My Husband Replaced Me, My Lawyer Claimed Me.

Too late to talk

(Lena)

I stayed at the coffee shop until almost six.

By the time I packed up my laptop and walked to my car the sky had gone from blue to grey and the streets were filling up with end of day traffic. I sat in it without frustration. I was in no rush to get back to the house and whatever version of Brad was waiting there for me.

He had sent four messages and left one voicemail since my call. I had not read or listened to any of them. There was nothing in those messages that was going to change anything and I was done spending energy on conversations that went nowhere.

I pulled into the driveway a little after six thirty.

Brad's car was there. I sat in mine for a moment and then got out.

He was in the living room when I walked in. Not on the couch, not watching television. Standing near the window like he had been waiting and didn't want me to know how long. He had changed out of his work clothes and there was a glass of water on the table beside him that looked like it had been sitting there for a while.

"I've been waiting," he said.

"I know." I set my bag down near the door and took off my jacket. "I had work to finish."

"We need to talk, Lena."

"Brad." I looked at him. "I told you this morning. Everything goes through the lawyers now."

"Just listen to me for five minutes. That's all I'm asking."

I didn't sit down. I stayed near the door because I didn't want to settle into this conversation like it was one worth having. "Five minutes."

He moved away from the window and came a little closer. His voice was the calm version, the one he had tried on the phone earlier before I dropped Cole's name and the calm fell apart. He had put it back together since then.

"I've been thinking," he said. "About all of it. And I think we went from zero to everything very fast. You called a lawyer the same day I came home. You didn't give us any time to figure this out between us."

"There was nothing to figure out," I said. "You came home with another woman and told me to take care of her."

"I know how it looked."

"It looked exactly like what it was."

He put his hands up slightly, not a surrender, more like he was asking me to slow down. "I'm not here to argue about what happened. I'm here because I think we can handle this without it turning into a court case. I've been talking to some people today and I think if we sit down together, without lawyers, we can come to something fair."

I watched him. He was choosing every word carefully and I could see the effort in it. "What does fair look like to you, Brad?"

"The house," he said. "I'll let it go. You can have it. We split the remaining mortgage and whatever equity is there we divide it evenly and we walk away. No court, no lawyers, no dragging this out for months."

I looked at him for a long moment. He thought he was offering me something. He thought the house was a gift he was giving me that I should be grateful enough for to drop Cole Harmon and shake hands and close the door on everything that had happened.

"Evenly," I said.

"Yes."

"I paid sixty percent of the mortgage every month for six years. I designed the house. I managed the build. You want to split it evenly."

"Lena."

"And you want me to drop my lawyer to do it."

He didn't answer that directly. He just looked at me with the careful face still in place.

"That's what this is," I said. "You want Cole Harmon out of this. That's the whole point of this conversation."

"I want to handle this privately. Between us. The way two people who spent six years together should be able to."

"Two people who spent six years together," I said. "Right. The same two people where one of them was building a whole other situation on the side for who knows how long. Those two people."

"I'm not going to keep apologizing for what I did."

"I haven't asked you to apologize once," I said. "Not once. I'm not interested in your apologies. I'm interested in what I'm owed and my lawyer is handling that."

His calm started moving. I could see it the way you see weather changing. Something behind his eyes shifted and the careful version of him began making room for the other one.

"You're going to regret this," he said. "Going up against me in court over a house. Spending money on a lawyer when we could have sorted this between us in a week."

"It's my money to spend."

"Cole Harmon is not taking your case out of the goodness of his heart, Lena. Men like that don't do anything without a reason. You don't know what you're walking into."

"That's the second time you've said that to me today," I said. "You said it on the phone too. And I'll tell you the same thing I said then. I think I do know."

He stepped closer. Not threateningly. Just closer than I wanted him to be. "You think because you've got some big name behind you now that changes things. It doesn't. That house has my name on it. Half of everything in this marriage has my name on it and no lawyer changes that."

"Then let the court sort it out," I said. "That's exactly what it's there for."

He opened his mouth to say something else.

Footsteps came from the hallway.

Jade came into the living room in a loose top and shorts, her round belly visible, one hand resting on it. She stopped when she saw us both standing there. She looked at Brad and then at me and then at the floor.

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't know you were home."

I picked up my bag from near the door.

"Lena." Brad's voice came from behind me.

I walked past Jade without stopping and went upstairs. I went into the bedroom and closed the door behind me and stood in the middle of the room for a moment.

Downstairs I could hear Brad's voice and then Jade's, lower, back and forth for a minute and then quiet.

I sat on the bed and opened my laptop and pulled up the email from Cole's assistant with the document list. I had already started pulling files together at the coffee shop. I opened the folder on my laptop and kept going.

Brad thought this evening was going to end differently. He had prepared that speech, stood by that window, waited for me to walk in the door so he could offer me a version of fair that worked out best for him and worst for me. He thought the mention of the house would be enough to make me reconsider.

He had never understood that it was never just about the house.

It was about the six years. The trying and the failing and the grief of it. The way he had stood next to me in that doctor's office and held my hand and looked me in the eye. The way he had taken all of that and used it as a reason to go find something else.

The house was just the part I could prove in court.

I kept working until almost midnight. By the time I closed the laptop I had put together most of what Cole's assistant had asked for. I would finish the rest in the morning.

I lay back on the bed and looked at the ceiling.

Brad wanted Cole Harmon out of this. That told me more than anything else he had said this evening. He was not afraid of me. He was afraid of who was standing behind me.

That was fine.

I could work with that.