Chapter 14 - Her Own Front Door|
The divorce became final eight months after the wedding.
Naomi wore a navy dress she could fasten herself.
It was a practical choice until she stood in front of the mirror and recognized why it mattered.
Mara met her outside the courthouse with two coffees and a folder far thinner than the one that had begun their work together.
Duly had signed the necessary agreements through counsel.
He did not contest her decision or ask for a meeting before the hearing.
The marriage ended without a room full of flowers watching it happen.
Outside, Naomi sat on a bench while people hurried past with lunches and parking receipts.
She had expected to feel triumphant.
Instead, she felt tired, then sad, then unexpectedly hungry.
“Is that normal?” she asked when she admitted it.
Mara handed her a paper bag from the bakery across the street.
“You haven't eaten since breakfast.”
Naomi laughed.
They ate pastries on the courthouse bench.
Two weeks later, she moved into an apartment above a quiet insurance office, three blocks from Second Page.
The kitchen had uneven cabinet doors and a window overlooking a maple tree.
She had saved the security deposit from her wages.
Her remaining money required a budget, and the budget required her to stop pretending she would cook every meal from scratch.
June brought a lamp.
Helen brought towels and asked where Naomi wanted them.
That question made her daughter pause.
Then she showed her the bathroom cabinet.
They ordered pizza and ate on the floor because the table would not arrive until Monday.
No one suggested that the apartment needed a man to make it secure.
Before leaving, Helen stood beside the door with her coat over one arm.
“I gave my full statement,” she said.
“Including the things I should have questioned sooner.”
Naomi nodded.
“Thank you for telling me.”
Her mother looked as though she wanted to ask for more.
Instead, she hugged Naomi when Naomi offered.
After everyone left, the apartment became very quiet.
Naomi checked the lock twice.
She was still learning the difference between caution and the old expectation that something terrible would happen if she stopped paying attention.
She unpacked her grandmother's letters, made tea, and left a cup in the sink because she could wash it in the morning.
A letter from Duly arrived through Mara the following week.
Naomi decided to read it on a Saturday when she had no obligations afterward.
He wrote that he had entered a guilty plea and agreed to testify about the business he had helped build.
He mentioned the families whose money had passed through his companies.
Then he wrote about the wedding night.
I knew you were waiting.
I went anyway.
For months, people had offered longer explanations for less.
Naomi read those two sentences again.
The letter did not ask her to visit or tell him that he had changed.
She appreciated that, and discovered that appreciation did not oblige her to answer.
She put it in the folder containing the divorce papers and closed the drawer.
Before the first anniversary of the wedding, Duly was sentenced to eleven years in prison.
Edmund's case took longer, ending in convictions and a fourteen-year sentence.
Naomi attended the portions of the proceedings where her presence was required and left when her part was finished.
She did not make the rest of her life into an audience for either man.
That autumn, she enrolled in an advanced book conservation course and returned home with glue on her sleeve after the first workshop.
On her front step, she searched through her bag for the key.
May you like
Then she found it and opened her own door.
Inside waited a lamp she liked, a dinner she had chosen, and a room whose silence asked nothing of her.
