10. Luisa
— ? —
Luisa
The lawyer’s office smelled like leather and old money.
I sat on one side of the conference table, my attorney, a sharp-eyed woman named Patricia Nowak who specialized in divorces that needed to stay quiet, beside me. Across from us, two empty chairs waited like open wounds.
“He’s late,” I said.
“He’ll be here.” Patricia checked her watch. “His attorney confirmed thirty minutes ago.”
I stared at the stack of papers in front of me. Dissolution of Marriage, Division of Assets, Spousal Support Waiver. Each document a piece of my life reduced to legal terminology and signature lines.
Three weeks since the accident. The stitches had come out, leaving a thin pink scar along my hairline. The bruises had faded to yellow-green shadows. The baby, my baby, was still there, still growing. Still my secret.
The door opened.
Wade looked like a man who had stopped sleeping. His face was gaunt, his eyes hollow, his usually immaculate clothes hanging loose on his frame. He moved like someone walking through water, slow, heavy, exhausted.
Our eyes met across the conference table.
I looked away first.
“Mr. Buckley.” Patricia’s voice was crisp and professional. “Thank you for being here. I trust you’ve reviewed the documents?”
His attorney, a gray-haired man with expensive cufflinks, cleared his throat. “We have. And we have some concerns about the proposed division of assets.”
“There’s nothing to divide,” I said.
Everyone looked at me.
“Mrs. Buckley-” his attorney started.
“Ms. Erickson.” The correction came out sharp. “That’s my maiden name. I’ll be using it from now on.”
Wade flinched. Just slightly, but I saw it.
“Ms. Erickson,” his attorney continued, “the marital assets include substantial holdings. The brownstone alone is worth-”
“I don’t want it.”
Silence.
“I don’t want the house,” I repeated. “I don’t want his money. I don’t want anything that belonged to him.”
Wade leaned forward. “Lu, that’s not-”
“Don’t call me that.”
He stopped. His mouth went flat.
“The brownstone was our home,” he said quietly. “You picked out every piece of furniture. You spent months making it-”
“Making it ours. And it’s not ours anymore.” I met his eyes, forcing myself to hold his gaze. “I don’t want reminders. I want a clean break.”
His attorney pulled a folder from his briefcase, thick and official-looking. He slid it across the table.
“My client would like to offer this settlement,” he said. “In addition to the full value of the brownstone.”
I opened the folder.
The number inside had a lot of zeros.
“This is…” Patricia trailed off, clearly recalculating her assessment of the situation. “This is extremely generous, Mr. Buckley.”
“It’s not enough.” Wade’s voice was hoarse. “Nothing I could give her would be enough.”
I closed the folder. Pushed it back across the table.
“No.”
“Ms. Erickson,” his attorney said, “I strongly advise you to consider-”
“I said no.”
“Lu-” Wade caught himself. Swallowed. “Luisa. Please. Let me do this one thing.”
“You don’t get to buy your way out of what you did.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
“Then what are you trying to do?”
He was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper.
“I’m trying to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’ll be okay.” I kept my voice steady, even though everything inside me was screaming. “I’ll be more than okay. Without your money. Without your help. Without you.”
“You don’t have to punish yourself to punish me.”
“This isn’t punishment. This is pride.” I leaned forward. “I will not be paid for my heartbreak. I will not take money from a man who threw away our marriage for another woman. And I will not spend the rest of my life looking at things that remind me of you.”
“So you’re just going to walk away with nothing?”
“I’m walking away with my savings. My name. My self-respect.” I stood up. “That’s more than you left me with.”
Patricia touched my arm. “Ms. Erickson, perhaps we should take a moment to-”
“No.” I shook my head. “I want this done today. Right now. Where do I sign?”
The next hour was a blur of papers. Initial here, sign there, date, initial again. Each stroke of my pen was a small death, the end of a chapter, the closing of a door, the final acknowledgment that the future I’d imagined would never exist.
Wade signed everything without argument. His hand shook on the first document. By the tenth, it was trembling so badly his signature looked like seismograph readings.
I watched him sign and felt nothing.
