Chapter Seven
ANN MARIE
Chicago, 2008
“You’re scaring me,” I say to my mom. “I can’t reschedule my appointment with the attorney. I’ve waited too long as it is.”
“I don’t mean to scare you.”
“What’s going on? Does this have something to do with my father?”
My parents had split up when I was very young, and I’d lived with my mother my whole life in Connecticut until I’d left home for college and never came back. Mom has always been tight-lipped about the relationship, never wanting anyone in her family to discuss him with me, good or bad. Needless to say, he’s been a mystery. Every once in a while, I’d get a Christmas or birthday gift in the mail, but those stopped many years ago. I would cringe and stammer when kids at school would ask me about my dad. The majority of my childhood was spent pretending I never had a father and coping with that void. Especially with my mother and my four aunts being around me at all times. There was an overwhelming female contingent, and asking them about my father was off-limits.
“Just stick to the topic of your divorce, and please don’t tell Stewart you’ve mentioned his name to me.”
“Why?”
“Please, Ann Marie. I have a royal headache this morning.” Her voice is stern, and I don’t press her.
Just as I hang up the phone, my stomach drops as I hear a key in the lock on the front door. I walk to the foyer, and a second later the door flies open as Todd storms inside. He’s standing there looking like he doesn’t have a care in the world, dressed in jeans and a short-sleeve Polo shirt, with a fresh haircut. It kills me that he looks good. I can barely look him in the eyes because I’m still uncomfortable hating him.
“Can I help you?” I ask.
“Doubt it,” he says, and runs past me up the stairs. My face goes flush with anger as he casually struts back down a few minutes later with a suitcase in his hand.
“I’ve asked you not to barge in like that!” I scream, grateful that the boys aren’t home.
“It’s my house, too,” he scoffs, and looks behind me into the family room. “I thought you were going to clean this place up for the showing?”
I shake my head. “Just get out.” I don’t even bother to ask why he needs a suitcase because it doesn’t matter, and I won’t believe him anyway.
Todd rolls his eyes. “With pleasure.” He exits and purposely slams the front door so hard that the light fixture in the foyer shakes.
I stand there alone again for about three minutes, shaking like the light above me but too angry to cry.
I get in the car thinking I can’t go on much longer like this. Once I reach the city, my friend Jen texts me as I’m parking the car in the attorney’s lot.
Good luck today, and make sure your mom can come in town so we can go to Cabo and do tequila shots and then vomit because we’re getting old and can’t hold our liquor.
I smile before tossing the phone back in my purse.
Now that I’m an official paying client, the receptionist greets me with added vigor. And refreshments. “Good morning, Mrs. Neelan,” he says.
“Please call me Ann Marie,” I say. “Mrs. Neelan has stopped taking my calls and refuses to acknowledge that she raised a cheating SOB.” I smile.
“And you can call me Thomas.” He winks at me. “Your shoes are the shit, Ann Marie.”
I glance down at my blue patent-leather pumps. “Thank you.”
“Mr. Fishman will be ready for you in about ten minutes. Would you like something to drink? Snapple?”
I shake my head. “No, thank you,” I say, and take a seat in the leather armchair by the window and text my mom.
I’m going to need a set of black pearls to match the circles under my eyes.
She replies, I think I have an old set from your grandma.
I laugh out loud. Love you, Mom. Can’t wait to see you.
Stay strong. We’ve been through worse, she writes. And please don’t worry about anything I’ve said. I’ll explain later.
OK. Hope your headache feels better soon.
Thank you, she answers.
Whatever she has to tell me can obviously wait if it’s waited this long, and I can’t afford to stress about one more thing these days. Sleep has become as rare as peace of mind. Yet while I’m afraid for my future, for my sons’ futures, I find fear to be a great motivator. The things that keep me awake at night are the concerns and worries about how they will grow up and deal with the truth behind the demise of their parents’ relationship. How will they react when they grow into men and learn what their father did to me? To us? Will they become cheaters? Will they have hate in their hearts? The truth always comes out, and I’m still struggling with the burden of understanding why and how these things happened to me.
