“And then,” I said, “you started handing me pens with kisses.”
His expression tightened.
“That was just…”
I waited.
He stopped.
I finished for him.
“Routine?”
He said nothing.
“Go home, Dale.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Which home?”
I almost laughed.
“That, I suppose, is something you’re going to have to figure out.”
He picked up the folder.
Looked at it.
Then set it back down.
He walked out without it.
I watched through the window as he sat inside his truck for a long moment.
Then he drove away.
Patrice turned toward me.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
She waited.
“No,” I admitted.
“That’s more honest.”
I nodded.
“What do you need right now?”
“I need to call my son.”
“Then call him.”
“And after that, I need to close the salon.”
“I’ll stay.”
Marcus answered immediately.
“Mom?”
“It’s done.”
“How did it go?”
“It went.”
“Are you okay?”
“I will be.”
There was a pause.
“I’m coming home.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I’m not asking permission.”
I almost smiled.
“I’ll be there by nine.”
“Okay.”
“I love you.”
“I know.”
“Dad’s still an idiot.”
“Yes.”
“A complicated idiot.”
“Yes.”
I finally laughed.
“Nine o’clock.”
“I’ll make pasta.”
“Mom…”
“It helps me to do something.”
“All right. Make the pasta.”
After I locked the salon doors, Patrice and I sat beside my station.
Her yellow legal pad rested on her lap.
She explained what came next.
Discovery.
Financial disclosures.
Experts.
Property reviews.
The condo.
The Lexus.
The account holding the boat money.
The debt Dale had not yet managed to transfer.
Everything.
Then she held up my appointment book.
“Carol Ann, this is extraordinary.”
“What is?”
“Twelve months of records.”
She flipped through the pages.
“I’ve practiced divorce law for twenty years. Most people walk into my office with suspicions.”
She tapped the notebook.
“You walked in with documentation.”
“I keep records.”
“I noticed.”
Then she asked,
“Why did you start writing it down?”
I thought about Ashley.
The comment that had bothered me most.
She never pays attention anyway.
“Because he told Ashley I never paid attention.”
Patrice looked at me.
“So you decided to.”
“I decided to pay the kind of attention I should have been paying for years.”
She waited.
“I chose the fog, Patrice.”
“What do you mean?”
“I spent years deliberately not looking closely.”
“Why?”
“Because once you really see something, you have to decide what to do about it.”
She nodded.
“And I wasn’t ready.”
“And now?”
I looked toward the book.
“Now I have an appointment book.”
Patrice smiled slightly.
“Yes.”
“You do.”
Marcus arrived at 8:50 that evening.
He walked into the house that was still partly mine.
The house wasn’t disappearing.
Neither was I.
He hugged me in the kitchen and held on longer than usual.
“You okay?”
“I’m going to be.”
“That’s different from yes.”
“Yes.”
“It is.”
He smelled the stove.
“The pasta smells good.”
“Sit.”
We ate together at the kitchen table.
After a while, Marcus asked,
“What happens next?”
“Patrice files Monday.”
“And then?”
“Then we find out everything.”
“How long will it take?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you need from me?”
I looked at his bowl.
“I need you to eat your pasta.”
He smiled.
And he did.
While we sat there, I thought about all the things I had refused to examine over the years.
Not just Dale.
Myself.
For twenty-six years, I had somehow become a passenger inside my own life.
The person sitting at the table while someone else placed papers in front of her.
The woman accepting the pen.
The kiss.
The explanation.
The fog.
Because fog can resemble peace when you don’t want to know what’s underneath it.
Then Ashley sat in my chair.
Every Thursday.
For almost a year.
She trusted me completely because she had no idea who I was.
She once told me,
“You’re the only person in this town I completely trust.”
The strange thing was, she had been right.
I had never used what she told me to harm her.
I used it to protect myself.
That distinction mattered.
I wasn’t interested in destroying Ashley.
I wasn’t even interested in publicly humiliating Dale.
I wanted the truth.
The actual terrain.
No fog.
And once the fog disappeared, I realized something.
The terrain underneath was ugly.
Complicated.
Difficult.
But manageable.
Because I had paid attention.
Because I had written everything down.
Every Thursday.
Date.
Time.
Dollar amount.
Property.
Account.
Promise.
Lie.
And because Dale had spent so many years underestimating the woman he described as someone who “did hair or something.”
I had been a notary for eleven years.
The certificate had been hanging beside my mirror the whole time.
He had never bothered to notice.
He had decided long ago what I was capable of.
And he had been wrong.
Wrong about the hair.
Wrong about the “something.”
Wrong about all of it.
Later that night, Marcus pushed his chair away from the table.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Do you want to talk about Dad?”
“Not tonight.”
“Okay.”
“What do you want to do?”
I looked around the kitchen.
My kitchen.
The food I had made.
My son sitting across from me.
My appointment book safely inside Patrice’s briefcase.
Monday morning waiting on the other side of the weekend.
“I want to sleep.”
He nodded.
“And tomorrow?”
“I want to go to work.”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday.”
“I have a client at nine.”
He laughed quietly.
“Mom.”
“I like my work, Marcus.”
“I know.”
“I have always liked my work.”
He waited.
“I should never have allowed anyone to make me feel like it was small.”
“No.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“It isn’t small.”
“No.”
“It isn’t.”
I smiled.
“People trust me with the back of their heads.”
Marcus smiled too.
“That’s true.”
“That’s not a small thing.”
“No, Mom.”
“It really isn’t.”
I went to bed.
In the darkness, I thought about my salon chair.
My notary stamp.
The appointment book.
Ashley sitting in Dale’s company Lexus, fixing her lipstick before accidentally walking into the truth.
Dale’s face when he looked up and realized who was standing behind the counter.
I thought about the fog.
And then I thought about what remained once it finally cleared.
Me.
Just me.
Standing behind my own counter.
With my stamp.
My book.
My work.
My son.
My attorney.
And every part of myself I had always possessed, even during the years when I let someone convince me those parts were insignificant.
That was the whole truth.
And for the first time in a very long time, it was enough.
