Chapter 5: What Grace Brought With Her
Grace arrived in twenty-two minutes.
She walked into the banquet room in a dark blazer, a leather portfolio under one arm, and the particular expression she wore when she already knew more than she was going to say immediately.
I had seen it in her office four months ago.
I recognized it now.
She took the empty chair beside me without being invited.
Daniel looked at her.
Then at me.
"You called your lawyer to your daughter's baptism."
"I called my lawyer to my daughter's baptism," I confirmed.
Ruth was still at the table.
She had not moved since hanging up with Chloe.
She sat with both hands folded in front of her, the bank statement from the folder pressed flat under her left palm, as if she was keeping it from escaping.
Daniel's father had moved to the window.
His back was to the room.
Grace opened her portfolio and removed a single sheet of paper.
She set it in front of Daniel.
He looked at it without touching it.
"What is this?"
"That's a petition for divorce," Grace said.
"Filed this morning.
You've been served, Mr.
Hargrove."
The room was very quiet.
Daniel's jaw moved but nothing came out for a moment.
Then: "This morning.
You filed this morning.
On the day of Lily's baptism."
"The filing date was my client's decision," Grace said.
"I advised her it could wait.
She disagreed."
He turned to me.
"You planned all of this.
The folder.
The party.
The lawyer.
You planned the whole thing."
"You planned yours first," I said.
He pushed back from the table.
Not standing all the way.
Just creating distance.
His hands went to the back of his neck, and he stood half-bent in the way men stand when they are trying to look like they are thinking clearly and failing.
"I want to talk to you alone," he said.
"Just us.
Five minutes."
"No."
"Jennifer—"
"No, Daniel."
He straightened.
The pleading expression closed over and something harder came back underneath it.
I watched it happen.
The shift from husband to opponent.
"You realize what you're asking for," he said.
"A divorce.
A custody fight.
You want to put Lily through that?"
"I want to protect Lily from a father who spent her emergency fund on another woman's hospital bills," I said.
"That's what I want."
Grace put one hand briefly on my arm.
A small gesture.
It steadied me.
Daniel turned to his mother.
"Mom.
Tell her.
Tell her this is not the way."
Ruth looked up from the bank statement.
She looked at her son for a long moment.
"I don't know what way would have been better," she said quietly.
"You should have thought about that before."
His father turned from the window.
"We're going home, Ruth."
"George—"
"We're going home." He looked at me.
His voice was not unkind.
"Jennifer.
I'm sorry.
For whatever that's worth right now."
It was worth something.
I wasn't sure how much yet.
They left together.
Ruth paused at the door and looked back once at Lily, still asleep near my mother across the room.
Her expression was the saddest thing I had seen all day.
Then the door closed.
Daniel and I were alone at the table.
Grace sat between us, which was exactly where she was supposed to be.
"You're going to regret this," Daniel said.
"Maybe," I said.
"But I won't regret it the way I would have regretted staying."
He picked up the divorce petition.
He read it slowly.
I watched his eyes move down the page and stop somewhere in the middle.
"Dissipation of marital assets," he said.
"You're claiming dissipation."
"Fifteen thousand dollars in documented transfers," Grace said.
"Plus the secondary account.
We'll be requesting full disclosure on both."
His eyes came up from the page.
"What secondary account?" he said.
Grace smiled once.
Very briefly.
"The one Chloe mentioned," I said.
"The one you opened five months ago so the transfers wouldn't show up together."
The color left his face for the second time that day.
"We don't have access to that account," he said carefully.
"Not yet," Grace said.
Daniel set the petition down.
He straightened his jacket.
He looked at me with an expression I could not fully read — part anger, part something that might have been, in another life, respect.
"I'll get my own attorney," he said.
"I assumed you would," I said.
He walked to the door.
He stopped with his hand on the frame and didn't turn around.
"For what it's worth," he said, "I never stopped caring about you."
I said nothing.
He left.
Grace waited until the door had been closed for a full ten seconds.
Then she turned to me.
"How are you doing?"
I looked across the room at my mother, who was lifting Lily carefully from the carrier, one hand behind her small head.
Lily's eyes opened briefly, unfocused and calm, and then closed again.
"Ask me in a week," I said.
Grace nodded.
She began gathering the papers.
"He mentioned the secondary account," she said, not looking up.
"Which means he knows we're going to find it."
"Will we?"
"Oh, we'll find it," she said.
"The question is what else is in it."
May you like
She closed the portfolio.
That question sat between us for the rest of the afternoon.