I can’t help but assume that my own parents’ relationship was riddled with aggression and betrayal. “It was a different time,” my mom would say whenever I dared to ask her about it. “People know better these days.” Now that I’m in a position of raising children as a single mother—just as she was—I’m going to hold her to a better explanation.
Somewhere between today and the last time I was standing in this waiting room, I turned a corner and am determined make things right for my boys and myself. I don’t want to hold on to the revulsion I have for Todd. I want to rid myself of the shame and hold my head up again. Each day I inch a little bit closer to the edge of confidence.
“He’s ready for you,” Thomas tells me.
Stewart is in his office, and this time there are two other attorneys with him. The first is a woman about ten years younger than I am, and it looks as if she passed the bar and leaned how to ride a two-wheeler just this morning. Her short skirt and long hair make me think she’ll be sleeping with one of the married partners within a year. Thanks to Todd, that is where my mind goes now. The second guy is closer to my age, wearing a light-blue dress shirt, navy twill trousers, and wing-tip shoes. His thick round neck is spilling over a plaid bow tie that’s begging to be loosened.
“Ann Marie, I’d like to introduce you to two of my associates. This here is Noah Goldman and Amanda Dorneker.”
“Nice to meet you.” I shake their hands.
“Please, everyone, sit,” Stewart says, and gestures to a round table in the corner of his office. “I’m obviously your lead attorney, but Amanda and Noah will be assisting me. The good news about that is that they’re both fantastic attorneys in their own right, and they charge one-third of my hourly fee.” He raises his brows. “We’ve reached out to Todd’s attorney and don’t have much encouraging news to report, other than he’s agreed to pay the electric and the gas.”
I take a deep breath. “What a prince.”
“It’s a starting point,” Stewart says.
Noah fumbles through some papers. “So, your husband is claiming he makes very little money and is unable to afford unallocated support, which includes your child support and alimony. He’s also showing a tax return that would only make him liable for one-fourth of what we were asking for in child support.” He looks at me, and I say nothing. “I know you’re selling the house, and there’s a little bit of equity there, so we’re going to see if he’ll allow you to keep all of the proceeds from the sale in exchange for alimony, at least.”
“He can afford both. He makes thirty thousand dollars a month.”
Amanda speaks softly. “We’re going to hire a forensic accountant to do a little more digging.”
All I can think is that a forensic anything cannot be cheap. Todd runs a moving company with four locations. When he first started, I used to help him do the books, and many people would pay him in cash. I went to great lengths at the time to hide those transactions and bump up our expenses to make it look as though the business barely broke even. “He doesn’t report most of his income, as I’m sure you can guess.” Amanda is taking notes. “I was actually being generous by asking for the minimum child support required from him. How does he expect us to live on a fourth of that?”
I exchange glances with Noah and Amanda, but they say nothing. “Stewart?”
“Like I said, we’re at the beginning stages. We’ll uncover whatever he’s hiding and make things right. We’re far from over.”
That can’t be cheap, either.
I stand, cross my arms, and begin to pace. “I don’t want this to drag on forever. I can’t have him continue to come into the house whenever he pleases.”
“Well, he’s legally entitled to access the home because he’s still on the title.”
“I know the law, but it’s disruptive for me and the boys. Can we at least get him to agree to forfeit his right of entry until it sells? He’s the one that put us in this position. At the very least, he could show some compassion. It’s beyond unnerving for them to have him pop in and out unannounced. They have no structure and no promise of seeing him or not.”
“We asked him that, and he declined.”
I throw my arms in the air. “What do I get to decline? Can I decline having to be here with all of you this afternoon? Can I decline the invoice that’s going to come from a forensic fucking accountant?” I bury my face in my hands. “Please forgive me. I honestly hate profanity. Todd just brings out the worst in me, and I can’t seem to express my thoughts where he’s concerned in any other way.”
Stewart stands up and places a hand on my shoulder. “No need to apologize.”
I wipe beneath my eyes. “Do I need permission to leave the country?”
“With the children?”
“No, with a friend.”
He smiled. “No, you fucking don’t.”