Chapter 7 - The Number He Wrote Down
Marcus read the page three times without a word.
Then he set it on the desk, leaned back, and stared at the ceiling for a moment.
"He calculated this himself."
"Yes."
"And wrote himself a note to keep it out of the legal process."
"Yes."
He looked back at me. "Diane. Do you understand what this is?"
"Tell me."
"This is Nathan admitting, in his own handwriting, that he knew the full value of what you gave him. It kills any argument that your role was small or incidental. And it shows deliberate concealment — he wasn't just hoping you'd take a lowball number. He was actively planning to hide material financial information from the court." He paused. "Where did this come from?"
"A witness. Someone who found it and brought it to me on her own."
"Will that person testify if it comes to that?"
I thought about Kayla's hands around the mug. *I printed it for you.*
"I think so," I said. "Yes."
Marcus picked up his pen. "I'm sending Prewitt and Cole a revised letter today. I'm not showing them this document yet. I'm going to raise our number hard and see how they react. If they push back, we show them what we've got. And at that point, their client is in a very uncomfortable seat."
"How uncomfortable?"
"Hiding financial information in a divorce is not something a judge forgives. It wrecks your credibility on everything else. And if his own attorneys didn't know about this page — which they almost certainly didn't — it puts them in a bad spot too." He paused. "He hired a small firm because he thought this would be simple. It is not simple anymore."
The letter went out that afternoon. Marcus's new number was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, lump sum, plus my legal fees.
Prewitt and Cole called back within two hours.
Marcus walked me through it that evening. "They called it aggressive and unreasonable. They said their client is prepared to let the original offer expire and just file a standard uncontested divorce."
"Can they do that?"
"They can try. But an uncontested filing needs both people to agree that it's uncontested. You don't agree. So what they're really threatening is a contested divorce — which means discovery. Which means full financial disclosure. Which means that page becomes part of the official court record."
I let that sit.
"Did you tell them that?"
"Not in those words. I told them we're ready for full discovery and we're looking forward to the financial disclosure process." A pause. "They got quiet for a while after that."
"I bet they did."
"They'll go back to Nathan now," Marcus said. "He has to decide how badly he wants this in a courtroom. My read is he doesn't. His career's just starting. He's about to walk into a residency. A contested divorce with concealment allegations hanging over it is not how he wants to begin."
"So what now?"
"Now we wait. And we let him think about it."
I waited three days.
On the third day, Nathan called me himself. Not through the lawyers.
His voice had changed again since the parking lot call. The control was still there, but something under it had come loose.
"Diane. I want to talk. Just us. No lawyers."
"Everything goes through Marcus."
"Please." A pause. "I just want to talk."
I thought about it. "One hour. The coffee shop on Halstead. Tomorrow, ten o'clock."
He was already there when I came in. He looked like he hadn't slept. His hands were around a cup and he was staring at the table.
I sat down. He looked up.
"How did you get the document?"
"That's not why we're here," I said.
"Diane—"
"You added up what I gave you," I said. "Three hundred and forty thousand dollars. And then you wrote yourself a note to hide it from your own lawyers."
He didn't deny it. He looked back down at the table.
"I didn't want a fight," he said.
"You didn't want to pay me what you owed me," I said. "Those aren't the same thing."
He was quiet a long moment. Then: "What do you want?"
"It's in Marcus's letter. Two hundred and fifty thousand. My legal fees covered. Clean break. We never speak again."
"That's—" He stopped.
"It's less than what you calculated yourself," I said. "You know that. You did the math."
He looked at me then. Really looked, for the first time since before the graduation. And there was something in his face I hadn't braced for. Not guilt, exactly. Something more tangled than guilt. Something that almost looked like grief — though for what, I couldn't say. Maybe for the two people we used to be. Maybe for the man he'd been before he became someone who plans a betrayal six weeks out and writes it down.
"I'll talk to my attorneys," he said.
"You do that." I stood up. "Nathan."
He looked up.
"I hope she was worth it," I said. "I really do. Because if she wasn't, then none of this adds up to anything at all."
I walked out without looking back.
Marcus called two hours later.
"They've come up to two hundred and twenty-five thousand. They're digging in on the last twenty-five. I think we can push—"
"Take it," I said.
"Diane, we've got the leverage to—"
"I know we do," I said. "Take it. I want it done."
A pause. "You're sure?"
"I'm sure."
He was quiet a moment. "All right. I'll get the paperwork drawn up. You review it, you sign it, and we can have this closed inside two weeks."
Two weeks. After seven years, two weeks.
May you like
"Marcus," I said. "Thank you."
"You did the work," he said. "I just made the phone calls."
