Sydney takes both my hands in hers. Her skin is smooth andsupple and it makes me miss the hand cream she always kept in her purse. “Clover Rowan, you listen to me. You are the closest thing I have ever had to a daughter, and I refuse to let you struggle when I am so capable of helping you. I’m honestly ashamed for not thinking of becoming an anonymous benefactor or something sooner. Your mother refused any help from me when I let her go. She wouldn’t even agree to a severance package, and where did that get her? What moral high ground did she gain in denying herself that?”
She lets go of my hands to reach into her purse and places a card on the table. “This is my personal family attorney. She litigated my divorce from Bennett’s father. I have already been in touch with her and have told her to expect your phone call. I plan on covering all of your legal fees and will not settle for anything less than supplementing your expenses and anything else you require.”
Tears are swelling in my eyes and I blink rapidly in an attempt to stop them before they fall.
“Oh, Clover,” she says, anguish in her voice. “Promise me you’ll take what I’m offering you.”
“Okay,” I whisper. I know that divorcing Bennett will feel all wrong, but it will also give him the freedom to be with me without any sort of obligation. It will let him choose me. It will let us grow into a relationship and do this the right way.
Bennett returns with his mother’s gift. He’s quiet and almost uncertain as he watches her take the bag, but she’s always had that effect on him. Buying something for Sydney Graves is no simple task.
Sydney gushes over her gift, an antique glass fisherman’s buoy in rope netting. She has a small collection of them and we happened to see a cranberry-colored one in an antique shop window in downtown Wexley.
“You know,” she tells us as we walk out to our cars. “They would use gold to create this particular color, and it’s quite the rare find.”
She gives me a kiss on the cheek and then a rare hug to Bennett. His body is stiff, and with how affectionate he is with me, it’s easy to forget that he and Sydney have always been a little physically distant.
The moment we get in the car, I buckle my seat belt and sink into a light sleep.
Bennett is silent as we walk up to the dorm, and I make a mental note to pester him when we’re in bed to see what’s on his mind.
As soon as he unlocks our door I shuffle inside and kick off my heels before flopping down on the edge of the bed.
But Bennett remains quiet as he begins opening and closing drawers and haphazardly throwing clothes into his gym bag.
I laugh because I’m a little nervous and because he looks like a little boy planning his big runaway. “Going somewhere?”
“This whole thing was a mistake, right?” he asks.
“What?” I’m on my feet now, reaching for him, but he rolls his shoulder back before walking past me to the bed. He picks up the small clutch I took to dinner and rifles through it, tossing my lip gloss and a tampon on the bed.
“What are you doing?” I reach for the bag, but he holds it out of my reach like a fucking bully.
He huffs, his frustration with the size of the bag growing, and eventually just shakes it out. My debit card and IDs and the rest of the contents flutter to the bed below. And then finally the crisp ivory business card Sydney gave me not even an hour and a half ago.
He holds it up, practically waving it in my face. “This,” he says. “You’re letting my mother pay you off in exchange for divorcing me. Is that it? Is that how much you love me? I wonder what the exact price tag is on that, Clover? Have you done the calculations? I knowyou love your numbers. I heard you talking before I sat back down at the table.”
I yank the card out of his hand, and I immediately regret taking off my heels because I would love a few extra inches right now so that I could at least attempt to get in his face. “Sydney is not paying me off. What the hell are you on about?”
“A mistake,” he says. “Isn’t that what you called us?”
“I’m using you, Bennett!” I shout back at him, neighbors be damned. “Don’t you see that?”
“At first, yes. And I deserved that.” His hands are in his hair, tugging against the roots. “I still do, but you can’t tell me that’s all that this is now.”
“Of course it isn’t, but you have to know that we did this all wrong.” My voice loses its edge. “This is our chance to fix it. I’ll have my housing taken care of next semester, so we can get divorced after finals. That was always the plan.”
“Well, pardon me for thinking the plan changed when I tore my damn heart out and served it to you on a silver platter, Clo.”
“Everything between us can still be true,” I tell him. “We don’t need a marriage certificate for that.”
“What if I do?” His voice is desperate and on the verge of cracking, his cheeks ruddy and eyes wide.
“You don’t. Bennett, don’t you get it? If you divorce me, then we can take our time and get to know each other. You won’t be obligated to me like you are now.”
“I know you,” he says through gritted teeth. “I’ve known you and loved you all my life. I have taken my time for twenty years, but I amdoneliving without you, Clover. Do you know what happened after that night at the country club? I cut each of those so-called friends out of my life. One by one, I found their dirtiest, most vile secretsand I promised them that if they even so much as thought about you again, I would make their lives miserable. For the next two years, I went to school and I came home. And then I did it all over again the next day. I was a fucking hermit until Julian became my roommate last year.”
I’m glad to hear it. I’m glad to know that his life changed after that. Mine certainly did. But how does that make a difference right now? “What do you want me to say to that, Bennett? Thank you? I never asked you to punish yourself, and I refuse to stay in a marriage that you entered to nobly settle some sort of moral debt with me. My god,I used you. How many more times do I have to say it for you to understand? This marriage is built on a collapsing foundation.”
