Read Online Faithful Unto Death by Stephanie Jaye Evans - Free Book Online
Authors: Stephanie Jaye Evans
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a little too precise. I don’t think I’ve ever in my life seen a man so tightly controlled.
Graham leaned against the window, his hands grasping the sill. I could see, on one white French cuff, a black embroidered monogram, “GVG.” The cuff links were gold scales of justice.
“I don’t need her to forgive me,” Graham repeated, “I need her to let me go.” His voice was low, uninflected, but it didn’t lose any of its power.
There wasn’t a whole lot for me to say at this point. This wasn’t a man who was trying to find his way back to loving his wife. This was a man who was done.
Some ministers believe that any marriage can be saved. You get the couple together, get on your knees and pray with them, enlist the help of a good Christian counselor, have elders drop by, make some phone calls. Theoretically, I agree. But it only works if both partners want that marriage to last, want it enough to give up a lot, even give up part of who they are.
Sometimes, when the couple comes to see me, the marriage is dead. All they really want from me is to help them get it decently buried.
Honey didn’t know it, but her marriage was dead.
There was a time when I would have pushed with everything I had to save a marriage. I wasn’t interested in the couple’s happiness. I was interested in their salvation. I’ve come to see that single-mindedness as a kind of arrogance.
I tried to listen, see if Graham had anything to tell me, something that could help them stay together, but I didn’t hear anything.
“Why don’t you divorce her?” I said. “If you want out so bad. You’re a lawyer; you know it only takes one to end a marriage. You don’t have to have any reason except you don’t want to be married to her anymore.”
Graham shook his head, pushed back from the window. He was looking out the window, not seeing anything more out there than he had on my ceiling. Those long fingers laced together and then did an inside-out motion, cracking the knuckles. He looked at me a moment, his face a blank, then his gaze turned toward the window again. He put his hands in his trouser pockets and I could hear him jingling coins.
“Is there someone else?”
He didn’t say anything, so of course there was.
“If you tell Honey, I’m pretty sure she’ll let you go. Adultery is the magic key for most of us Church of Christers. Your kids are too old to be fought over. You have plenty of money. You do, don’t you? You’d take care of Honey and the kids, wouldn’t you?”
Texas is notoriously hard on a nonworking wife in a divorce. There’s no alimony in Texas. A lawyer at the church once joked, “You want to divorce your wife, do it in Texas. You want to kill her, do it in California.” He said California punishes a man for marrying a woman; Texas punishes him for killing her.
We’re a community property state, so no matter what, assets are split fifty-fifty. For the Garcias, that might mean something—but in lots of situations, the couple’s real financial investment was in the husband’s education and career. Then, just when he’s starting to make really good money but long before there’s been time to build up savings, he divorces his wife, they sell the house and split the profits (if there are any). She might get a nominal spousal support payment—for a maximum of two years—
if
they have been married for at least ten years and she is a stay-home mother. Yes, there is child support—until the child is eighteen, but no assurance of financial assistance with college, no matter what the father’s income is. The husband may go on to enjoy three or four hundred thousand a year, and if the wife has been out of the workforce for fifteen or twenty years, she may find herself clerking at the Gap. It’s hard to start over under those circumstances if the husband doesn’t make a good settlement. A decent man does. I’ve almost never seen it happen.
Graham shook his head at me as if he couldn’t understand
Graham leaned against the window, his hands grasping the sill. I could see, on one white French cuff, a black embroidered monogram, “GVG.” The cuff links were gold scales of justice.
“I don’t need her to forgive me,” Graham repeated, “I need her to let me go.” His voice was low, uninflected, but it didn’t lose any of its power.
There wasn’t a whole lot for me to say at this point. This wasn’t a man who was trying to find his way back to loving his wife. This was a man who was done.
Some ministers believe that any marriage can be saved. You get the couple together, get on your knees and pray with them, enlist the help of a good Christian counselor, have elders drop by, make some phone calls. Theoretically, I agree. But it only works if both partners want that marriage to last, want it enough to give up a lot, even give up part of who they are.
Sometimes, when the couple comes to see me, the marriage is dead. All they really want from me is to help them get it decently buried.
Honey didn’t know it, but her marriage was dead.
There was a time when I would have pushed with everything I had to save a marriage. I wasn’t interested in the couple’s happiness. I was interested in their salvation. I’ve come to see that single-mindedness as a kind of arrogance.
I tried to listen, see if Graham had anything to tell me, something that could help them stay together, but I didn’t hear anything.
“Why don’t you divorce her?” I said. “If you want out so bad. You’re a lawyer; you know it only takes one to end a marriage. You don’t have to have any reason except you don’t want to be married to her anymore.”
Graham shook his head, pushed back from the window. He was looking out the window, not seeing anything more out there than he had on my ceiling. Those long fingers laced together and then did an inside-out motion, cracking the knuckles. He looked at me a moment, his face a blank, then his gaze turned toward the window again. He put his hands in his trouser pockets and I could hear him jingling coins.
“Is there someone else?”
He didn’t say anything, so of course there was.
“If you tell Honey, I’m pretty sure she’ll let you go. Adultery is the magic key for most of us Church of Christers. Your kids are too old to be fought over. You have plenty of money. You do, don’t you? You’d take care of Honey and the kids, wouldn’t you?”
Texas is notoriously hard on a nonworking wife in a divorce. There’s no alimony in Texas. A lawyer at the church once joked, “You want to divorce your wife, do it in Texas. You want to kill her, do it in California.” He said California punishes a man for marrying a woman; Texas punishes him for killing her.
We’re a community property state, so no matter what, assets are split fifty-fifty. For the Garcias, that might mean something—but in lots of situations, the couple’s real financial investment was in the husband’s education and career. Then, just when he’s starting to make really good money but long before there’s been time to build up savings, he divorces his wife, they sell the house and split the profits (if there are any). She might get a nominal spousal support payment—for a maximum of two years—
if
they have been married for at least ten years and she is a stay-home mother. Yes, there is child support—until the child is eighteen, but no assurance of financial assistance with college, no matter what the father’s income is. The husband may go on to enjoy three or four hundred thousand a year, and if the wife has been out of the workforce for fifteen or twenty years, she may find herself clerking at the Gap. It’s hard to start over under those circumstances if the husband doesn’t make a good settlement. A decent man does. I’ve almost never seen it happen.
Graham shook his head at me as if he couldn’t understand
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