There it was.
I understood.
The affair.
The humiliation.
The challenge.
The pressure to leave.
The insistence that I sign everything away.
They had needed me out.
Not merely divorced.
Out voluntarily.
Preferably
angry.
Preferably ashamed.
Preferably convinced the house was hers.
I looked at Claire.
“You wanted me to abandon it.”
She began crying.
I had seen Claire cry hundreds of times.
At funerals.
Movies.
When our dog died.
When we lost the baby.
These tears did nothing to me.
“You knew the house wasn’t ours to divide.”
“I was trying to protect myself.”
“By forging my signature?”
“I didn’t know what else to do!”
Derek stepped between us.
“Back off.”
Rebecca actually laughed.
Everyone looked at her.
“Derek,” she said, “you may want to stop speaking.”
