After the Divorce, Married to the Quiet Billionaire Next Door

I hung up the phone.

My hands didn't shake. My heart didn't race.

My mother heard me from the kitchen. She came out carrying a bowl of soup, stood in the doorway watching me for a long moment, opened her mouth and closed it again, and in the end said nothing. She set the soup on the table and turned back inside.

The next morning I got up early, dug out a clean sweater and put it on, and tied my hair back.

My mother insisted on coming with me. I wouldn't let her.

She said what if Ethan got physical, and I said he wouldn't dare, not outside the county courthouse.

When I got there, Ethan was already waiting.

He had on a jacket I'd bought him, his hair styled with gel, his shoes polished to a shine.

He saw me, looked me up and down, and his mouth turned down at the corner. “You're wearing that?”

I didn't answer. I just went in ahead of him.

The clerk asked how we wanted to divide the property.

Ethan pulled out his phone and started running the numbers. The house split fifty-fifty, the car to him, the savings divided evenly.

I asked him how much was in savings. He said eight thousand three hundred dollars.

I said that wasn't right. At the end of last year there'd been twelve thousand.

Ethan's face changed. “You're misremembering.”

“The bank statements don't misremember.”

The clerk glanced at him and told him to pull up the records. He dragged it out for a long while, fished out his phone and scrolled through it, and finally admitted he'd withdrawn a little over three thousand last year, claiming it was to fix up the house back home.

I didn't call him out. Where that three thousand had really gone, everyone knew perfectly well.

The child went to me. Child support was eighteen hundred dollars a month, calculated at the legal minimum.

Ethan tried to haggle even over that, asking if fifteen hundred would work, saying money was tight for him right now.

Even the clerk couldn't stomach it, telling him it was set by law and couldn't go below that figure.

He twisted his mouth and signed.

The whole thing took less than twenty minutes. The marriage certificate was traded for the divorce papers. Ethan stood up and left first, and at the door he turned back to look at me and said, “If you can't make it on your own, don't come crying to me.”

I told him not to worry.

Outside the courthouse doors, the sun was bright.

I stood on the steps and opened the divorce papers to look. In the photo my expression was calm, nothing like the day we'd taken the marriage photo five years ago, when the corners of my mouth had been turned up and the light in my eyes was something even a fool could see.

My phone rang.

It was Aunt Sherry.

“It's done?”

“It's done.”

“I'm free.”

“Good for you. I tracked down the address of that first love of Ethan's. He transferred her a good amount of money, and I got someone to pull the transfer records. There's also that house in his hometown under his name. He bought it before the marriage, but the mortgage was paid down with your joint assets after, so you can claim a share of that.”

I said I didn't want his money.

Aunt Sherry got worked up. “Are you out of your mind? Even if you don't want it, what about the child? What's eighteen hundred a month from that Whitney man good for? Two cans of formula and it's gone.”

I stood under the sun, the wind blowing past me, my eyes dry. I said I understood.

After hanging up, I dialed another number.

It rang twice on the other end before he picked up, his voice low and a little rough. “Miss Fox.”

“Mr. Henson, are you free today?”

“I am. Where are you? I'll come get you.”

I gave him the address.

He said he'd be there in fifteen minutes.

It was only after I hung up that I remembered my mother had said he didn't talk much. He certainly hadn't wasted any time answering, though.

The car arrived, a black SUV, scrubbed spotless. The window rolled down to reveal a face: a square jaw, eyes that weren't large but sharp and alert.

He had on a dark blue jacket, the collar neat and squared.

He got out to open my door, not looking at me much, not smiling either. Only once I was settled did he speak. “Have you had breakfast?”