CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Kate stared at the paperwork spread out across her hotel bed, too dumbfounded to comprehend the words dotting the pages like blood spatter.
She looked up to see Amy watching her with a nervous expression. “Say something,” Amy urged. “What are you thinking?”
Kate swallowed, trying to get her bearings. “So the divorce papers were never officially filed,” she said. “Which means the divorce never happened.”
“Right.” Amy nodded like a teacher responding to a pupil prone to hysteric outbursts. “As soon as I uncovered all this, I called Viv.”
“What?” Kate knotted her fingers in the bedspread and ordered herself to keep breathing. “You called Viv about this?”
Amy reached across the bed and laid a hand on Kate’s arm. “No, not like that,” she said. “I didn’t tell her what I found. I just asked a few questions about the divorce paperwork. She knows I’ve been working on all the due diligence. The background checks and legal stuff.”
“Right. I’m sorry, of course.”
“I wanted to see if I could figure out what happened. Get a handle on things so we know how to proceed.” Amy gave Kate’s arm a squeeze, but didn’t draw her hand back. “I gave Viv this totally convincing story about some other show we worked on where an actor’s divorce was filed in the wrong state and his ex-wife came after his checks and—well, it doesn’t matter. She bought it. She didn’t seem suspicious about me trying to track down copies of their divorce certificate.”
Kate looked down at the paperwork again, willing there to be a divorce certificate somewhere in the jumble. She saw photocopies of driver’s licenses and birth certificates and something that looked like a Costco card.
But no divorce certificate.
“There isn’t one,” Amy said, reading Kate’s thoughts. “According to Viv, they handled the divorce themselves to make sure it stayed out of the media. It was an uncontested divorce, so all they had to do was file a Petition for Dissolution of Marriage and then have a lawyer prepare a QDRO.”
“A cuatro?”
“No, a QDRO—it’s legal shorthand for a Qualified Domestic Relations Order.” Amy picked up a sheaf of papers from the pile and waved it at her. “It’s a legal document for splitting up things like retirement accounts and pension plans.”
“Okay,” Kate said, not sure she was following. “So what happened? Or what didn’t happen?”
“According to Viv, they divvied up the tasks. They did all the paperwork together—”
“How chummy,” Kate muttered, hating the bitterness in her own voice.
Amy, bless her heart, ignored Kate’s snark and continued. “Apparently they worked out a big list of who’d get what. She was very proud of that—that they didn’t use a mediator or lawyers or anything. Just made this great big document splitting up all their assets and accounts and possessions.”
“Okay,” Kate said, pretty sure she was following.
“They decided Jonah would file the paperwork for the petition, and Viv would file the QDRO.”
“You can do them separately?”
“Apparently so.” Amy bit her lip and looked down at the papers. “And as far as I can find, Jonah never did his part.”
“But—but—that doesn’t make sense,” Kate said. “Wouldn’t there have been some sort of red flag when they did taxes or something?”
Amy shook her head. “It’s only been a year. They had to file taxes together last time, since they were still married the preceding tax year,” Amy said. “The red flag wouldn’t have been raised until the next round.”
Kate swallowed, unsurprised Amy had done her homework. It was the only thing here that wasn’t a complete and total shock. “I still don’t get it,” Kate said. “How could you not realize your divorce wasn’t final?”
“Viv did the QDRO,” Amy said. “There would have been a lot of legal-sounding paperwork flying back and forth. It’s possible they both just assumed it was a done deal. Viv does, anyway.”
Kate opened her mouth to insist how improbable that sounded, but closed it again. Hadn’t Jonah himself acknowledged his own forgetfulness? His failure to keep track of documents and remember important dates?
“Even Viv didn’t catch it,” Amy said, reading Kate’s thoughts. “When I first started asking for paperwork, she gave me all these official-sounding documents, but nothing with an actual county seal on it. That’s what raised my antennae. That’s why I contacted the courthouse.”
“But wouldn’t Viv or Jonah or someone have realized at some point that they never saw an official divorce certificate?”
“That’s what I asked the county clerk,” Amy said. “She said it’s not unusual. They don’t automatically send you copies. You have to pay for them. And with all the QDRO paperwork flying around—”
“Jonah probably figured Viv had taken care of it,” she said. “He told me once before how she was always giving him honey-do lists and then doing the tasks herself if he didn’t jump on it fast enough.”
“Sure, that’s possible,” Amy said. “All this time, Viv seemed so proud of how they managed to keep their divorce out of the media.”
“And all this time, they weren’t actually divorced.” Kate had hoped saying the words aloud might make them easier to digest, but that wasn’t the case at all. They still sounded sharp and cold, like little obsidian arrow tips.
