Strangers

A seemingly perfect marriage—a whole life—shatters overnight when Belle discovers her husband’s betrayal and uncovers the silences and stories that have come to define her. As everything collapses, she must decide whether to protect the narrative she’s been handed or finally confront the truth.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Were there red flags? The subtle or not subtle warnings
I should have seen before we married? The ones people
ask me about now, wanting something, anything to prove that
our fate could have been predicted, that the same thing
couldn't happen to them. Maybe the shift and personality at Kenyon,
Maybe the arrests and the breaking of girls' hearts, Maybe

(00:29):
his tendency to direct and mind to follow. Maybe the
untold tale of his father. But these felt like stories
of a rebellious boy becoming a responsible man, the normal
mysteries of a three dimensional human being. There is nothing
I look back on now and say, how could I
have missed that? Other couples I knew then and know

(00:52):
now had many more flags, redder flags, and they stayed married.
And doesn't it all look different? Wouldn't your own story
look different if you knew how it was going to end?

Speaker 3 (01:07):
That's Bell Burden, attorney and author of the recent book Strangers,
a memoir of a marriage. Bell's story is, on its surface,
one of privilege. That's a word that gets a lot
of play these days, privilege. But privilege does not protect
us from pain. The pain of loneliness, the pain of

(01:28):
a solitary childhood, the weight of expectations that do not
come from our own deepest longings, but rather from a
sense of the way it's supposed to be. It's also
a book about following an intricate choreography set out for
us at birth, and what happens when the dance steps
completely change on us. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is

(02:04):
family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, the
secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep
from ourselves. Bell tell me about the landscape of your childhood,
your early memories, where you lived, what it was like,
the atmosphere surrounding you.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
My parents got divorced when I was two, and I
can't remember a time before that. I always remember them
being divorced, and I mostly lived at my mother's apartment,
which was on East eighty fourth Street, and my father
lived on East fifty second Street. Both of them lived
all the way over by the East River, and I
only got to see my father every other weekend. That

(02:47):
was typical custody arrangement of the nineteen seventies. And at
my mother's apartment, I lived with my brother, my mother,
and always live in nanny working and my brother was
often playing Atari video games, which had just been invented.
And I remember in that house feeling lonely a lot,

(03:12):
and I had the nannies that I had were not
the nicest people. So I think of my childhood as
a happy time but also a lonely time. When I
saw my father and my stepmother every other weekend, I
loved being with them, but it was sporadic. I went
to school on the Upper East Side, a private girls

(03:33):
school called Spence, and I started there in first grade
and had some friends there, but it was socially a
challenging place, especially in middle school, which tends to be
difficult too. And I was very quiet, very not cool
is what I would say, nerdy. And I also lived

(03:54):
all the way east and the school was on Madison Avenue,
so I did not feel very much in that social world,
and I think in living all the way over there,
it was very quiet and it didn't really feel like
the swirl of New York because you had to walk
several blocks even to get to a subway. But in

(04:14):
seventh grade, girls in my class started to become very
sophisticated started to go to Studio fifty four to really
go out at night, and I was not like that.
I couldn't really figure out how to be social in
that way. I was home baking cookies, that was what
I did, and I was reading. I just remember a
lot of quiet. I remember the first book I really like,

(04:39):
long book that I really got so absorbed in was
Harriet the Spy and I remember reading it on the
floor of my bedroom and I just consumed the whole thing,
I think in one sitting, and I really felt like
I knew her. I remember that feeling so clearly. And
then Judy Bloom books, even Encyclopedia Brown, and I really

(05:01):
escaped into books and they became very meaningful to me.

Speaker 4 (05:04):
And you did well in school.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
I did well in school, except that in every single class,
every report card, the teacher said that I was bright
and doing well, but that I needed to speak in class.
I never spoke in class. And this continued through high school.
I went to boarding school, and it is a school
with oval tables, called the Harkness Method. Even math is

(05:28):
taught around an oval table. And I really had a
lot of trouble speaking. I would overthink and my face
would turn bright red, and it became so important what
I was going to say because I hadn't said anything
and so long, and then it became too hard to
actually say it. So that really defined my academic life.
But I was very conscientious. I did my homework on

(05:51):
Friday afternoons for the weekend. I worked very hard in
high school. And in high school is really where I
started writing, and was nurchured by a couple of extraordinary
teachers who could see that writing was maybe a path,
not out of shyness, but just a way to access
me and for me to express myself since I wasn't

(06:14):
very comfortable doing it verbally.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
And in boarding school were there a lot of social
rules and more rays the same way that there were
expense even if they were different, or what was the
social aspect of being in high school?

