I walked into the courthouse alone. Greg had gone over to Jack’s condo yesterday when I went to see the girls for brunch. He ended up spending the night because him and the guys had gotten shit-faced drunk and he didn’t want to take an Uber home.
To say I was upset would be an understatement, especially since he never answered my texts about meeting me at the courthouse. So here I was, sitting alone, waiting to meet with Judge Baker. I was wearing another dress Greg had bought, but this one was a little more sophisticated. It came down to my knees and was wrapped around me tight. It was sleeveless, with a high neckline that had a collar wrapped around my neck. I felt like I should be the one running the courtroom here while wearing this dress, and not Judge Baker.
“She’ll see you now.” The receptionist came out of the chambers and held the door open for me. I entered and saw both Judge Baker and Tessa sitting behind the desk and only one chair stationed in front of them.
“Lilly,” Tessa stood to greet me. “Please, take a seat.”
I sat down slowly, trying to read the expression on both of these women’s faces.
“I’m sorry, Greg’s not here. He won’t answer my texts.” I pulled out my phone to show them but Tessa waved me off.
“It’s no problem.”
I sat there looking between them, trying to figure out what was going on. Judge Baker was sitting in her chair behind the desk, but Tessa was standing next to her with a hand resting on the back of her chair.
Tessa spoke up first. “I’ll have to say, this isn’t the outcome I thought was going to happen.”
“But this is what was decided on,” Judge Baker added as she reached for Tessa’s hand that was on the back of her chair. The way the judge circled her thumb on Tessa’s made me miss when Greg would do the same to me. I tried to focus more on what was being said but felt confused by what I was seeing.
“I’m conf—”
“Alice figured it would be easier to keep track of both you and Greg if I was the one who counseled you.” Tessa finished my unformulated question. “When she called me this morning to tell me I needed to come down here, I knew something was wrong.”
“Ok…” I still had no idea why both women looked somber.
When Judge Baker grabbed for the paper sitting beside her, my heart stopped.
“Greg came in to see me this morning. He asked for an early meeting before you were scheduled to come in.” The judge slid the papers towards me. “Greg signed the papers to file for divorce.”
It was with those last words that the world dropped out from under me. I grabbed for the papers and there it was, his signature on the dotted line on each page that needed to be signed. There were ten pages total. Ten times that Greg said in his head that he wanted to divorce me. He hadtenchances, and not once did it look like his signature wavered.
I looked up from the papers to see Tessa holding out a pen to me and the pain that was in my heart was in her eyes. She knew it too. She had felt the shift within me, which was why she hadn’t seen this coming. I don’t think any one of us had thought Greg would be the one to sign this document first, but he had. He had sealed our fate, and I was about to do the same.
I snatched the pen from her hand and signed.
First page a tear dripped onto the paper.
Second, I dug my pen in.
Third, fourth, and fifth pages, the hurt turned to numbness.
Sixth and seventh it turned to anger.
Eighth, I had not a tear left in me.
Ninth, I was already plotting a way to get back at him.
And by the tenth page, I knew the best kind of retaliation against Greg.
