Chapter 8 - THE QUESTION HE COULD NOT PREPARE FOR
Two years after I carried Nathan’s lunch into St. Catherine’s, I met him in a conference room overlooking the Charles River.
He had completed his suspension and begun monitored work at a community hospital outside Boston. He no longer held an executive title. His cases were reviewed by another surgeon, and he was prohibited from participating in internal incident investigations involving his own care.
Our divorce petition had remained inactive for six months.
Neither of us withdrew it.
Neither of us moved it forward.
Nathan arrived early and placed his phone face down on the table.
He looked older without the authority of St. Catherine’s surrounding him. There was more gray near his temples. His shoulders no longer carried the rigid confidence I once mistook for calm.
A mediator sat near the window.
This was not a reconciliation session.
It was a meeting to decide whether there was any reason to schedule one.
Nathan answered questions about his work, therapy, and limited contact with Everett.
His father had never admitted altering Leah’s record.
Nathan no longer visited him.
“Do you miss him?” I asked.
“Yes.”
The direct answer surprised me.
“Do you still love him?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe cutting contact proves you’ve changed?”
“No. It proves I finally stopped making other people absorb the cost of loving him.”
The mediator looked toward me.
I had prepared a list of questions.
Only one still mattered.
“When you saw me at that charity auction, before you walked over, what did you want?”
Nathan lowered his eyes.
“At first?”
“Yes.”
“I wanted to find out whether you planned to challenge the settlement.”
“And after we spoke?”
“I wanted you to like me.”
The answer hurt because both parts could be true.
He continued.
“I told myself the second feeling erased the first. It didn’t.”
I looked through the window at boats moving slowly along the river.
Leah had loved the water. Nathan knew that before our first date because he had read it in the family background notes attached to her case.
For years, I believed he remembered the details I shared because he listened more carefully than anyone else.
Sometimes he had.
Sometimes he had known them before I spoke.
The mediator asked whether I wanted another session.
Nathan did not look at me.
He left the decision where it belonged.
“I don’t know,” I said.
No one rushed to fill the answer.
When the meeting ended, Nathan gathered his coat and walked toward the door.
I stopped him.
“Next Thursday,” I said. “One hour. No mediator.”
He turned.
Hope appeared in his face, but he did not move closer.
“This is not forgiveness,” I told him.
“I understand.”
“It may only be another conversation.”
“I understand that too.”
I watched him leave before returning Leah’s file to my bag.
May you like
Outside, Nathan waited on one side of the glass doors while I stood on the other. He did not hold them open as though we had already decided to walk together.
When I reached the entrance, he stepped back and gave me room to choose my own way through.
