Chapter 7: The Morning After
I slept for eleven hours.
When I woke, the fever had broken.
The sheets were damp and the room was quiet and the house felt different in a way I couldn't name until I sat up and realized Ethan was not in the bed beside me.
He had slept in the guest room.
Or he hadn't slept at all.
His side of the bed was undisturbed.
I showered, dressed, and went downstairs.
The pot roast was still in the oven, long cold.
Diane's coat was gone from the hook by the door.
Her car was not in the driveway.
Someone had come for her in the night.
Daniel had left a note on the kitchen counter before he went home.
Three lines.
*Petition will be challenged Monday.
Do not speak to Ethan without me present.
Call me when you're ready.*
I made coffee and sat at the kitchen table.
Ethan came downstairs at seven-thirty.
He was dressed.
He had his laptop bag over his shoulder.
"I'm going to stay at a hotel for a few days," he said.
"Give us both some space."
"All right."
He set his keys on the counter.
Then he picked them back up.
"I didn't mean what I said last night.
About your investors.
I was angry."
"I know you were angry," I said.
"You meant it anyway."
He looked at me across the kitchen.
The morning light was flat and even.
He looked older than he had the day before, or maybe I was simply seeing him more clearly.
"Is there anything left to save?" he asked.
I thought about the question honestly.
I thought about two years of dinners and conversations and the way he looked at me sometimes when he thought I wasn't watching.
I thought about fourteen months running underneath all of it like a current I had never felt.
"I don't know," I said.
"But I know that what you filed in that courthouse can't be undone by a few days at a hotel."
He nodded.
He picked up his bag.
At the door he stopped.
"For what it's worth," he said, "the house was never really about the house."
"I know," I said.
"That's what makes it worse."
He left.
The door closed behind him.
I listened to his car back out of the driveway and turn onto the road.
Then I picked up my phone and called Daniel.
"He's gone," I said.
"How are you feeling?"
"Clearer." I looked at the note on the counter.
"Tell me about Monday."
"The petition gets challenged.
Given the prenup and the deed, it should be dismissed within thirty days.
The co-petitioner's affidavit is the more interesting problem.
I've already sent a letter to her attorney."
"She has an attorney?"
"She retained one yesterday afternoon." A pause.
"Ava, she knew about you.
She has known about you for over a year.
She signed that affidavit understanding exactly what it was."
I set my coffee cup down.
May you like
"What does she want?"
"That," Daniel said, "is what her attorney is about to tell us."
