He glanced toward the hallway as if calculating logistics. “Soon.”
“Soon today?”
“Yes.”
I actually laughed then, one ugly, unbelieving sound that startled even me. “Of course.”
He picked up the envelope and slid it toward me like a restaurant bill. “My lawyer said not to discuss details without counsel.”
I looked up at him. “Your lawyer.”
His silence was answer enough.
I should say that once, a long time earlier, I loved Mark Carter with the uncomplicated certainty of youth. We met at a friend’s Fourth of July barbecue outside Nashville when I was twenty-three and he was twenty-six, all confidence and rolled shirtsleeves and easy charm. He talked with his whole body then, leaning in when you spoke, laughing quickly, making you feel as though the room adjusted itself around your presence. He had kind hands at first. That is one of the more brutal truths about certain endings: cruelty doesn’t always arrive as cruelty. Sometimes it begins as care with conditions you don’t notice until later.