Maggie,
What I said at Thanksgiving was cruel. Worse, it was lazy. I accepted the easiest interpretation of a woman’s labor because it allowed me to feel superior while benefiting from it.
I am sorry.
Brittany.
Maggie almost smiled.
Only Brittany could make an apology sound like a deposition.
Still, she kept it.
Tom sent flowers to the Marriott in Missouri before he realized Maggie had already left that hotel behind.
The florist called her.
“Ma’am, we have an arrangement here for a Maggie Holloway.”
“Throw it away,” Maggie said.
Then she paused.
“No. Donate it to the front desk.”
The woman laughed.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
Tom had spent thirty-five years sending flowers after injury, as if petals could cover a bruise left on the spirit.
Not this time.
Months later, people would ask whether she bought Alaska because she was angry.
The answer was yes.
But not only yes.
Anger opened the door.
Proof helped her walk through it.
Part 2
Maggie did not move to Alaska immediately.
That was important.
The people back home expected her to make a grand impulsive collapse, the kind of thing that could be used later to prove Tom’s point.
She did not give them that.
She returned to Ohio two weeks after Thanksgiving with the deed filed, a folder in her bag, and a lawyer already retained.
Her lawyer was a woman named Dana Whitcomb, sixty-two, silver-haired, direct in a way Maggie found both comforting and frightening.
Dana’s office was in a brick building downtown, above a bakery. The whole place smelled like coffee, paper, and cinnamon rolls. On her desk sat a small wooden sign:
DO NOT CONFUSE PEACE WITH PERMISSION.
Maggie liked her immediately.
Dana reviewed the voicemail transcript from Tom, the escrow documents, the savings account records, the deed, the hotel receipt, and the family messages.
“He tried to interfere with a real-estate purchase by calling you unstable,” Dana said.
“Yes.”
“Has he done that before?”
Maggie almost said no.
Then she stopped.
That was what therapy would later teach her: the first answer is often the trained answer.
She thought of Tom telling doctors she was “sensitive.”
Tom telling their accountant she “didn’t care for financial details.”
Tom telling Michael she “got confused about practical things.”
Tom telling Sarah that “your mother works herself up.”
Tom telling neighbors that Maggie was “sweet but not good under pressure.”
