12. Madison
— ? —
Madison
The conference room at Aldrich and Hale was filled with tension that came from putting two people who used to love each other on opposite sides of a table.
Ford sat across from me with his lawyers flanking him like bodyguards, his face drawn, his tie perfectly knotted despite the fact that he looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
I had Marguerite beside me. And Emery, who had refused to hear a word I said when I told her I would do this alone.
“Before we begin,” Ford’s lead attorney said, sliding a folder across the polished wood, “my client would like to propose an alternative arrangement to the one currently on the table.”
Marguerite didn’t touch the folder. “We’ve already agreed to terms.”
“These are better terms. Significantly better.” The attorney, a silver-haired man named Whitley who had probably handled Harrington legal matters since Ford’s father was alive, opened the folder himself.
“Mr. Harrington is prepared to offer Mrs. Harrington the Harrington estate outright, no mortgage, along with a monthly maintenance allowance and a lump sum settlement of…”
“No.”
Everyone looked at me.
“I said no.” I kept my voice level, my hands flat on the table. “I don’t want the estate. I don’t want a maintenance allowance. I don’t want a settlement.”
Whitley blinked. “Mrs. Harrington, perhaps you don’t understand the figures we’re discussing. This is a substantial…”
“I understand the figures perfectly. My answer is still no.”
Ford leaned forward, and I made myself meet his eyes. He looked wrecked. Hollowed out in a way I might have found satisfying a month ago, but now just made me tired.
“Madison,” he said quietly. “Please. Just let me do this one thing.”
“You don’t get to buy your way out of this, Ford.”
“I’m not trying to buy my way out. I’m trying to make sure you’re taken care of.”
“I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing it for years.”
He flinched at my words, but he said nothing after that.
“The terms stand as originally negotiated,” Marguerite said smoothly, pulling the conversation back to professional ground.
“Ms. Ellsworth retains sole ownership of Ellsworth Interiors and all assets she brought into the marriage. Mr. Harrington retains all Harrington family assets, properties, and business holdings. No spousal support. No property division. Clean break.”
“This is highly irregular,” Whitley said. “In a marriage of this length, with assets of this magnitude, it’s standard practice for…”
“I don’t care about standard practice.” I pulled the signing documents toward me. “I care about being done. Where do I sign?”
Marguerite pointed to the first tab. “Here. And initial at the bottom.”
I signed. Madison Ellsworth Harrington, for one of the last times.
“Madison.” Ford’s voice again, strained. “At least take the jewelry. Those were gifts, not assets. They’re yours regardless of what happens here.”
“I left them in the safe at Harborlight. Your mother can have them. She always thought they were wasted on me anyway. Or better yet, why don’t you give them to Valerie?”
Emery made a small sound beside me that might have been a laugh she was trying to suppress. I initialed at the bottom of the page and moved to the next document.
“The car,” Ford tried. “The Mercedes is still registered in your name. Just keep it. You need reliable transportation.”
“I have reliable transportation. The Volvo runs fine.”
“The Volvo is fifteen years old and the heater doesn’t work.”
“Then I’ll wear a coat.”
Ford pushed back from the table, his chair scraping against the floor. He stood and walked to the window, his back to all of us, his shoulders tight beneath his suit jacket.
“You’re doing this to punish me,” he said without turning around. “Taking nothing so everyone knows you don’t need me.”
I set down the pen and looked at his back.
“I didn’t need your money when I married you, Ford.
I had my own. Richard made sure of that.
And I didn’t stay for ten years because of the houses or the cars or the jewelry.
I stayed because I loved you. Because I thought what we had was worth fighting for. ”
He turned around. His eyes were red-rimmed, his composure cracking at the edges.
“Then why won’t you let me give you anything now?”
“Sign the papers, Ford,” I said quietly. “Let me go.”
He walked back to the table. Sat down. Picked up his pen.
For a long moment he just held it, staring at the documents like they might burst into flames if he looked hard enough. Then he signed.
One page after another, his signature sharp, not looking at me, or at anyone.
When he finished, he set the pen down and pushed the folder toward Marguerite.
“There,” he said. “It’s done.”
“I’ll file these with the court today,” Marguerite said, gathering the documents. “Given the circumstances and the lack of contested assets, this should move faster than a typical filing. I’ll call you the moment it’s official.”
“Thank you.” I stood and gathered my bag. “Emery, let’s go.”
Ford stood too, blocking my path to the door. “Madison, wait.”
“There’s nothing left to wait for.”
“Just…” He reached for my hand, then stopped himself, his fingers hovering in the air between us. “I need you to know that I’m sorry. For everything. For all of it. I know it doesn’t change anything. I know it’s too late. But I need you to know.”
“I believe you, Ford. But, like I said, it’s not enough.”
I walked past him and out the door. Emery followed, her heels clicking on the marble floor of the hallway. We made it to the elevator before she spoke.
“Holy shit,” she said. “That was the most savage thing I’ve ever witnessed, and I once watched Greer tell Viola Bancroft to go fuck herself in front of the entire Newport Garden Society.”
I laughed, and it came out shaky, half-sob and half-relief. “Was it too much?”
