most of his clothes from his house to the apartment. As he had suspected she would, Amanda wanted him to give her the New York house in the divorce, and she also wanted the house in the Hamptons. Her lawyer said he could keep the boat. Their pre-nup said she could have neither since he had bought both homes, and their lawyers were battling it out. He didn’t go to her induction, but sent her flowers and a note. He had no battle with her personally, he just wanted out. Despite the more modest but reasonable terms of their pre-nup, she wanted a million dollars for each of the nineteen years they’d been married. Phillip wasn’t surprised, and Olivia was livid. She told her mother that the woman’s greed was beyond measure.
As always, Maribelle was very supportive of her grandson when he came to visit. She told him she was sorry about the divorce, and asked him about the new woman in his life. He had told all of them about her, but none of them had met her yet. Phillip wanted to let the dust settle. All they knew was that she taught school, was very young, and they had been together for two months. It had been a whirlwind romance, which they all realized had toppled his chilly marriage to Amanda. They could hardly wait to meet her. Their passionate love affair was astoundingly unlike him. In two short months, he seemed to have mellowed, and was being much nicer to their mother. Liz and Olivia had talked about it a lot. John and Sarah were less interested, they were still trying to adjust to Alex’s announcement. And Maribelle had told Cass about Phillip when she called from the tour with Danny. They were in Dallas.
Phillip was at the Southampton house with Taylor, by prearrangement with Amanda, when he finally told her about his mother. The small house was filled with beautiful contemporary furniture and expensive art. Taylor didn’t recognize all the artists, but the overall impression was one of exquisite taste and valuable objects. It was a peaceful place, and they spent a quiet weekend there, walking on the beach, and cooking together. It was a beautiful Indian summer weekend.
“Do you think you’d have gotten divorced anyway, if we hadn’t met?” she asked him. She felt guilty at times for how quickly his house of cards had come down, and although he didn’t complain about it, she sensed that they were battling hard over real estate and money.
“Maybe,” he said honestly, “probably. I was too lazy, and maybe too scared to deal with what I wasn’t getting. I got used to the way things were. I think everyone else saw what I didn’t, or didn’t want to, how cold she was, and how greedy. She’s not a happy woman and she’s very ambitious. I thought her coolness was a challenge and at first I liked it, but we’d drifted apart more than I knew. She’s driven by her ambitions, socially, professionally, and financially. And the stunt she pulled about my job would have done us in anyway. She’d gotten very insulting about it for the last few years. Once she went after the federal judgeship, she wanted me to be more ambitious too.”
“What’s wrong with your job?” Taylor asked with a look of surprise, lying on the beach next to him, and looking at the expression in his eyes. There was a deep hurt there that he never explained and that she sensed was about him and not the divorce. They were still getting to know each other, although he felt as though she’d been part of his life forever, but there were things he had not yet shared, and she always felt them. She didn’t want to pry, but he peeled off his layers and revealed himself like an onion. She had told him all the things that mattered most to her and that she cared about, along with her old griefs and sorrows, like the loss of her parents, but she was younger and less complicated, and despite her parents’ death, she had already understood that her home life had been happier than his. He talked a great deal about his memories of his grandmother and father, but very little about his mother, and she knew that his parents hadn’t been divorced.
“Amanda thought my job wasn’t important enough,” he explained as they lay on the sand. His eyes were gentle, and he looked happy, more