Page 3 of Escape Girl

I made a practiced cooing noise, a delighted yet noncommittal sound that said, “How lovely, but I’m not sure I’ll make it.” Did I have plans Friday night? Nope. Would I go to a happy hour? Only if there was no way I could avoid it.

Colleagues were often surprised at how quickly I could go from badass in the boardroom to awkward wallflower at the bar. Innate social shyness plus an intense reluctance to discuss anything personal kept me eons away from being the life of the party.

Rosie glanced at the tablet again. “The only thing left on your calendar today is whatever personal meeting you have blocked at 5:30.” She looked up, eyes twinkling. “Please tell me it’s time that you’re spending with a sexy adult man, Robot Emily.”

“Ha.” I laughed weakly and shut the door to my office without answering.

*

Yeah, it wastime spent with an adult man. But no, Rosie, poor Cal was not sexy in the slightest. On the Zoom screen in front of me, my divorce attorney’s face looked particularly shiny.

I’d met Cal Bergman several times back in San Francisco, and he was always covered in a light sheen, even in the Bay Area’s cool climate. I used to surmise that he was intimidated by all the power players at the various social events where I’d seen him, but then I randomly ran into him at a dry cleaner’s one morning. He was perspiring then too, and I felt sorry for him. My looks weren’t anything special, but at least I didn’t walk around the world constantly drenched in my own sweat.

I resisted the urge to blot his screen-forehead with a paper towel and forced my attention back to his last words. “Apologies, Cal. Can you repeat that please?”

He nodded furiously at me as though I’d said something very smart instead of spacing out for the last several minutes during his warm-up small talk. “As an attorney yourself, you know that California is a no-fault state. Between that and your iron-clad prenup, this should be a very simple situation.”

A Very Simple Situation. Sure, Cal. Divorces were always notoriouslysimple.

But I knew what he meant. Bobby and I had only been married for nine months. There were no children. He had his own money and no access to mine. I wouldn’t think of taking his. So yeah. In that context, it was a Very Simple Situation.

If you didn’t take into account the embarrassment factor of being married for less than a year.

If you didn’t factor in…I don’t know, freakin’ feelings.

My face felt pretty hot, so maybe I was broadcasting the sarcasm. A line formed between Cal’s brows and he spoke quickly. “Not that I’m trying to minimize anything, of course. I fully understand—”

“It’s fine,” I said, cutting him off before smiling sweetly. This mess wasn’t Cal’s fault, and I’d hired him specifically because I knew he was deathly afraid of my father and would take care of this discreetly.

Outside of my office window, the mid-September sun was beginning to set. In the skyscrapers around me, office lights began to pop on to fight off the encroaching dusk. I hadn’t quite gotten used to my Manhattan view yet. I’d been working on a case in London from March until August. My New York case was supposed to last well into the new year, but now the settlement would open my schedule for something new. The country’s highest-ranked intellectual property firm never had a shortage of work.

“Shall I put together the paperwork?” Cal asked quietly. He spoke in such a gentle tone, probably perfected over a dozen years of handling Silicon Valley first wives. “We can file whenever you’re ready.”

I glanced down at my left hand, even though I’d stopped wearing my ring a month ago. “Yes, let’s get started.”

Cal bobbed his chin briskly, switching from sympathy to no-nonsense, and poised a pen over a legal pad. “Good. It takes a minimum of six months for divorces to become final in California, so the sooner we get started, the sooner this unpleasantness will be behind you.”

Unpleasantness. What a bland word. If the end of my relationship with Bobby was unpleasant, that would imply that the beginning waspleasant. Which was insipidly inaccurate. I could use a thousand different words to describe the beginning of me and Bobby March and not one of them would bepleasant.

Of course, at the core of the wordpleasantwas “to please”…and that had different connotations, different memories.

“I’ve just realized something quite silly.” Cal adjusted his glasses with a nervous laugh. “I don’t know what your legal name is, and I need it for the paperwork.”

I swallowed a sigh and gave him a practiced smile. I dealt with the name question constantly. I’d planned on taking Bobby’s last name to end the confusion once and for all, but things were over between us so quickly. I never became Emily March.

“I generally use the name Emily Austin.” That name was on the door to my office, it was how my coworkers and clients knew me, and I was comfortable with it. “But Austin is actually my middle name.” It had been my mother’s maiden name, and my parents had decided that I’d go by Emily Austin when I left home to go to college thirteen years ago. It was an attempt at protection, at anonymity. There were always paparazzi willing to stalk billionaires’ kids to try to get incriminating photos.

“My legal name is Emily Saturn.” TheSgot caught coming out, and I slithered the “Saturn” like a snake. The name never rolled off my tongue easily. I hadn’t answered to it since I was a child, and I didn’t like using it now. It was a weird, distinctive name to begin with. My father had imbued it with such power and status that it didn’t sit well on my very innocuous shoulders. The name felt wrong. Unearned.

“Got it.” Cal jotted away. “Is your permanent address still the San Francisco place, or have you officially moved to New York?”

I hadn’t officially done anything. I’d left our condo in the middle of the night on March 31, and I hadn’t been back since. But I hadn’t moved. Exactly. “I’m just traveling for work right now,” I said smoothly. “Use the San Francisco address.”

On autopilot, I answered more simple questions, watching the day fade away outside. It would be a beautiful, crispSeptember evening. The kind of night that made you want to walk the long way home. I would, I decided. For once, I didn’t have a case keeping me here late, and my rented studio was blank and depressing. I’d walk the streets for hours and distract myself in the Upper West Side.

Cal’s voice turned gentle again. “I assume you’re filing on the grounds of irreconcilable differences?” Since California was a no-fault state, those were the default grounds. It was a formal way of saying that you and your spouse had serious differences that had broken your marriage beyond your ability to repair it. No one was at fault, but you still wanted a divorce.

“Yes.” It came out as a whisper, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “Yes,” I said firmly.No one is at fault.That didn’t feel true.

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