Chapter 9 - The Last Signature
Our divorce became final on a Tuesday in April.
There should have been thunder.
A meaningful song.
Some visible shift in the weather.
Instead, Chicago was wet and gray, and the man ahead of me at the courthouse complained about parking.
Rebecca met me near the elevators.
“You ready?”
“No.”
“That’s allowed.”
Lauren arrived with her attorney five minutes later.
She wore a navy coat and carried the same brown purse she had owned when we bought the house.
I wondered whether she had chosen it deliberately.
Then I reminded myself that her choices no longer needed to be puzzles I solved.
The hearing was brief.
The life afterward would be longer.
Outside, Rebecca shook my hand.
“Send me pictures when the theater opens.”
“I will.”
Lauren waited beneath the stone overhang while her attorney took a call.
“Coffee?” she asked.
I considered it.
Then I nodded.
We chose a place across the street.
For the first few minutes, we talked about my father, who was doing well after treatment and had begun taking walks with an enthusiasm that mostly involved criticizing other people’s lawns.
Lauren had found a job at a smaller agency.
Less money.
Less travel.
“Do you like it?” I asked.
“I like that I’m learning to do it without needing everyone to be impressed.”
“That sounds useful.”
“It’s uncomfortable.”
“Also useful.”
She smiled faintly.
Then she took a folded piece of paper from her purse.
“I wrote this in therapy. You don’t have to read it here.”
I didn’t reach for it.
“What does it say?”
She looked down.
“That you weren’t boring. That our marriage wasn’t a cage. That I wanted excitement without risking the person who made me feel safe.”
Her voice trembled.
“That I used words like freedom because they sounded better than entitlement.”
I sat very still.
“And that calling you from California was cruel. Not brave. Not honest in any meaningful way. Cruel.”
For months, I had wanted an apology without a hidden request inside it.
Now one lay between us.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I looked through the window.
People hurried past beneath umbrellas, holding coffee, checking watches, living through days that had nothing to do with ours.
“Thank you for saying it.”
“Do you forgive me?”
I turned back.
“I’m working on letting go of what keeps hurting me. I don’t know whether I have a better answer yet.”
She nodded.
“That’s fair.”
When we left, she hugged me.
I hugged her back.
It felt like saying goodbye to someone who had survived the same fire after helping start it.
Then we walked in opposite directions.
At the theater, Nora found me standing in front of the restored lobby doors.
“How did it go?” she asked.
“It’s done.”
She nodded.
“Do you want company or work?”
“Work.”
“Excellent. The east door is making a noise I’ve decided is personal.”
I laughed.
We spent the afternoon adjusting hinges.
By six, the door opened smoothly.
By seven, we were eating takeout on the stage.
Nora told me her marriage had ended four years earlier, after a long period of trying to fix problems both people could name but neither could change.
“I wanted to ask you out in November,” she admitted.
I looked at her.
“Why didn’t you?”
“You were still carrying your entire house around in your chest.”
I laughed softly.
“That obvious?”
“Only when you breathed.”
I turned the empty carton in my hands.
“I like being here with you.”
“I like being here with you too.”
“I’m still figuring things out.”
“Then figure them out. Dinner can just be dinner.”
Two weeks later, I asked her to dinner.
A real restaurant.
Clean shirt.
No sawdust.
Halfway through the meal, I noticed I hadn’t checked my phone once.
On the walk back to our cars, she reached for my hand.
May you like
I didn’t compare it to anyone else’s.
I simply held on.
