Chapter 10
Andi
DIANE PRESCOTT’S OFFICE is on the second floor of a converted house on Grove Avenue.
The waiting room has two chairs, a stack of magazines from last year, and a framed print of the Virginia countryside that’s generic enough to belong in a dentist’s office.
I sit down and text Tessa that I’ll be back by two.
The receptionist calls me in at noon. Diane is in her fifties, with gray-streaked hair pulled back and reading glasses on a chain around her neck. Her desk is neat. Her handshake is firm. She has a legal pad, a pen, and a direct, unhurried manner. “Tell me what’s going on,” she says.
I tell her. Dating for a year, married for thirteen years, with two kids, twelve, and nine.
He’s a surgeon. I own a PR firm. He had an affair, emotional for six weeks, physical once.
He confessed voluntarily. He’s in the guest room.
I’ve separated our bank accounts. I want to know what a divorce looks like.
She writes while I talk. She doesn’t interrupt. When I finish, she reads back through her notes and asks three questions. “Is there a prenup?”
“No.”
“Are both names on the house?”
I nod. “Both names. It’s a joint mortgage.”
“What’s your income relative to his?”
“He makes roughly four times what I make. My business is growing, but it’s a boutique firm. Four employees.”
She writes this down. “And the affair. You said he confessed voluntarily?”
“Yes. He ended it before he told me.”
“Good. Virginia is a fault-state for divorce. Adultery is grounds. It can affect spousal support, in your favor, depending on the circumstances.” She flips to a clean page.
“Virginia is also an equitable distribution state. That doesn’t mean fifty-fifty.
It means fair, based on a range of factors, length of marriage, contributions to the marriage including non-monetary contributions, earning capacity, and the circumstances that led to the dissolution. ”
“What does that look like for us?”
“With a fourteen-year marriage, two minor children, and a significant income disparity? You’d be looking at shared custody unless there’s a fitness issue, which it doesn’t sound like there is.
The home would either be sold or one party would buy out the other’s equity.
Retirement accounts are divided as of the separation date.
Spousal support is possible given his income, but the duration depends on multiple factors. ”
I bite my lip. “He’s not a bad father. He’s absent.”
“Courts don’t penalize absence as harshly as they penalize harm. If he wants shared custody and can demonstrate involvement, he’ll likely get it.”
I knew this. I did the math at 2 a.m. weeks ago. Hearing it from an attorney makes it concrete, but not worse. Just settled.
“What about the business?” I ask.
“Monroe PR was started during the marriage, so it’s technically marital property.
That said, a sole-proprietor PR firm’s value is largely tied to your personal labor and client relationships.
Your attorney would argue limited transferable value.
He wouldn’t get half your company. He’d get a fair share of marital assets, which includes the home equity, retirement accounts, and a portion of business value as assessed. ”
I nod slowly. The numbers are manageable.
“Do you want to file?” she asks.
“Not yet.”
She doesn’t argue. “Okay.”
“I want the papers drawn up and ready. I’m not committing to filing yet...just to having the option.”
She nods. She’s obviously heard this before. I can’t be the first woman who doesn’t know what I want but needs the exit to be real before I can decide whether to use it.
“I’ll draft a petition and a proposed property division. You’ll have it by next week. Nothing gets filed until you say so.”
“Thank you.” I stand up. We shake hands. At the door, I stop.
“Is it common?” I ask. “For people to have papers drawn up and not file?”
Her expression remains neutral, offering no judgment. “More common than you’d think. Some people hold them for months. Some never file. Having the option makes things clearer even if you don’t use it.”
I nod, then exit the building, walk to the parking lot, and sit in my car.
The consultation lasted thirty-eight minutes.
In thirty-eight minutes, I learned exactly what my marriage is worth in legal terms, and the number is smaller than the life I built inside it.
The house has equity. The retirement accounts have balances.
Monroe PR has a value that can be assessed and divided.
None of those numbers contain the mornings I spent packing lunches, the nights I spent on the porch with Sadie, or the fourteen years of conversations that started as real connection before morphing to schedule coordination.
I go back to the office, work until the usual pick-up time, get the kids, and head home. At 3:30, Laurel calls. She’s been calling every few days for the past two weeks, and I’ve been letting it go to voicemail before sending back quick text: Busy with a client. Call you later.
