Chapter 58 Lawyers and divorce
Vivienne's POV
So while I was planning anniversary celebrations and thinking about our future, he was quietly dismantling everything. Calling lawyers. Briefing HR. Revoking my access cards. Preparing to wipe me out of his life as cleanly and completely as possible.
I pushed my eggs around my plate, my appetite completely gone again.
"What do I do about the apartment?" I asked. "Everything there is his. All my clothes are there. My things."
"You have every legal right to go back and collect your belongings," Sarah said. "You're still his wife until those papers are signed. Nobody can stop you from going back for your things."
"I don't want to go back there," I admitted quietly. "I don't want to walk back into that apartment and see his face or his things or our pictures on the wall."
Sarah was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "You can stay here. For as long as you need. The couch pulls out into a bed."
I looked up at her, this woman I had practically abandoned for three years, who had every right to be angry at me and turn me away. Who instead had dropped everything, jumped in an Uber, brought me home, fed me, and was now offering me a place to sleep.
"Sarah, I'm so sorry," I said, my voice breaking again. "I'm sorry I disappeared. I'm sorry I stopped calling. I'm sorry I missed your birthday and all those coffee dates. I was so caught up in his world that I forgot about everything that actually mattered."
She looked at me for a long moment. Then she sighed and reached across the table and squeezed my hand.
"I was hurt," she said honestly. "I won't pretend I wasn't. You basically vanished on me for three years and the only time I heard from you was at Christmas."
"I know," I whispered.
"But I also know that you were trying to survive, Viv. You were trying to walk out of Margot and her toxic attitude. I understand that now even if I didn't fully understand it then." She squeezed my hand again before letting go.
"We can talk about all of that later. Right now what matters is that you're here and you're okay."
I nodded, wiping my eyes with the corner of the blanket.
"You have a meeting with the lawyer at two," she reminded me. "We need to think about that."
Right. Two o'clock. David Anderson. The divorce papers are waiting for my signature.
A cold feeling settled in my stomach all over again.
"I don't want to sign them," I said. Not because I thought fighting it would change anything. Not because I thought there was any hope left for this marriage. But because the moment I signed those papers, it was truly over. The moment I signed, I became someone who had failed. Someone who had been used and thrown away.
"You don't have to sign them today," Sarah said, her voice taking on a practical, focused tone. "You go to that meeting, you listen to what the lawyer has to say, and you sign nothing until you have your own legal representation. Do you understand me? Nothing. Not one signature."
I looked at her.
"Do you know a lawyer?" I asked.
A small smile crossed her face. "My cousin Laura just passed the bar last year. Family law is her specialty." She was already reaching for her phone. "Let me call her right now."
I sat there wrapped in my blanket in Sarah's messy warm apartment, listening to her make the call. Listening to her fight for me the way I had forgotten people could fight for each other.
Outside the window, the city moved on like nothing had happened. Like somewhere across town a man wasn't sitting in a glass tower calmly dismantling every piece of a life we had built together.
But here, in this small warm kitchen that smelled like coffee and vanilla, something was slowly shifting inside me.
The numbness was still there. The grief was still there. The heartbreak was real and deep and I knew it wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.
But underneath all of that, something else was quietly waking up.
Something that felt a lot like anger.
And anger, I was beginning to realize, was much more useful than tears.