Chapter 11 Darcy
I had been thinking about my first appointment with Judith Parnell.
Her office had turned out to be nothing like I'd imagined, no dark wood or intimidating diplomas, just a bright, plain suite above a bookstore with a view of the trees along Grace Street.
Judith herself was tall and unhurried, closer to Maxine's directness than to the sharp-edged divorce attorney I'd built in my head from movies, and our first meeting the week before had mostly consisted of her asking careful, specific questions and taking neat notes on the details she needed to check.
She hadn't told me what to want. She'd told me what my options were, laid out plainly, no pressure attached to any of them, and sent me home with a folder of paperwork I hadn't yet found the nerve to open all the way.
I remembered sitting in my car outside Judith's building for a few minutes after that first meeting, watching people move along Grace Street, ordinary lives proceeding around me while mine sat suspended somewhere between the marriage I'd had and whatever came next.
I called Maxine from the car, mostly just to hear a familiar voice, and told her the meeting had gone fine, better than fine, that Judith seemed like someone I could actually trust to walk me through this without an agenda of her own.
"Good," Maxine said. "You deserve someone in your corner who isn't also trying to fix your marriage while they're at it. "
The following Wednesday, with Judith's folder beside me at Maxine's kitchen table, I finally started the financial forms. I had reached the section on joint accounts when Claudette called about lunch.
"I think it's time we cleared the air," she said, in the bright, managing voice she used when she'd already decided how a conversation was going to go. "Just the two of us. No Tyler, no Felicity. I'd like the chance to talk to you directly."
Some part of me knew better than to expect anything real from an invitation phrased that way.
But another part of me, the part that had spent twelve years wanting exactly one honest conversation with this woman, said yes before I could talk myself out of it.
I wanted the chance to say my own piece directly to her, without Tyler in the room translating or softening it on my behalf. If nothing else, I owed myself that.
We met at the same restaurant as the planning lunch weeks earlier, the white tablecloths and the wine list longer than the menu, and Claudette was already seated when I arrived, a pot of tea between us instead of coffee, which felt, somehow, like its own small strategy, an attempt to set the tone toward something calmer than either of us felt.
"You look well," she said, by way of greeting, in a tone that suggested she'd expected otherwise. "I was worried about you, you know. Leaving like that."
"I'm fine, Claudette."
"Good. I'm glad." She poured tea for both of us without asking, an old habit of hers I'd once mistaken for warmth.
"I want you to know, I've thought a great deal about what happened at the gala.
I think you took my comment about Felicity far more seriously than it was meant.
It was a joke, Darcy. An old woman being sentimental about a family friend after too much champagne.
I certainly never meant to embarrass you. "
"You called her the daughter you should have had, in front of two hundred people, at your husband's birthday party for our family.
" I kept my voice level, the way I'd practiced in the car on the way over, though nothing about saying it out loud felt as controlled as the practice had.
"That's not a joke I misread, Claudette.
That's a sentence with a very clear meaning, and everyone in that room understood it exactly the way I did. "
"You're being dramatic. Tyler was terribly embarrassed by how you handled it, you know.
Walking out like that, in the middle of his father's celebration.
" Claudette set her teacup down with a small, precise click.
"I understand you were hurt, but there are ways to handle these things with more grace. "
"I want to tell you two things, and then I'm not going to argue with you about whether I'm allowed to feel the way I feel.
" I'd promised myself this part in the car, and I held onto it now, watching Claudette's expression shift into something more alert, more prepared for combat than she'd been a moment before.
"Three years ago, at Joanna's engagement party, you introduced me to your cousin as 'Tyler's wife, she handles the logistics,' after introducing every other person at that table by their actual name and profession.
I stood there and smiled because that's what I'd learned to do.
And two years ago, at the spring gala, you corrected my seating chart in front of the catering staff, loudly enough that three vendors heard you imply I didn't know how to do my own job, work you have never once thanked me for doing, for free, for over a decade. "
"You're bringing up ancient history because you're angry about one comment at a party.
" Claudette's hand tightened slightly around her teacup, the first real crack in her composure.
"I've always treated you like family, Darcy.
I don't know what you think you're accomplishing by rewriting years of warmth into some kind of campaign against you. "
"I'm not rewriting anything. I lived it.
I remember exactly which vendors were standing there when you corrected my seating chart, and I remember exactly what your cousin's face did when you introduced me as the woman who handles the logistics.
I don't need you to validate my own memory for it to be real. "
"I don't remember either of those things happening quite the way you're describing them."
"I know you don't. That's rather the point.
