Chapter Five
THE DIVORCE ATTORNEY’S office is on Wisconsin Avenue in a building with marble floors and a receptionist who offers me water in a glass, not a paper cup. Wealth assumes you’ll stay hydrated in style while discussing the end of your marriage.
I don’t want to be here. I made the appointment three days ago because Amy said, “You need to know your options,” in the same tone she uses when she tells Dad to back up his manuscript, and Amy is right often enough that I’ve learned to listen even when I don’t want to.
The attorney, Rebecca Wen, is thorough and unhurried. She’s reviewed the prenup. I had independent counsel before the wedding, I remind her, and she nods. She’s already read it and knows this.
“Maryland is an equitable distribution state,” she says.
“The prenup protects his premarital assets and provides you with specified support. Custody would be decided according to the child’s best interests once the baby is born.
Shared parenting is common, but the court considers the full circumstances.
You’re in a strong position, Mrs. Drake. ”
I listen and take notes. I ask about asset classification, the house, and whether the prenup’s support provisions activate at separation or at filing. Rebecca answers each one clearly. I organize the information into mental categories.
I don’t file. Instead, I leave the office knowing exactly where I stand legally and having no idea where I stand emotionally. I love Evan, a fact underneath everything else, one I know without thinking about it.
Loving him after what he did isn’t enough to rebuild a marriage on though. I love him, and I don’t know whether I can trust him again. Rebecca can’t answer that question for me.
THE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL Gala is at the Willard. Glynnis meets me at the entrance in a navy dress and the expression she wears when she’s decided the evening will go well regardless of anyone’s input.
“You look beautiful,” she says, and links her arm through mine before we enter. Several people notice. That’s exactly why she does it.
We’re twenty minutes into the cocktail hour when a woman I barely recognize leans in. “Penelope, how are you holding up? After everything?” Her sympathy has a question hidden inside it.
“I’m wonderful,” I say. “The crab puffs are excellent. Have you tried them?”
She hasn’t, and she’s confused. I’m already moving toward Glynnis with a fresh glass. The separation has become a story in these circles. I don’t know what version they’re telling, and I don’t plan to find out by asking.
Megan is at the gala. She’s about four months along now, wearing a dress that drapes over her belly with the ease of money and good tailoring.
She finds me near the auction table and hugs me carefully, keeping the belly clear.
“I heard you moved to your dad’s. I didn’t want to call if you needed space. ”
“I needed space, but I’m glad you’re here.”
We talk about her nursery colors (sage green, which feels wrong to me, but I don’t tell her that because she’s happy), her due date, and if she’s registered anywhere she actually wants to register or just where her mother-in-law told her to.
She’s due in November. I’m due in January.
We don’t talk about Evan or my own pregnancy.
I haven’t told anyone outside of Dad, Amy, and Evan. Megan doesn’t push or even know.
I excuse myself to the bar for sparkling water and stand there for a moment watching the room.
These are Evan’s people. This is Evan’s world.
I’ve been moving through it for a year as his wife, attending the functions, smiling at the donors, and learning the names.
Without him beside me, I’m a woman at a party she was invited to by her mother-in-law, drinking sparkling water instead of champagne for reasons she hasn’t announced.
I could leave. Glynnis would understand, but I stay and accept another sparkling water from the bartender. This circuit became part of my life during the marriage. I’m not handing it back because Evan failed me.
I DRIVE TO DAD’S AFTER the gala. I find him at the kitchen table with his reading glasses on, a book open, and Oscar asleep on the manuscript pages. Dave is at his feet.
“How was the fundraiser?” he asks.
“I ate four crab puffs and made a woman very uncomfortable.”
“Excellent.” He closes the book. “I need your help with something. I’m working on a general who received intelligence reports from three separate sources telling him the enemy was weak on the left.
He ignored all three because they contradicted his assumptions, committed his reserves to the wrong position, and lost a battle he should have won. ”
He says nothing pointed, and he doesn’t look up. He just turns a page and waits for me to catch the parallel myself. My father has been teaching by indirection for forty years, and I’ve never once caught him at it in real time, which is the whole point.
“Dad.”
“I’m merely discussing military history. If you find a personal application, that’s between you and the material.”
I sit with him. We work on the chapter for an hour, and somewhere in the research, the knot between my shoulders loosens a little. Dad gives me a chair at his table and a military problem old enough to belong to someone else’s century.
