Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 108173 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108173 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
“Not one Lilah, I’m sorry. I was wrong. I should have told you. Please forgive me? Right?”
“Maybe I was saving the I’m sorry’s for a face-to-face conversation.”
“It wouldn’t matter. Your apologies are inconsequential and I wouldn’t believe them anyway.” She was amazed to see him flinch in response to that.
“Then what do you want from me?” his voice was hoarse, the question almost despairing.
“A divorce. Now. Not in six months or a year. But right now. So that I can move on with a clean slate.”
“I don’t want that.”
“I don’t care what you want, Ben. You married me to please a dying man. Since that man is no longer with us, you no longer need to keep him happy. So please consider your debt to him repaid in full.”
“I told you I can never—”
“Oh, my God,” she interrupted him, impatience simmering away beneath the exclamation. “I don’t care if you think you can never repay him, I’m done being your fucking penance, or punishment, or whatever the hell twisted reasoning you had for marrying me.”
“We’re a family.” His choked statement shocked her and she gaped at him. Not sure how the hell to respond to that. “You’re my family. You’re all I have in this world. I refuse to give up on that so easily. I refuse to lose you.”
“Come on, Ben, let’s not pretend I’m yours. I’ve never been yours and you’ve never been mine. It was all just a massive con designed give an old man his dying wish. Only I was conned too, because I didn’t know he was dying and I naively believed what was happening between us was real.”
It was the first time Lilah had admitted as much. She’d clung to her false pride by professing to have married him for business reasons. Fooling absolutely no-one. But this marriage was over and there was no longer any reason to keep up the needless pretense.
“This is my life too,” she continued in a low, but determined, voice. “And I want you out of it. I’m filing for a divorce next week.”
He staggered back—that was the only word she could think of to accurately describe the lurching movement—eyes feverish in his too pale face as he stared at her in disbelief. Lilah would have laughed if it weren’t so damned tragic, he looked like a man whose pet Pomeranian had just bitten him.
“Lilah…”
“I have nothing more to say to you, Ben. And, like I told you before, I don’t think you have anything new to say to me. It’s best if you go.”
She didn’t wait for him to respond, instead she turned on her heel and walked away without looking back.
Lilah was as good as her word, Ben was served divorce papers late Thursday afternoon by a very young, very nervous officer of the court. The man looked both awed, and terrified to be in Ben’s massive 30th floor office, which overlooked Cape Town harbor.
Ben impatiently ushered the gawking man out of his office and immediately went through the documents. Their prenup protected both of them from any “unreasonable” divorce settlement demands, but right now Ben wasn’t feeling reasonable. He would have loved for her to make impossible demands, something he could fight, rail against, use as an excuse to delay these proceedings. But she was being perfectly civil. She wanted nothing from him. Just a divorce. And Ben hated that they hadn’t made any purchases together, didn’t own a pet, and possessed nothing to say “this is ours we should split it”. Something that would prove to her that this marriage was real. A shared experience, rather than just a sad chapter in her life that needed to end.
But they didn’t have any normal couple stuff. Nothing they’d seen together and simply had to have for their home. No assets to split, no fond keepsakes to cling to and fight over.
When this marriage was over it would be as if it had never happened. And—without Cyrus to act as a link between them—she would fade from his life. Ben glowered at the papers in his hands, before slowly crumpling them in his fists.
He refused to lose her.
Despite her many protestations to the contrary, Lilah was his. And he was keeping her.
Winter was properly setting into the Mother City now. Lilah loved the crisp, cold, often wet days of a Cape Town winter. The brusque ocean air, the chill on her skin. She loved how green and vibrant everything got during the rainy season. The season had put a halt to most of her outdoor gardening activities and she and the Horti Hoes spent most of their weekly gatherings gossiping, drinking, ostensibly planning their spring planting projects.
One of the projects that had been gaining momentum was the foundation Lilah wanted to set up in her grandfather’s name, as well as the public green space that she intended to create in his memory. She had narrowed down three possible locations for the public garden. But site was subject to municipal approval, and needed to get the nod from the board of trustees she was setting up to oversee the foundation.