21
The next morning found me dressed in a Chanel suit I borrowed from my mother and seated in a plush chair across from a huge mahogany desk, while an attractive man in an equally expensive suit asked me questions about my marriage to Larry, his secretary taking notes in the corner.
I had thought the Chanel was overkill—wouldn’t it be better to look like Larry was keeping me in poverty?
But my mother insisted I needed to walk in there looking like the lifestyle I expected Larry to maintain in divorce, even if he had never quite gotten to this level in marriage. And who was I to turn down Chanel? Though it came with a warning that I had better not even think about denting the matching hat. Better I go in sackcloth and ashes than follow that trend.
I held myself steady when Greg—he insisted I use his first name—asked about Larry’s infidelity, not allowing a stray flinch to betray how I felt about discussing this with a perfect (and ridiculously handsome) stranger.
“Do you think this secretary would be willing to testify?”
“Linda? Why?”
Greg was all sympathy as he explained. “The court will need evidence of infidelity.”
“I’m the evidence. I caught them.”
He shook his head. “It has to come from a source that isn’t involved in the divorce.”
“Well, Linda’s involved in the divorce. If he hadn’t been cheating on me with her, we would still be married.”
“It can’t come from the husband or wife,” he said gently. “So we either need her to testify or other evidence that he was illicitly engaged outside of the marriage.”
There was no way Linda was going to testify for me. And Larry didn’t want to let me out—even if she thought that would set him free, he would be done with her after that. If he wasn’t already.
Not shacking up with her certainly didn’t bode well for them having a future.
And if I was being completely honest, I wanted nothing to do with her. There had to be another option.
“What else would work as evidence? She’s not testifying.”
Greg leaned back in his seat and ticked the examples off on his fingers as he gave them. “A private investigator, if you think the affair is still going on. Someone else who saw them in flagrante. Love letters. Things like that.”
“And if I can’t prove it?”
“A no-fault divorce can be granted after eighteen months of living apart.”
“Eighteen months!”
He nodded. “It leaves room for reconciliation.”
“There isn’t going to be a reconciliation here.”
“Not now, no. But a lot can change in a year and a half.”
I rubbed at my temple with the base of my palm. “So how does one hire a private investigator?”
Greg grinned. “Michael said you were a fighter.” Then his smile faded somewhat. “There is something else I think you should know—your husband called me this morning.”
I jumped out of my seat, ready to leave. What kind of setup was this?
But Greg held out his hands, palms facing me, and I didn’t move. “Once you called me, I wasn’t taking him on. But I was curious so I called a couple of colleagues, and he’s retaining people left and right so you can’t hire anyone good.”
“Can he do that?”
Greg smiled wryly. “Let’s just say it’s a good thing you got to me first. I don’t know who he’s going to choose to go with, but there’s no one I’m afraid of in this town.” I sat back down as he asked me to go over marital assets.
“Legally,” he said, “his threat about the house was empty. If he’s running around throwing money at multiple lawyers, it won’t be hard to prove he can afford for you to stay where you are. And no judge is going to want to uproot the kids.”
I finally leaned back in the chair, relieved, albeit furious that Larry could just scare me like that because I didn’t know better. “So I don’t need a job?”
“You absolutely do not need a job. He is legally required to support you in the manner you were accustomed to in your marriage. But you can’t abuse that—no big shopping sprees.”
This time I flinched.
“How much are we talking?” he asked, not even batting an eye.
“Not that much in the grand scheme of things. I didn’t buy a car or anything. But I—well—I was mad. So I kind of ... redecorated the whole house.”
“A car would have been easier to spin. You could argue you needed that for the kids. If anyone asks from now on, you weren’t mad. You had been planning to overhaul the house for years and now that you’re working, you thought you could afford to.”
“So I do need a job.”
“No, you can say you thought that was how you would have to pay for things because you didn’t know how a divorce would work.”
“Isn’t that lying?” I looked at him curiously. Who had Michael sent me to?
“Much less so than committing adultery, so let’s call it stretching the truth. Besides, you didn’t know that he couldn’t sell the house out from under you.”
“I can live with that.” I thought for a moment. “Assuming we can get evidence, how long will the whole thing take?”
“Usually about six months.”
I did the math in my head. December felt awfully far off. And ideally, I didn’t still want to be married when the election happened. If we won, I didn’t care that much. If we lost ... Well, we just couldn’t lose. “Is there any way to speed that up?”
Greg smiled, a dimple forming in his right cheek. I glanced down almost involuntarily at his left hand. How on earth this man wasn’t married, I couldn’t have explained—unless dissolving marriages for a living had made him cynical. “I’ll talk to Michael. If he’s willing to call in one favor for you, he might call in another with a judge. No more spending sprees for now though. Necessities only.”
There went that watch I needed. “Unless it’s money I earn myself?”
His smile turned into a mild grimace. “For our purposes, it’s likely better if you’re not working. You’re a more sympathetic case if you need Larry supporting you.”
My mother would be happier. She could go back to her lunches and bridge games and hair and nail appointments without having to move back home. But something inside me wilted at that idea. It had only been a week, but I was enjoying my work on Michael’s campaign. I was useful. And while I had to fight with Stuart, Michael was starting to listen to me.
And more than anything, I wanted to prove Larry wrong: I may not have finished college, but that didn’t make me less smart or capable than him.
I knew I shouldn’t want revenge, but I did.
The words popped out of my mouth on their own accord. “I want to keep working.”
Greg studied me. “I think Michael will be happy with that decision. And we’ll make it work.” Then the friendly advisor was gone, and he dismissed his secretary, waiting until she was out of the room to speak again. “But no funny business or this is going to go south quickly.”
“Funny business?”
“Office affairs.”
“Excuse me?”
“I get it. I’ve been lonely too. And it’s easy when someone else is there all the time. But that’s going to derail our case, and I can promise that with us hiring a PI, your husband is also going to be looking for any missteps on your part.”
“Ha,” I said drily, trying to picture a scenario on earth where that was a concern. “I can assure you that not only do I have no interest in any ‘funny business’ with anyone for a very long time, but I am far more professional than my husband is in that regard.”
“Good,” Greg said, holding out his hand. “Had to get that part out of the way. I look forward to working with you, Mrs. Diamond.”
“Beverly,” I said, taking his hand and shaking it firmly. “Just Beverly.”
The smile returned. “Talk to Michael about judges. I’ll have my PI call you early next week.”
As I left the office, I pressed a palm to the top of my mother’s hat in a small act of rebellion. No one was going to tell me what I could or couldn’t do anymore.
Of course, I removed the dent by pressing on the underside of the hat before I returned it that afternoon. If I wanted to beat Larry, I did still need her watching Robbie and Debbie instead of abandoning me over a dented hat.