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“Good for you,” he said, then swallowed.
“You look great, by the way. Did I say that already?” He gestured towards her with one hand, then looked down at his computer screen.
“Yes, you did.” She pulled her own laptop out of her shoulder bag and set it on the table. “I suppose we should get started.”
“You know, we’ll still see plenty of each other,” he said, as though she hadn’t spoken. “We have two children together. I’m sure we’ll bump into each other at the holidays and for big events.”
“Maybe, although I doubt your fiancée will want to spend Christmases in the cottage with me on Coral Island.”
“You wouldn’t come to Melbourne?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why would I come to Melbourne for Christmas? We’re getting divorced, Pres. That’s what this whole thing is about, or did you forget?”
He sighed. “I didn’t forget. I thought you might be able to put that aside for the good of the family. But I suppose not.”
“The good of the family? Really?”
“Let’s not start,” he said.
“No, let’s. Because I’m still struggling to understand how you could do this to our family, Preston.”
“What’s gotten into you? You’re not usually this…”
“Feisty, strong-willed, determined?”
He shrugged.
“I know, I should’ve shown you this side of myself a lot more than I did over the years. But I thought if I was easygoing and gave you whatever you wanted, you’d appreciate and love me. It seems I was wrong.”
“I did appreciate and love you. I still do… I don’t know…”
She huffed. “You have a strange way of showing it.”
“Nothing’s turning out the way I’d hoped it would.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying, Preston.” She pushed her laptop shut. “How did you hope it would go when you asked for a divorce?”
“I thought we could be friends. That you would stay in Sydney, we’d still see each other, the kids would have you here with them. Now that you and Dani are so far away, who knows when I’ll get to spend time with either of you. Harry is the only one returning my calls. I miss you both. That’s all.”
“This is what you wanted, Pres. You wanted to tear our family apart, and you have.”
“It’s not what I wanted, but I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place,” he shouted, slamming one hand down on the table. He composed himself. “I’m sorry. You’re right—we should go through the list of assets and get everything resolved. That’s what you came here for.”
As they talked about furniture, knickknacks and investments, Bea couldn’t help wondering what her husband had meant when he said he was between a rock and a hard place. Was he feeling pressure from his new girlfriend to be more than he’d planned to her? He’d made it clear he wanted to be there for his son—perhaps that’d been his impetus for breaking up their family. But why break up a family to hold another one together? That made no sense to her.
Still, watching him sweat as he ran over line items on a spreadsheet he’d put together, she couldn’t help thinking that perhaps she was seeing him clearly for the first time in a long time — she’d overlooked his flaws for so long because she had no other choice if she wanted a smooth and conflict-free life. But now she didn’t have to worry about that. He was no longer a part of her life. Or at least, not a big part of it.
All the irritations and frustrations about his selfishness, his lack of consideration, the way he never appreciated her and the effort she put into being a good wife and mother all came crashing in on her.
With her attention firmly back on the spreadsheet, she did her best to understand what he was talking about. She held a finger up to each line item and processed what he was saying.
“Hold on,” she said, studying the line that showed their main bank account. “Are you telling me that after all these years of working, there’s only two thousand dollars in our bank account?”
“That’s right. We basically live month to month from this bank account. Anything extra, I’ve put into our stock portfolio.”
“But that only has twenty thousand dollars in it. And I know you’ve made well over a half million every year for the past ten years or so.”
“That’s right.”
