CHAPTER 5

Sophie’s POV

Because that is what I was. That is what she was saying. After two years of living in this house, cooking the meals and keeping the rooms and shrinking myself down to nothing, I was the help.

I pressed my lips together very hard. I picked up my plate. I pushed my chair back carefully so it wouldn't scrape and stood up and walked toward the kitchen door.

"The food tastes awful by the way," Lana said behind me.

More laughter.

The banging on my door woke me out of a dead sleep.

I sat up too fast and the headache rushed back immediately, that familiar throbbing behind my eyes that never fully went away anymore. I pressed my hand to my temple and waited for the room to stop spinning. The clock on my nightstand said seven fourteen in the morning.

The banging came again. “Sophie!”

"Coming," I said. My voice was rough with sleep.

I opened the door. Lana was standing in the hallway in a silk robe, arms crossed, looking at me the way she always looked at me. Like I was an inconvenience that had overstayed its welcome.

"Derek wants you in his office," she said.

I blinked. "Now?"

She stared at me for a long flat second. "Are you slow or are you deaf?" she said. Then she turned and walked back down the hallway without waiting for an answer. Her robe trailed behind her and she disappeared around the corner.

I stood at the open door for a moment.

Derek's office. First thing in the morning. The day after Rosa came home.

I already knew what this was.

I closed the door and looked around my room. It was the smallest bedroom in the house. I had figured that out in the first week. The guest rooms were larger. Even the room they used for storage had a bigger window. I had never said anything about it. I changed out of my nightgown slowly, my fingers clumsy and stiff. I splashed water on my face and looked at my reflection. The mark on my cheek from Shirley's slap had faded to a faint pink. My eyes were puffy from bad sleep.

I looked tired. I was tired.

I smoothed my clothes and walked down the hall to Derek's office. I stood outside the door for just a second with my hand raised. Then I knocked.

"Come in."

I pushed the door open.

Derek was sitting behind his desk. He looked composed and distant the way he always did, like a man conducting a business meeting. Like this was nothing personal. Like I was nothing personal.

I stepped inside and stopped.

There was another man in the room. Older, grey haired, sitting in the chair across from Derek's desk with a leather briefcase on his knees and a stack of papers on the small table beside him.

I recognized him immediately.

Mr. Graves. Grandpa Edward's personal lawyer. I had met him before. That had been before the wedding when the papers were drawn up. The papers that had made me a Callahan in name if nothing else.

He looked up at me when I came in and gave me a small careful nod.

I looked at Derek.

He gestured to the empty chair across from him without quite meeting my eyes. "Sit down."

I sat.

The room was very quiet. Mr. Graves shuffled his papers once and was still. Derek folded his hands on the desk in front of him and finally looked at me directly.

I looked back at him and waited.

I had known this was coming. Maybe not today, maybe not this soon, but I had always known it was coming. From the moment Edward had a heart attack eight weeks ago and slipped into a coma, I had felt the clock ticking. Rosa's return had only moved up the timeline. I had told myself I was prepared for it.

Sitting in that chair in the grey morning light, I realized I was not prepared for it at all.

"You know why I asked you here," Derek said.

It wasn't a question. I nodded anyway.

He glanced at Mr. Graves and then back at me. "I want a divorce."

The words sat in the air between us. Simple and clean and final. I had heard them in my head so many times over the past months that I thought they would feel different when they actually came. They didn't. They landed the same way Dr. Elliot's words had landed yesterday. Heavy and quiet and without warning.

I pressed my hands flat against my thighs and kept my face still.

Then Mr. Graves turned to me.

"And what about you, Mrs. Callahan?" His voice was calm and professional. "Is this what you want as well?"

I stared at him.

For a moment I wasn't sure I had heard him correctly. In two years nobody in this house had asked me what I wanted. Not about anything. Not once. The question felt so strange coming out of a human mouth that I didn't know what to do with it.

"Why are you asking her that?" Derek's voice was sharp. He sat forward in his chair and looked at Mr. Graves with barely contained irritation. "I called you here because I want to begin divorce proceedings. That is what we are here for."

Mr. Graves did not flinch. He turned to Derek with the calm steady manner of a man who had delivered difficult news to powerful people for a very long time and had learned not to be rattled by any of them.

"I'm asking her," he said evenly, "because according to the terms your grandfather set out, you cannot initiate divorce proceedings, Derek. That right belongs solely to your wife."