What an ass. “Was reminding me how right I was to divorce him.”
“Because ...” Once again, she reaches into the box and pulls out an envelope, this one in my handwriting, addressed to a Washington, DC address, Nash Fletcher written above it.
I rip it open. The papers look exactly like they did the day I sealed them up nearly eight years ago.
Sheer terror wraps around my neck like a hungry boa constrictor as she says, “I never sent the divorce papers.”
“Youwhat?” My whole body seizes as I fumble through the papers. At the line requiring Nash’s signature, it’s blank.
Oh, God.
“At first I was waiting for the right time to tell you, then you got engaged to what’s his name an?—”
“Oh, don’twhat’s his namethis, Mom. You know damn well it’s Jonathan.”
“I have a brain tumor,” she deadpans.
I could kill her. “Can you take one damn thing seriously?”
“You take everything seriously enough for both of us, what do you need me for?” She has the nerve to look annoyed. “Anyway, you seemed happy, and I didn’t know how to tell you, so ...”
“So?” I demand, shaking—physically shaking—as the room spins then shrinks.
All this time I thought Nash got the papers—which I gave to my mother to mail. I thought he signed then sent them to his attorney who then filed. I thought our divorce was final. A closed book. History. I’d never been divorced, and with a new baby, I figured his silence meant it was taken care of. You don’t get an official birth certificate unless you apply for one at the courthouse. I assumed divorce records would be the same.
I didn’t need evidence of it, I wanted to pretend it never happened. So much so I’d burned every photo I had of us. Our divorce made him dead. Bennie would never be able to pick him out of a lineup.
“I liked him, Rue,” Mom says. “But you loved him.” My attempt to argue comes out like a death rattle. “Really loved him.”
“I love Jonathan,” I cry.
She scoffs. “You do not. Not the way you loved him.” She drills a finger into the stack of postcards. “Youwere besotted.”
“I wasnotbesotted.” Briefly, I think of Bennie asking me if I loved Jonathan the way I loved Nash. “And who cares if I was? Who cares if I love Jonathan differently? Maybe it’s a good thing not every love makes you so overwhelmed with the other person it makes you crazy. I don’t want to be crazy. Crazy made me love someone I couldn’t keep.” When I think I’m finished, I shout, “And you make me crazy enough!”
“I know you didn’t think he was what was best for?—”
“What wasbest?” I need to be put in a straitjacket. “He was a traveling substitute history teacher.” Just saying that ridiculous profession out loud still shocks me that I was with such a person. “At Fontain Academy. For the summer. Living in a hotel. Who didn’t want to stay here.” I’m angry just reciting that list. “And Iwas pregnant.” She opens her mouth, causing my voice to shout my final point: “And he didn’t want kids!”
“But you married him.” She says it like that makes up for his complete lack of regard for responsibility. Like it was a real marriage and not one that started and ended so quickly, I never changed my last name. Like the ink wasn’t barely dry on the marriage certificate before I had the divorce papers drawn up.
“That was a lapse in judgment.”
Because it was.
Because I got swept up in him and that summer and made the mistake of marrying a man who was completely wrong for me. Who was beautiful, and fun, and made every decision in his life based on what he wanted in any given moment. As deep as my roots were in Fontain, his were shallow.
“I couldn’t watch you make the same mistakes I did,” she says.
I physically teeter. “You kept me married because you were vicariously living through me?”
“Because I knew exactly what you were doing because I did the same thing. Because I knew that you would never be as happy as you were.”
I let out a guttural groan.
“According to the latest postcard,” she says, ignoring my outburst. The evenness of her voice is at complete odds with the fury surging through me. “He’s also in Charleston. A tour guide or something.”
Of course he’s in Charleston—of course he is. It was on his list of cities to live in. Eastern Seaboard historical hotspots. I want to light my entire life on fire.
