The mediator pushed the final copies toward him without comment. David did not read them. He scrawled his name with a jagged, contemptuous flourish and tossed the pen across the desk like a man signing something beneath his notice.
“There’s nothing to divide,” he said, addressing the mediator as though I were a piece of furniture that happened to be inconveniently positioned in the room. “The condo was my premarital asset. The car is mine. As for the children, if she wants to take them, let her. It’s one less complication.”
His older sister, Megan, was standing near the door. She had positioned herself there at the start of the proceedings and had remained with the posture of someone who came to witness a sentencing. She had always been David’s most devoted audience, the person who laughed at his jokes longest and repeated his opinions back to him in her own voice until he could not tell where his thinking ended and hers began.
“Exactly,” she said. Her voice had the particular sharpness of someone who has been waiting for permission to be cruel and finally received it. “David is marrying a woman who is actually giving this family a son. Who would want a used-up housewife with two kids in tow anyway?”
The words were designed to find a wound. They landed in empty air. I had been absorbing their cruelty for long enough that I had simply stopped being permeable to it. I reached into my purse and placed a brass ring on the table.
“The keys to the condo,” I said. “We moved the last of our things out yesterday.”