THE ROOM BOX STARTS because Megan needs a gift and I need something to do with my hands that isn’t checking my phone for messages from Evan.
I’m at Dad’s kitchen table with a sheet of basswood, an X-Acto knife, and a printout of Victorian crown molding profiles Amy found at the Annapolis library.
Oscar is on the manuscript pile, and Dave is snoring on the couch.
Dad is writing. The house is quiet except for the scratch of Dad’s pen and the occasional thump of Oscar’s tail when he dreams about whatever small dogs dream about. It’s mailmen, probably.
“That profile is Georgian,” Dad says without looking up from his manuscript. “Megan’s nursery is meant to be 1870s.”
“How can you tell from across the room?”
“The dentil spacing. Georgian dentils are evenly spaced. Victorian dentils cluster at the corners.” He turns a page. “I didn’t teach military history for forty years without learning to read a room. Even a very small one.”
I pull the reference book closer. He’s right. The dentils are wrong. I start over with a new strip of basswood, carving the molding profile with the X-Acto knife while Dad returns to the Battle of Chickamauga.
The work requires patience, and fitting each piece into place keeps me from checking my phone every three minutes.
Dad provides the historical research with an enthusiasm that borders on alarming.
He pulls three reference books on Victorian interior design from the Naval Academy library and presents them to me with sticky notes marking the relevant pages.
My wallpaper pattern choices get corrected with professorial authority reminding me once failed a student for misidentifying a regimental flag.
“That pattern is 1890s, Penelope. Megan’s nursery is meant to be 1870s. Twenty years matters.”
“It’s a room box for a baby, Dad. The baby won’t know.”
“The baby won’t know. I’ll know. Amy will know. You’ll know. Do it correctly.”
Amy helps me source the miniature furniture online. We spend an evening on Dad’s couch comparing brass drawer pulls on a scale so small they’d fit on a thumbnail. Amy holds up two options, one with a rosette motif and one plain.
“The rosette is more period-accurate,” I say.
“The rosette is also four dollars more per pull, and you need twelve of them.”
“O’Hara Miniatures doesn’t cut corners on hardware.”
Amy stares at me. “O’Hara Miniatures doesn’t exist yet.”
“It might.”
Dad lowers his manuscript. He looks at me over his reading glasses with an expression I’ve seen before, the one he wore when I told him I’d been accepted to Georgetown Law. “O’Hara Miniatures,” he says. “That has a ring to it.”
I order the rosettes.
EVAN SENDS FLOWERS on a Friday. Irises, a huge arrangement, delivered to Dad’s door by a courier who looks like he’d rather be anywhere else.
Dad carries the vase to the kitchen. He fills it with water, arranges the stems, then sets it on the table next to my reference books and the half-finished room box. Mom’s old vase, the blue ceramic one that has been sitting empty on the windowsill for three years.
“Your mother liked irises,” he says, adjusting a stem.
“I know she did.”
“You don’t.”
“I don’t.” I look at the flowers. They’re expensive, with every stem perfect. It’s the arrangement Evan’s assistant would have ordered because he never orders flowers himself. Irises. They were my mother’s flower, not mine.
“What should I do with them?” I ask.
Dad considers the arrangement. He tilts one stem a degree to the left. “That is precisely the question Evan should have asked before sending them.”
I leave the flowers because Mom would have liked them and throwing away flowers feels wasteful even when they’re the wrong ones from the wrong person for the wrong reason.
They last four days. When they die, Dad replaces them with peonies from the garden, which are mine, and neither of us says anything about the swap.
I FINISH THE ROOM BOX on a Saturday afternoon.
The wallpaper is 1870s, the crown molding is clean, and the dentils are properly Victorian.
By the window, the miniature rocking chair has a cushion I sewed from a scrap of fabric that matches the drapes.
I photograph it on Dad’s kitchen table with natural light from Mom’s window.
I send the photos to Amy. Amy sends them to three friends.
One of them sends them to two more. Within an hour, my phone is buzzing with messages from women I know through the charity circuit, asking where I got it, if I sell them, and if I could make one for their nursery, their daughter’s room, or their collection.
I stare at my phone, then at the room box on the table. Dad watches me over his reading glasses, deciding whether to speak or let me arrive at it myself.
He decides. “If you’re going into business, you’re going to charge what it’s worth,” he says.