"Would spend what the accounts are giving us, or close to it, and would ask a judge to believe she didn't know her own mind because a woman who loved her was in the room." Helen's mouth tightened. "I have been the woman in the room. I have been the competent one people obey. If someone said Paul didn't know his mind because I was beside him, I would burn the courthouse down. I don't get to like the argument only when it isn't aimed at me."
Paul nodded. He had the sense not to praise her. Praise, in Helen, could freeze a decision into a performance. "What will you do instead?"
"Not file," she said. The words were heavy and ordinary. "Tell Mark I won't, so he doesn't wait for me to be his courage. Tell Lydia she can stop bracing for my petition. And go to the house when I can look at Ruth without turning her into a verdict." She picked up the magazine page. "This gets burned or it gets kept as a record of a mistake. If I keep it, I'll use it in some future argument. So." She stood, took it to the sink, and lit it with a match from the junk drawer. The hearing-aid advertisement curled. The three signatures blackened. The smoke was brief and bitter. She ran the water over the remains until they were a gray paste and the alarm did not have time to be offended. "There," she said. "We are not a secret anymore."
She called Mark from the porch, where the night was cooler. He listened, and when she said she would not contest, he was quiet so long she thought the call had dropped. "All right," he said. "I gave the money back. Don't make a speech about it. Evan wants Thanksgiving at the house, which is a thing I can't think about yet."