Matchmaking by Moonlight

“It’s a serious world. Serious issues, serious problems. Mine is, at least,” Ashe told her.

“Maybe a little too serious.”

“Divorce is a serious topic,” he argued. “It’s really hard for people.”

“I know. I want to help them. Truly, I do,” she claimed. “If you believe nothing else about me, please believe that. I take helping people very seriously.”

“So, tell me what it is you do at these classes of yours,” Ashe said, deciding she deserved a chance to be heard. Plus, he’d promised Wyatt to find out if she was up to something with Wyatt’s wacky relatives.

“Eleanor said you’re in family law. Or that you were, and now you hear cases in family court,” she began.

“Yes.”

“Divorces?”

He nodded. “Plus custody issues both between parents and social services, some probate stuff, guardianship issues for people who are older or incapacitated in some way, that sort of thing.”

“Have you seen how some people, while they might have been divorced for a while or just separated for a long time, are still emotionally so entangled in their marriages?”

“Yes.”

“To the point of it being highly detrimental to their lives? Clouding their judgment? Keeping them locked into place, unable to move on emotionally or just let go?”

“Yes,” he agreed.

He could tell stories that he thought would keep anyone, even the most hopeless, foolish, absolutely blind romantics and optimists, from ever getting married. In fact, he thought if he could videotape some divorce and custody proceedings in his courtroom, he could splice real-life scenes together into a documentary that had the power to end marriage, once and for all, in America, possibly even globally.

“I want to fix that,” Lilah said, as she eased back in her seat to make room for the plates of food their waitress was placing in front of them. “Divorced people who can’t let go and move on.”

“That’s all?” He dug into his lunch, deciding she was either supremely confident or hopelessly naive. He thought about telling her his idea for simply ending marriage altogether, which would end the need for helping anyone get over divorce, emotionally or otherwise.

“It’s important work,” she insisted.

“Yes, it is. I’m just not sure if it’s at all possible.”

“Well, I intend to try.”

She was naive, Ashe feared, perhaps idealistic and completely unrealistic. He felt sorry for her and experienced some small need to try to save her from herself.

“I don’t think that’s a job for one person, all by herself.”

“Then help me.”

“I don’t think it’s a job for two people, either. Way too big for that.”

She sighed, sounding disappointed. “Gandhi said, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world.’”

Ashe blinked at her. She’d quoted Gandhi to him? “I wonder if he was ever married.”

“He was. To the same woman for sixty years,” she claimed.

“Sixty years? Truly?”

“He was young when they married,” Lilah said.

“Must have been.”

“Okay, he was like … thirteen, and she was, too, or maybe a year older. It was an arranged marriage—”

Ashe laughed out loud, truly enjoying that little fact.

“Which has nothing to do with anything—”

“You’re the one who brought Gandhi into this,” he reminded her.

“Because I admire the sentiment. Imagine what a better world this would be if we all found a problem, a cause we felt passionate about, and went to work fixing it?”

Good grief.

Had Ashe ever been this naive? He didn’t think so.

Lilah sighed, clearly disappointed with him. “Please, just think about helping me. I promise I won’t tease you anymore about naked women.”

Which should have been a plus, he supposed.

“I don’t think it’s ever a bad thing to try to help people who truly need it,” she pleaded. “Watch those people coming through your courtroom and think about whether you believe they need some help letting go, moving on. That’s all I’m asking.”

He frowned. “You’ll be holding these … classes at the Barrington estate?”

Lilah nodded. “It’s perfect.”

“I thought she’d turned it into a wedding venue?”

“That’s what makes it perfect,” Lilah claimed. “All that excitement, the anticipation, the happiness. It’s like it’s in the air there, plus all the physical preparations to turn it into someone’s fantasy of the perfect wedding. We get caught up in the fantasy, the dream, and then reality sets in, and … Well, you know all this. You must see it every day. The fantasy doesn’t last.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“I want to use all that energy, all those feelings, the memories. Too often, we try to run away from those feelings or to bury them so deeply we never feel them, and that doesn’t work, either. The women coming to my classes won’t be able to. Wedding preparations or the dismantling of the wedding fantasies will be all around them there.”

“You want to deliberately stir them up?” He saw it now.

Lilah nodded. “Not to be unkind. Just to make it impossible to hide from those emotions. We have to deal with our feelings before we can move on from them.”

“So, that’s why you’re at Eleanor’s?” He couldn’t argue the sense in that.

“It seemed perfect, once I thought about it. And she’s been so kind. She’s a good friend of my mother’s and a distant cousin of some sort.”

“And you’re living there?”