Chapter 2 - The Page Beneath My Hand

Grant's fingers stopped an inch from mine.

I kept my palm flat against the navy-blue folder. Across the table, Avery was standing beside her chair, her phone still open to the photograph of her father sitting with Tessa Langford and a man in a charcoal suit. Owen hadn't moved since his sister mentioned the house.

"What house?" I asked again.

Grant looked at our children before he answered. "It's a prospective investment. Nothing that concerns this conversation."

"Then why did someone ask whether I knew about it?"

"Because business associates ask questions." His voice had recovered some of its familiar authority. "Meredith, you're misunderstanding photographs taken by a teenager."

Avery's face changed. "I was there."

"You were across a restaurant," he said. "You couldn't possibly understand the context."

"I understood the question," she replied. "The man asked if Mom knew about the house. And you said you'd handle her."

Grant looked down. It was only a moment, but I had lived with him long enough to recognize the difference between irritation and being caught off guard.

Owen pushed his plate away. "Is he buying another house? Are we moving?"

"No," I said before Grant could answer. "Nobody is making you move tonight."

Grant held my gaze. "Can we discuss this without involving the children further?"

The request might have sounded reasonable if he hadn't insisted on involving them in the first place.

"Yes," I said. "We should have done that from the beginning."

I asked Avery and Owen to wait in the living room. Avery hesitated, unwilling to leave me alone with the folder, but I promised I would keep it. Owen followed her, walking with the careful silence of someone afraid the wrong movement might make matters worse. Once they were out of earshot, I opened the cover.

Grant made another small movement toward it. I looked up, and he withdrew his hand.

The first page was titled Proposed Marital Settlement. His attorney's name appeared beneath it. Several pages summarized bank accounts, retirement assets, the equity in our Charlotte home, and the furniture we had accumulated over twenty-one years. There were columns for estimated values and suggestions for who would retain what. Nothing was signed.

"You brought this to dinner," I said, "before you even asked whether I wanted a divorce."

"I was trying to make the transition orderly."

"You put the children at the table and expected me to agree with whatever you had already arranged."

"I never asked you to sign anything tonight."

That was true. It didn't make the folder less calculated.

I turned to the property schedule. It listed our primary residence, two vehicles, investment accounts, and retirement balances. Near the bottom was a statement that neither party held an undisclosed interest in other real estate or entities acquiring real estate. The wording was part of a draft representation for both spouses to make if they reached an agreement.

I read it twice.

"Does this include your investment?" I asked.

"If the investment happens, it will be accounted for."

"So it hasn't happened?"

"Not in the way you're implying."

"I'm asking whether you've signed a contract for a house."

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "There's a possibility of a purchase. It's complicated."

I thought of the thick envelope in Avery's photograph. The second navy-blue folder. The woman straightening his collar. "Is Tessa buying it with you?"

His answer was too careful. "Tessa is connected to the project."

"As a vendor?"

"Meredith, stop trying to turn an investment into an affair."

I hadn't mentioned an affair. Not directly. The word had come from him.

I closed the folder, though I left my hand on top of it. "I'm not signing an agreement. I'm not agreeing to your numbers. And neither child will be brought into another conversation about our assets."

"You can't make this ugly just because you're hurt."

"You've mistaken my questions for an attempt to punish you. They are questions about our money and our family."

For the first time, he had nothing immediate to say. Then he reached for his phone and announced he was staying elsewhere for the night. I didn't ask where. The person I would have asked that question of had disappeared somewhere between his prepared folder and our daughter's photograph.

After Grant left, I found Avery and Owen sitting at opposite ends of the sofa. Neither had turned on the television. Avery stood when she saw the folder still in my hands.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"For what?"

"I didn't mean for him to find out I took pictures. I just didn't know what to do when he started lying."

I set the folder on a shelf, beyond Owen's reach but where both children could see I hadn't given it back. "You haven't caused this," I told her. "And you don't have to prove anything else for me. You should never have been put in that position."

Owen studied the floor. "Does Dad still love us?"

I couldn't answer for Grant's feelings. I could tell my son what I knew. "Your father is responsible for explaining his decisions to you. My job is to make sure you are cared for, whatever happens between us."

He came closer, and I held him until his shoulders relaxed. Avery stayed nearby, holding her phone with both hands. I asked her not to delete the pictures, but I also told her she didn't need to show them to anyone else. An adult attorney could decide whether they mattered.

When the children finally went upstairs, I sat alone at the dining table. The roast chicken had gone cold. I photographed the unsigned settlement pages for my own records and put the original folder in the locked drawer where we kept passports and insurance policies. I wouldn't alter it, and I wouldn't pretend that a proposal was an agreement.

Then I opened our latest joint account statements.

One figure troubled me. The brokerage account in the proposed division was valued at just over sixty thousand dollars. I remembered it being substantially higher when Grant and I reviewed our retirement plans a few months earlier. Market changes might explain part of a decline. They could not be assumed to explain all of it.

I wrote down the discrepancy instead of calling him. It was almost midnight. I was tired, and I understood how easy it would be to let fear supply answers that documents hadn't yet provided.

In the morning, I would call an attorney of my own.

Before I went upstairs, Avery came back into the hallway. "Mom?"

"What is it?"

"In the café, Dad had the same blue folder on the table. The man in the gray suit pointed at it before he asked about the house."

I looked toward the drawer I'd locked.

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It was possible the two folders held different papers. It was also possible Grant had brought a carefully selected part of the same transaction home to our dinner table.

Either way, I intended to learn what he'd left out.