11. Dean

11

DEAN

Divorce minus 120 days

A s much as Dean dreaded it, the courthouse process was very straight-forward.

The most challenging part was dividing property, not because they each wanted things, but because they each kept trying to give everything to the other.

"You keep the house," Deirdre insisted. "I'll stay in the guestroom downstairs while we're separated."

"I can sleep upstairs from the fire station," Dean pointed out. "We wouldn't want it to be weird."

"Right," Deirdre said, glancing at the clerk, who was pretending not to eavesdrop. "We wouldn't want this to be weird. "

Changing the mortgage wouldn't be possible until they were officially divorced. They split the bank account down the middle, not that it amounted to much. Dean got the car, too. "You'll need it," Deirdre said. "Milwaukee has public transportation."

There was a pile of forms to fill out, the clerk took their statements with dead eyes and no nonsense, stamped the forms and told them the date to come back to finalize the process.

"What do we do now?" Deirdre asked quietly, as they stood on the steps of the courthouse. Aaron was riding on Dean's shoulders, with fistfuls of his father's hair in each hand.

"Wait for the gossip to hit, I guess?" Dean suggested, bouncing Aaron and only precipitating more painful hair-pulling. It felt good to have something tangible that hurt. The whole divorce process left him feeling numb and unreal.

Deirdre was silent and still beside him.

"There's a park across the road, want to see if they have a toddler swing?"

She smiled wanly up at him. "Are you suggesting we jaywalk in front of a courthouse?"

"We haven't done anything illegal in ages," Dean teased. "C'mon!"

There was almost no traffic to dodge, but they were still laughing when they got across, and Aaron was shrieking happily.

There was no toddler swing, but Dean held Aaron in his lap while Deirdre pushed them, then Deirdre went down the slide with him.

They ended up in the sandbox, playing with a plastic shovel and a cracked bucket that some child had left behind.

They played and laughed until Aaron started rubbing his eyes in a clear sign that he was ready for a nap, then carried him, protesting mightily, back to the car. He was asleep before Deirdre had completely buckled him into the car seat.

They drove in silence all the way back to Green Valley and Dean came in with them to pack a suitcase. Bingo had destroyed a library book, shredding pages all over the house to protest the fact that he'd been left alone all day.

Deirdre gathered up the mess and half-heartedly scolded him while Dean took Aaron to bed and then started to pack.

"Is this the end of us?" Deirdre asked plaintively, when he zipped his suitcase closed. "We can still change our minds. That's the point of the waiting period."

Dean turned. She was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, every inch of her slight frame tense with guilt.

Part of Dean thought she should feel guilty. How dare she meet her mate! How dare he not be everything she ever needed or wanted!

The rest of him only hurt for both of them. He patted the bed beside him and Deirdre gingerly sat down.

"Do you remember when we got married?"

"Of course. It rained for hours and then cleared up just in time for the ceremony. It felt like providence."

"We'd been planning to go to college in Madison. I was going to study engineering, and you wanted to do pre-med. We were even looking at apartments. I remember thinking a dishwasher would be the pinnacle of luxury."

"I remember that," Deirdre said, chuckling.

"But it didn't happen. My parents moved away, and I bought the house and took over the hardware store. You gave up your dream of college to stay in Green Valley with me."

"I don't regret that," Deirdre said too quickly, like she'd been thinking about it, and probably having exactly the regrets she was denying. "And Aaron?—"

"A lot of great stuff has happened since then," Dean said firmly. "And a lot of not-that-great stuff. But this is your second chance. Milwaukee isn't Madison, but they've got a campus. You could do what you've always wanted!"

"It's so far away! What kind of mom does this make me? How is custody even going to work? "

"We'll make it work," Dean promised, though he wasn't sure how. "This isn't the end of us," he assured her. "It's just the start of a new us. A better us. Back to best friends."

Her shoulders relaxed a fraction, and Dean gathered her into a hug. He could kiss her forehead in a fond way and ignore the urge to make it more. He could do this.

He could let her go.