Chapter 9: The Divorce Summons Has Arrived

Helen's POV

I heard every word Roxi said, naturally.

What was it this time — something else I'd done wrong, something that required forgiveness from both her and Ivy? I couldn't be bothered to work it out. Ever since the day I walked out of that hospital and made the decision to relinquish custody, her words, however sharp, had somehow lost their power to reach me.

Cavell leaned in close, dropping his voice to a register only I could catch. "You know what kills me? You were at the peak of your career, and you gave up everything to play house for five years — five years — and this is what you raised? A little ingrate. But forget her for a second. What exactly is your husband's deal? If she hadn't interrupted, was he actually about to out you in front of everyone?"

I gave him a sideways look and didn't dignify it with a response.

Right on cue, Rhian extended his phone toward me, requesting to add each other as contacts. I pulled out my own and accepted. The moment I did, the air around the table seemed to drop several degrees — a subtle but unmistakable shift in pressure that radiated, I was quite certain, from Kael's direction. I didn't look over. I didn't acknowledge it.

Coltham, ever the diplomat, must have sensed the change in atmosphere, because he cleared his throat and filled the silence with something sociable. "I was already surprised to learn that Dr. Davis had married so young — and now I find that Mr. Nightingale did as well. Your daughter must be getting on in years by now?"

Kael said something in reply, but the table was wide enough that I made no effort to listen. A few minutes later, he pushed back his chair and stood. "I'm finished. I have other matters to attend to — please, everyone, take your time." He lifted his suit jacket from the back of the chair, and without ceremony, he left.

As he passed behind me, he paused — or I thought he did. His voice came low and even, just above a murmur. "Not leaving?"

For a moment I genuinely wondered if I'd imagined it. He was speaking to me? That seemed unlikely. In five years of marriage, he had never once addressed me in a public setting — we were more like strangers than strangers. The words couldn't have been meant for me. Besides, I hadn't finished eating.

After a brief silence, his voice returned, louder this time, threaded with a patience that was clearly running thin. "Silas."

"Coming!" Silas was on his feet in an instant.

I raised an eyebrow to myself, quietly vindicated. Not for me, then. Kael strode out, Coltham moved to see him off, and the rest of the senior staff followed in short order, peeling away from the table one by one until only the physicians remained. The mood lightened immediately — conversation flowed, glasses were refilled, and another twenty minutes passed before anyone thought to leave.

Down in the parking structure, the group dispersed to their respective cars. When the last of the others had gone, it was only Cavell, Rhian, and me left standing in the relative quiet.

Rhian turned to me with a measured, genuine smile. "Dr. Davis, talking with you tonight has been genuinely illuminating. Your grasp of vital sign modeling is more thorough than most — your clinical intuition already surpasses a great many practitioners I've worked alongside. That you were never able to go deeper into clinical work is, honestly, a real loss to the field."

"Clinical work is the least of what she lost," Cavell offered from somewhere beside my shoulder.

He'd had more to drink than was strictly advisable, and the evidence was plain — his head was listing sideways, eventually coming to rest in a warm, boneless slump against my shoulder. Rhian smiled at that, then glanced at him with a mild sort of concern.

"Can I give you a ride home?"

"No need." Cavell shook his head, slow and bleary. "Helen's taking me."

Rhian accepted this without pushing, and turned to take his leave of me instead. "Then I'll head out. I hope we'll have another chance to talk, Dr. Davis."

"The pleasure was mine. Any time," I said, and offered him a quiet smile.

He left. The parking structure fell still.

"Still performing?" I asked, and gave Cavell a light knock on the top of his head.

"Performing what?" He straightened with great effort, turning to look at me with an expression of profound, wounded innocence.

I'd wondered, at first, why he'd insisted on bringing me tonight — he knew perfectly well that Kael and I were already in the process of filing. The answer had become clear somewhere between the appetizers and the main course. For five years, I had existed in Kael's orbit as nothing more than a domestic figure, unremarkable and unexamined. Now that we were ending things, he still hadn't looked at me — not properly, not once. Even if I had made my peace with that, Cavell hadn't. Tonight had been his doing, a small and deliberate act of defiance on my behalf, engineered so that Kael would have no choice but to see me.

Something warm moved through me, briefly and without announcement.

I looked at him for a moment, then let my voice soften. "You didn't have to. From the moment I decided on the divorce, how he sees me stopped mattering. I'm not going back."

Cavell pressed his lips together and nodded, then cut a glance toward the five-o'clock position. "Maybe. But someone seems to feel rather differently than you do."

I followed his line of sight without thinking — and stopped.

Kael was still there. He hadn't left. He was standing with Coltham beneath the shadow of the old scholar tree, half-concealed in the dark beneath its canopy. I studied the sight for exactly as long as it took me to decide I wasn't going to read anything into it. They had unfinished business to discuss. That was all.

