17. Deirdre

17

DEIRDRE

Divorce minus zero

A knock on the door sent Bingo into a frenzy of barking.

Deirdre put down the roll of tape and hollered, "Down, Bingo! Down! Watch out, Aaron!"

Bingo managed to knock Aaron down in his scramble for the door, but Aaron only laughed and crawled back to his feet, using one of the moving boxes to leverage himself up.

"Happy divorce day," Dean said, handing over a bouquet of flowers.

"Flowers? For a divorce?" Deirdre took them with a smile that went bittersweet as she realized they were lilies, her favorite.

"I don't really know what the customs are," Dean admitted. "And I didn't want to let you down."

"You could never let me down," Deirdre said, hugging him. She held the lilies aside as she ushered Dean in. He paused to gather his suitcases from the porch .

"I'll come back and get the rest of my things later this weekend," Deirdre promised, looking around at the box-cluttered living room as she went to the kitchen for a vase. "I'll need a second load to get it all." She had already arranged for Aaron to stay full-time with Dean while she and Juan got settled in Madison.

"I feel a little bad that I'm getting the house and the car and the business."

"You're getting the lien and mortgage, too," Deirdre reminded him. "The business has only ever had one year in the black. It's as fair as we can make it. And you'll need a car, but Juan and I can share his. And you know I could not possibly live here after this. Small town gossip was bad enough before I was the other woman."

"You're not the other woman, I'm the other man."

"I think technically Juan is the other man."

"Let's go finish this," Dean said easily. "Ready to go for a drive, little man?"

"We could leave him with Andrea," Deirdre suggested.

"The family that divorces together…er…that didn't go quite the way I wanted." Dean bounced Aaron in his arms. "Let's do this together."

Bingo howled when they left him shut up in the house, and they took bets on what he'd chew up while they were away.

The drive to the county courthouse in Alder Creek was both painfully long and painfully short, and the same dead-eyed clerk who had accepted their paperwork four months ago took their affidavit and issued them finalized divorce papers.

"It's done," Deirdre said, holding her copy of the papers on the steps of the courthouse.

"Mazal tov!" Dean said .

"MAHva top!" Aaron echoed.

Deirdre was glad they'd brought him, because it was an excuse to put upbeat kid's pop on the radio, and by the time they got back to Green Valley, it felt like normal, singing to ridiculous songs about feet and caterpillars.