Chapter Fifty-Four
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
THEN
May 2025
“WHERE’S ELLIE?” FINN ASKS when I hand him a fresh beer. I had invited Finn, Nick, and Alex over for a pre-Memorial Day BBQ since everyone was going to be in town at the same time, and I hadn’t seen much of Finn since New Year’s. After everything that happened between him and Michaela, he’s kept his distance. He spent Thanksgiving with us but joined the Monroes at their cabin for Christmas. In doing so, he got a free ticket to the Dean and Raeanne showdown. Twenty years of sexual tension and hidden feelings came to a head and ended with Rae leaving without even saying goodbye. I liked them together, but Dean refused to tell her the truth, scared she might reject him—look how that turned out. “And I thought I had problems,” Finn joked when he told me about it on New Year’s Eve in Los Angeles. He’s kept his distance from all of us since.
Elizabeth and I spent the new year apart—I was in Los Angeles, and she was in New York with Nina.
“She’s back in Charleston,” I say, running a hand through my hair.
It’s longer than I normally keep it, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t even thought about getting it cut. Michaela said it was starting to look like a sophisticated mullet before she left for Europe. While she meant it as a jab, I kind of liked it.
My sister had been here long enough to drop off a few suitcases and make sure there was enough room for her shit that would be delivered by movers the next week. Michaela had finally left David, for good this time. The fact she even went back to that asshole in the first place blows my mind, but I’m just glad she realized the mistake she made. I almost didn’t answer when she called to say she was leaving and needed a place to stay while she figured things out. A day later, I got a call that she was going on a sabbatical…in Europe.
So now, all of her shit is packed away in one of the guest rooms, waiting for her to return. And what am I going to tell her when she gets back and realizes Elizabeth hasn’t been home in months? I have no fucking clue.
“Been gone a lot, hasn’t she?” Finn pushes and tries to hide the questioning glance he shares with Nick across the fire pit.
Nick knowingly raises his eyebrows, taking a drink of his beer instead of offering a verbal response. He doesn’t know anything, but he suspects it. The only person I’m sure of who knows something is Nina, and maybe Kai, but Nina has kept this from her husband (unsurprisingly).
“Everything okay with you guys?”
“Sure, why wouldn’t it be?” I shrug, taking a long drag of my beer.
Lie. Everything is far from fine.
The sound of the doorbell echoes outside, and at first, no one moves. When it sounds again, I finally get up to answer it with a long sigh. Who in the hell could that be?
Padding through the house, I open the front door to find a young kid standing on the stoop dressed in a suit and tie, holding a manila envelope in his hands. “Is this the home of Michaela Reed?” He asks peering over my shoulder.
“As of now,” I say, and he just stares at me. Rolling my eyes, I repeat myself, but this time in the way he wants.
“Is she home?”
“That depends who’s asking.”
“I’m Luke, a courier for—”
“You new?” I’ve met almost everyone who works at the law firm handling my sister’s divorce, but not this guy. “I’m Josh, her brother. I’ll take the paperwork; she’s still out of the country.”
“Oh, well, I don’t know if—”
“Luke, if you like your job, hand me those documents because my sister is getting very impatient about it,” I say. His eyes widen, and he almost throws the envelope at me. “You can tell Elias and Jason you gave them to me. You’ll be fine.”
Luke skitters away to his car without looking back, climbing into the beat-up Toyota just as another car pulls into the driveway. This one is much nicer—a sleek, black BMW—and the afternoon sun reflects off the shiny body. It parks directly in front of the steps, and the driver climbs out. She slides her sunglasses on top of her fiery red hair and reaches inside the car to pull out a manilla envelope.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Joshua Davis,” she says without a smile.
“What for?”
The woman steps around the car, dressed in skin-tight jeans and a black blazer. “Got some paperwork for him.” She lifts the envelopes in the air.
“I’m Josh.”
“Oh good.” Redhead smiles and walks up the steps. “You just need to sign that you got them.”
She peels away a document stuck to the manila envelope and hands it over with a pen.
By signing my name, it feels like I’m already signing the divorce papers. Handing back my signature, she pushes the envelopes into my hands with a grim smile, turning on her heel and skipping down the stairs. I think about ripping it open just to see what it looks like, but I also think about throwing it straight in the garbage. I’ve been waiting for it to show up since Wednesday—exactly five and a half years from our wedding day.
