I was sorry too. I had once imagined Celeste and me helping Marianne grow older, taking turns with errands and fixing things around her house. I'd pictured holidays with too many people at the table and Biscuit lying under a chair waiting for scraps. Now those futures would have to be redrawn by everyone involved. It was possible to be sure about leaving and still mourn the consequences for people who hadn't caused the betrayal.
Four months after the petition was filed, Diane called to tell me the court had entered the final divorce order. There had been the required disclosures and waiting periods, the negotiated property terms, and the formal steps necessary to close the case. Celeste had not pursued a contested trial once the settlement was finalized. The phone call was brief because there was nothing dramatic left for Diane to announce. The marriage had ended in the eyes of the law.
I thanked her for helping me through it. She told me to keep copies of the final orders and to complete the remaining financial updates promptly. Then she asked whether I was all right. I looked at Biscuit asleep beneath the kitchen table, at the folder of records that had become smaller with each completed task, and at the empty shelf where our wedding photograph used to stand. "I think I will be," I said. For the first time, I believed my own answer.
I called my mother afterward. She answered while watering the plants on her porch, and I could hear the faint rush of a hose in the background. I told her the divorce was final.
She was quiet for a moment, then asked if I wanted to come over for dinner. I said yes. We ate roast chicken and vegetables while Biscuit slept beside her chair, and she didn't ask me to explain whether I was sad or relieved. She let both things be true.
That evening she brought out a small tin of photographs she'd found while cleaning a closet. There were pictures of my father as a young man, wearing work boots in front of his first truck, and one of him holding me as a baby beside a kitchen refrigerator that looked older than both of us. I laughed at his haircut, then grew quiet when I realized how often I'd wished for his advice during the divorce. My mother said he had never been perfect at marriage either. He had learned, sometimes slowly, that being dependable was not the same as telling someone what he needed.
"Your father could fix half the neighborhood's appliances," she said, "but he still had to learn how to say when something hurt him." I turned one of the photographs over and found a date written in his careful block letters. My mother told me it was all right to want another relationship someday, but that I didn't need to rush toward one just to prove the last hadn't broken me. I told her I wasn't thinking about dating. I wanted to understand how to be at peace in my own home first.