Exit Light Read online

  Awfulness washed over her like a wave of nausea. He didn’t want to hear that she was sorry, even though she was. Tovah couldn’t blame him.

  “I’ll let myself out,” he told her. “Take care of your leg.”

  As soon as he’d gone, Max padded into the room and laid his head on the couch next to her. Tovah buried her face in the thick, soft fur, not sure if she was crying or only imagining her tears until the dog lapped at her cheeks.

  “What just happened?” she asked the dog, and was glad he had no answer.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The last thing Tovah wanted to do was walk into the meeting on crutches. Walk. As though what she was doing could be called walking. She lurched into the meeting already flustered by the difficulty of navigating the elevator and doors while carrying her briefcase and maneuvering her crutches. The only thing worse would have been showing up in a wheelchair.

  She bore the pitying look on Kevin’s face when she came through the door by biting the inside of her cheek hard enough to taste blood. He got to his feet when she pushed the door open, but it was her lawyer Reginald Perry who held the door for her and helped her get to her seat. The pressure of Kevin’s fingertips against the glass tabletop left expanding circles of moisture.

  “Tov.” One small word, made so important by the waver in his voice.

  It was the first time they’d been in the same room since the day they’d signed the mediation papers. She’d seen him once after that, looking at her through the glass of an observation room at the Sisters of Mercy Hospital. He’d turned away from her then. She turned away from him now.

  Tovah thanked Mr. Perry and arranged herself as best she could in the too-cushioned chair. She’d chosen a midlength skirt today, long enough to cover the bandages but short enough not to tangle in the crutches and to provide ease in caring for her stump during the day. It was serviceable but not attractive, and at the sight of Jennifer Petrucci’s smart navy pinstriped suit, dowdiness ambushed Tovah into wishing she’d worn something a little less practical.

  Kevin’s lawyer, Bill Long, cleared his throat, perhaps to catch Kevin’s attention. It worked, because Kevin sat abruptly, as if someone had cut the back of his knees. The marks his fingers had made on the tabletop slowly dissipated. Tovah watched for a moment but had to look away at the evidence of Kevin’s anxiety.

  “Should we get right to it?” Mr. Perry said.

  Mr. Perry didn’t waste time with cheery words or false enthusiasm. He laid out the insurance company’s final settlement in clear, crisp tones, then added the specifics about the divorce agreement. He pushed a thick folder toward the center of the table. It bulged with receipts for service from Tovah’s doctors, her prosthetist and the supply companies she used. She’d kept careful documentation for years, had been the one to live through the endless appointments and open the boxes full of skin creams and cotton socks, and even to her the file looked obscenely stuffed.

  “This is the financial responsibility my client has managed for the past three years.” Perry pushed another, slimmer file next to the first. “These are copies of the insurance payouts.”

  A chortle—an actual chortle—burst from between the other lawyer’s lips. “Yes, but Perry, you don’t need a thick stack of papers when the checks have six zeroes on them.”

  Mr. Perry pursed his lips and looked at Tovah. “My client has looked over the proposal carefully, Mr. Long, but I’m going to be upfront about this. I’ve counseled her to deny any further requests for support or a portion of the settlement.”

  “Still got that beach house in the Keys, huh, Perry?”

  Mr. Perry looked pained. “We’re here today to discuss these arrangements, Mr. Long. Not my vacation house.”

  “Right, right.” Long nodded. Unlike the actual chortle, he didn’t really rub his hands together in glee, but it didn’t take much imagination to picture him doing it.

  Tovah had never met Kevin’s lawyer before. The divorce mediator had been nice and fair. This lawyer seemed almost a parody, and she turned to look at the man to whom she’d been married. Kevin wasn’t looking at her. He stared at his hands, clasped tight on top of the table. His shirtsleeves had pulled up, showing wrists once familiar to her but now not.

  Kevin’s lawyer was still talking, making a joke out of the insurance companies and their bad habit of holding on to settlements or something, Tovah wasn’t paying attention. She was too busy looking at Kevin’s watch.

  For as long as she’d known him, he’d worn the thick metal band of a watch that had belonged to his grandfather. Even in college he’d preferred that old-fashioned timepiece to the nylon and plastic sports styles his friends had worn. He’d worn it every day and placed it with care into its original box every night.

  It had been replaced with a similar but brand-new watch. There could be no mistake. The metal was shiny, the links tight, the watch face decorated with large, clear numbers instead of the slightly blurred roman numerals. She was too far away to read the maker, but the watch looked expensive.

  “Nice watch,” she said aloud.

  The conversation between her lawyer and Kevin’s stopped. Kevin looked up. The way he pulled his sleeve down over the watch told Tovah more than anything else. She felt the wash of emotions cross her face: anger, grief, loathing, disgust, and she saw that Kevin saw them, too.

  Tovah looked at Kevin’s lawyer. “Mr. Long, Kevin signed a mediation agreement in which he agreed to relinquish any insurance settlement to me in return for not taking financial responsibility for the continuing costs of my injury.”

  Long’s slick, smarmy grin made Tovah want to spit. “Ms. Connelly…”

  “That was a binding agreement, Mr. Long.” She looked at Kevin. “He can’t come back with his hand out now just because the dollar signs started flashing.”

  “Tovah.” Kevin gave a small shake of his head, seeking to stifle her.

  “Since the insurance premiums were paid for through my client’s wages and via his employer—” began Long, but Tovah cut him off.

  “He walked away. He was driving the car, and he walked away.” She bit out the words one at a time, making each count. “Literally. Kevin walked away from the accident and from our marriage. As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t deserve a penny of this money.”

  “I don’t think you can just—” started Long, but Tovah cut him off again.

  Her gaze, locked on Kevin, didn’t waver, and though Jennifer tugged at his arm he gave Tovah the respect of looking at her instead of at his fiancée. “You walked away.”

  “I know.” Kevin’s voice scraped the floor, but he didn’t look away from her.

  “Kevin,” whispered Jennifer with a frantic look back and forth between him and Mr. Long. “You don’t have to talk to her!”

  The room filled abruptly with silence.

  It took Kevin seven breaths, in and out, to speak. “Actually, Jen, I think I do.”

  There was a kerfuffle then, with the lawyers posturing and Jennifer flailing, but in the end it was just the two of them. Tovah and Kevin, facing off over a glass-topped table. Kevin leaned back in his chair, one long leg crossed over the other. He toyed with the end of his tie, one she’d never seen.

  Once she’d known every item in his closet, had washed and folded and taken to the dry cleaner everything he’d ever worn. His clothes had been as familiar to her as his body had been, each line and bump. Each scar. All the flaws, and all the perfections, too. Though they sat close enough for her to count the stripes on his tie, they were very far apart.

  She shifted in her chair, pulling the skirt smoother under her thighs so the bunched material wouldn’t rub. The glass of the table hid nothing, and though she was careful not to flash him with anything, she made no effort to conceal the wrapped end of her limb. Kevin had, after all, seen her in the hospital. Seen her at physical therapy. Seen her in the car, as a matter of fact, her bones sticking through her shredded skin. He’d seen her in the first days after the