Paul and Sue

I didn't say anything. I just stripped out of my PJ's and threw on a loose shirt and some shorts. After a moment of confusion, I retrieved my earbuds from the treadmill, then fit Daisey with her harness. I queued up my long running playlist, then jogged out to the pre-dawn twilight with my dog. The spark of a plan from last night about had bounced around in my head, and I took the bare bones of what I'd worked out and added some immediate steps for today.

Unsurprisingly, my wife had left for work by the time I Daisey and I returned from our run. The first step was to call my boss, and take a week of PTO. Stacy laughed when she said she would approve it; HR had been emailing her about my unused vacation time for the last month and a half. The less comfortable step was to ask for the name of the lawyer who'd handled her divorce. That sobered the conversation considerably. She texted me with the lawyer's contact details, and wished me good luck.

***

"Good morning, Paul!" Susan's mom greeted me at their door with a smile. As she looked at me, her smile tightened. "You needed to speak to Donnie? He's in the office. I just put on a fresh pot of coffee; I'll bring y'all some in a few minutes."

"Thanks Mary." I gave her a sad smile and a hug. I walked through my in-law's home, trying not to let my spirits sag.

My father in law's office was half law library and half trophy room. He'd abandoned a run for state office in the nineties. Books on legal theory and constitutional law crowded images of Donald Smith shaking hands with the great and the good on full bookshelves. He hadn't dropped out because of a scandal, but because Mary had started feeling the stress of the race. She'd asked him to spend more time with her and Susan, and he'd walked away from a decade's worth of work to be by her side.

"Paul." Donald said, grimly. He offered his hand, and I shook it. "It's good to see you. Take a seat."

"Thank you for coming home to get this for me." I replied, sitting in one of his antique armchairs.

"I was already here. The Doc has me working from home until this new variant has died down. Our neighbor's daughter is a mobile notary, part time." Donald rubbed the back of his head. "I've asked her to come over and make some notarized copies of the agreement for you two. I'd like to hang on to the original."

"Thank you." I nodded. "I've got cash on me, so I can cover the costs."

Donald sat behind his desk; his tells were worse than his daughter's. "I wish you'd tell me what this is about."

"Donald, I think it would be better if you asked Sue." I kept my poker face up.

"Coffee's up!" Mary entered the room with a tray. She handed me a cup, black with two sugars on the saucer, before putting her husband's coffee on the desk. Mary glanced down and stiffened before she turned to me.

"Sweetie..." Donald said, hesitating.

Sue's dad had always hated poker for one simply play: the bluff. If you looked 'Honest Lawyer' up in the dictionary, you'd find his picture. In contrast, I wouldn't have played a high stakes card game against Mary; she was one of the most perceptive people I'd met. "What has my daughter done?" Mary asked in a flat tone.

"I'm not here to talk about that, Mary." I said, my poker face on. I wasn't there to tear down their image of their daughter; if Susan wanted to do that, she could do that herself. "I just needed to get a copy of the prenuptial agreement."

"What makes you..." Donald almost got a full sentence out before Mary's sad look silenced him.

"Paul is here asking for the agreement, so it seems she's taken after you, dear." Mary immediately put her hand to her mouth, as her husband slumped in his chair. "Oh god, Don, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it."

"Baby, I love you." My father-in-law took a deep breath to compose himself. "Even if you meant it, I know you love me."

The doorbell rang. Mary excused herself to go answer it.

"Paul, I wasn't..." Donald started; I didn't let him finish.

"I know." I let the mask drop. I owed the man that much. "Mary took me aside and told me when you sprung the prenup on me. I knew you just wanted to protect your daughter. Honestly, I wanted to do the same thing; I just wasn't okay with the protection being so one-sided. I just never expected us to be... here."

"This wasn't... She never rubs my face in it, for all that she'd be justified." Don looked at his coffee cup. "Even if I spend my life making up to that woman, I doubt I'll feel clean."

"You know, Mary told me she forgave you a long time ago." I said, as gently as I could.

"I know that." Don said, quietly. "But I'm the one to blame here. I took the best thing in my life and I damn near burned it."

The notary did her business and took my money before providing me with a pair of stamped copies printed from Donald's old multi-function printer and a scanned PDF in my in-box. She handed me her card as she headed for the door.