"Are you coming or not?" I said, already turning away. "Because I'm leaving."

---

By the time I'd dropped Cavell off and made it back to Glimmer Within, it was well past nine. I showered, pulled back the covers, and was asleep before I'd had time to think about much of anything. Since reclaiming a life of my own, sleep had come easily and without interruption — something I hadn't realized I'd been missing until I had it back.

I arrived at work the next morning feeling clear-headed and rested, and walked into the secretarial department to find a young woman sitting at my workstation. She looked barely past twenty-two, dressed in professional attire that still couldn't quite conceal the freshness of someone who'd only recently left a university campus. Silas passed by as I was taking this in and offered a brief explanation: she was new, I was to get her up to speed, and once she had her footing, I'd be handing off my responsibilities to her.

"Of course," I said.

I meant it without reservation. If Silas noticed the absence of any reluctance on my part, he showed it only by looking at me a moment longer than necessary before continuing on his way.

The girl's name was Mia. She was sharp — a strong university graduate, the kind who needs to hear something only once before it's filed away. I walked her through the essentials, handed her a set of spreadsheets to practice on, and let her work. She sat beside me, quiet and focused, and for a stretch of time the office was pleasantly uneventful.

Then she looked up, with the particular mixture of curiosity and self-consciousness that belongs exclusively to the very young, and asked whether it was true that the company's CEO was as handsome as people said.

"You're his secretary," I replied, without glancing up from my own screen. "You'll have plenty of opportunities to find out for yourself."

She was young and quick and perfectly presentable, and I knew exactly what was turning over in her mind. Under different circumstances, I might have offered some guidance — steered her toward something more constructive than whatever she was currently imagining. But I didn't have the energy for it, and more to the point, it was no longer any of my concern. Whether she caught Kael's attention, whether he noticed her at all — none of it had anything to do with me. I don't involve myself in other people's fates.

Mia got the message and let the subject drop.

Not long after, Silas called. "Helen — coffee for the CEO, please."

I set down what I was doing without comment. Years ago, learning that Kael drank coffee had felt like a gift — a small, concrete thing I could act on. I'd studied it with a seriousness that probably would have embarrassed me now: the grind, the temperature, the extraction time, the variables. After a long string of failed attempts and quiet, stubborn persistence, I had eventually produced something he approved of. He'd started requesting it daily — three times a day, in fact, always specifying that it be mine. I had taken that as a sign, back then. I had been pleased for a very long time.

It hadn't meant what I'd thought it meant. He liked the coffee. He had never liked me.

For one brief, uncharitable moment, I considered walking in with a cup of instant. The thought passed. Whatever was happening between us personally, I was still here in a professional capacity, and I intended to behave like it.

I brought Mia with me to Kael's private coffee station and walked her through the entire process from start to finish — the grinder, the warm cup, the extraction — and handed over the notes I'd kept during all those months of practice. What she did with them was up to her.

I loaded the finished cup onto a tray and started toward his office.

I was nearly at the elevator when a junior assistant stepped out of it, carrying a courier envelope that had the particular, unmistakable look of something issued by a court. I didn't need to read the return address to know what it was.

I crossed the distance quickly and kept my voice composed. "Is that for the CEO?"

"Yes."

"I'll take it up. I'm heading there now." I held out my hand with the practiced neutrality of someone who does this every day.

He handed it over without question. I glanced at the sender's information, confirming what I already knew, then set the envelope on the tray beside the coffee and walked to Kael's office.

Outside his door, I stopped and drew a slow, deliberate breath — then another, and one more after that. Then I reminded myself that this was unnecessary. He had never once paid me enough attention to notice anything about me. There was nothing to brace for.

I knocked.

"Come in."

I pushed the door open. He was at his desk, working through a stack of documents, the full length of the floor-to-ceiling windows spread behind him and the river beyond that, broad and glittering in the morning light. The sun came through at an angle that settled over him in a way that, once, I would have stood in the doorway and quietly memorized.

The filter was gone now. I looked, and felt nothing in particular, and moved to set the coffee on his desk.

He looked up. Unexpectedly, and all at once.

My hand faltered — just slightly, just for a moment. The coffee stayed in the cup, but the saucer rang against the tray with a small, clear sound.

Something crossed his expression and was gone before I could name it. His voice, when he spoke, had returned to its usual register: even, unhurried, faintly cool. "What took so long?"

"I apologize," I said. No explanation.

He frowned, barely perceptibly, but said nothing further. He reached for the cup — and then his eyes moved to the envelope on the tray.

"What's that?"

"A summons from the court," I said. "It requires your signature."

He paused, the cup not quite at his lips, and looked up at me. "What kind of summons? Let me see it."