Chapter 1
Chapter One
The courtroom smelled of old paper and regret. A place where marriages went to die.
Harper Gleason sat stiff-backed in the front row, her hands neatly folded over the manila folder containing every attempt she had made to end a marriage that had dissolved years ago.
The clerk called the next case.
“Harper Gleason versus Everett Gleason.”
Her case.
The name hit like a flicked bruise. It sounded clinical. Transactional. Something to be filed and forgotten. She needed this stamped, signed, and shredded so she could stop looking over her shoulder for a man who wasn’t there.
She smoothed the front of her navy blouse and lifted her chin as she stood. Her fingernails dug into her palms until the pain sharpened her focus.
Today is the day I end this. For good. For real.
Three years of silence. The default judgment forms were already prepped in her folder, tabbed and highlighted.
She had calculated the odds. Everett avoided conflict like it was contagious.
He wouldn’t come. He would let the system grind them into dust while he stayed safe in whatever hole he had crawled into.
The bailiff opened the side door. And in walked Everett F. Gleason. The audacity was breathtaking.
She noticed the scar above his left eyebrow from when he tried to fix their broken ceiling fan and it fought back. The white line was still there. It wasn’t fair. Grief was supposed to hollow people out. He looked solid. Grounded.
She felt like a collection of frayed nerves held together by starch, spit, and spite. Her jaw locked, but her heart hammered against her ribs. Of course, he shows up today. The one day I’m finally ready to close the door.
Part of her wanted to run. Another part still remembered his hands in her hair and wanted to demand why now.
Everett stopped beside her at the respondent’s table and gave her a single, quiet nod.
“Harper.”
She gave him nothing in return.
If I open my mouth, what spills out? I waited for you. I hate that I still know the exact shade of your eyes.
Her wedding ring burned suddenly against her finger like a brand. With very little movement, she turned the ring until the diamond no longer showed on her ring finger.
The judge exhaled as if she had been holding her breath all morning. “All right, Mr. and Mrs. Gleason. We’re here to finalize your uncontested divorce.”
“Your Honor,” Everett said calmly, “I’m contesting it.”
The courtroom went dead silent.
This wasn’t in the script.
Everett didn’t fight. He retreated. That was his entire modus operandi. He didn’t get to change the rules of engagement, not now.
Harper’s head snapped toward him so fast her neck popped.
“Excuse me?”
Everett slid a paper across the table. “I’m requesting mediation before dissolution.”
Mediation? She’d asked him to go to a couples therapist at least a dozen times. Why now, after three years of hiding?
Her laugh came out sharp enough to cut glass. “You’ve avoided me for years, Everett. You disappeared. You left me chasing you like some deranged debt collector, and now you want mediation?”
“I know, I should’ve come back sooner.”
That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?
“Oh, should you have?” she shot back. “Well, I should’ve set your truck on fire, but here we are.” She swallowed what she really wanted to say.
The gallery snorted.
The judge banged her gavel.
“Enough. Both of you.”
Judge Malhotra pressed two fingers to her temple. “Mrs. Gleason, sit. Mr. Gleason, sit.”
She slowly sank into her seat, avoiding him as he had done to her for the last several years. If only she could forget the good days.
The judge flipped through the file: Harper’s objections, the numerous returned mail, the three-year paper trail of a marriage she tried every which way to lay to rest. Her expression tightened.
“Mr. Gleason, in twenty-three years on this bench, I’ve never seen a more unnecessarily difficult divorce.”
Harper wasn’t difficult. She was efficient.
He, on the other hand, was the wrench in the gears. But sitting here, watching him finally fight for something, even if it’s just the right to drag this out longer.
Harper realized her efficiency was just another form of the same avoidance. He ran. She organized.
“I’m sorry, Your Honor,” Everett said, quiet but steady. “I was overwhelmed. I admit I handled things badly.”
Harper snorted under her breath. “Like that’s new.
That’s just another of your excuses. You didn’t see fit to engage then.
Why now?” Badly didn’t cover it. But calling him and listening to his phone ring and ring and ring wasn’t handling things badly.
That was abandonment. Hearing him use such a mild, polite word for the nuclear winter he’d initiated made her teeth ache.
“Mrs. Gleason,” the judge said sharply, “I understand your frustration. Truly. But since your husband has contested the divorce, the court must address marital reconciliation requirements.”
