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Lucy took the news (‘Not well,’ I said), and how I was faring (‘I’m glad it’s behind me’), she sounded genuinely thrilled. For a moment I wondered if she saw all this as some sort of victory – the ultimate merger and acquisition. But the moment passed when she told me how much she loved me, how hard this must have been for me, and how she would always be there for me. But though I was reassured by these declarations, I still felt a desperate hollowness – to be expected under the circumstances, but disquieting nonetheless.
    ‘Get over here now, darling,’ she said.
    ‘I have nowhere else to go.’
    The next day, Lucy and I agreed in a terse phone call that I would pick up Caitlin after school.
    ‘Have you told her?’ I asked.
    ‘Of course I told her.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘You’ve just destroyed her sense of security, David.’
    ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘I’m not the one ending the marriage. That was your decision. Like I said last night, if you’d just give me a chance to prove . . . ’
    ‘No sale,’ she said, and hung up.
    Caitlin wouldn’t let me kiss her hello when she saw meoutside her school. She wouldn’t let me hold her hand. She wouldn’t speak to me when we got into the car. I suggested a walk along the seafront at Santa Monica. I suggested an early dinner at Johnny Rockets in Beverly Hills (her favorite restaurant). Or maybe a trip to FAO Schwartz in the Beverly Center. As I reeled off this list of potential options, the thought struck me: I’m already sounding like a divorced dad.
    ‘I want to go home to Mommy.’
    ‘Caitlin, I’m so sorry about –’
    ‘I want to go home to Mommy.’
    ‘I know this is awful. I know that you must think I’m –’
    ‘I want to go home to Mommy.’
    I spent the next five minutes trying to talk her into hearing me out. But she wouldn’t listen to me. She just kept repeating the same line over and over again: ‘I want to go home to Mommy.’
    So, eventually, I had no choice but to do as she asked.
    When we reached the front door of our house, she fled into Lucy’s arms.
    ‘Thanks for brainwashing her,’ I said.
    ‘If you want to talk to me, do it through a lawyer.’
    Then she went inside.
    Actually I ended up talking to Lucy through two lawyers from the firm of Sheldon and Strunkel, who came highly recommended from Brad Bruce (he’d used them for his previous two divorces, and had them currently waiting in the wings if Marriage Number Three tanked). They, in turn, talked to Lucy’s lawyer – a woman named Melissa Levin, whom my guys described as an exponent of the ‘Let’s eviscerate the sonofabitch’ school of legalistic practice. Fromthe outset, she didn’t simply want to seize all my material assets; she also wanted to make certain that I came out of the divorce hobbled, and boasting a permanent limp.
    Eventually, after much expensive wrangling, my guys managed to curb her scorched-earth tendencies – but the damage was still pretty formidable. Lucy got the house (and all my equity in it). She also received a whopping $11,000 per month alimony and child support package. Given my new-found success, I could afford this – and I certainly wanted Caitlin to have everything and anything she wanted. But it did appal me to think that, from this moment forward, the first $200k of my gross income would be spoken for. Just as I wasn’t pleased about the clause that Levin the Impaler also included in the settlement: allowing Lucy the right to move with Caitlin to another city, should her career require it.
    Four months after our fast-track divorce was finalized, she exercised that option when she landed a job heading the Human Resources division of some software company in Marin County. Suddenly, my daughter was no longer down the road. Suddenly, I couldn’t play hooky from my desk for an afternoon, and take off with her after school to Malibu, or to the big ice-skating rink in Westwood. Suddenly, my daughter was an hour’s flight away