But I was not a fool. At least, not any longer. I squared my shoulders and stared him directly in the eyes as I went on: “I don’t do anything by half measures, Ned Hutton. You should know that by now. When I set out to discover if you were an adulterer, I did the work, and now I have the proof.”
I saw his entire frame sag at this, as if the air had been pulled from his lungs, and with it his will to fight. He looked at me as if he did not know me, as if I were no longer the woman he had held in his arms so many times. Just as I had never thought it possible that he would stray, he had never thought it possible that I would leave. And now here we both were, staring down the final lessons we’d teach each other in this wrecked and ravaged union.
I cleared my throat, summoning steel to my voice even though all I wanted to do was weep. But that would have to come later. For now, I had to act. “Here is how it will go, Ned: You’ll give me the divorce. I’ll keep Deenie with me. You’ll get her for visits over the summers and holidays. I’ll pay you what’s fair, but you won’t take my homes. I’ll keep them all. You’ll step down from the board of my company.”
“Marjorie…please. Can we discuss this? Let’s both just slow this down a bit…” His voice was choked. “This is my life. You are going to ruin my life, do you hear? My daughter. My work. My home. Everything that you and I have—”
I raised my hand. “Ned, there’s nothing more to discuss.” I just needed to get this out, and then he would not take anything more from me, least of all my dignity. “My life is ruined, too. Don’t you see that? The only difference is that I’m not the one who decided to ruin it.”
* * *
Summer gave way to fall, and then, somehow, it was winter. We celebrated a quiet Christmas and then a subdued New Year’s together, me and my girls at home in Palm Beach. For months, I had felt too melancholy to do much more than simply rise from bed and then sit, alone, in my bedroom. Knowing that it was a crushing heartbreak for Deenie, too, I knew better than to weep in front of her, but Eleanor and Adelaide were with me, mercifully. My youngest, fortunately, had just been enrolled at Mount Vernon that fall. Deenie would, I hoped, have plenty at school to keep her mind off the heartbreak that filled the home she’d just left.
Colby Chester took the reins of General Foods without a moment of hesitation, vowing to me that I would not need to worry about the company during this transition from Ned’s leadership. The company would be all right. My Deenie would be all right. My family would be all right. Everyone told me this, and yet I found it nearly impossible to believe.
The truth was that I had been in a state of mourning for quite some time, long before the divorce papers had been signed in court and then splashed across the news journals. I’d taken years to reckon with the unwanted possibility that the husband I adored was betraying me. That my marriage was careening toward its disastrous end. But still, it felt like a death for which I could never have braced.
* * *
—
Nor could anything have prepared me for what came just a few months later. Less than half a year after the signing of our divorce agreement.
Ned had told me that he still needed me. That he loved me as wildly as he had on the day we married. That his life would be ruined if I left him. And yet, shortly after the New Year, while reading the society pages of the New York papers to see what I might have been missing during my quiet respite in Florida, I saw a photo that showed quite a different story. It may have been black-and-white, but it exploded before me in a stunning barrage of colorful details.
Ned, smiling.
Ned, accompanied by a beautiful young girl.
Ned…planning to marry again.
Hell, I couldn’t look away in time; I could not help but read the article. And as I did, I noted that I recognized not just Ned’s face, but hers as well. A young divorcée, about the same age as my Adelaide. The caption spelled out her name: Dorothy Metzger.
I blinked, my memories shifting and swirling violently in my mind. A girl not yet in her twenties, out and about without her parents. Adelaide’s guest. A summer party at my home on the Gold Coast. The theme: Versailles. The costumed guests behaving like a crowd of fools. A brazen young girl with wigged men pinching cigarettes and dollar bills from between her breasts.
Dorothy Metzger. Ned was going to marry that girl.
The memories shifted again as my vision swam. I was no longer a jilted ex-wife or a scandalized mother on the Gold Coast but a smiling young girl, still in finishing school, popping in for a surprise visit to my father, only to stumble on the scent of cherry perfume and a scattering of inexplicable divorce papers. And then I heard him in the next room with that woman, that woman who was not my mother.