Speaker 2 (06:30):
The social aspect was actually incredible for me because it's
a big boarding school, Exeter in New Hampshire, and I
found my people there. It was a place that rewarded academics.
It didn't feel like there was a real social hierarchy.
I was put into a very small dorm and a
group of us became very very close friends. It took

(06:52):
a while the first two months I was very homesick
and I was too afraid to go to the dining hall,
so I lived on David's cookies, which were the popular
cookies in New York that my stepmother used to send me.
And then I started making friends in the dorm and
we were different ages. Two were older, one in my class,
and two were younger, and they became like sisters for

(07:15):
me because we grew up together, living together in this
very intimate way when you're not living at home and
academically it was. It was really wonderful for me. So
I did not feel the social pressure there or the
social failure there. I felt very much understood and like

(07:36):
I was in the right place.

Speaker 4 (07:37):
That's such a gift when that happens. Yes, I wonder too.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
You write about the burden family trade of temper, yes,
and how you did not exhibit that trait but you
were surrounded by it. So was it also just kind
of good to be on your own, kind of developing
that whole, like the whole in Loco parentis aspect of
boarding school.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yes, it was. I think volatile is not is too
strong of a word. But my father definitely had moods
and emotions and would have temper tantrums that were more
like a child's temper tantrum of getting his way, and
my brother was similar, had bad moods and tempers. And

(08:21):
I think that I was born very quiet, but I
think that I became quieter in that and very watchful,
more observant. And my mom, at that point before I
went to boarding school, had gotten divorced for the second time,
and I loved my stepfather and that was a really
hard loss to have that marriage end, and she started

(08:45):
dating again, which is exactly what she should do, but
that was hard for me. In the couple years before
I left that there were new relationships and relationships ending,
and so again I wouldn't characterize it as volatile, but
it was changeable and unpredictable, and I think going away
at that point was the best thing for me. It

(09:07):
was a calmer and more predictable atmosphere for me.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
Bell grows up in New York in a family that,
from the outside, has a sparkly public presence. Her mother's
life sometimes appears in the society pages, and her stepfather
moves through the world as a public figure, But inside
the apartment, Bell doesn't feel like she's living in a fishbowl.
This is long before the Internet, before the constant gaze

(09:35):
of social media. Whatever attention exists in the wider world
barely registers in her childhood. The family's public reputation is
simply not something she's aware of. What she is aware
of is her own inner life, especially her love of writing.
When she arrives at college Harvard, she as just a freshman,

(09:57):
gets accepted into a competitive writing work shop. For a moment,
it feels like the beginning of something, something true, and
something she can lay claim to. But then, during a
class critique, a fellow student named Greg mesodically dismantles her
story submission in front of everyone. The teacher says nothing.

(10:20):
The room stays quiet, and in that silence, something closes
inside her. The possibility that writing might be her path
suddenly feels out of reach, as if a door she
had just opened has been slammed shut.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
It was really painful because I think in high school
we can form an identity, and being a writer became
a really important part of who I thought I was
and who I thought I was going to be. And
I arrived at college so hopeful about it and excited
to get into that class, and he did tear it apart.
I remember not so much him having concrete criticisms of

(11:00):
the piece, which was a short story, but really raising
it to the level of my writing as a whole,
my talent. And I had to check with a friend
to make sure who was in the class with me,
to make sure that I was not, you know, making
this more dramatic or fabricating it in any way, and
that friend said, indeed happened. What I think about now

(11:23):
is the fact that he probably thought about it for
maybe two minutes after the class. You know, that was
just something that he did. He was four years older,
and maybe because he was male, and because he spoke
with such authority and confidence that I took it as

(11:44):
the truth rather than one person's opinion. And the fact
that he said it really wasn't the problem. The fact
that I believed it and changed the course of my
life because of it is really the problem. And I
have daughters that are that age now college age, and
it would horrify me if they changed what they believed

(12:07):
was their passion and talent because of what one person said.
So I think it's an important story for people to hear.
I think what's interesting is that other people I know
have a similar story, but in different fields, maybe a
boss saying something. But yes, I stopped writing. I got
through the class. I think I wrote a couple more pieces,

(12:28):
but my heart was not in it anymore. And it
was one semester and after that I completely stopped writing,
and I decided I was going to be a lawyer instead,
and I didn't write again other than legal writing for
thirty years. I am a person who likes steps. I
like constructions. I like to follow instructions. And it looked

(12:50):
like a path where if I just kept working hard
and putting one foot in front of the other, that
I would get to the finish line of finishing law school,
taking the bar, and get a job. And the creative
life is much much harder. And I got knocked down
once and that was enough for me. I could not

(13:10):
see the path beyond that, and the law was a
much more clear, secure route to take.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
What truly interests Belle is criminal defense. One summer, she
works at the Legal Aid Society in Brooklyn, and the
experience standing beside people whose futures are uncertain is meaningful
to her. But when it's time to begin her career.
The offer she receives is from Davis Polk, one of
New York's most prestigious corporate law firms. It's the kind

