Chapter 23 - THE DIVORCE PAPERS

I did not sign them that night.

Not because I had decided to stay married.

Because my mother had told me not to make permanent decisions while grief was making every room echo.

So I put the papers in a drawer.

Then I sold the house.

It took four months.

The buyers were a family with three children and a dog that immediately peed on the formal dining room rug during the showing.

Florence would have loved that.

Half the proceeds went into the shelter trust, exactly as she requested.

The other half came to me.

I kept enough to pay off my mortgage.

Then I funded an independent forensic audit of every charitable account our family had touched in twenty years.

That part was not in Florence’s will.

It was for me.

I wanted no more sealed boxes.

No more “we thought it was better not to know.”

The audit found smaller failures.

Sloppy approvals.

Missing receipts.

One board member who had charged a fishing trip as donor development.

Nothing like Martin’s theft.

Still, I published the findings.

Our family name looked less polished afterward.

Good.

Victoria began her sentence in October.

I visited once before Christmas.

She wore gray prison clothes and no jewelry.

For a while we talked about stupid things.

The weather.

A television show we both used to hate-watch.

Whether prison coffee was actually worse than hospital coffee.

Then she asked, “Did you sign?”

I knew what she meant.

“No.”

Hope flashed across her face.

I hated that I caused it.

“I’m going to,” I said.

The hope disappeared.

She nodded.

“Okay.”

“I’m not doing it because I never loved you.”

“I know.”

“I’m doing it because I don’t know how to build a marriage on top of six years of hidden rooms.”

She swallowed.

“Okay.”

We sat there with the plastic table between us.

Then she said, “I am sorry.”

Not for everything.

That would have been meaningless.

“For Florence. For using you. For making love into evidence. For the money. For all of it that was mine.”

I nodded.

“I believe you.”

She cried.

So did I.

A week later, I signed the papers.

---

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