October 30th
Hollis
“Repeat after me.” Kat’s tone is as sharp as the lines of her angled bob and pressed black pantsuit as she pauses outside of the familiar conference room, her manicured fingers on the handle of the door. “I, Hollis Hartwell, will not walk out of this room again without being a free woman.”
I roll my eyes—this is the fourth litigation meeting where she’s tried this psychological pep talk. Yet here I am, still legally married to my bastard of a not-quite ex-husband after a year of these ridiculous meetings.
Nota free woman.
“Does this kind of bullshit mantra recitation ever work?” I ask, tugging at the collar of my pumpkin-covered sweater, perfectly on theme with the season and all the glorious festivities that await me if I survive the next hour. My stomach churns when I catch a glimpse of Ryan through the window of the door to the conference room, smugly relaxed as he talks to his attorney.
“It would if you repeat it,” Kat snips, not waiting for me to respond before jerking the door open and giving the room a cool, “Gentlemen.”
Reluctantly, I follow her; Ryan has the nerve to smile as I take the seat across from him.
It’s hard to believe once upon a time I thought that smile was charming, but it must be; we wouldn’t be in this room if it wasn’t.
I would venture a guess that married men without charming smiles can’t usually convince the nurses they work with to abandon their scrubs and bend over a vacant hospital bed otherwise. Easy on the eyes, says all the right things, and enough ambition to make any woman feel like they’ve been chosen. It’s this lethal combination which makes Doctor Ryan Hartwell who he is: an asshole wrapped up as something pretty. It’s not like I can blame them for falling for him. Twenty years ago, I did too.
“Let’s get to it, shall we?” Ryan’s attorney slides a paper across a table that probably costs as much as Kat does for two billable hours. It only takes a glance at the wordsyearly holiday rotation schedulebefore deciding I want to light everyone on fire and watch them burn.
“Is this a joke?” I ask through gritted teeth, glaring from the ridiculous document in front of me back to Ryan’s arrogant face. “You want to rotate holidays by the year?”
Kat puts her hand on my arm—like I don’t know I’m supposed to be playing it cool like she’s coached me. Like I didn’t hire her with all her sharp lines, bold shades of lipstick, and expensive pantsuits to take care of this. Like she believes I’m really going towalk out of here a free womanif this is the game he’s playing. I yank my arm away from her, blood boiling. To hell with playing it cool. To hell with him.
I didn’t want an ugly divorce. Despite my husband’s multiple affairs, I didn’t even know if I wanted a divorce—I thought wecould work through it. Thought I could forgive and forget, and he would be the same Ryan I married. But as much as I tried to force us back together for a year, there was no coming back from what he did.
The first five years of our marriage played out like a honeymoon on repeat. Ryan built his career as a doctor, I had a column for a local newspaper, and we used every vacation day we earned in the quietest nooks and crannies we could find. Together.
Then came the kids, and as much as I loved being a wife, I loved motherhood more. I embraced it all. The sleepless nights, the potty training, the hard transitions. It was as if being a mom was who I was always meant to be. I left my job at the newspaper to focus solely on the four perfect children we created and started a blog calledHome with Hollisto document every recipe, holiday tradition, and scary step of the motherhood journey. Women loved it—I loved it—so much so, a few years ago it led to a full-time opportunity at a magazine writing about those very same things.
Everything was perfect. I wrote us perfect. But now I know, perfection was the lie of the screen and keyboard.
Behind the scenes, I now see Ryan was drifting. His hours got longer and later, but I always chalked it up to doctor life. Being so busy with the kids, I never cared or worried. But the day I showed up at the hospital to surprise him with lunch and found his pants around his ankles and a nurse on her knees eating a little lunch of her own, there wasn’t enough bleach in the world to erase that image from my memories. After that, the truth came out about the others—nearly a dozen. A train wreck with cars that just kept piling up one on top of the other. There was no coming back from it.
After a year of trying to put us back together, we separated. Now here we are, paying an exorbitant amount of money fora year of litigation that has gotten us absolutely nowhere. Two years since we shattered, and it still seems impossible to escape the shards of him.
Ryan interlaces his hands behind his head, cradling it as he leans back easily in his chair. It squeaks with the movement. I wish it would collapse, reassemble as an evil robot, and impale him.
He says nothing.
“Ms. Hartwell,” his round-faced attorney says in his stead, four strands of his combover slicked to his forehead. Years of marriage only to have it end without Ryan even being the one to say the words.Pussy.“My client feels that with your terms of getting the house, more than he wanted to give of his retirement and savings?—”
“He’s made more money than me,” I snap, clenching my fists on the table. “I only went back to work full-time four years ago,Ryan. Half of the retirementwesaved isn’t outrageous.”
“Hollis,” Kat hisses.
“After I spent years taking care of our kidsandhim so he could build his career,” I argue. “Or did you forget that part, Ryan?” I cut my eyes to him. “Too busy screwing your way around the hospital to remember the wife at home washing the shit stains out of your underwear?”
“Hollis,” Kat snaps, more firm.
“No.” I keep my eyes glued to him. “Fuck you, Ryan. We’ve been rotating the holidays since we separated a year ago and you’ve never complained. What the hell do you want them for anyway? You’re always working.” With a flick of my wrist, I slide the ridiculous custody schedule across the too-big table toward them. “Over my dead body.”
I grind my teeth; Ryan looks smugly bored.
Asshole.
“Because of your financial terms,” his attorney continues, adjusting the wire-rimmed glasses on his nose before shuffling through papers, “Mr. Hartwell has adjusted his schedule and feels this arrangement of holidays—all spent with one parent for the entirety of the year—will allow more easily for plans to be executed. Traditions, vacations, etcetera.”
