Chapter Twenty-Eight
KATERINA
The elevator ride to the law office feels entirely too claustrophobic for my liking, and now I wish I had taken the stairs.
I fold and unfold my gloves in my hands as floors tick by on the screen above the doors. My heart is beating too fast, fluttery and uneven, like it’s trying to find a way out, and I’m having a hard time calming my breath.
You chose this; I remind myself. You made the deal to give him up. To give him back a life with his father.
You’re doing this because you love him.
The elevator dings.
The doors slide open onto a hushed, expensive-looking lobby—polished floors, glass walls, the kind of modern minimalism that always makes me feel like I’m in the wrong place.
“Mrs. Easton?” the receptionist asks, standing when she sees me.
I nod. “Yes.”
“Right on time.” She smiles efficiently. “Elena Sokolova has everything ready for you. If you’ll just have a seat for a moment, I’ll let her know you’re here.”
I sit on a leather chair that squeaks softly under me. My palms are damp. My legs feel weak. The clock on the wall ticks a little too loudly.
This is good, I tell myself. This is the last hard thing you have to do, and then before you know it, you’ll be in Moscow, and you can try to put it all behind you. Distance will help you forget the life you lost.
The things Scottie has given me—his kindness, his family, the theater, the movie candy, his body, his heart—they’re not things I can ever give back. But his father walking again?
I can give him that.
“Mrs. Easton?”
I stand too quickly, my knees wobbling.
Elena Sokolova is what I expect from one of my grandmother’s lawyers. She’s wearing a sharp suit, sharp jaw, sharp eyes behind rimless glasses. She shakes my hand once, briskly.
“Thank you for coming in,” she says. “We’ll just go over the documents together. It’s all very straightforward. My assistant is in the conference room as well.”
Straightforward.
Right.
She leads me into a conference room with a long glass table and a view of the city, her assistant putting sticky labels where I need to sign. And then she passes it over to Elena.
Elena slides it between us, and that’s when I see it all: My name is on top.
In Re: The Marriage of Katerina Popovich Easton and Scottie Easton
The breath catches in my throat.
I knew, of course, that it would say that. I knew this was what I came here for. But seeing it in ink feels so final, I’m almost a little dizzy.
“Here,” Elena says, sliding the top copy toward me. “This is the petition. We’re filing under irreconcilable differences, no contested property, no minor children. Very simple.”
She says it as if we’re dividing up an ugly couch we never liked.
Irreconcilable differences.
My vision blurs over the words as if I might faint.
I blink hard and look down at the words anyway.
My name–His name–Dates. Legal phrases that mean nothing and everything. Somewhere in the middle, there’s a line about the marriage being “irretrievably broken.”
My fingers go cold.
Broken.
It has me thinking about that last night together. Scottie’s mouth on mine, his hands on my body, the way he whispered I love you against my skin like it was the easiest, truest thing he’d ever said.
Broken. We weren't broken until I broke us. More like shattered us into a million pieces.
“You’ll sign here,” Elena says, tapping a spot near the bottom. “And here, on the acknowledgment page. We’ll have Mr. Easton come in tomorrow to sign his portion, and then we’ll file with the court.”
Tomorrow.
By tomorrow afternoon, this marriage could be over on paper, even if it will never be over in my soul. As much as I wish it weren’t true, a part of me will always be married to Scottie, even if it’s only in my mind.
He’ll move on with Anika, or someone like her.
They’ll have children who look like him.
They’ll spend Christmas in Whitefish with Hillary and Arny, that they’ll call pop-pop and nanna, and I’ll live isolated in a mansion with a husband who’s always working for the next power move and children that will be shipped off to boarding school at an age that’s far too young for them to be away from me, but Maxim and my father will insist and I’ll have no say.
I’ll be married to a man who thinks love looks like diamond necklaces, shopping sprees, and day spas. Whether he’ll be faithful isn’t likely, either, no matter how much he claims that he always thought we’d end up together. Each year, we’ll grow further apart, and I won’t bother to notice or care.
“Do you have any questions?” he asks.
I stare at the pen he’s placed beside the form. My hand reaches for it automatically, the way it has a thousand times when presented with contracts, waivers, rehearsal schedules.
But it hovers above the paper as if there’s an invisible wall.
My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.
Sign. For his father. For Arnold. For Scottie. For their future as a family.
I lower the pen to the page.
And my hand shakes. Not a little but a full tremor, as if I’m having a seizure.
