Nobody ever did.
Then Rebecca reached into her purse and pulled out a thick manila envelope.
My stomach dropped.
“I was going to do this privately,” she said, even though every person there could see she’d chosen the exact opposite. “But I’m tired of carrying dead weight in private while he pretends everything is fine in public.”
She held the envelope between two manicured fingers like it was a receipt.
“Those are divorce papers, Mark.”
The whole yard went silent.
I remember hearing the hum of cicadas. The ice settling in a cooler. Somewhere out on the road, a truck shifting gears.
Rebecca’s chin lifted. “You can either sign them like a grown man, or you can do what you always do and sit there looking wounded while everybody else cleans up your mess.”
I looked at the people around me. Faces I’d spent Christmases with. Birthdays. Church picnics. Hospital waiting rooms. People who had eaten my food, borrowed my tools, shaken my hand, and called me family.
