By March, I had planted two hundred thirty tulip bulbs, a personal record, and hired a young landscaper named Theo to help me with the east garden bed that had always been too heavy for one person to manage.
Theo was twenty-two and knew almost nothing about perennials, but he was willing to learn, and he showed up on time, which in my experience covers a great deal.
I refinanced the house as Robert had recommended, establishing a clean financial structure going forward.
My monthly income, between alimony, Gerald’s pension share, my Social Security, and a small amount from the investment account, was more than I had ever during the marriage controlled independently.
It was a quietly exhilarating thing to sit down with my budget at the kitchen table and find that the numbers made sense. That there was room. That I could simply book a flight to see my college friend Louise in person rather than spending two hours on the phone because a plane ticket seemed extravagant.
I booked the flight.
I also returned, for the first time in thirty-nine years, to bookkeeping. Not full-time. Two clients. Small businesses in Westport who needed quarterly help with their accounts.
I charged a fair rate and found, to my considerable surprise and pleasure, that I was still good at it.
Numbers had not changed.
The logic of them was the same.
My brain, which Gerald had occasionally implied was suited to domestic management but perhaps not much more, turned out to be entirely capable of professional work at seventy-one.
Sophie, who visited in April for spring break, sat at the kitchen table doing her law school readings while I worked on a client’s quarterly accounts, and we worked in companionable silence.
At one point she looked up and said, “Grandma, you look different than you did last year.”
“Different how?” I asked.
She thought about it.
“Settled,” she said. “Like you’re in the right place.”
“I think I am,” I said.
The Garden Society welcomed me back warmly.
Or most of it did.
Clare Ostrander remained slightly awkward in my presence, the residue of that pointed conversation in September.
I did not hold it against her. She was not a bad person. She had simply chosen the side she thought would win.
Barbara Henley, who had known us both for thirty years, took me to lunch in April and told me over salads at the restaurant on the harbor that she was glad it had worked out.
“I never believed the version he was telling,” she said.
“What version was that?” I asked.
“That you’d become cold, difficult. That he’d been unhappy for years because of your attitude.”
She waved a hand.
“Gerald needs a narrative. He always did. You just never needed to control it.”
I thought about that for a long time afterward.
And Gerald—
He was living with Renee in Fairfield, in her house now, since the Sarasota condominium had been sold at a loss and the GRM Holdings LLC account had been distributed per the court order.
He had paid all legal fees.
He had watched sixty-two percent of his 401(k) transfer into my account.
He had, Michael reported carefully and without obvious satisfaction, adjusted his lifestyle significantly.
Renee was not pleased with the lifestyle adjustment. There had been arguments, I heard through Karen.
Renee had not entirely understood the financial scope of the settlement when she and Gerald had celebrated with champagne.
The man she had chosen—the seventy-three-year-old who had lost eleven pounds and bought new sneakers—had turned out to come with considerably fewer resources than advertised.
I did not feel triumphant about this.
What I felt was something closer to the absence of surprise.