A full, visible shaking of my hand that makes the tip of the pen stutter over the paper before I even start the first letter of my name.
“Katerina?” Elena prompts. “Is anything unclear?”
I swallow. My mouth is dry. “No. It’s… clear.”
You can do this, I tell myself. You’ve danced through injuries. You’ve smiled through pain. This is just another performance. Sign it. Sign and go.
I press the pen tip down again.
Images flash too fast:
Scottie in the kitchen, pretending burned bread is delicious.
Scottie’s mom hugging me in Montana, calling me sweetheart and her sweet face on video call as she walked me through dinner and we laughed for an hour.
Scottie in the roadhouse, hands on my hips, saying Jesus, I want you like he meant every word.
Scottie whispered, “There is no ‘just in case’. We’re going to figure this out. For better or worse.”
The pen slips from my fingers and clatters to the table.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt, stepping back. “I—I forgot—I’m late. For rehearsal. I’m supposed to be at the studio. I—”
Elena blinks. “Mrs. Easton, this will only take—”
“I know, I just—” I’m already moving, backing toward the door. “I’m so sorry; I completely lost track of time. I’ll—I’ll come back. After he signs. That might be easier. You said he’s coming tomorrow, yes?”
“Yes, but—”
“Good.” My smile feels barely there, and his receptionist looks terrified for me. “Then I’ll sign after. Once everything is… ready. Thank you,” I say, and then spin around and physically run for the elevator door.
“Mrs. Easton, are you alright?” I can hear Elena's assistant running quickly towards me.
I hit the elevator button three more times in rapid succession. It’s open, and I jump in, hitting the close door before she can stop me.
I stagger back three steps until I hit the back wall as soon as the elevator starts moving.
I couldn’t sign. I walked in ready to do it, prepared to carve my own heart out and leave it bleeding on the paperwork, but I couldn’t make my hand move.
My phone buzzes in my bag, and I scream at first and then realize it’s just a phone.
I reach into my bag. For a moment, I think it might be Scottie, like he can somehow sense what I almost did, and my whole body aches to see his name.
It’s not him.
It’s the email notification again.
From the lawyer’s office. Subject line: Divorce Pleadings – Signature Reminder.
My stomach turns.
“I’ll do it,” I whisper to no one. “I’ll do it. I just… I need more time. I need to see his ink on the paperwork first. Then I can do it.”
I push out onto the street into the cool Seattle air.
The world is still moving, people rushing by with coffee cups and umbrellas, cars honking, lights changing.
It feels wrong that the world isn’t crumbling with me. That no one out here knows the hell I just endured.
I pull my coat tighter around myself and walk away from the building without looking back.
For now at least, on paper, I’m still his wife, and somehow that makes me take my first deep breath since I entered the building.
Scottie
I walk into the lawyer's office, wiping my sweating palms on my jeans before I reach the front desk.
“Hi,” I say to the receptionist. “I’m Scottie Easton. I’m here to sign the… uh, the paperwork for the divorce.”
The word tastes like something I shouldn’t say out loud. Not about her. Not about us.
The receptionist looks up, eyes flicking to my face with a spark of recognition. She’s probably seen my head on team graphics around town. Sometimes the real world bleeds into the sports one.
“Mr. Easton, yes,” she says. “We’ve been expecting you. One moment, let me just pull up your file.”
Her nails clack on the keyboard for a few seconds. Then she frowns, just a little.
My stomach tightens. “What?”
She glances up at me, hesitating. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s just… usually by the time the second party comes in, the initial filing is already signed by the petitioner.”
“The… petitioner?” I repeat.
“Your wife,” she clarifies. “She’s the one who retained us first.”
Right. Of course she is.
“She… didn’t sign?” I ask slowly.
The receptionist shakes her head, almost amused.
“She came in yesterday. Everything was prepared, Ms. Sokolova walked her through the documents, and then she just… looked at the papers like they might bite her, apologized, said she forgot she had another appointment, and ran out. I’ve never seen anything like it from a client first in line to file. A little odd, honestly.”
Something in my chest lurches.
“She told us,” the receptionist adds, “that she’d come back in after you had a chance to sign. So we were going to have you sign your portion today, then contact her again.”
I just stare at her for a second.
She couldn’t sign.
Kat, who can dance on bloody feet. Who can plaster on a perfect smile for the cameras? Who walked up to me in that hallway and told me we were over like she was discussing the weather.
“She couldn’t sign?” I ask.