Then in December I found a Christmas card in his coat pocket while taking it to the cleaners. It wasn’t signed, just a note in careful feminine handwriting: “Every day with you is a gift.”
K.
I stood there in the hallway of the house where I had raised three children, buried two dogs, and planted a garden the local paper once admired, and I felt something icy move through me.
By February, I knew the truth. Walter was involved with a woman named Denise Parker, a fifty-four-year-old real estate consultant from Darien.
I found her name on a restaurant receipt from New Canaan buried in the recycling. When I tried to speak with him one quiet Sunday morning, he didn’t deny anything.
He looked at me over the breakfast table and said, calm as weather, “Evelyn, I want a divorce. My attorney will contact you.”
No apology. No explanation. Fifty-two years dismissed like canceling a subscription.
The next six months were a blur of legal proceedings I was completely unprepared for. Walter had hired a team of attorneys who specialized in protecting wealth.
I later learned he had been rearranging our finances for a year and a half before filing.