Chapter 2 - The Visitor at the Curb
I stayed in my car for a full minute, watching the silver sedan through the rearview mirror.
The driver's door pushed open, and Diane Mercer stepped out. She looked smaller than she had in court photographs, her graying hair pinned back in a neat, severe twist, wearing a beige trench coat that looked too heavy for the Southern California evening. She didn't walk toward my front door immediately. Instead, she stood by her fender, checking her watch with the deliberate slowness of someone who had nowhere else to be and wanted me to know it.
I killed the engine, grabbed my briefcase, and walked up the concrete path to my front steps.
"Claire," Diane called out. Her voice was thin, carrying easily across the quiet lawn. "We need to talk about the petition. Making things difficult won't change what you owe Dylan."
I stopped at my screen door, my key halfway out of my purse. "Diane. You're parked illegally."
"Don't be petty," she said, closing the distance between us with brisk, purposeful strides. She stopped at the edge of my porch, looking up at me through tortoiseshell glasses. "Dylan is in a bad way. You know how sensitive he is. When you walked out, you pulled the foundation right out from under him. He hasn't slept properly in months."
"He seems well enough to go to restaurants," I said, my voice steady.
Diane’s eyes narrowed slightly, a microscopic twitch of muscle near her jaw. "People need to eat, Claire. Are you begrudging him a sandwich with old friends? Is that what your marriage meant to you? Just ledger entries?"
It was a practiced line. It sounded like something Dylan’s lawyer had coached her on, or something she had repeated to herself in the mirror until it felt true.
"It's interesting you mention ledger entries," I said, unlocking the door and pushing it open wide enough for me to stand in the threshold. "Because I've been looking at some paperwork today. Specifically, the loan documents for the vehicle Dylan is driving."
Diane didn't flinch, but her hands—clutched tightly around the straps of her leather handbag—went white at the knuckles.
"That loan is part of the marital debt division," she said stiffly. "Your lawyer agreed to let him keep the vehicle for transportation during his transition."
"My lawyer agreed to a refinance," I corrected her, keeping my tone level. "Which means Dylan was supposed to assume the loan. But the loan is still in my name, and according to the Department of Motor Vehicles, the title is in yours."
The silence that fell between us was thick, broken only by the distant hum of traffic from the highway.
"Dylan needed stability," Diane said, her voice dropping its maternal warmth, hardening into something transactional. "And you make good money, Claire. You always have. A woman like you doesn't suffer because of a car payment. But a man with Dylan's artistic temperament—"
"Dylan is thirty-two years old, Diane," I interrupted. "He isn't an artist; he's a grown man who figured out how to make his mother the owner of a car that his ex-wife is paying off."
"You signed those papers," she snapped, her composure cracking. "You signed every single line. You were in such a hurry to get rid of him that you didn't even read the closing disclosures at the dealership. The court won't care about your regrets."
"The court might be very interested in fraudulent inducement during a property settlement," I said, using a phrase I had picked up from reading bankruptcy filings at work. "Especially when one party signs under the explicit promise of a refinance that never happened."
Diane stared at me for a long moment, her expression shifting from righteous indignation to something much colder.
"You think you're clever, don't you?" she whispered. "You think because you sit in an office all day pushing numbers around, you're smarter than everyone else. Wait until the judge hears how you treated him during the marriage. Wait until he hears about the isolation."
She turned on her heel, her trench coat swirling around her shins, and marched back down the path toward her sedan.
I watched her drive away, her brake lights glowing red against the gathering dusk. My hand was shaking slightly as I pulled the door shut behind me, but the fear I had felt when I first opened the county envelope was gone. It had been replaced by something much sharper.
May you like
Diane hadn't denied the title arrangement. She had defended it.
---
