And that very same day was served divorce papers. I didn’t blame Chris. Our lives were empty. But still . . . in December? Without talking to me first?
Maybe there was something we could do. We were family. That stood for a lot.
And yet, what was there that we hadn’t already tried? Except the counseling that he’d opted not to participate in?
“Can’t we at least talk about this?” I asked him that night when he got home from work. I handed him the Cognac I’d poured for him when I’d heard the garage door go up, signaling his arrival. I had the papers I’d been served in my left hand.
He sipped, and looked at me over the rim of his glass.
“You know as well as I do that this is no way to live.”
“But . . .”
“Look, it’s going to be painless for both of us,” he said. “We agree to a sixty/forty split—I’m giving you the sixty in lieu of spousal support— you sign the papers you were served today, and in thirty days it’s done.”
“What about the house?”
“I’m buying you out of it. It’s all in the papers.” He spoke as though I were a child, assuming I hadn’t read the papers.
He was right, of course. I’d been too shocked. Too hurt. And I’d had pages to write. I was on deadline. I had the second book of a suspense trilogy I was doing for MIRA books due in February, and two weeks later, also in February, I had a book due to Harlequin Superromance— the launch book for a five-author continuity series.
Chris knew about both projects. Or he should have. I’d been talking about little else for weeks. His timing couldn’t have been worse.
That night, with the door to my bedroom suite shut tight, I drew a bubble bath in my garden tub, poured a glass of wine from the carafe I’d carried up with me, lit a candle, turned on some soft classical music, laid back in the hot water, and cried.
The next day, I called a lawyer friend. She advised me not to sign the papers until she’d had a chance to go over them. I’d read them. They were more than fair.
Still, was this the right decision? I’d married “for better or worse, in sickness and health, ’til death do you part.”
Chris couldn’t do anything more without my signature. Unless he wanted to sue me for divorce.
I needed time to think.
Was there more I could do to make Chris happier? What would a divorce do to my mother? And what family would Chris have without mine? His parents were both gone. His siblings, two sisters and a brother, called about once a year. Maybe.
Was this the only way? Had we really passed the point of no return?
I had my answer on January 21, 2007, when I came home to find a woman in bed with Chris. It was Sunday afternoon. I’d said I was going to be out with an unpublished writer I was mentoring. She’d had a family crisis and couldn’t make our meeting.
I’d come home to work. And was intending to let Chris know I was there.
“What the hell are you doing, you stupid bitch?” Chris jumped up when I opened his bedroom door to see his naked butt moving on top of a female body.
Standing there naked, with a hard-on protruding out in front of him, he didn’t even attempt decency as he came toward me. “
Get out,” he growled out the words, shoving me, as he slammed the door in my face.
I stumbled across the upstairs foyer to my suite and started packing.
All of the clothes from my dresser were in the two suitcases I’d had in my walk-in closet by the time I heard Chris’s door open twenty minutes later. A minute after that the front door closed, and then a car started up down at the street. Must have been the Mustang I’d passed as I’d pulled in our driveway. It had been parked on the side of the road in front of our house, and I’d surmised that it belonged to someone visiting next door.
“What the hell do you think you were doing barging in like that?”
I swung around, my heart pounding as the door to my bedroom flew open and slammed so hard that the knob left an indentation in the drywall behind it.
“I . . .”
“You stupid bitch . . .” Chris was wearing jeans and nothing else.