Chapter 17 - THE GIRL WHO FOUND THE OLD DIVORCE PAPERS
Amelia was sixteen when she found them.
Our divorce papers.
I had kept one copy.
Not sentimentally.
At least that was what I told myself.
They were inside an archive box in my studio.
Amelia came downstairs holding them.
“Grandma?”
I looked up.
“Yes?”
“You and Papa D got divorced?”
I froze.
Apparently Elena had told her the sanitized version.
“We did.”
“And then remarried?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I smiled.
“How much time do you have?”
“A lot.”
So I told her.
Not the crime details.
Not everything.
But enough.
I told her about vomiting in the law office.
The hospital.
Pregnancy.
Her mother and Uncle Julian.
The secrets.
The divorce.
Dating again.
The second marriage.
When I finished, Amelia stared at me.
“You divorced him while pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“That's kind of iconic.”
I laughed so hard Dorian came downstairs.
“What happened?”
“Your granddaughter approves of our divorce.”
He looked offended.
“Of course she does.”
Amelia waved the papers.
“Papa D, Grandma says you were emotionally incompetent.”
“I was thirty-eight.”
“That isn't a defense.”
“I like you less every year.”
“No, you don't.”
He smiled.
“No.”
She sat between us.
“Were you scared Grandma wouldn't come back?”
Dorian’s expression changed.
“Yes.”
“Then why sign?”
“Because loving her didn't give me the right to keep her.”
Amelia became quiet.
That was the answer she carried with her.
Two years later, when her first serious boyfriend became controlling—checking her phone, demanding passwords, questioning her clothes—she ended the relationship.
She came to our house afterward.
Cried on my couch.
Dorian made tea.
Badly.
“I loved him,” she whispered.
Dorian sat across from her.
“That can be true.”
“He said if I loved him, I wouldn't need privacy.”
Dorian’s jaw tightened.
I knew that expression.
The old man inside him wanted to solve the problem personally.
He didn't.
He asked:
“What do you think?”
Amelia wiped her eyes.
“I think love shouldn't require proof every five minutes.”
Dorian nodded.
“Good.”
She looked at him.
“Did you ever do that to Grandma?”
“Different versions of it.”
“Why?”
“Fear.”
“Did that make it okay?”
“No.”
No excuse.
No lecture.
Just truth.
Amelia eventually studied law.
Family law, ironically.
When she graduated, she gave Dorian her first framed diploma.
On the back she wrote:
Thank you for teaching me that love and control are not synonyms.
He cried.
May you like
Allergies.
Still.