As I was getting ready to go, Mary stopped me. "Give him a dollar." She said, pointing at her husband. I looked at her for a moment, then pulled a one-dollar bill out of my wallet and handed it to my father-in-law. "Paul has your firm on retainer. We're not taking sides in this, and your firm is staying out of it."

Donald nodded slowly. He looked at the dollar in his hand, then shoved it in his pocket. He extended that hand to me. "For a personal matter that is not related to divorce. We aren't taking sides in this. Son, I hope that you two remember that you are stronger together, no matter what you are going through."

"For a personal matter that is not related to divorce." I agreed, shaking his hand.

Mary pulled me into a quick hug. "Let's see about having dinner soon, just the four of us."

"We'll see." I smiled despite the poker face, and headed to my car. Our last two dinners with just the four of us had resulted in Mary, Don and I eating at a nice restaurant, with their daughter nowhere in sight.

***

Susan

"Baby, you'll get another go to talk him into it tonight." Bart whispered in Susan's ear. His arm was warm around her shoulders through her blouse, hers was around his waist. "I'm sure you'll work him round, and we'll have our special night tomorrow."

"Bart, you didn't see him." Susan said. She shivered. "Hell, I've never seen him like that. He was so cold, and he went right to talking about divorce."

"Babe, it's just saber rattling. He's just a no-ambition geek. He knows he has it good with you." Bart smirked. "You know he won't leave you." The elevator dinged and opened to the building's lobby. As they walked out of the building, Susan's phone rang; She looked at the screen and was surprised to see her father's number. "Hey Dad! Is something wrong?"

"Yes Sue." Her father said. "I need to speak with you."

"What's up?" For a moment, worst case scenarios crossed her mind. "Is Mom okay?"

"She's fine." Donald said. "But we need to speak as soon as possible."

"Sure, what's going on?"

"I'm outside your office right now." Donald replied. His tone had become more and more curt. "Can you join me for lunch?"

"You're here?" She said loudly for Bart's benefit, as she quickly extricated herself from his arm. "Where are you?"

"Turn around, Susan." Her father's voice was flat, and had come from behind her, not from her phone. "We really need to talk."

"Good afternoon, Sir." Bart chose to run interference; he extended his hand. "I'm Bart Hackett, Susan's boss."

"Mr. Hackett." Donald looked at Bart's hand, but made no move to shake it. "I'm Donald Smith, head of the litigation at Matthew, Smith and Barrett. I assure you, your HR department has heard of us. I'm Susan's father. I'm taking her to lunch."

"I'm sorry but we've got an important project we're wrapping up." Bart awkwardly withdrew his hand. "We're putting the finishing details on a major project..."

"I'm afraid I urgently need to discuss a family matter with my daughter." The older man was wearing his anger on his sleeve.

"I'm sorry, Bart." Susan knew she had to get her father away from the man who was courting her. Of all the people to run into with Bart, her father was almost the worst person she could think of. "I'll catch up with you at the office."

Bart nodded, his eyes narrowing. "You should see to your family emergency. We'll go over the last steps with the group later."

Susan took her father to one of her and Bart's favorite lunch spots. The host took their order, as the waitress was running late. At her father's nod she ordered burgers and fries for the pair of them. Hers with extra pickles, his with onion hot from the grill. "What's going on Dad?" Susan asked. "What was so important that you couldn't have just called?"

"I need to tell you three things." Donald sighed. "I know you're busy, so I'll try to keep this brief."

"First, when you were five, I had a brief affair with someone I considered a good friend." He grimaced. "It started as trying to comfort her after her husband's death, and got a lot more complicated very fast."

"What..." Susan's jaw dropped.

"Your mother caught me coming back from our third time together." Donald said. "She was very angry with me, and she took you to your gran's farm down in Waco."

"Lorena." Susan absentmindedly corrected him, her mind overloaded.

"Yeah. Tiny Lorena, Texas." Donald smiled sadly, before continuing. "Mary came back, and we went into couple's therapy. If she hadn't forgiven me... I don't know what I'd have done. I certainly didn't deserve it."

