Chapter 109: Let Me Stand Alone
The envelope from the state bar was cream-colored, heavy, the kind lawyers use when the news is already decided.
I knew that weight. My marriage had ended inside an envelope like it.
Funny, the things that turn out to be training.
Owen opened it at the kitchen table, read the first page, and did something worse than anger.
He went still.
Owen still was worse than Owen angry. Angry I could argue with.
An anonymous complaint, he said. Conflict of interest. Improper relationship with a client during your divorce.
Anonymous, but not amateur.
Amateur complaints ramble. This one had a table of contents.
Tabs. Exhibits. A timeline of his work on my case laid beside a timeline of us, the two braided together as if they had been one thing.
The first kiss, dated. The decree, dated. The order of the two reversed, undated, unsigned, and infinitely suggestible.
They were not one thing. That was the point. That was the whole defense.
Truth is easy when the dates behave. Ours behaved. They had to be shown behaving.
He spread his record on the table the way other men spread weapons.
I watched him inventory his own life, page by page, without flinching.
The engagement letters, dated and signed.
The scope notes, initialled.
The memo he had written to his own file the day things changed between us, ending the attorney-client relationship before anything personal began.
He had written it at eleven at night, alone, before he ever told me what he felt.
Dates. Signatures. A spine of evidence, straight as a ruler.
I had fallen in love with that spine without ever being shown it.
Now strangers were going to read it, looking for crooked.
It is clean, he said. It is clean, and I still have to prove it, because clean is not a verdict.
That is the tax on doing things right. You still get audited by the people who did not.
Let me help, I said.
No.
Adaeze, then. A statement from me. The trust's records, the—
Nora. Any hand of yours in my defense is the conflict, gift-wrapped.
He kept his voice low, which made it worse.
They are not attacking my record, he said. They are fishing for your fingerprints on my defense. One call from you and their story writes itself.
I thought of every weapon I had and could not use. It was a long inventory.
I hated how right he was.
I hated it with the fury reserved for a locked door in a town I had taught to use locks.
In my marriage, decisions about my life happened in rooms I was not in. I had sworn never to do that to another person. Keeping that oath tasted like pennies.
For two days he drafted his response at the lake house, alone, door open, phone face down.
I heard the printer at midnight, then again at three. He was editing his own life for strangers.
I brought him coffee. It was the only exhibit I was allowed to be.
Helen offered to testify to his character, loudly, anywhere. We declined, gently, twice.
On the third night we sat on the porch steps, close, not touching, watching the lake take the light apart.
Not touching was our armor. If they were watching, let them report that.
If I fall, he said finally, I land on you. That is the design.
My disgrace becomes their exhibit at your hearing. The wife and her lawyer.
You will not fall.
I said it like a fact. He heard the wish inside it. We both let it pass.
You cannot promise that, he said, with the gentle correction reserved for someone you love.
Dusk flattened the lake. Somewhere across the water a dog barked at nothing.
This one is mine, Nora.
Let me stand alone.