That was a lie. I felt everything. I just wouldn’t let him see it.
“There’s one more thing,” his attorney said when we’d worked through the stack. “The matter of Ms. Erickson’s contact information. Mr. Buckley would like to maintain the ability to reach her, in case-”
“No.”
“Luisa.” Wade looked up from the papers. “If you ever need anything-”
“I needed you.” The words came out before I could stop them. “For so long, Wade. I needed you to see me. I needed you to choose me. I needed you to love me the way I loved you.”
His face crumpled.
“But you were unavailable for me.” My voice cracked, but I kept going. “Not for her, though. Never for her. You always had time for her. You always had attention for her. You always had-”
I stopped, took a breath, continued.
“I will not give you my contact information. I will not tell you where I’m going. And if you try to find me-” I held his gaze. “Don’t.”
“I would never-”
“You would. In a year, or two, or five, when you realize what you threw away, you’ll try to find me. You’ll tell yourself it’s because you want to make things right. You’ll convince yourself that I’d want to hear from you.” I looked away. “I won’t.”
“Luisa-”
“This is goodbye, Wade. Forever.”
He looked at me with those light blue eyes, the eyes I’d fallen in love with, the eyes that had promised me forever on the cobblestones in Nantucket, and what I saw there almost made me hesitate. Pain, and under it a regret that looked almost like desperation.
But I’d seen him look at me before and still choose her. His pain meant nothing.
“I’m sorry,” he said. The words seemed inadequate for everything between us. “I know that doesn’t help. I know it doesn’t change anything. But I’m sorry.”
I didn’t respond.
Patricia was organizing the signed documents into folders. His attorney was making notes. The machinery of divorce grinding forward, indifferent to the humans being processed.
Wade stood up slowly, like a man much older than his thirty-three years. He looked at me one more time, a long look, searching, sad, and then he turned toward the door.
He paused with his hand on the handle.
“Take care of yourself,” he said without turning around. “Please.”
And then he was gone.
I stood in that conference room for a long moment after the door closed. Patricia was talking through next steps and paperwork. I wasn’t listening.
I was thinking about the man who’d just walked out of my life. How defeated he’d looked. How miserable. Like a man who hadn’t slept in days, who had aged ten years in three weeks, who was carrying a weight too heavy for his shoulders.
Good, I thought.
But another part of me, the part that had loved him, the part that still remembered the boathouse and the waltz and the way he’d looked at me on our wedding day, that part buckled anyway.
“Ms. Erickson?” Patricia’s voice cut through. “Are you alright?”
“Fine.” I picked up my purse. “I’m fine. Are we done here?”
“We’re done.”
I walked out of that office with my head held high. Down the hallway with its tasteful art and soft carpet. Into the elevator that smelled like perfume and anxiety. Through the lobby where receptionists smiled professionally at my tear-streaked face.
***
The bus station was six blocks away.
I’d sold my car, too many memories, too much damage, and used the money for a cheap hotel room and a one-way ticket to anywhere. I’d already packed everything that mattered into a single suitcase. My phone was a new number, prepaid, untraceable.
I was going to disappear.
The station was crowded with the usual chaos, businesspeople rushing to catch the next departure, families corralling children, tourists consulting maps with expressions of mild panic. I stood in front of the departures board and let my eyes move across the destinations.
New York. Too obvious.
Philadelphia. Not far enough.
Portland. Maybe.
My gaze landed on a name I didn’t recognize. A small town in Maine, far enough north to feel like another country. The bus was leaving in forty minutes.
I bought a ticket.
The platform was cold and gray, November wind cutting through my coat. I found a bench away from the crowd and sat, my suitcase beside me, my ticket clutched in my hand.
I thought about the baby.
Ten weeks now. Still too small to feel, but there, a flutter of possibility, a promise of the future. My secret. My hope. The only piece of that broken marriage I was taking with me.
I pressed my hand flat against my stomach. Nothing showed yet. Nothing anyone could take from me. A miracle, hiding in plain sight.
“Just us, kid,” I whispered. “Just us now.”
The bus pulled in.
I picked up my suitcase and walked toward my new life.