“It was perfect.” She pressed the button for the lobby. “I thought his lawyer was going to have a stroke.”
“Good. He’s been overcharging the Harringtons for years. A little cardiac excitement will do him good.”
The elevator doors opened and we stepped out into the bright lobby. Through the glass doors I could see the harbor sparkling in the afternoon sun, the boats bobbing at their moorings, Newport carrying on without any awareness that my entire life had just changed.
“Wavecrest?” Emery asked, already pulling out her phone to text Greer.
“Wavecrest,” I confirmed. “I need to not think about any of this for at least an hour.”
“I can arrange that. Greer’s already ready with the wine, she said Grace is with the sitter and she’s got two bottles open.”
“Two bottles might not be enough.”
“That’s why she bought a case.”
Greer met us at the door of Wavecrest with a glass of wine in each hand, her hair piled on top of her head, her feet bare despite the chill.
“Is it done?” she asked, pressing a glass into my hand before I could even say hello.
“It’s done. Signed, filed, finalized within seventy-two hours.”
“Thank God.” She pulled me into a hug, wine sloshing dangerously. “I’ve had this bottle breathing for three hours waiting for you. Come inside before we freeze.”
I followed Greer into the living room where a fire was already burning, the flames casting dancing shadows across the cream-colored walls.
“Sit,” Greer commanded, pointing to the couch.
Emery filled Greer in on all that had happened. And despite my initial reservations, I was glad she’d been there. It was the support I needed.
“I would have paid good money to see his expression.” She refilled my glass without asking. “Ford Harrington, finally understanding that his wife was never impressed by his money. That must have been a new experience for him.”
“He looked like someone had slapped him,” Emery said. “It was beautiful.”
“It wasn’t beautiful.” I stared into my wine. “It was sad. All of it was sad. Ten years and this is how it ends.”
Greer sat down beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched. “It’s supposed to be sad. If it didn’t hurt, it wouldn’t have meant anything.”
“Did yours hurt? When you and Graham…” I stopped, remembering that their situation had been different. They’d found their way back.
“Every day,” Greer said quietly. “Even when I thought I hated him. I was sure I’d never take him back.
” She took a sip of her wine. “But it gets better. The hurt fades. And eventually you wake up one morning and realize you went a whole day without thinking about it, and then a whole week, and then it’s just part of your history instead of your whole present. ”
“How long did that take?”
“Too long. But I had Grace. And you guys. And eventually I had Graham again, when we figured out how to do it right.” She squeezed my arm. “You have us. And you have your work. The rest will come.”
“I don’t know how to feel. What comes after this?”
“Whatever you want.” Emery curled into the armchair across from us, her legs tucked beneath her. “That’s the whole point, Madison. You’re not waiting for Ford to notice you anymore. You get to decide what happens next.”
“What if I don’t know what I want?”
“Then you figure it out. You try things. You say yes to stuff you would have said no to before. You remember what it’s like to be a person instead of just someone’s wife.”
I thought about that. Tried to imagine a life that wasn’t organized around Ford’s calendar, Ford’s preferences, Ford’s world.
I’d been Madison Harrington for so long I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be just Madison.
“I haven’t been just me in ten years,” I said. “I don’t even know who that is anymore.”
“You’re about to find out.” Greer raised her glass. “To Madison Ellsworth. Newly single, independently wealthy…”
“Not that wealthy. I didn’t take anything, remember?”
“You have your business and your inheritance. That’s plenty wealthy by normal human standards.” She grinned. “To Madison Ellsworth. Business owner, badass, and the only woman in Newport history to tell the Harrington family exactly where they could shove their settlement offer.”
“I didn’t tell them where to shove it.”
“Semantics, babe. Now can we fucking toast?” Emery raised her glass too. “To new beginnings.”
“To new beginnings,” I echoed, and drank.
The wine was good.
My friends were here, and not going anywhere. And somewhere on a lawyer’s desk, a stack of papers was waiting to be filed that would officially end the chapter of my life I’d been living for the past decade.
I should have felt devastated. Part of me expected to feel devastated.
But sitting here in Greer’s living room with the flames crackling and Emery making dark jokes about setting Ford’s boat on fire, I mostly felt tired.
“What’s the first thing you’re going to do?” Greer asked. “As a divorced woman? Officially?”
I thought about it. “Go back to work. I’ve been neglecting the firm while all this was happening. I have clients who need attention and projects that need finishing.”
“That’s very responsible of you.”
“I’m a very responsible person.”
“You’re a person who’s avoiding the question.” Greer poked my arm. “I didn’t ask what you should do. I asked what you want to do.”
What did I want to do?
The question sat in my chest, unfamiliar after so many years of organizing my wants around someone else’s needs.
“I want to remember what I like,” I said finally. “Just what I actually enjoy. I think I forgot, somewhere along the way.”
“Then that’s what you do.” Emery smiled at me. “You remember. You rediscover. You figure out who Madison is when she’s not trying to be anyone’s perfect wife.”
“What if she’s not that interesting?”
“She’s extremely interesting. She just got buried under ten years of trying to make a man notice her.” Greer refilled all our glasses. “You just have to dig her out.”
I leaned back into the couch at her words.