Chapter 14 - THE LAST THING HE NEEDED FROM HER
Daniel brought the email to their next mediation session.
Chloe stared at it.
“I forgot about that.”
“I believe you.”
She looked surprised.
Daniel folded the paper.
“You weren’t always cruel.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“No.”
“Then why show me?”
“Because I spent months trying to decide whether the woman at the wedding was the real you or the woman I loved was the real you.”
Chloe looked at him carefully.
“And?”
“They both were.”
Her face changed.
Daniel continued before he lost the nerve.
“You could be generous when you felt secure. You could be vicious when someone had no power over you. You could protect staff from your mother in April and humiliate one in August.”
Chloe swallowed.
“I didn’t trip her.”
“No. You only made her kneel.”
She looked away.
There was nothing to say.
Daniel placed the proposed separation agreement on the table.
His attorney had already reviewed it.
So had hers.
It did not attempt to punish Chloe financially.
It returned both parties largely to the positions they held before marriage and created a clear path toward divorce if reconciliation did not occur.
Chloe touched the corner.
“If I sign this, are we done?”
Daniel considered the question.
“Legally? Not today.”
“And us?”
“I don’t know.”
She looked almost angry at that.
“You’ve known everything else for months.”
“No. Other people knew things. Then documents knew things. Then lawyers knew things.”
He leaned back.
“I’m finally learning not to invent certainty because uncertainty makes me uncomfortable.”
Chloe picked up the pen.
Before signing, she said, “I’m sorry about Eleanor.”
Daniel waited.
Chloe forced herself to continue.
“And I’m sorry that it took finding out who she was for me to understand what I’d done.”
That mattered.
It did not fix anything.
Chloe signed.
May you like
Then she slid the agreement across the table.
For the first time since their wedding, Daniel did not feel the need to rescue the moment.
