Chapter 20 - The People Who StayedSix months after the wedding, Nathan stood outside a courthouse holding a folder beneath his arm.
The morning air was cool.
He wore a simple navy suit.
No wedding ring.
No flowers.
No cameras.
Dina stood beside him.
“Ready?”
Nathan looked toward the courthouse entrance.
“As ready as I'll ever be.”
The marriage had lasted less than a day before Nathan decided it was over.
Legally, however, ending it required time.
There were documents to exchange.
Financial questions to resolve.
Property interests to clarify.
And, because the marriage had already been solemnized, Nathan couldn't simply declare it nonexistent by leaving a ring in a ruined cake.
He had to go through the proper divorce process.
The settlement confirmed that Nathan retained his premarital house and business, with no Rosehaven debts assigned to him.
The parties had separately reached an agreement addressing certain documented wedding-related losses and counseling expenses.
The agreement also provided for Audrey to have no contact with Eli.
Nathan did not accept a condition requiring him to withhold evidence from lawful investigations.
He had refused that from the beginning.
The financial application had already been canceled.
The lender's fraud review had been completed.
The records documenting the false submission remained preserved.
Other investigative decisions proceeded independently of the divorce.
Nathan had learned to accept that not every outcome was his to control.
Inside the courtroom, Audrey sat beside her attorney.
She wore a black dress.
Her blonde hair fell loosely over her shoulders.
Without the sparkling wedding gown and carefully arranged bridal bun, she looked different.
Younger, somehow.
Exhausted.
For a moment, Nathan remembered the woman who had helped him believe he might fall in love again.
He remembered their first date.
Their walks through the park.
The way Audrey once laughed so hard at one of Eli's jokes that she cried.
Those memories had been real experiences.
But so were the others.
The threats.
The lies.
The frosting.
The terrified child.
Nathan no longer needed to pretend one set of memories canceled out the other.
When the proceedings ended, Audrey approached him in the hallway.
Dina remained nearby.
Audrey stopped several feet away.
“Nathan?”
He turned.
“I wanted to say something.”
He waited.
Audrey pressed her lips together.
“I've been seeing a counselor.”
Nathan nodded.
“That's good.”
“My mother and I aren't speaking much anymore.”
He didn't respond.
Audrey looked down.
“She made me believe everything depended on that loan.”
Nathan remained quiet.
Then Audrey said, “But I know she didn't make me do what I did to Eli.”
Nathan looked directly at her.
For the first time, Audrey didn't seem to be searching for someone else to blame.
“I was jealous,” she admitted.
“Of a child?” Nathan asked.
“Of the place he had in your life.”
Her eyes filled.
“I thought if you loved him that much, there wouldn't be enough love left for me.”
Nathan felt a familiar sadness.
“Love isn't something you have to take away from one person to give to another.”
Audrey began crying.
“I know that now.”
Nathan looked toward the courthouse doors.
“I hope you keep working on yourself.”
She wiped her face.
“Do you think Eli will ever forgive me?”
Nathan paused.
“That isn't something you can ask him to give you.”
Audrey lowered her eyes.
“I understand.”
“And I won't ask him.”
He turned and walked away.
Outside, the sky had cleared.
Dina accompanied him to the steps.
“How do you feel?”
Nathan considered the question.
“Sad.”
She nodded.
“That's understandable.”
“But certain.”
Dina smiled faintly.
“Those two things can exist together.”
Nathan drove home.
When he opened the front door, Eli came running down the hallway.
“Daddy!”
Nathan bent and caught him.
“Hey, buddy.”
“Did you finish the grown-up stuff?”
Nathan smiled.
“Most of it.”
Eli wrapped his arms around his neck.
“Does that mean we can go to the park now?”
Nathan laughed.
“Yes. It does.”
The boy raced to collect his sneakers.
Nathan stood alone in the hallway for a moment.
He looked at the framed photograph of Hannah on the mantel.
Then at the new photograph beside it.
Just Nathan and Eli.
Taken three weeks earlier, laughing on the front porch.
Nobody had asked them to pose.
Nobody had moved Eli out of the picture.
May you like
And Nathan realized that the family he had spent so much time trying to create had been standing in front of him all along.
It simply needed him to protect it.
