“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this, Kate.”
“Ian—”
“You said you had an ex. I thought… never mind. I have to go pick up Audrey.” He brushes past Adam to the coatrack, then breezes out the open door in a frigid gust.
“Ian!” Kate calls again, but he peels out down the laneway. “Goddamnit,” she mutters.
“What did I just walk into?” Adam asks behind her.
She shuts the door and turns, crossing her arms. Adam is here. At the Oakwood. Kate takes in his sandy, styled hair, the grey wool coat atop his slim shoulders. He looks exactly the same, yet is somehow unfamiliar to her now. “What are you doing here?”
“I called three times last night, Kate. You didn’t answer, didn’t call me back.”
“You know I don’t look at my phone much now. And we had an emergency.”
Concern ripples across his face. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. It was Audrey. The owner. My boss. My—” She exhales. My friend. My saving grace. The woman who pulled me back from the brink. “Never mind.”
“And the guy?”
She looks him square-on. “Why are you here?” she repeats.
“I have the divorce papers.” He taps his messenger bag.
She lets her breath out. “Right. Okay.” But the anger surges. “I thought you’d courier them or something. Jesus, Adam.”
“I was in Glasgow this week at a conference. I’m on my way back to London. That’s why I tried to call you last night, to tell you I was coming round.”
She shakes her head. “You could have couriered them.”
Adam shifts his feet, and a little snow falls off, melting into the entryway carpet. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“Okay, let’s talk,” she says, bringing him into the sitting room even though all she wants to do is go find Ian, explain and apologize.
Adam settles in a chair by the fire, Ozzie pressed excitedly against his knees, tail wagging. She sinks into the opposite chair, looking at him expectantly.
“How have you been?” he asks.
She opens her mouth on a curt reply, but catches herself. His expression is genuine. He came all the way here to talk to her, check up on her. She should lower her guard a little.
“Actually, I’m okay,” she says. “This place has been good for me.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Really,” he says. “But you do know you’re in the middle of nowhere, right? I had to take a train and then a taxi to get here.” He lets out a small chuckle.
“It might seem that way to you,” she says, without heat. “But it’s home for a lot of people. Me included.”
He strokes Ozzie’s head. “Home, eh?”
“Yeah. Believe it or not. My parents stayed here on their honeymoon. That’s why I picked it.”
He watches her. “I didn’t know they came up here.”
“Yeah.”
His brow contorts in the way it does when he’s considering something. “I think about ours a lot,” he says. “Hawaii.” They’d spent ten days in bed and diving into the blue pools, drank late into the night in front of bonfires after watching the sun set from Wailea Beach. It was paradise, but it feels like a memory from someone else’s life now. Adam looks down at the dog, clears his throat. “I miss this guy. He like it here too?”
Kate smiles a little. “Yeah. He’s got a girlfriend. Sophie.” She points to the small black lump on the dog bed.
“Didn’t even see her there. Well… that’s nice, buddy,” he says, and Ozzie retreats, curls up with Sophie.
“I sometimes feel like the mistress now,” Kate says. “The girl he cuddles with on the side. I’ve been completely usurped.”
After a moment, Adam reaches down and withdraws a manila envelope from his bag on the rug. “So, here are the papers.”
“Right. Yeah,” Kate says, heart fluttering a little.
“I sold the flat,” he says. “It fetched a good price. That’s all here in the divorce settlement. We split it.”
Kate nods. “Thanks for handling that.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you have a pen?”
She reads through, feeling the burn of his eyes on her. She signs the pages indicated with little red flags, one at a time. It feels at once mundane and profound, to sign off on her marriage like this, to put her signature to all her failures. Claiming, yet releasing them. She signs the final page, hands it back to Adam. They stare at one another.
Adam speaks first. “We had a good run for a while, didn’t we? There were better times. Especially in those first few years. I know it was never perfect, but…” His shoulders droop a little. Kate nods, her eyes prickling uncomfortably.