"I..." Susan stuttered; she vaguely remembered the summer with Gran, down on the farm. "I don't know how to process that." "There is more, though." Donald grimaced again. "About two years later, your mom and I were finally in a good space. We'd worked through the trust issues and the negative feelings. Your mom decided it was time that to try to get pregnant again. We'd wanted a second kid, and I was so happy, so glad that we'd gotten past my fuckup. But try as we might, we couldn't conceive. We didn't know until we started looking for answers, but I'd caught gonorrhea from Christy, and gave it to your mom. She never showed symptoms, and I'd always written my problems off to diet and stress. It went untreated until we'd seen the doctor, and left a lot of scar tissue on your mom's fallopian tubes... she wasn't able to conceive a second time. You're an only child because I let myself get involved with another woman, and it kills me that I did that to your mother. It still hurts her, every damn day and I will never forgive myself for that."

Susan sat for a moment and digested that bombshell. Her father took a deep breath.

"Second, your husband stopped by the house this morning to get a copy of your prenup." Donald watched his daughter freeze. "He refused to tell us anything about what's going on between you two. Mary saw right through him. She's pretty sure he was trying to spare our feelings. Before you ask, he didn't put me up to talking to you, and your mom was against me coming to talk to you while my emotions were high."

"That's..." Oh god, that's not good. "What was the third thing?"

"As of this morning, Paul has my firm on retainer." Donald said, almost gently. "We will not represent you in any divorce action, as it would be a conflict of interest. Mary also wants us to be neutral in this; after seeing you and your boss together today, I agree with her." "Neutral?" Susan asked, wide eyed as the first part of her father's statement hit. "Why a retainer? Daddy, you wouldn't let the firm represent him, would you?"

"We agreed it was for a personal matter; our involvement will preclude the firm's involvement in any divorce between you two." Donald said, looking away. "But honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if his lawyer didn't call us in to consult on the prenup, at least. That would be well within the scope of a retainer."

"You mean call you in." To Susan's ears, her tone was as flat as her husband's had been the previous night.

"That's a reasonable expectation." Her father said, squaring his shoulders. "I wrote the damn thing. If he pursues a divorce, his lawyer is going to want to review the agreement with me before taking anything to court, and probably testify as to its validity under the law." They sat in silence for a moment.

"Oh, hey there Susan! Is this your dad?!" Her usual waitress brought their food to the table. "Is Bart not joining you two today?" "Not today, Cindy." Susan winced.

"To bad, you two are my favorite couple." Cindy smile faltered as she saw the reaction of the father and daughter. "Did I say something wrong?"

"I'm afraid I've lost my appetite. I need to get home to Mary." Donald stood, and put several twenties on the table. He fixed his daughter with a glare. "I'm sure you understand that I cannot discuss a client's activity; I may already have said too much. I hope for your mother's sake you haven't already gone too far."

***

Susan rushed home that evening. When she'd returned from lunch, Bart had summoned her into his office and demanded a blow-by-blow of the conversation. He'd sneered at her father's confession, and said again that there was no way Paul would divorce her. It was a lot less convincing after hearing of her parent's decision to remain on the sidelines, and that Paul had gone out of his way to get a copy of the prenup. Her phone pinged with Paul's tone as she took the left in front of the old chapel. It was a text, so she had her digital assistant read it out.

"I'll be headed to Walt and Hannah's for dinner in a bit. I'll probably be drinking, so I'll grab a rideshare. I don't expect to be back before you go to sleep tonight." The digital voice read out. Her phone dinged again with his tone. "There are leftovers in the fridge if you're hungry."

"Fuck." If they didn't talk, they couldn't resolve this silly issue, and she'd miss her date with Bart. She sped up. She pulled up in the driveway as a compact with uber stickers pulled away. Cursing as she parked, she grabbed her phone and called Paul. "Hey Susan, did you get my texts?"

"Baby, I was hoping we could talk tonight."

"I'm already headed for Walt and Hannah's." he hesitated, the U2's One came through tinny on the phone's speaker. "I can check and see if I can wrangle an invitation for you; I'm not just going over for drinks or to play some poker. I need to talk with them about some stuff they've considered private. It's really not going to be the place for us to discuss our issues."

"I..." She thought about it as she went into the house. If it was either going to visit her husband's best friend and his wife, or stream some of the shows she'd missed by herself, she knew which one she'd rather do. "I'd like to come."

"Cool." Paul said. The music in the background shifted to a song by Depeche Mode. "There should be a few 'rona tests left in the five pack in the bathroom cabinet. Can you take one while I call them? Walt has been immunocompromised since the transplant."

"I know that." She set her purse down in its usual spot and hung up her jacket. "Can you see if there's anything they want me to pick up?" "I'm bringing a pie, but I'll ask."