I haven’t called her later. I haven’t called her at all, because Laurel is the person who will hear my voice and know something is wrong, and once she knows, I have to say it out loud to my sister. That makes it the kind of real that can’t be managed with bank transfers and attorney consultations.
I pick up.
“Oh, she lives.” Laurel’s voice is warm and annoyed in equal measure. “I was starting to think you’d changed your number.”
“Sorry. It’s been a lot.”
“You’ve been dodging me for two weeks, Andi. You don’t dodge. You manage, you organize, and you always return calls within the hour. You don’t dodge.” She waits. I can hear her shifting the phone to her other ear, settling in. “So what’s going on?”
I close the study door and sit in the desk chair. The room is small, lined with client files and the framed Richmond Times-Dispatch clipping from six years ago. Nobody framed it for me. I went to the frame shop myself. “Elliot had an affair.”
The silence on the line is absolute. Laurel doesn’t gasp. She doesn’t curse. The quiet stretches long enough that I check to make sure the call didn’t drop. It didn’t. She’s just processing.
Finally, she speaks. “What?” The warmth is gone from her voice. What’s left is the stripped-down version of my sister, the one who showed up at my apartment in 2009 when the college boyfriend forgot my birthday and sat on my couch with me, eating ice cream and making a list of his flaws. “Who?”
“A surgical fellow. Six weeks of lunches and texting. Physical once. He confessed almost three weeks ago. He’s in the guest room.”
“He slept with someone else.” She says each word separately, as though she’s confirming the information for a police report, not asking a question.
I close my eyes, finding it hard to confirm even after knowing all this time. “Yes.”
“A woman at the hospital?”
“Yes.”
I hear a chair scrape. She’s standing up. “I’m going to kill him.”
“Laurel.”
“I’m serious. I’m getting in my car right now. I’m driving to Richmond, and I’m going to walk into that guest room and kill him with my bare hands.” Her voice is climbing. “A jury will understand.”
I shake my head though she can’t see it. “You’re not driving to Richmond.”
“Give me one reason.”
I press my forehead against the heel of my hand. “Because I need you on the phone right now more than I need you in my driveway.”
That stops her. I hear her exhale, slowly regaining control, followed by the sound of her chair squeaking when she sits down again. When she speaks again, the fury is still there but banked behind something softer. “Are you okay?” The sister part has taken over. “Are you eating? Are you sleeping?”
“I’m eating. I’m sleeping enough.” I pick at a thread on the chair arm. “The kids are fine. They don’t know the details.”
“Hope knows something.” She speaks it with certainty.
I sigh. “She does but not details. She’s too perceptive sometimes.”
Laurel is quiet for a second. “What are you going to do?”
“I saw an attorney today. Diane Prescott, who specializes in family law.”
“Good.” The word comes fast and clipped. She’s relieved I’ve already moved. “What did she say?”
“She’s drafting papers. I’m not filing yet. I just need the option to be real.”
“Andi, file.” Her tone switches from gentle back to furious. “Take the house, the kids, and everything he has. He doesn’t deserve the air in that guest room.”
“Maybe.”
“Not maybe.” I can hear her pacing now, her footsteps crossing whatever room she’s in.
“He cheated on you. He cheated on the woman who put him through medical school. He cheated on the woman who built a company while he was in the OR pretending to be important. File the papers. Let him find out what his life looks like without you running it.”
She means every word. Laurel has been protective of me since we were kids, especially since I organized our parents’ divorce at fourteen.
She’s two years younger but has never forgiven anyone who hurt me, including Dad, the college boyfriend, and the landlord who tried to keep my security deposit in 2008.
Laurel holds grudges like I maintain schedules, with full commitment.
“I hear you,” I say.
“You’re not going to file.” It’s not a question. She knows me.
“I don’t know yet. I’m not ready to decide.”
The pacing stops. I can hear her wrestling with it, the gap between what she wants to say and what I need to hear.
“Okay,” she says. “I’m not going to pretend I think you should stay.
I think he’s a selfish, oblivious man who took the best woman he’ll ever meet and treated her like furniture.
I think you should take the house and the kids and let him eat hospital cafeteria food for the rest of his miserable life. ”
She pauses long enough that I can hear her breathing change. “I also think you’re the smartest person I know, and whatever you decide, I’ll be there. If you stay, I’ll be there. If you leave, I’ll help you pack.”