The Divorce Papers He Made Me Sign

The second call

He called again at ten that night. I almost did not answer. I am glad I did, because it is the reason I understood, later, exactly how frightened he was underneath all that swagger, though I did not know to call it fright yet.

“You get those papers signed?” No hello.

“Not yet.”

“Diane.” A hard edge. “Do not drag this out. Sign the papers, leave the key, be gone by the end of the week. I’m being generous giving you the week.”

“Generous,” I said.

“And one more thing.” He paused. He wanted me to feel the pause. He had always liked to load a moment before he dropped it. “Tammy’s expecting. We’re getting married next month. So there’s nothing here for you. There hasn’t been for a while. Do us both a favor.”

I closed my eyes. Twenty-two years. A boy at Purdue who has his father’s ears. A porch swing. Green shutters.

“Congratulations,” I said, and I meant it to cut, and it did, because he did not know what to do with a woman who would not scream.

“Just sign,” he said, and hung up.

I sat with the phone in my lap. And here is the thing I keep trying to explain to people who ask why I did not just fall apart. He was in a hurry. A week. Be gone by the end of the week. Sign now, no drama, do not drag it out. Ada had been gone two weeks. The will could not even be through probate yet. Why the rush? A man who has already won does not stand over you with a stopwatch. He gloats slow.

Something was wrong with his hurry. I could feel it the way I can feel a column that does not add up before I have found the bad number. I did not sign the papers. I went to bed in the half-empty house, and I slept, which surprised me, and in the morning I called a lawyer.

Roy Alderman’s office

Roy Alderman kept an office above the old bank building on Main Street, up a flight of stairs that smelled like a hundred years of pipe smoke and floor wax. He was near seventy, with reading glasses pushed up into white hair and a habit of listening so completely that you found yourself telling him more than you meant to.

Peggy drove me. She sat in the waiting room with her purse in her lap like a woman at a funeral.

I told Roy everything. The call in the meeting. The two hours. The photographs off the walls. The shoebox, which I had brought, and set on his desk. The steaks and the wine at the IGA. Tammy. The baby. The week I had to be gone. He listened to all of it without writing much down. When I finished, he took his glasses off his head and folded them and looked at me.

“Diane,” he said. “I only have one question for you right now. What was Ada’s full name? Her legal name.”

“Ada,” I said. “Ada Louise Merrick. Her maiden name was Petrey. Why?”

He turned to the computer, which looked comically new on that old oak desk, and he began typing. He pulled up the county probate records, which are public, anyone can look, though most people never think to. He read for a while in silence. His face did not change, which I would learn was Roy being very interested indeed.

“The will’s been filed,” he said. “Two weeks ago, like you’d expect, right after she passed. Executor is the bank trust department, not your husband, which is already interesting.” He clicked. He read. He was quiet for what felt like a long time. Then he sat back in his chair and looked at me over the desk, and for the first time a little light came up in his eyes.

“Diane,” he said. “I need to see that will in full. Not the summary. The whole instrument. And I believe I know a clerk who can have it for us by Thursday.” He tapped the desk once with two fingers. “Do not sign one single page your husband put in front of you. Not one. Do you understand me?”

“I understand you,” I said. I did not, not yet. But I understood the light in his eyes.