Oh, but you thought it was six and a half years…
Well, according to Line Eight of our terms, if we decided not to stay together, the required year separation under South Carolina law would count towards the final year.
Walking back to the backyard, I hide my envelope behind Michaela’s and hold them up for the others to see. “Divorce papers finally came. Signed, sealed, delivered.”
Don’t think I don’t notice the way Finn’s eyes turn into giant saucers at my words. He’s confused; I haven’t told him anything about what’s going on.
“Whose divorce papers?” Finn’s voice breaks, treading carefully through unknown waters.
“My sister’s.” I rip open the envelope and pull the documents out to make sure everything is here. “We’ve been waiting for these. David and his attorney have been dragging their feet.”
David and his attorney have been taking their sweet time getting everything finalized, delaying the process until they couldn’t anymore. And why? David was already back together with what’s-her-face (Karina, or something?); the tabloids caught them sneaking around, and it cost him a few points in the polls. Call me crazy, but I think he’ll still pull out the win.
My best friend’s eyes light up, looking around the group. “Wait, Michaela left him?”
“About two months ago,” Nick says. “She’s been Eat, Pray, Loving it all over Europe since.”
I toss the envelope onto the table between me and Finn, and the other envelope displays itself beneath it. When I scramble to hide it, I notice the item that falls out of Michaela’s envelope —her locket. The same one Finn helped me pick out for her eighteenth birthday present.
“Is that her locket?” Finn reaches for it, but I grab it first.
“Yeah, David has been holding it hostage since she left,” I say.
Sunlight reflects off the silver heart dangling from the small chain. I hate that she’s been without it for so long, Michaela has worn this thing every day since she got it. Normally, I would have asked Nick for help picking out a gift; he was far better with that sort of thing, but he was dealing with Aunt Evie’s death, and I didn’t want to bother him. So, I went to Finn, and we swore never to tell Michaela otherwise she’d throw it straight in the garbage. That was before she fell in love with him. “His campaign manager made her take it off because it didn’t go with the aesthetic they were creating for the wife of the future congressman.”
“I wondered where it was the night of the Valentine’s Day dinner,” Finn says, and all heads turn toward him. I’m pretty sure I just gave myself whiplash. Did he just say they saw each other on Valentine’s Day?
“What Valentine’s Day dinner?” Alex asks.
“Oh, we were at the same event and ran into each other.”
“And you’re just now telling me this?” My voice raises slightly. How could he not tell me about this? Why didn’t Mic tell me?
“Nothing happened.” Finn shrugs as if it’s no big deal. “I don’t think we said two words to each other. David made sure of that.”
“Did Nina know about this?” I ask Nick.
“Don’t think so.” Nick shrugs. “ She and MJ have only started talking again after she left him.” Nick chuckles, seeing Finn’s face, a big ol’ what the fuck displayed front and center. “David didn’t want her involved with Nina. Told her that our family is plain and Nina was holding her back.”
“He’s such an ass,” Alex mumbles under his breath.
“Here’s to never seeing that asshole again.” I lift my beer in the air between us, and they join me in cheering. After a long sip of my beer, I stand from my chair to call my sister and tell her the good news.
I make my way to my office and she answers just before her voicemail picks up. She is relieved to find out she no longer has the looming David cloud over her. It even makes her more excited to come home in a few days, but then she starts to fill me in on the gossip in the vineyard, and I stop listening. My focus returns to the other envelope on my desk—inside, my own fate. My fingers toy with the edges, I consider opening it to see what all it says, but I stuff it into the top drawer of my desk instead.
“Please tell me he sent the locket,” Michaela begs.
“He did.”
She breathes a sigh of relief. “Can you mail it to me?”
“Mail it to you? Are you insane, MJ?.”
Absolutely not. I am not overnighting her locket to Italy . Michaela’s final stop on her European getaway was the vineyard owned by Romy’s boyfriend, Enzo, in Estranei. Do you know how much that would cost? Not to mention, it probably wouldn’t make it before she left to come home anyway.
“You’re going to be home in a few days! You can get it then.”
“Bub, come on!” Michaela whines.
“No.” I slam my desk drawer closed. “It will never make it in time. You’ve waited this long, a few more days won’t hurt you.”