The woman who looked at me during our divorce proceedings and said, with perfect calm, that I'd never actually loved her. That I'd loved what she represented—the perfect wife, the perfect family, the perfect life that complemented my perfect success.
She wasn't entirely wrong.
But she also wasn't entirely right, and that's what makes it worse.
Because I did love her, in my way. Or I thought I did. But somewhere along the line, our marriage became just another transaction. I provided wealth and status; she provided elegance and social connections. We negotiated our lives like a business partnership, and when the partnership dissolved, we divided theassets with the same cold efficiency we'd brought to everything else.
Everything except Samantha.
My daughter is the one thing we couldn't negotiate cleanly.
My phone buzzes again, and I glance at the screen, expecting another congratulations.
It's not.
Samantha:Mom says you're trying to reduce her alimony again. Real classy, Dad.
I close my eyes and count to five. Then ten.
Victoria is well-provided for. Absurdly so. The settlement was generous to the point of financial idiocy, and she knows it. But she also knows that taking these complaints to Samantha will get under my skin in a way that directly confronting me never could.
I should ignore it.
But I can't seem to stop myself from typing a response.
Me:That's between your mother and our attorneys. But for the record, I haven't touched her settlement, and I won't.
The three dots appear immediately. Disappear. Appear again.
Samantha:Whatever. I'm staying with mom this weekend.
Like she stays there every weekend. Like she's stayed there every weekend since the divorce, because being with Victoria means expensive shopping trips and unlimited credit cards and no expectations beyond looking pretty.
Being with me means dinner at seven sharp and questions about her college applications and reminders that money doesn't buy character.
I'm the parent who says no. Victoria is the parent who says yes.
It's not a competition I can win.
Me:Okay. I love you.
She doesn't respond. She never does when I say something that doesn't give her ammunition.
I set the phone down and return to the window, that familiar hollowness returning. My daughter is eighteen years old, brilliant and so full of rage that sometimes I don't know how to talk to her. Every conversation is a minefield. Every attempt at connection gets thrown back in my face.
And the worst part is that I understand. I do. Because I'm the one who shattered her perfect family. I'm the one who filed for divorce, who ended the carefully constructed illusion that we were happy.
I thought honesty would be better. Thought that living an authentic life, even a difficult one, was better than perpetuating a lie.
But Samantha doesn't see it that way. She sees a father who destroyed her world because he was bored with his marriage. A man who has everything but can't seem to be satisfied with what he has.
Maybe she's not wrong.
I'm reaching for my coffee when my mind does what it's been doing for weeks.
It conjures Emma.
Not intentionally. Not because I'm trying to think about her. But because my brain seems determined to ambush me with memories at the most inconvenient moments. Her laugh. The way she pushed her hair back when she talked about her plans for her fragrance company. The fierce independence in her eyes when she talked about building it without her father's help.
