didn't talk about Andrew.
We talked about Nicole's upcoming school trip and a garden she was trying to grow in her backyard and a television series we had both apparently been watching.
When she left, she squeezed my hand at the door.
I stood on the step and watched her car pull away.
It wasn't forgiveness exactly.
It was something quieter than that.
A decision to let one small thing remain intact from the life that had broken.
Carol and I had lunch the month the divorce was finalized.
She raised her glass.
"To knowing your own worth," she said.
I raised mine.
"To good lawyers."
She laughed.
It was the first time I had laughed in what felt like a long time.
It surprised me.
That evening I came home to an empty house.
Nicole was at a friend's.
I made dinner for one.
Poured one glass of wine.
Sat at the kitchen table.
I thought about the vacation photo.
The one I had posted and then deleted.
The one that had started everything.
I got my phone.
I went to my camera roll and found the original.
Before the post.
Before the comment.
Just the photo itself.
The three of us at the beach.
Nicole with her hand shading her eyes.
Andrew's arm around my shoulder.
All of us squinting into the sun.
I looked at it for a long time.
Then I put the phone face-down on the table.
I didn't delete the photo.
But I didn't look at it again that night.
I finished my dinner.
I washed the single plate.
I turned off the kitchen light.
And I went upstairs to a room that was entirely mine now, and I slept better than I had in eight months.
---
Sometimes the life you thought you had turns out to be built on a foundation someone else was quietly dismantling.
Rachel didn't fall apart.
She found out, stood up, and chose herself.
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