Chapter 6: Interim Life
Exclusive use of the house meant I slept in my own bed again, but sleep did not return on command.
I woke at three most mornings to the phantom sound of a dining chair scraping back—the sound from Chloe’s hallway before Julian opened the door. I named it aloud in the dark, a therapist’s trick Mara had texted me, and waited until my pulse slowed. Then I made tea in a kitchen Julian no longer entered without Helen’s scheduling. The ordinary motions—kettle, cup, honey—became proof that the life under this roof still belonged to someone who had not been assigned “companion” status by Evelyn’s decree.
Helen’s weekly memo kept the temperature procedural: disclosures due, appraisal booked, a request from Julian’s counsel for mediation “in the spirit of family.” I told Helen the spirit of family had been chicken broth and a nightgown. She translated that into a polite decline and a counterproposal focused on numbers. Numbers were cleaner than lineage lectures.
Chloe sent one more message through a blocked-number workaround: a sonogram thumbnail and the words He deserves peace. I forwarded it to Helen and deleted it from my phone’s face, not from the archive. Peace was not a photo attachment. Peace was a lock that turned only for me.
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At work I took on a rushed branding project for a client who did not know my marriage was on a court calendar. The deadline was a mercy. For six hours a day my mind had to live in fonts and color palettes instead of Evelyn’s mouth saying incapable. When I finished, I invoiced promptly. Money in my sole account was a kind of spine.
Mara dragged me to a Saturday market. I bought too many peaches and cried over one bruised fruit in the car. Mara said nothing until I finished, then ate a peach with me in silence. Juice on our wrists. No heirs required for the sweetness to be real.