Amy dropped the stack of papers on the comforter and nodded. “That appears to be the case.”
They both looked down at the paperwork then, like the answer might be somewhere in that pile. Kate took a few deep breaths, trying to imagine how it might have all happened. Jonah with a big stack of paperwork, never quite getting around to filing his portion. Getting a stack of documents months later about the divvying up of assets and assuming it was a done deal. That it had all been handled.
Kate looked up again. “Who else knows about this?”
“Just the two of us, for now.”
Kate nodded, letting the wheels turn in her brain. For once, she had no answer. No certainty about the right next move. Was this a deal breaker? A show killer or a show maker?
Beyond that, what did it mean for Jonah? For Viv? For all of them?
Amy sat watching her, waiting for a response.
“We have to tell them,” Kate said.
“Tell who?”
Kate hesitated. “Viv. Jonah. The network execs.” She thought about the order of those names, about which needed to happen first. About their need to be discreet. “The show’s lawyers.”
“You’re sure?”
Kate nodded, her brain working quickly, even though she wasn’t sure. “We start with the lawyers. They’ll know what to do.”
“I thought about that,” Amy said. “Surely the legal team has seen something like this before. Like maybe there’s a simple solution. Some way they can just file the paperwork and get it over with and never need to alert Viv and Jonah at all.”
“Right,” Kate agreed. “Maybe it really is that simple.”
They looked at each other for a long time. Neither of them spoke, but Kate knew they both realized there was no way it could be that simple. Not legally, anyway.
She looked down at the copy of the QDRO. Both bore signatures from Viv and Jonah. It would be so easy to trace those words, to imitate Viv’s loopy cursive or Jonah’s blocky lettering.
“No.” Kate’s voice was sharp as she glanced back at Amy. “We’re not forging anyone’s signatures.”
Amy looked startled. “I didn’t suggest it.”
“I know.” Kate took a shaky breath. “I’m telling myself. That’s a line we can’t cross.”
“Understood.” Amy was silent a moment, studying Kate with such intensity that she wanted to look away. “Kate?”
“Yeah?”
Amy seemed to hesitate. “I’ll only ask you this once, and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want.”
“Okay.”
“Do you think Jonah knows? That there’s some reason he did it on purpose or—”
“Stayed married to Viv?” She shook her head, waiting to feel any pinpricks of suspicion, any niggling tingles of doubt. There was nothing.
In a way, it was a relief to feel certain about one thing.
“No,” Kate said. “I don’t think he knows. It wasn’t intentional.”
“Okay,” she said. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
Amy gave Kate’s arm one last squeeze before letting go. Then she picked up a stack of paperwork and began organizing it. Kate watched all the pages shuffling past, all those certificates and licenses and legal documents. Pieces of two intertwined lives.
Amy gathered them all into a thick stack and shoved them into a big envelope the color of baby food. When she closed it and looked at Kate again, she looked determined. “If I do my job right, maybe Jonah never needs to know,” Amy said. “Same with Viv.”
Kate nodded, wishing it could really be that easy.
In the back of her mind, she heard Viv’s words again. A quote from But Not Broken, or maybe it was On the Other Hand. Kate wasn’t sure anymore.
“If something seems too easy, get ready for certain heartbreak.”
Kate touched a hand to her chest and tried to ignore the sharp ache.
Jonah held a twenty-pound Main coon named Lucifer between his thighs and tried to remember why he’d agreed to do this.
“I love you, Jonah.” Jossy smiled at him, then grabbed hold of Lucifer’s rear paws before he could rabbit-kick Jonah in the nuts again. Jonah shifted in his chair, fumbling for a better grip on the cat.
“I’m having second thoughts about whether the feeling’s mutual,” Jonah muttered, though he knew damn well that’s the why he was here at the Cat Café long after business hours, subjecting Lucifer to the world’s ugliest manicure. Jonah held out his hand to accept a pink glittery nail tip from his sister. “Remind me again why we’re putting Lee Press-On Nails on a cat?”
“Because Lucifer has a bit of a scratching issue,” Jossy said. “That’s why he’s been rehomed six times.”
Lucifer wriggled one paw free and took a swipe at Jonah’s cheek. Jonah ducked back, glad the military had left him with sharp reflexes. He’d never expected to use them for cat wrangling, but it was a small price to pay for helping his sister. And this asshole cat.
“You remembered to put glue in it this time?” Jonah pressed Lucifer’s squishy pink paw pad to reveal the claws on his right hand. Lucifer responded with a hiss that sounded like a malfunctioning espresso machine.
“Yes, I remembered.” Jossy held the cat still while Jonah wrestled the nail tip onto the cat’s first claw.
