Chapter Three

I met his parents for the first time over spring break of sophomore year.

Ethan had been careful about it. Looking back, I think he was nervous. He asked me twice if I was sure I wanted to come, which I thought was strange at the time. I told him yes. We took the train to Connecticut, to a house that was actually an estate gates and a long driveway and windows that went from floor to ceiling in every room.

His father, Robert Harrington, was quiet and careful and shook my hand with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

His mother, Diana Harrington, looked at me the way people look at something that doesn't belong where it is.

She was polite at dinner. She asked about my major, my hometown, my mother's work. All the right questions. But the way she asked them.… the little pauses before each one, the way she smiled at my answers, it was like she was building a file. Like she was collecting evidence.

Ethan watched her the whole time. He kept touching my hand under the table, small reassurances, like he knew.

That night, when Ethan had gone to find us tea, Diana Harrington saw me alone in the hallway and walked towards me.

"You seem like a smart girl," she uttered.

"Thank you," I mumbled, I could tell she wasn't just there to throw compliments at me.

"Smart enough to know what this family is." She held her wine glass with two fingers, casual and controlled. "What it requires."

I looked at her. "I know Ethan. That's what matters to me."

She smiled. It was not a warm smile. "Darling, knowing Ethan is the easy part."

She walked away before I could answer.

I stood in that hallway with my heart beating so fast it could pop out of my mouth. I told myself it meant nothing. She was just a difficult woman. It would get better.

It didn't get better.

Back at my desk the next morning, I stare at the case files spread in front of me.

Jade is perched on the edge of my office couch, legs crossed, watching me with wide eyes. I had to call her the moment I got off the phone with Patrick.

"Ethan is the opposing counsel," she says again, like she's still processing it.

"Yes."

"Your ex-husband."

"I'm well aware of that part, Jade."

"The man you….."

"Jade." I look up. "I know who he is."

She presses her lips together. "Are you okay?"

I pick up a document and flip through it, not really reading. "I'm fine. This is just a case."

"Maya."

"I'm fine." I put the document down. "What I need to do right now is focus. The first hearing is in two weeks. I need to know everything about Harrington Legal, everything about the Mercer case, everything"

"Maya." Jade's voice is soft now. "When was the last time you talked to him?"

The room goes quiet.

Six years, one month, and twelve days.

Not that I'm counting.

"A long time ago," I say.

She looks at me for a moment. Then she nods and uncrosses her legs and stands up.

"Okay," she says. "Then let's get to work."

She walks to the table and picks up a file.

I took a deep breath in and out.

Two weeks.

I have two weeks before I walk into that courtroom and see the face of the man I used to love more than I had words for. The same man who stood across a room from me six years ago and signed his name on a paper that ended us.

I told myself I was over it. I've told myself that for six years.

I guess I'm about to find out if I was telling the truth.

People always want to know whose fault it was.

That’s the first question when a marriage ends, isn’t it? Who ruined it. Who stopped trying. Who left first.

As if love can always be traced back to one mistake.

The truth is, most marriages don’t fall apart all at once. They crack slowly. Quietly. A hundred little disappointments collecting over time until one day you look at each other and realize you’re both exhausted from carrying something that used to feel easy.

But yes, there was a bigger thing too.

There usually is.

Ethan and I got married the summer after graduating from NYU. I was twenty-two. He was twenty-three.

Everyone told me we were too young.

My mother tried the hardest to talk sense into me.

A week before the wedding, she sat me down at the tiny kitchen table in our apartment in Newark and held my hands between hers.

“Baby,” she said carefully, “I love Ethan. You know I do. But marriage is different. And his family…”

I sighed before she could finish. “I know his family.mom”

The look she gave me lasted longer than the silence after it.

“Do you?” she asked softly.