" I folded my hands on the table, bracing myself against the part of me that wanted to soften what I was saying, the part that had spent twelve years managing this exact discomfort so the room could stay pleasant.
"I'm not here to convince you those moments happened the way I remember them.
I know what I experienced. I'm telling you so you understand that the gala wasn't one bad night.
It was the loudest example of something you've been doing since the day I married your son. "
Claudette's face did something complicated, offense and calculation moving across it almost simultaneously, and when she spoke again her voice had lost its warmth entirely.
"I think an apology is in order, Darcy. Not from me.
From you, for the scene you caused, and for the position you've put this family in with your absence.
Edmund's Foundation gala is in a few weeks and apparently no one can manage it without you throwing a tantrum about it first."
I sat with that for a moment, feeling something in me that had been braced for this exact demand finally settle into certainty rather than hurt.
"I'm not going to apologize for leaving a room where I was humiliated.
And I'm not managing the Foundation gala, this year or any year going forward, whether I'm still married to your son or not. "
"Then I don't see what this lunch has accomplished."
"It's accomplished exactly what I wanted it to.
" I stood, reaching for my purse, and looked down at her for a moment, feeling calmer than I'd expected to feel saying any of this.
"I said what I came to say. You don't have to agree with it.
I just needed you to hear it from me directly, once, instead of through Tyler. "
Claudette called after me once, my name sharp in the quiet of the dining room, and I heard a few nearby tables go slightly still, the particular hush of strangers pretending not to listen to someone else's family unravel in public.
I didn't turn around. Some old version of myself would have, would have smoothed it over for the sake of the room the way I'd smoothed over a hundred smaller moments before this one, but I kept walking, and I kept my attention on the door until I had reached it.
Outside, I took my phone out of my purse and checked the time. I had left an hour free afterward because I'd expected to need it. For once, I didn't want to sit in my car rehearsing a better answer. I had said what I came to say. Now there were practical questions I wanted to deal with.
I called Judith's office from the parking lot and asked whether she had time for a question about the financial forms. Her assistant offered a brief appointment between clients.
I drove over, waited until Judith was available, and told her why I wanted to finish the paperwork.
Claudette's lunch had left me certain I needed arrangements that didn't depend on keeping her happy.
"Which part is holding you up?" Judith asked, opening my folder to the financial section. She pulled a blank sheet toward her so we could make a list.
"I don't know which statements I'm supposed to request myself," I said. "Some accounts are joint. Others belong to Tyler or the company. I don't want to put the wrong thing down or leave something out because I've never handled it."
"Start with the accounts you can access," Judith said.
"We'll identify the other information we need and request it through the appropriate channels.
If you don't know an answer, mark it for discussion.
Please don't guess." She wrote three items on the sheet and turned it toward me. "These are enough to begin with."
"I can do those today." I read the list again. Downloading statements was a task I understood. I could work through an account at a time without having to decide what the rest of my marriage would become.
"And we can discuss the next section after that," Judith said. "You mentioned housing costs in your email. Have you had a chance to read the proposed temporary arrangements? There's a question about the insurance I wanted to go through with you before you sign anything."
"Some of it." I admitted it without embarrassment, because there was no reason to pretend otherwise with her. "It's a lot to take in. I keep starting the financial disclosure section and putting it down again."
"Let's deal with the immediate questions first," she said.
She marked the insurance paragraph and explained which information she still needed.
"Keep a copy of anything you send. If you receive a document you don't understand, forward it to me before responding.
You don't have to work it out on your own. "
"I'll remember that." I meant it, sitting with the weight of it a moment longer than the rest of what she'd said.
"My assistant will send you the list as well," Judith said. "Call if you get stuck. We'll schedule enough time for the rest once you've gathered the statements."
I thanked her and drove back to Maxine's with the folder zipped inside my bag. At the kitchen table I downloaded the first statement and saved a copy, then checked the account number against Judith's list. The paperwork would take longer than an afternoon, but I had somewhere to begin.
I told Tyler that evening, calling him instead of waiting for him to call me, laying out the lunch plainly, without asking him to referee it or fix it or apologize on his mother's behalf.
"I'm not asking you to do anything about this," I said, before he could offer. "I just think you should know it happened, since it's your family."
"I'm not going to make you sit through something like that again.
" His voice had a firmness in it I hadn't heard from him in longer than I could easily place, no hedging, no reflexive defense of Claudette woven into the sentence.
"You don't have to see her, Darcy. Not for the gala, not for anything, unless you decide you want to. I mean that."
"Thank you," I said, and meant it, even though some small, tired part of me noted that it had taken twelve years and a wrecked marriage to hear him say something that simple.