Prologue

“…Whatever makes you happy
Whatever you want
You’re so fucking special
I wish I was special…”

– Radiohead
_________________________

“Mrs. Mahr?” The disembodied female voice pierces through the fog of my mind. I look up to the blur in front of me but do not reply. “Mrs. Mahr, please answer the question.” The woman tries again. The tears begin to well in my eyes as the lawyer begins to lightly tap her foot on the parquet floor of the courtroom. And all I can do is to try to blink these traitors to my emotion out of existence before they completely betray my resolve.

“No.” I reply simply, quietly, as I look over to the seat currently occupied by Owen Mahr, my husband and member of one of the biggest rock bands on the planet, Omicron — though not for much longer, if he has anything to do with it. 

Is it just me, or has Owen aged considerably in the last six months, since the kids and I were unceremoniously removed from his lovely house on the hill? His chocolate eyes, normally fierce and piercing all at once, now look resigned and tired. Though thanks to dark, slashing  brows, no less fierce and hawk-like. And Owen’s unruly dark brown hair has seemed to transform to include more than a smattering of silvery threads woven along his temples. But in spite of the fact that this change only makes him look even more distinguished, It also ultimately makes him look considerably older and more world-weary. Slightly dimming the distinguished, beautiful man I was involved with for the better part of ten years.

Did I do that? Did I make him age a hundred years overnight?

I’m jolted back out of my own head with the shrill, demanding voice of his lawyer.

“No what, Mrs. Mahr? No, you don’t believe that you were unfaithful to your husband on a repeated basis? Or no, you are not currently residing with your extramarital lover?”

I wince. 

But then I take a chance to look at him again, trying desperately to search for something, anything he may be hiding in those beautiful eyes, but I find nothing but emptiness. Not hatred or contempt, which I could mistake for any trace of love still left. And it is this lack of anything at all that calls forth the unbidden tears that begin to stream fully over my cheeks, leaving little trails of clean skin where my makeup once existed. I blink, trying to clear my vision and I could swear that he looks back in sympathy and longing. But that can’t be, my mind must be playing tricks on me since this divorce is at his request. Hell, he even has a new fiancée already, some Chilean supermodel, nearly half his age, according to the very revealing photos that have appeared in the papers recently. I shake my head, but do not reply to the lawyer’s question.

“Mrs. Mahr, you have been asked for a response,” the judge says as gently as possible, leaning over to hand me a tissue. “Please provide an answer.” I dab my eyes and try to straighten myself out as best I can. I take a deep breath and speak with as much force as I can muster;

“I have not been unfaithful to Owen during our marriage and I am not living with anyone at the moment, other than our children. He knows that.”

In all truth and in the deepest recesses of my soul I love him as much as I ever have. But I am not at liberty to tell him that anymore. For I have been fully exiled from his world and I’m now living like a refugee inside my self-built emotional Fortress of Solitude.

Oh, who am I kidding? I’m sitting here crying, for god’s sake…

The lawyer sighs audibly but returns to the table to go through her notes. I try not to fidget in my seat in the witness box as his divorce attorney uses the time available to her to increase my discomfort and put me off guard as much as possible as she readies to make her next move in this chess game of a divorce hearing.

“Tell the court how you met my client.” The lawyer states and I look past her again and back to him, losing myself once more in his handsome face and I remember…