“I’m not sure.” Hugo looked away.
“You went all the way to that health-food store on the mainland, didn’t you?”
“I was going anyway,” Hugh muttered.
“Sorry, what’d I miss?” Marigold asked.
“This young man drove almost a hundred miles round trip so we’d have coconut milk for you.”
“Wait, what?” Marigold didn’t remember Hugo taking a trip to the mainland during her stay on the island.
“Bob, do you mind printing the forms for us? Marigold will email them to you.”
When they reached Bob’s miniscule but tidy office on the second floor, he wrote an email address on a Post-it and handed it to Marigold. “Printer up here’s out of ink, so I’ll run downstairs for it.”
As he left, Marigold forwarded the forms, then turned to Hugo. “What was he talking about? With the coconut milk?”
“It’s stupid.”
“Come on, tell me!”
“Fine.” Hugo sighed. “When you left, I was sure you’d be back, that you’d just gotten freaked out and needed time to clear your head. And I wanted…” Hugo shook his head ruefully. “I wanted everything to be perfect for you when you returned, so you’d know you’d made the right decision. I kept the house clean… bought coconut milk for the café to have on hand… pretty mortifying to think about now.”
“That was really sweet,” Marigold said quietly.
“I thinknaïvewould be a better word. Or maybedeluded.”
They sat in silence until Bob returned with the papers, and for a man who’d had no qualms about shouting about Hugo’shealth concerns a few minutes earlier, he was surprisingly discreet when it came to passing them each a copy of the divorce forms. Perhaps Bob the notary was more professional than Bob the barista. He motioned for Hugo and Marigold to sit at the tiny table, asked to see both of their IDs, then handed each of them a pen and took a few respectful steps back.
As Marigold examined the signature line Bob had flagged with a sticky note, her hand felt suddenly heavy, as if she were holding a dumbbell instead of a pen. Her whirlwind engagement and marriage to Hugo had been the most exhilarating, romantic moment of her life. And now it was ending in the office of a coffee shop called Mocha-Latte-Tude. Of course, it’d been over for years—these papers were just a formality at this point. But was there a reason she’d never signed the original documents? Was it really just her usual flakiness? Wouldn’t her therapist ask her to dig a bit deeper? And why did it feel so hard now?
Because you’re saying goodbye to the old Marigold, the one who went on adventures and made terrible choices.Marrying Jonathan was the right decision—the adult decision. Signing these papers meant she was finally growing up.
When she looked up, Hugo had already handed his documents to Bob. Apparently, he hadn’t hesitated before getting down to business. Marigold scribbled her signature and did the same.
Bob stamped the papers, scanned them, and then emailed copies to both Marigold and Hugo. Then Marigold forwarded the scans to her lawyers and the town clerk. It was done. They were officially divorced.
As they followed Bob downstairs to pay (he needed to ring them up in the café), Marigold thanked Hugo for all his help,then added, “I hate to ask one more favor, but can you drive me to the airport? Unless there’s Uber on the island now?” Before Hugo could answer, her phone rang. It was her mother.
“Hi, Mom!” Marigold said with forced cheer. “Yep… I’m heading to the airport now. No, traffic’s not too bad… No, don’t order a helicopter, an Uber is fine… Okay, see you soon, love you.”
“Traffic? Helicopter?” Hugo said incredulously. “Where does she think you are?”
“New York,” Marigold said in a small voice.
“Christ, Mare,” Hugo said, laughing for the first time since she’d arrived. “I guess some things never change.”
Something in her chest twinged at the sound of her nickname. Only her family and Natalie called her Mare. Jonathan had tried for a bit, but it’d never sounded natural, and he’d quickly reverted to Marigold. (“Sorry,” he’d said sheepishly. “I just keep imagining a horse when I say it. AndMarigoldis such a beautiful name.”)
“I didn’t want to freak anyone out! So do you mind driving me to the airport? I don’t want to miss my flight.” She’d called in a huge favor to take a private jet up here, but there was no way she could play that card again.
“Yeah, no problem,” he said without hesitating.
“Do you… do you need to let anyone know that you’ll be home late?”
“Humphrey doesn’t have his own phone yet. Maybe when he turns seven.”
Marigold blushed. “You know what I mean.”
