Chapter 12 - Coffee With My Ex-Husband
I called him two weeks later.
It took me eleven minutes to press the button.
Aaron answered on the second ring.
“Claire?”
The surprise in his voice almost made me hang up.
“Coffee?”
A pause.
Then:
“Yes.”
We met Saturday morning.
He arrived early.
Of course he did.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
He smiled.
“I discovered clocks.”
I laughed.
And suddenly we were two people sitting across from each other rather than plaintiff and defendant in the ruins of a marriage.
We talked for two hours.
Aaron had started advising smaller companies.
He volunteered with a legal-aid business clinic.
He was seeing a therapist.
He said that without embarrassment.
“I spent years believing providing was the same thing as loving,” he said. “It isn't.”
“No.”
“I know.”
I stirred my coffee.
“Why didn't you fight harder when I divorced you?”
“I wanted to.”
“Why didn't you?”
“Because fighting for you after ignoring what you wanted would have been another version of the same mistake.”
That answer stayed with me.
We began meeting occasionally.
No promises.
No secret reconciliation.
Coffee.
Lunch.
Walks.
Aaron learned who I was.
Not who he remembered.
He asked about Hale Meridian.
My foundation.
Books I was reading.
Places I wanted to travel.
Tiny things.
Things he should have asked during our marriage.
One evening, he said:
“I don't expect you to forgive the past.”
“I have forgiven it.”
His eyes lifted.
“That doesn't mean I want it back.”
“I know.”
There was that phrase again.
But this time it felt peaceful.
Then he said:
“If there's ever something new, I want it to be new.”
That was exactly what I needed to hear.
And precisely what frightened me.
Because somewhere between losing my husband and meeting my ex-husband again, I had begun to understand that endings were not always doors slammed shut.
Sometimes they were walls demolished so something healthier could eventually be built.
But before I could decide whether Aaron deserved another chance, someone else from our past returned.
May you like
Richard Prescott.
And he came carrying a letter my grandfather had written specifically to Aaron.