He drew back, admiring his handiwork. “Why the pink glitter?”
“Because the vet clinic was out of more manly colors.” Jossy stepped back to fill another claw tip with glue. “Sorry, Lucifer.”
The cat growled as Jonah slid the next claw tip into place. “You’re seriously compromising his manhood here.” He positioned another glittery pink object over the next claw. “And mine,” he added as Lucifer delivered another rabbit-kick to his nuts.
“Sorry, Sorry.” Jossy handed him another claw tip and grabbed the cat’s rear wheels again. “Seriously, Jonah—I owe you for this. Declawing is such an inhumane thing to do to a cat, so this is truly a kindness you’re doing for him.”
Lucifer growled again, unimpressed by Jonah’s kindness. Jonah grabbed another claw tip from Jossy and slipped it into place, getting more comfortable with the task even if Lucifer wasn’t.
Maybe this would be a good time to broach the subject of the computer-controlled knee. They’d discussed it before, but not recently. And never when it was a real possibility. Never when Jonah was in a position to make this kind of difference in Jossy’s life.
He was thinking about how to bring it up when Jossy interrupted his thoughts. “Have you seen the footage yet?” she asked. “The stuff they shot at the animal shelter the other day?”
“Not yet. Kate mentioned something during filming yesterday. Said post-production was putting together a promotional thing on YouTube.”
“Will you get to see it before it goes out?”
“She offered, if we wanted to see it. Apparently they can’t e-mail it out, but she’s willing to pull it up on her laptop and show us when she gets the files tomorrow night. We could both meet up with her if you’d like.”
“No.” Jossy bit her lip and handed him another claw tip. “I think I’d be too nervous. Maybe you could watch it first and tell me what you think?”
“You’re so weird.” Jonah wiggled the glittery pink claw tip into place and held out his hand for another.
They lapsed into silence for a moment, each of them focused on the task of helping the uncooperative cat. When Jossy spoke, her voice was barely audible.
“Jonah?”
“Yeah?”
“I had a dream last night that I was riding a bike.”
He looked up sharply, and Lucifer saw his shot at escape. Jonah gripped the cat tighter, subduing him without taking his gaze off his sister.
“Wow, that’s—does that happen often?”
She shook her head, eyes glittering a little. “No, that’s why I told you. It kind of shook me up. I mean—I’ve barely even thought about bike racing for eighteen years.”
“Really?”
She shrugged and handed him another nail tip. “I mean, sure, I’ve thought of it. In that way you think something absurd like, ‘I wonder what it would be like to buy a two-thousand-dollar pair of stilettos and sashay through downtown Seattle.’”
Jonah frowned and slid the next claw tip into place. “You lost me there.”
“I just mean, it’s impossible,” she said.
“It’s not impossible, Joss.” Jonah kept his voice soft, both for Lucifer’s benefit and his sister’s. He couldn’t believe his luck at having her broach the subject. This had to mean something. “We’ve talked before about the computer-controlled knees.”
“Please.” Jossy rolled her eyes. “You think two-thousand-dollar shoes are insane. A prosthetic like that? You could buy fifty pairs of those shoes for the cost of one of those.”
“Call me crazy, but only one of those options sounds practical.”
“That’s not even remotely practical,” she said. “Even if money were no object, it’s a silly thing to spend it on.”
He started to tell her money was no object. Thanks to the show, that was almost the case. But should he really count chickens that hadn’t hatched? The show hadn’t formally been picked up yet. Anything could happen.
Jossy shook her head and handed him another nail tip. “I wasn’t telling you about the dream to complain. I just thought it was interesting.”
Jonah nodded, not ready to let the subject go just yet. He thought about Kate’s words the other night.
“That really fucking sucks.”
It did suck on so many levels. He’d spent eighteen years trying to make it up to Jossy. Trying give back some of what he’d stolen from her. Trying to live up to his father’s last request.
But shirtless dog walks and cat manicures could only go so far.
“What if a computer-controlled prosthetic just landed in your lap?” he asked.
Jossy snorted. “Ouch.”
“I don’t mean literally. Like what if insurance suddenly paid for it or something.”
He kept his gaze on the cat, not wanting her to read too much into the “or something.”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “There’s no point in even talking like that. It’s never going to happen, Jonah.”
He took another nail tip from her and slid it onto Lucifer’s claw. For the first time, he saw a faint shimmer of hope. Things would never be the same for Jossy, but if he could just make this happen for her—
“We’re almost done,” Jossy said. “Hang in there, sweetie pie.”
“That’s right, buddy.” Jonah glanced at his sister and smiled. “The end is in sight.”