"You're taking them the good stuff?"

"Yeah, Chocolate French Silk from that place on Tennessee." He paused again. "Honestly, this turned into a bigger ask than I'd originally expected; this may be something Walt asks me to keep private."

"I get it." She sighed; Walt was a marriage counselor, and it wasn't unusual for him to vent to Paul in confidence; this sort of thing would likely be up Walt's alley anyway. "I'll be okay if I can't come, but you'd better bring me home a slice of the pie." "Sure. I'll check back in a few minutes." He hung up.

She went to the dining room and pulled the last of the test kits out of the box. She had the swab in her second nostril when she realized that he hadn't said that he loved her.

***

"Hey Sue!" Walt greeted her with a warm hug. If the Pedrotti's were one thing, they were huggers. "I'm surprised to see you; Paul said you were burning the candle at both ends."

"I'm doing pretty good, actually! I thought I would be working." Sue smiled. "We're in the last stretch on a big project at work, but they're trying to be sure we're getting some rest before the last big push."

"That's great. Paul is in the den with Hannah and Monica. Help yourself to something from the bar." Walt departed toward the kitchen. "We'll have dinner out in the next little bit."

Sue walked down the hallway to the den; for some reason, the old Victorian house always felt larger than it actually was. She rounded the corner to see Hannah in an armchair near the big fireplace, and Paul in conversation a strikingly beautiful woman who looked to be in her forties. It took her a moment to place Monica, the woman who had donated her kidney to Walt.

"Hey Baby!" She said with a smile.

"Hi Susan." There was genuine warmth in his greeting, if not much. He seemed overdressed for a night at a friend's; one of his better button-down shirts and a pair of towsers that went with his good suit.

"Hey Hannah!" Susan said, expecting a hug.

"Hi." Hannah sat on the chair with her arms around her legs.

"Hi Susan." The older woman said, with a smile. "I'm Monica; We met at the movie screening on Hannah's birthday."

"It's good to see you again." Susan turned to Hannah. "Is everything alright?"

"It's not." Hannah took a deep breath. She seemed to fold further in on herself.

Monica went to the younger woman and took her hand. "It's gonna work out okay baby. You can't lose hope."

"What's going on?" Susan asked.

"Do you want me to fill her in on what I know?" Paul asked Monica.

"It might be for the best; you actually know everything but the sexy stuff." Monica replied. "Hannah's not going to be her usual effervescent self."

"About three years ago, you and Cecily were working overtime on one of those projects. Her husband and I had taken to meeting for drinks at that bar that's styled like an English pub." Paul motioned his wife to the couch. She sat down close to him. "Lowell had been a lifelong supporter of one of the teams on the big screen so he was incredibly invested in the game, so I was mostly people watching. As I was sitting there, a pair of women came into the pub, pretty obviously on a date; Holding hands, stolen kisses, that sort of thing." He nodded at Hannah and Monica. "I took a few discrete pictures and texted Walt. He asked me not to disturb them and to meet him and Hannah for lunch.

"The next day the three of us sat down to lunch. Walt and Hannah explained that they were polyamorous and that they both were dating Monica, as a couple, and individually. I'd accidentally caught Hannah on one of her first solo dates with Monica."

"Polyamorous?" Sue asked, with a frown.

"The dictionary defines it as being involved in romantic or sexual relationships with more than one person." Hannah answered, almost robotically.

"You should tell it the right way; It was actually our first proper date together. Walt printed one of the pictures and he keeps in his desk." Monica said with a grin. She kissed Hannah on the cheek before looking back at Paul. "Your photography skills suck."

"I've seen it. He should have printed the pic of you two making out like teenagers." Paul quipped back. He turned back to Susan. "Walt and Susan asked me not to tell anyone, especially you. Monica's manager at the time was a mega-church zealot, and would have fired her in a heartbeat."

"Why wouldn't they want you to tell me?" Susan asked, bemused. "I wouldn't even have known who that manager person was."

"Because the zealot's husband is highly placed with your employer." Monica replied. "She'd brag about how he was making the big bucks reading advance copies of your firm's reports and trading stocks ahead of the results. Walt and Hannah had heard me rant about her bigoted South African ass, and put two and two together. She left my employer a few months ago. Hypothetically, it's less of a risk to tell you now."