Page 27 of Rebound

Five days later, back in the “real” world, we finally agree on a statement about our separation. We’ve already filed, so there’s no point in hoping that nobody will notice—eventually, they will. The statement was drafted up by Mason with our input, and it’s short and simple.

“After more than two decades together, Jamestech CEO Elijah James and his wife Amber have agreed to part ways,” it reads. “The decision has been made jointly and amicably and is grounded in mutual love and respect. Amber and Elijah remain close friends and will continue to support each other as they enter the next stage of their lives.”

Then there’s some extra flimflam about respecting our privacy, which we all know in the age of instant social media and online news is unlikely to happen. Mason is going to post it on the company website tomorrow morning, and it won’t take long to spread after that.

It feels odd, knowing those words will be out there. That it will all become real. Journalists will contact me for comment, and acquaintances will be surprised. Our marriage will become part of the rumor mill. People will gossip about us over lunch, wondering what went wrong for the apparently perfect Mr. and Mrs. James. What we don’t provide in fact, they will supply in fiction. And by the end of the week, Elijah will probably be having an affair with his secretary, I will have discovered God and joined a convent, and both of us will have “possibly” been spotted at sex clubs with a dominatrix.

Tongues will wag so hard they might fall off. I know all of this because I’ve been guilty of doing it myself. Never maliciously, I hope, and never in a way intended to spread harm, but I’ve gossiped over cocktails. I’ve reduced other people’s lives to entertainment. I’m sure most people have.

Interest in our separation will fade, though, because that’s the way these things work. As long as we remain quiet and dignified, people will soon get bored of us and the fuss will die down.

I am surprised at how much pain I feel. After the other night, part of me wondered if things would change course. If either of us would have second thoughts. Obviously, we didn’t, and while I might know that’s for the best, this feels awful. I don’t give a damn about the gossip, but this is a step closer to the end of my marriage, to the end of something I once thought was sacred.

I hit reply all to the email chain I’m part of—me, Elijah, Mason, and Drake—and confirm that I’m happy to go ahead. Happy, of course, is not really the right word. I’m terrified. Uncertain and anxious. Although I instigated this turn of events, it still hurts. I keep the tone of my response polite and businesslike, but inside I am unbearably sad.

Our strange and magical interlude in Elijah’s hotel room definitely showed that there is still something between us, and we’ve exchanged a few sexy messages since. That’s certainly been fun and exciting, but clearly neither of us feels it’s enough to sustain a whole marriage.

Drake contacted me separately to ask if I want to delay the statement, assuring me that there’s no rush at all. Bless his heart, he’s trying to give us the opportunity to rethink. But he would have asked Elijah first, and my husband obviously didn’t draw the proceedings to a halt.

Yes, there is still something between us, but that’s only natural after so long together. Maybe it’s simply a leftover, a reminder of what once was. Whatever it is, it’s not enough to reverse all the damage we’ve done to each other.

I don’t quite understand how one version of us is calmly discussing logistics with Drake, and another version of us is using burner phones to carry on our illicit “affair.” Then again, there’s a hell of a lot that I don’t understand about the world.

After I’ve approved the release, I message Martha and ask if she wants to meet up for drinks soon. I don’t really want to, but the news will be out tomorrow, and she’s the closest thing I have to a friend in Elijah’s and my shared world. She’ll have questions, and I owe her after abandoning her to go fuck my husband. Interestingly, now that I think about it, we both studiously avoided talking about our men during our night out.

That’s not unusual—we’re not exactly soul sisters—but Freddie’s name did not pass her lips even once, and I didn’t discuss anything about my own marriage. I know why I stayed quiet, but she was equally close-mouthed.

Freddie is one of the toughest divorce lawyers in the country. He has a reputation for ruthlessly championing his clients and skewering his victims on their behalf, but he is, ironically, also a lousy husband. His constant cheating is well-known to our entire social circle, and I don’t know how Martha tolerates it. I guess we all make compromises in life. At least Elijah didn’t do that to me. He cheated with his work, with his family, but never another woman.

One day, though, he will meet someone else. That is what I want for him—at least it’s what I told him, and myself, that I wanted. But I’m realizing how devastated I will be when it happens.

Shit, my life is a mess. I go with the flow of that thought and get another crappy task done—I call my parents to warn them that the news is breaking tomorrow. When I told them about the split, predictably enough, their only concern was how much I’d be taking away with me financially. The whole conversation was full of dire warnings, stories about women who were left homeless and missing a kidney after brutal divorces. There was pretty much zero concern for my wellbeing, and in my mom’s case, a cynical tone of voice implied she expected this. She even uttered the immortal words, “Well, at least there aren’t any children to make it more difficult.”

I long ago came to terms with the fact that my parents are emotionally incompetent, but sometimes I still find myself hoping for their support, and it’s a painful shock when I realize yet again that not only is it not available, but it never was. Granny Lucille makes up for both of them though.

