Page 4 of Escape Girl

If we had gotten married in an at-fault state, there would have been different grounds to choose from:

Adultery? Nope. Or at least, it hadn’t been an issue as of the night I left him. Since then, I suppose I couldn’t blame him if he’d…well.

Of course, at this point, he could claim desertion, if he were the one filing in an at-fault state.

Maybe we could both blame mental incapacity at the time of marriage. We’d been so crazy for one another, so obsessed with each other’s every thought, so insane with lust. What was that if not a form of mental incapacity?

Anyway. We got married in California. So irreconcilable differences it was.

No one is at fault.No, that didn’t feel true—but it didn’t matter. None of it mattered now, except getting the damn thing over.

Cal turned a page of his pad over. “The Summons Form is relatively simple. This one tells Mr. March that you’ve started a court case and the repercussions if he doesn’t respond withinthirty days.” He cleared his throat and looked off into the distance. “Ah, is Mr. March still residing at the San Francisco address?”

I ground my jaw. “I don’t believe so.” I looked at the footage from our security cameras every few days. Bobby hadn’t been there in almost two months.

“I see. Has he taken up residence somewhere else in the city?”

“I don’t know.” A long hiss escaped my tight lips. “I don’t know where he is. We haven’t spoken in some time.”

Not one conversation. Not since that horrible phone call at the beginning of August when he’d called me at my London hotel, drunk off his ass.

No more texts or voice mails either. From March until that call in August, Bobby had texted or called every single day. Sometimes multiple times a day, even though I rarely responded. Usually he was sober and his messages were reasonable, asking what was going on. But sometimes he was miserable and pleading. Rarely, he was angry. The angry ones were the messages I listened to the most.

“No need to worry,” Cal assured me. “If you prefer to have no contact with him, we can handle everything.”

“I think that would be best,” I said demurely. My current dream was to get this divorce settled without seeing Bobby’s face or hearing his voice.

“We’ll find him,” Cal said confidently.

After a slight hesitation, he dropped his pen and entwined his fingers over his keyboard.Oh no. Here it comes: the unasked-for sympathy.

He cocked his head to one side and pursed his lips in a sad frown. “Might I say, Emily, how sorry I am that your marriage didn’t work out as you hoped. You’ve always been such a nice, sweet, good-natured young woman.”

I lifted my upper lip in an attempt to smile, but in my Zoom window, I was snarling. Why were so many people such lousy judges of human nature?

Being quiet is not the same thing as being nice.

Being shy is not the same thing as being sweet.

The ability to plaster on a smile in social or professional situations is a survival skill for women; it doesn’t make us all good-natured.

Ironically, the first person in my life who immediately saw through my quiet, shy-smiling bullshit to the real person underneath was my soon-to-be ex-husband.

Chapter Two

After hanging upwith Cal, I stood at my desk and stretched my arms over my head. I still wanted the long walk home, but I wished I had comfier clothes in which to enjoy it. My tailored smoke-colored suit was one of my favorites, but it wasn’t ideal exercise attire.

On my desk, the phone buzzed. “Emily, there’s a woman here to see you. She doesn’t have an appointment!” I almost laughed at Rosie’s incredulous tone. In the six months I’d worked at this prestigious firm, I’d never met with a client spontaneously. Usually appointments were lined up well in advance.

I had nothing against walk-ins. Unusually, I was even free to take on a new case if it had merit, I was interested, and the partners agreed. I loved the idea of diving straight into something new, but I was strangely fried at the moment. Though the call with Cal hadn’t been intellectually demanding, it was emotionally exhausting to pull the trigger I’d been contemplating for months.

“I’m just about to leave for the day,” I said to Rosie. “But I’ll meet her quickly before I go. Send her in, and then you go home too, OK?”

“Got it. Thanks.”

I cleared my throat and pinched my cheeks, tucked my hair behind my ears. An inquisitive smile turned up my lips, and I opened my office door, ready to shake hands.

“Miss Austin?” Her voice was low and tremulous.

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