“You told me the apartment was going to be sold,” Vanessa continued. “You said the divorce would give us the down payment for a house.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
Claire felt something unexpected.
Not pain.
Exhaustion.
That was how thoroughly he had already divided her life between them.
Before he had even left.
“He told you the apartment was being sold?”
Vanessa stared at Daniel.
“Daniel…”
“Vanessa, wait in the car.”
“No. I want to understand.”
Claire leaned against the doorframe.
“Did he promise you the car too?”
The expression on Vanessa’s face answered before she did.
“Daniel…”
“Enough!”
He finally lost control.
“Yes! I said the car would be mine! And that the apartment was jointly ours! Because it is!”
“Some of its value may indeed have to be considered in the settlement,” Claire said calmly. “The lawyers will deal with that.”
Vanessa looked at him.
“You told me the apartment belonged entirely to you.”
For the first time, Daniel seemed completely lost.
Claire had not exposed him.
He had done that himself.
He had built two separate versions of his life—one for his wife and one for his mistress—and now both versions had collided in the same narrow hallway.
Vanessa slowly stepped away from him.
“I’ll wait in the car.”
“Vanessa…”
“No.”
She walked outside.
Claire looked at Daniel.
“Interesting.”
“What is?”
“You’re leaving me for a woman you lied to in exactly the same way you lied to me.”
He opened his mouth.
No words came.
“Take your personal things,” Claire said.
Forty minutes later, Daniel drove away.
He had two suitcases.
No television.
No coffee machine.
No car.
But the most surprising event came a week later.
Claire’s mother-in-law called.
“Claire?”
“Yes, Margaret.”
“May I come by?”
Claire was so surprised that she did not refuse quickly enough.
An hour later, Margaret sat at the kitchen table while her tea cooled untouched in front of her.
“I know what you think,” she said.
“I’m not sure I do.”
“You think I came to defend my son.”
“Didn’t you?”
Margaret sighed.
“At first, I intended to.”
Claire said nothing.
“He told me you were trying to leave him with nothing. That the apartment belonged to him. That the car belonged to him. He said you were only trying to punish him.”
“I see.”
“Then Vanessa called me.”
Claire lifted her eyes.
“She called you?”
“They had a fight.”
Margaret gave a bitter little smile.
“Apparently she thought I had helped him with his stories about the property.”
“That must have been awkward.”
“He also asked me to take out a loan.”
Claire went still.
“For what?”
“To give him money for rent and another car. He had already promised the old one to Vanessa.”
Claire closed her eyes.
“Good Lord.”
Margaret looked down at her hands.
“I raised him badly.”
“Please don’t say that.”
“I have to.”
She straightened in her chair.
“I always told him, ‘Daniel, the important thing is to make sure you’re comfortable.’ I suppose he understood me too literally.”
For the first time in a week, Claire laughed.
Even Margaret smiled.
“I’m not going to interfere in your divorce,” her mother-in-law continued. “I only came to tell you not to give in because you feel sorry for him.”
Claire looked at her in surprise.
“You mean that?”
“Completely.”
Margaret finished her tea and stood.
At the door, she paused.
“One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t give him the coffee machine.”
Claire laughed again.
“Why that one?”
“I thought of buying him one for Christmas once. Then I saw the price and changed my mind.”
The divorce lasted nearly seven months.
There were no cinematic victories.
Daniel did not walk out of court wearing nothing but his socks.
Claire had to compromise on some matters.
Daniel did too.
In the end, the car was sold and the money divided.
They reached an agreement regarding the apartment that took into account where portions of the original funds had come from.
Daniel received some of the appliances.
Claire kept most of the furniture.
Vanessa disappeared from his life before the divorce was finished.
One afternoon, Emily asked Claire:
“Do you feel sorry for him?”
“For whom?”
“For Daniel.”
Claire thought about it.
“A little.”
“After everything he did?”
“You can have no desire to take someone back and still feel sorry for them. Daniel spent so many years constructing the image of a successful man that eventually he believed it himself.”
By spring, the divorce was finally complete.
Claire came home and unlocked the door.
The apartment was quiet.
Emily had moved into a dormitory by then, although she often visited on weekends.
The coffee machine stood on the kitchen counter.
Claire pressed the button.
The machine hummed to life.
She suddenly remembered Daniel dragging it toward the door in the middle of the night and began to laugh.
A few days later, she decided to do something she had postponed for almost ten years.
She repainted the bedroom.
Daniel had always insisted:
“Gray-beige makes a place look expensive.”
Claire hated gray-beige.
She chose a deep green instead.
The painter examined the color card.