It’s midafternoon now, and I’m at home alone. I’ve paused all of my social engagements for the foreseeable future and have way too much time on my hands. Elijah has been in Seoul for work, and I’ve been trying to keep busy and tick off some of the things on my list. I thought “learn a new skill” would be a fairly easy item to start with. However, I’ve already taken up crochet, jewelry design, painting, and needlepoint. Quickly, I realized I neither enjoy nor have the talent for any of them.

So instead, I organized the contents of my entire closet and donated an embarrassingly large pile of barely worn designer clothes to charity. I’ve also organized every other closet in the house—except for Elijah’s. It didn’t feel right to go through his things.

I need a job, a purpose of some kind, or I’ll go mad. I need to find something that ignites my passion or at least does some good in the world. Melanie, Nathan’s wife, still works as a veterinary nurse, and Amelia is still Drake’s secretary. That makes me feel even worse. They both have billionaire partners and managed to keep their own identities. It is a bit different for them, though—they were already in their thirties when they met their James boys. I was only nineteen. I grew up with mine, molded my life around him. It’s daunting, this whole unraveling, but as Granny Lucille said, it’s never too late to change.

I sit down with my laptop and look up examples of résumés on employment websites. I am ashamed to say that I have never needed to write one. Elijah proposed to me when I was still in college. I didn’t possess any driving ambition to build a corporate career, but I did have some grand ideas about changing the world. Maybe working for nonprofits or setting up my own charity. But then, marrying Elijah presented me with a new role—being the perfect corporate wife and mom. The next Verona James. And it was a role that I wanted. One I truly relished for a short time. I made it my own, and while I didn’t do any of the changing the world stuff I envisaged, I did make a difference.

There are plenty of people who look down on society wives and their charity work, but I took it seriously. I chose to make a difference the best way I knew while maintaining my most important role as Mrs. Elijah James. Perhaps it was an old-fashioned idea, too old-fashioned for a woman like me. But I adored Elijah and wanted nothing more than to build our world together. I was happy to simply be a wife and a mother, to play my part that way. As it turned out, I wasn’t great at the former, and I was never given the opportunity to try out the latter.

I browse the advice on the website I’m currently on and pull a face. Even the made-up people populating the résumé templates seem a lot more impressive than me. I’m sure I could get some dreadful figurehead job just because of who I am—who I was?—but I don’t want that. I want something real. My life from now on, I have promised myself, will be real.

My own résumé is pretty thin, so I decide to explore the “getting back into the workplace” suggestion by doing some voluntary work. Except in my case, it’s getting in, not getting back in. It makes sense. Volunteering will give me the chance to gain experience and find out what I might want to do in the next stage of my life, as Mason put it. I start to scout out some opportunities but quickly find that filling out a résumé is harder than it seems. How do I succinctly say what it is I have to offer?

I do have a little hands-on work experience from the soup kitchen I volunteer for every Thanksgiving and all the dinners, auctions, and galas I organized. Plus, I’ve literally raised millions of dollars for charity and boosted the funds of hundreds of different causes, from hospitals to theaters to retired circus folk. But nearly all of that has been done at a distance. Sure, I cajoled and convinced and used my position of influence to make all of those events a success, but I rarely got involved in the grassroots work. I rarely contributed in any way other than financial and as a representative of the James family. The vulnerability required to offer myself up like that on a regular basis was outside my wheelhouse and probably still is, but I’m done keeping walls up between me and the rest of the world.

I’m not an idiot—I’m aware that most charities would prefer a nice big check to someone like me turning up on their doorstep. I mean, what use am I, really? I have no tangible or practical skills. I can’t build a wall or tend a garden, fix a broken toilet or drive a bus. I’m a society wife who has good contacts and enjoys organizing. Or at least, that’s what I have been up until now. It’s time to find out what I will be next.

Granny Lucille knew what she was doing when she bought me that notebook and told me to make my lists. It’s helped, even if only by showing me what I don’t want to do. I carry it with me everywhere, and right now I turn to my “learn a new skill” list and grimace at all the things I’ve crossed off—and not because I learned them. Perhaps I should change it to simply “try new things.” I jot down “do something hands-on and make a difference” under the crossed-out needlepoint. Then I add in parentheses, “and stop feeling sorry for yourself.” I feel more determined as soon as I’ve done that. Like I now have to make it happen or I’ll be letting Lucille down.

When I turn back to my computer, I decide to register with a website that matches volunteers to roles in New York and soon realize that my initial self-assessment was completely incorrect. I have a whole plethora of skills that plenty of recruiters are looking for. I just need to figure out how to sell myself in a whole new way. It might take me a little time, but time is one thing I have plenty of.

If nothing else, it’s a distraction from the gnawing sadness that’s eating away at me. This is a time of transition, and it’s natural to feel upset, but I can’t sit around like this forever. There needs to be more to my life than missing Elijah.

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