Harper folded her arms and glared. “No. Absolutely not. I won’t waste my time on another round of couples therapy that you refuse to participate in.” They had tried talking. She had talked until her throat was raw, and he had sat there in that stone-faced silence.
“You won’t be attending counseling,” the judge interrupted. “You’ll be attending something far more structured.”
Harper’s body went cold.
“I am ordering both of you to attend a mandatory one-week reconciliation retreat.”
“A what?” The words didn’t compute. Retreats weren’t for sifting through the wreckage of a relationship. She didn’t have the energy for this.
Everett blinked. “A… retreat?”
“Yes. A highly structured, court-supported marital rehabilitation program. Seven days, no exceptions. At the end, the facilitators will submit a report addressing whether reconciliation or dissolution is recommended. Until then… no divorce. Mrs. Gleason, I understand your frustration. Believe me, this will be a beneficial exercise for both of you.”
Harper rose halfway from her seat. “Your Honor, this is completely unnecessary. He doesn’t want to reconcile. I don’t want to reconcile. End of story.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to reconcile,” Everett said.
“Don’t you dare!” She gnashed her teeth until the sound hurt her ears.
For one terrible heartbeat, something cracked open in her chest. If he actually wanted to fix things, he wouldn’t be doing it in a courtroom.
“You’re stalling, clinging to the status quo because, God help you, change requires effort.
” But that crack whispered something she couldn’t afford to hear: What if you’re wrong?
“Do not start,” she said tightly. “You left. You ran. And now you stroll in and decide you suddenly—”
“Mrs. Gleason,” the judge snapped, “this courtroom is not the place for emotional autopsies.”
Harper dropped back into her seat.
Judge Malhotra slid a packet across the bench. “Your retreat begins on Monday. You will complete every exercise, attend every session, and reside together in your assigned cabin. Failure to comply will result in sanctions you do not want me to enumerate.”
Harper snatched the packet before Everett could. Their fingers brushed. His hand retreated instantly.
Static flared up her arm.
“Seven days. Stuck in the woods with you.”
“It’s structured,” Everett said quietly. “Might help.”
“I don’t want help,” she said. “I want it over!”
His jaw ticked once. “Maybe I want something else.” His sober determination was more rattling than his silence ever was.
The silence that answered when I asked if there was someone else. The silence that meant ‘no’ to every question except the one I was too afraid to ask: Did you ever love me the way I loved you? The silence that filled our kitchen the morning after he left.
“Well, that doesn’t fit the narrative. If you wanted out, he should have signed the papers.
If you wanted back in, you should have shown up before the ink on the petition was dry.
You don’t get to judge my life after resigning from the position.
That isn’t how loyalty works, and it certainly wasn’t how I work.
For some stupid reason, I’ve been keeping you alive for years.
What happens when I have no reason left to think about you?
I’m there.” The thought made her stomach churn.
The gavel cracked.
The judge stood, and Harper caught something sad and weary in her expression, the look of someone who’d seen this dance before, maybe even lived it. “Good luck to you both. God knows you’ll need it.”
Once the judge retreated to her office, she gave her thoughts flight.
“You want to contest the divorce? Fine. You just bought yourself a comprehensive audit of your failures.” But even as she contemplated it, she noticed the way his shoulders had broadened, how he’d lost the softness around his jaw.
She hated that she was still cataloging the changes, still tracking him as if he mattered, when she never did.
Maybe I’m not just angry he left. Maybe I’m terrified he’ll confirm what I suspected all along: that it was easier to leave me than to love me.
Harper turned to face Everett, fury sharpening her voice. “You’ve avoided this for years. But you will not escape me for seven straight days.”
His eyes met hers, steady, unreadable. “I’m counting on it.”
He should be flinching, checking his watch, or searching for the nearest exit, doing anything other than standing there like a man who just won a prize rather than a sentencing hearing.
I’d prepared for evasion. I’d built my entire strategy around the cowardice that defined the end of our marriage.
But I didn’t factor in him actually wanting to be there.
Her breath hitched despite herself. Why does part of me want him to win this?
She set her jaw and mentally prepared to take him down. And for the first time in three years, the divorce she had fought for felt less like freedom and more like a cliff edge.