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“Yes, of course.” Michael took out the papers and handed her a pen. “I’ll file these papers this afternoon. The divorce will be final in sixty days.”
“That soon?” Jordan asked.
“That long?” was his wife’s question.
Michael studied the couple sitting across from him. Over the years, in most of the divorces he’d seen, the couple hated each other by the time they filed the final papers. It was disconcerting to represent two people who continued to love each other.
* * *
Sitting beneath the weeping willow tree in her father’s yard seemed the thing to do after meeting with the attorney. Molly hadn’t anticipated the emotional toll the appointment would take. She was grateful her father was away for the afternoon, because she needed time alone to sort through her feelings.
She expected tears. None came. How could she weep for a marriage that had been dead all these years?
The spindly branches of the willow danced in the wind about her feet. With her back against the trunk, she stared at the meticulously kept gardens that had been her mother’s pride and joy. But her mother, like Jeffrey, like her marriage, was dead and forever gone.
In the week since Jordan had asked for the divorce, Molly had made discreet inquiries about Lesley Walker. Everything she learned about the other woman was positive. Lesley was a talented architect with a promising future. She was energetic and well-liked. Difficult though it was for Molly to stomach, Lesley was exactly the type of wife Jordan needed.
Admitting that produced a sharp pain, and the tears that had refused to come earlier now rolled down her face.
“I wondered if this was where I’d find you.” She heard her father’s voice behind her.
Molly hastily wiped the tears from her face. “I thought you were going to be away for the afternoon.”
“I was,” Ian Houghton said, awkwardly sitting down on the grass beside her. He looked out of place in his expensive suit. “But I thought you might be feeling a little blue after signing the final papers.”
“I’m fine.”
Ian handed her his crisp white handkerchief. “So I noticed.” He placed his arm around her shoulders. “You used to come here when you were a little girl. The gardener’s been telling me for years I should have this old tree cut down, but I could never do it.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Things aren’t as bleak as they seem, sweetheart. I know that from experience, from losing your mother. Someday you’ll look back on all this and the pain won’t be as deep.”
Her father had said something similar after Jeffrey died and she hadn’t found it to be true. The ache would never leave her.
“Would you rather Jordan had never been a part of your life?” Ian asked.
Her immediate instinct was to tell him yes, she wished she’d never met Jordan, never loved him, never given birth to his son. But it would’ve been a lie. Jordan was her first love, her only love, and how could she ever regret having had Jeffrey? It wasn’t in her to lie, even to herself.
She’d failed Jordan, Molly realized, and he’d failed her. They’d been equal partners in the destruction of their marriage. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that she should have pursued counseling, even if Jordanrefused. He’d believed, or claimed to believe, that talking about their loss would only perpetuate it.
And yet, he was the first one to recognize that their marriage was over. He was the first one to make a new life for himself.
“I remember when Jeffrey died,” her father said with some difficulty. She knew it was hard for him to talk about his only grandchild. “Grief leaves you feeling hopeless. It turns you hollow inside and makes you wonder about God.”
Molly was well acquainted with the toll grief demanded. “Whenever I’m hurting that badly, I ask myself why God doesn’t do something,” she said.
“He does, but we’re in too much pain to see it.”
Molly knew that, as well.
Now, nearly four years after losing their son, Jordan was moving ahead and she needed to take that first tentative step herself. “I’m going to find myself an apartment,” she announced.
“There’s no rush,” Ian told her.
“It’s time I got on with my life.”
“Like Jordan?”
