Chapter 8 - THE DIVORCE AND THE TWO BETRAYED SPOUSES
The divorce took seven months.
There was no courtroom battle.
No screaming.
No hidden money.
I knew where every dollar was because I had spent years making sure every dollar had a place.
I took my share in cash rather than restaurant equity.
Owen tried to convince me to remain chief financial officer.
I laughed so hard the mediator left the room to give me a minute.
I started my own bookkeeping firm instead.
Independent restaurants.
Small operators.
People who had great food and terrible spreadsheets.
I made one rule.
My name went on the front door.
Lucas and Camille separated after the wedding.
I didn’t know the details for months.
Then, almost a year later, Lucas asked if I would meet him for coffee.
We chose a diner outside Racine.
Public.
Daytime.
Two cups of coffee between us.
He told me Camille had admitted to the Chicago dinner.
She insisted nothing physical had happened.
Lucas believed her.
“That almost made it worse,” he said.
I understood.
Because betrayal doesn’t always need a bed.
Sometimes it’s simply giving somebody else the version of yourself your spouse has been asking to see.
Lucas looked down at his coffee.
“People keep telling me nothing happened.”
I smiled sadly.
“People love defining nothing for the person who has to live with it.”
He laughed once.
A tired laugh.
“Exactly.”
He thanked me for the video.
I thanked him for not turning the wedding into a fistfight.
“I thought about it for about nine seconds.”
“Only nine?”
“I’m very mature.”
We laughed.
That was all.
No romance.
No revenge affair.
No two betrayed spouses magically falling in love because pain had introduced them.
We were simply two people who had received the same kind of bad news and survived it.
Before we left, Lucas said something I still think about.
“I spent months wishing you hadn’t sent that video.”
I looked at him.
May you like
“Then I realized I wasn’t wishing I didn’t know. I was wishing there had been nothing to know.”
There is a difference.
