Deconstructed(88)

“Who’s your attorney?”

“Jacqueline Morsett.”

“I don’t know her.”

“Would I use someone you knew? No. I need someone who hasn’t played golf with you, Scott.” I tapped the photos and lifted my eyebrows. “Besides, this is really all I need.”

“Cricket, we don’t have to—”

“Yeah, we do. There’s a reason why you did this to us. It’s a horrible thing to do to our family, Scott, but our marriage hasn’t been what it should have been for a long time. I’m not accepting blame. This affair is on you, but I accept that maybe you felt unloved. I know because I have felt much the same, like something has been missing for a while. So maybe we were on our way to being over anyway. It’s just, there are better ways to end a marriage than screwing someone else, you know?” A tear or two may have fallen.

He looked chagrined. “I know. I am very ashamed of myself.”

“But not enough to stop. You’re at her house all the time. Again, I’m not stupid.” But I felt that way at that moment. Like a very stupid woman who had been so focused on small things that didn’t matter—what font to use on name tags at Open House, what to put in Julia Kate’s Easter basket, if I should have Botox—when I should have seen that Scott and I were pulling away, a gulf ever-widening between us.

“Stephanie and I fell in love,” he said, looking into his beer. He couldn’t quite meet my eyes after he said that, could he?

I sighed, another arrow thumping into my heart. “So I guess that is all that needs to be said. No sense in pretending we’re even going to try to fix anything. It’s done. I haven’t told Julia Kate anything yet. I think it would be better coming from us both, so we need to choose a time soon to sit down with her. She’s at a difficult age, so she’s going to need lots of support. Maybe a therapist, too. At any rate, we are both going to have to be around to give her constant presence and ensure she feels loved.”

Ah. And there was the flicker. He wasn’t planning on being around. No, Scott was taking his size-2 ball lobber and heading to the crystal waters of the Caribbean. He’d made this mess and was going to leave me to clean it up while he relaxed in the sunshine. Just like my cat growing up. Jingles had loved to knock everything off the countertops and saunter away like a total ass.

I broke those arrows off and hurled them to the ground. Not so sad anymore.

“Sure,” he said.

“So I want to do this amicably. We can split everything we’ve built during our marriage, including the house Printemps occupies—I’ll pay you half the market value. Anything we came into the marriage with, we take. Like the lake house is my family’s place. That sort of thing. I want to be fair. I won’t allow the anger I feel for you to override my integrity. I expect the same of you.”

“Well, I need to get an attorney and let him advise me—”

I held up a finger. “That’s fine. But I would prefer that you make up for your indiscretion by helping me pursue an expedient divorce. Because you committed adultery, we don’t have to wait the standard six months, and though I know you stepped out on me, I also know that you would never treat me unfairly or leave your daughter without means.” Those words didn’t roll so easily off my tongue. Because that’s exactly what the bastard had planned to do.

“Of course not,” he said as he glanced away.

Slapping him across the face and screaming Liar would probably not be the best thing to do, considering I wanted him to sign the papers, but I swear I almost did it. Because he was a crappy, crappy person.

Instead I opened the folder with all the paperwork, my stomach dancing a jitterbug. But I felt very determined to try to proceed with our plan. I wasn’t money hungry, but I was irritated at Scott. Okay, more than irritated. I was incensed that he was going to steal from me and our daughter. That he was so selfish that he would leave me, skip town, and shower our resources on Stephanie like we meant nothing to him. So this was about winning. About rocking his damned boat. “I have some papers here for you to sign. Jackie filed the divorce papers, and these are your copies on top. The first document to sign is a waiver of service, which says that I gave you a copy of the divorce petition. Beneath it are a few others regarding our communal property and stuff like that.”

Scott pressed his hands in the air, eyeing my stack of papers. “Okay, yes, I will do what I can to make this easy for us both, but I don’t feel comfortable signing all those documents today. I’m going to need some time to read through them. To get an attorney.”

I closed the folder, anger creeping up inside. “Okay, then. If that’s how you want to play it. If you want a fight, we can do that. Jackie seems like a real tiger. I made sure of that before I signed for her representation.”

“Wait, I didn’t say that I want to fight the divorce. I’m just saying give me a little time.”

Scott hated a social scene, even at a place like the Bullpen. “Fine. Whatever.”

“Come on, Cricket.”

“What?” I said angrily, raising my voice, brushing tears away. “What can I say? All those years, Scott. Things were off but not irreparable. We could have worked it out, but you didn’t give us the chance. And a tennis coach? Really, Scott? She’s, like, fifteen years younger than you. You did what my dad did to my mom, and you know how much therapy it took to get me over that. I am just now on decent terms with my father.”