Page 66 of Unwrapped

I shake my head, looking out the window at the lake. It’s a bright, freezing cold morning. One of those days that makes this house feel like the only place on earth I want to be.

Elena is asking for the house again, which I could have seen coming from a mile away. This time, she also wants payment of her legal fees, and now she wants “custody” of an adult woman who lives here of her own volition because Elena abandoned her when she was seventeen.

“There’s also a request for spousal support,” Richard adds.

I snort. “That’s not happening.”

“No, of course not.” Richard pauses, and I can hear the rustling of papers. “These demands are performative, Vince. Her lawyer knows they’re absurd. Elena is escalating because she’s rattled, and rattled people do expensive, stupid things.”

“She’s rattled? By what? We’ve been separated for two years.”

“She’s rattled because we’ve made it clear that we’re prepared to litigate for as long as it takes, which means her savings are dwindling, and her boyfriend can’t float her legal bills forever. So she’s throwing anything she can think of against the wall, hoping something sticks long enough to scare you into a settlement.”

I lean forward and click through the divorce file on my screen. The lake house has been a point of contention from the beginning. Elena lived here for less than six months before walking out on me, and now she wants it on the grounds that it was her marital home.

My eye catches a notification in the corner of my screen. A message from Camille. I click it open while Richard is speaking.

Vince, thank you for being honest this morning. I appreciate your thoughtfulness, even if the outcome wasn’t what I’d hoped. I wish you well.

Very gracious. The kind of message that makes a man feel like an asshole for being relieved—because I am relieved. Calling things off with Camille was something I should have done sooner. I’d known for some time that my interest in her was halfhearted at best, and I’d even tried to use her to put Sophie out of my mind. In the process, I’d hurt Sophie and misled Camille into believing there might be a future between us. I’d been thinking entirely about what I wanted, without much consideration for either of them.

I close the message and turn my attention back to Richard.

“You know, Vince,” he says, “you’ve been more accommodating toward Elena throughout this divorce than most people would have been.”

I give a humorless laugh. “And look where it’s gotten me.”

“That’s rather my point. You’ve made concession after concession, and Elena keeps coming back for more. I understand wanting to avoid an ugly fight, but at some point you have to accept that you can’t make her reasonable.”

“I know.” I rub my forehead. “Christ, Richard, I’m exhausted.”

“I can imagine.”

“Elena leaves, I say fine,” I go on, hearing the edge in my own voice. “She wants the car, it’s hers. She wants to rewrite the narrative so that she’s the victim of my emotional unavailability, I let her. I’ve done everything I could to avoid being the bad guy, and you know what? Nobody’s happy. Not Elena. Not me. Not Sophie.”

Richard is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “When’s the last time you asked yourself what you actually want, Vince? Not what you think you should want, or what would make everyone else comfortable. What you want.”

It’s the kind of question I would normally roll my eyes at, a kind of pop-psychology navel-gazing. But after two years of trying to extricate myself from a marriage without causing unnecessary pain or conflict, it does seem that I’ve completely lost sight of my own happiness.

And Richard’s question has me thinking about Sophie.

We had such a wonderful Christmas together. For a couple of days, I allowed myself to enjoy what was happening between us without constantly questioning it. Then Elena arrived, and all my old doubts came rushing back.

I’ve been trying to find a way to reconcile how I feel about Sophie with everything that makes our relationship so complicated. I’ve thought about it from every angle, looking for some answer that would make the decision easier. But there isn’t one. Nothing changes the fact that I’m her stepfather, or that our history together makes this different from an ordinary relationship.

And yet I love her.

I want to be with her. I want us to have a life together, and I want to stop treating those desires as something I have to apologize for.

I think about the last few days, and how much unhappiness I’ve caused by refusing to make up my mind. I’ve been so preoccupied with whether this relationship is a mistake that I haven’t allowed myself to consider what happens if I walk away from it.

Sophie goes back to university soon. She’s young, and she has an entire life ahead of her. If I keep telling her we can’t be together, eventually she’ll believe me. She’ll move on, as she should.

The thought is miserable.

I can’t know whether we’ll manage to make this work. There are things we’ll have to figure out, and I can’t promise that everything will be easy. But I know how happy she makes me, and I know how I feel when we’re together.

Maybe I’ve spent enough time trying to talk myself out of loving her.