Chapter 17 - The Divorce
Fourteen years of marriage ended in twenty-two minutes.
The final divorce hearing was administrative compared with everything else.
Property agreement.
Retirement division.
Debt allocation.
Custody reserved under the family-court orders already entered.
Laura looked at Mark across the courtroom.
He had completed incarceration and was now on supervised release subject to strict conditions.
He looked older.
So did she.
The judge signed the decree.
That was it.
No music.
No dramatic speech.
Outside, Mark asked through counsel whether Laura would allow a brief conversation.
Grace looked at her.
“You don’t have to.”
Laura said yes.
Public courthouse hallway.
Lawyers nearby.
Mark stood several feet away.
“I’m sorry.”
Laura nodded.
“I know.”
“No. I mean—”
He stopped.
For once, he seemed to understand he could not perfect the sentence.
“I spent years telling myself everything I did was because I was scared.”
Laura waited.
“The company. Money. Losing you. Losing the girls.”
“Yes.”
“I thought if I could control the next thing, I could fix the last thing.”
Laura thought of the business accounts.
The custody folder.
Sophie.
“Did it work?”
Mark looked down.
“No.”
He began crying.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
“Good.”
He almost smiled.
“I deserved that.”
Laura shook her head.
“I’m not trying to hurt you.”
“I know.”
“Mark, I hope you become someone the girls can safely know someday.”
He looked at her.
“But?”
“But I will not hurry them so you can feel better.”
He nodded.
“That’s fair.”
It was perhaps the first time in their marriage he accepted a boundary without negotiating it.
Laura walked away.
May you like
She cried in the parking lot.
Then drove home.