(13:43):
of opportunity few people refuse, and so Belle steps into
a very different world from the one she had imagined.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
I loved being in a courtroom. I loved sitting second
seat in a trial. I loved the investigat aspect of it.
I like the writing aspect of it. I liked the
public interest aspect of it, providing a lawyer to those
who can't afford one. But I think this is another
example of life presenting a fork in the road and

(14:16):
choosing one that was actually not consistent with who I
am and what I like to do. Not passive this,
I actively chose to go in this direction. But I
am someone who enjoys achievement and documented accomplishment. This is
true now, and they just arrive earlier now. But in
law schools, the firms come to campus courting, you meet

(14:39):
with them for interviews, and then you collect these offers,
and it is something to boast about, to feel accomplished about.
And I fell into that and got a number of
offers to be a summer associate, chose Davis Polk and
then went back full time, thinking this is a great
thing to do, to really like a finishing school, to

(14:59):
really be tested in this very competitive environment, and to
see how I did again, you know, just one step
after the other to land at being a good lawyer
and being an accomplished person. And I think the criminal
defense path would have been a much braver choice because
it's not as go from A to B to C

(15:22):
to keep achieving. It just would have been like, Okay,
this is what I'm interested in. This is my passion,
and I'm going to try and do a good job
at it.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
And I love that phrase documented accomplishments. I think the
way that our culture and society and world sort of
operates in that sort of box checking kind of way. Yes, absolutely,
we'll be right back. In ninety six, Bell's father dies

(16:02):
suddenly at the age of fifty four. The loss is
shocking and destabilizing. She's in the middle of law school,
preparing to return to Davis Polk after working there as
a summer associate. His death is a rupture in the
midst of a carefully plotted future. In the days that follow,
new details emerge, details that complicate the story the family

(16:26):
thought they knew. The autopsy reveals that he had been
taking diet pills, and financial records show he died deeply
in debt. Bell and those closest to him begin to
realize that the version of his life they had held onto,
the clean, polished narrative, was never quite the whole truth.
For years, they had wanted his story to feel pristine.

(16:50):
Now they are left to sit with a far messier reality.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
I think both of those were things that we have
carried as a family and not revealed to the world.
And the first, my father grew up in Beverly Hills.
His mother was an actress and his father was a
photographer and a film producer, and his mother was always

(17:16):
very concerned about weight, I would say, not even appearance generally,
but weight in particular. And both my father and my
aunt were a little heavy as children and teenagers, and
there were doctors in Beverly Hills at that point they
would hand out diet pills, which is really speed to anyone,

(17:36):
very easily, and so my grandmother gave my father and
my aunt diet pills, starting, you know, in teenage years,
and so my father used them periodically through college in
his thirties. I don't know exactly when it stopped, but
he stopped doing it because it was so bad for
his health, and in particular his heart. He had documented

(18:00):
heart issue which was a leaky valve that we think
maybe he got from having scarlet fever as a child,
and he knew he would have to have the valve
replaced at some point. People do it much more easily now,
but it was major surgery and he was very afraid
of it. Did not want to convalesce and have a
scar and all those things. So we kept putting it off,

(18:23):
and he would go to the cardiologist every six months
to get a check up, and he had been cleared
just a few months before he died, saying that he
could wait to have the surgery. He died very suddenly
on a January morning. My stepmother went out to walk
the dogs and came home and his alarm was going off,
and she found him dead in their bed. And we thought,

(18:46):
after talking to his cardiologists, that he was in this
very rare two percent that die from sudden arrhythmic death
with this valve issue, and we thought, how unlucky he
is to have that happen, how horrible, and we discuss afterwards,
actually not in the autopsy, but his secretary confessed that
she had been making him appointments with a diet doctor

(19:07):
and that he had been taking diet pills, I think
for a year, and he had kept it from my stepmother, Susan,
and from me and my brother, almost like this rebellious
thing that I think Keith thought he was getting away with.
He and Susan had a really wonderful, close, intimate marriage,
so to her it felt just so devastating that he

(19:29):
hadn't told her this and that he was taking this
risk with his life. And we don't think it killed him,
but it certainly did not help his heart issue. And
we have carried this secret for the last thirty years.
He died thirty years ago. A couple months ago, when
I had started writing again, I wrote about this and

(19:50):
then asked my brother and Susan's permission to be public
about it, because I do think that it ate away
at us in some way that I hope talking about
it as I'm talking about it to you right now
is healthier for our family. The second piece was he
was in debt. My stepmother knew and my brother and

(20:10):
I sort of knew because they would say, like, the
bank owns the apartment. He had taken out a lot
of loans to finance his radio company, and so we
didn't really focus on it. We just thought everything would
be okay. But when he died, we discovered that he
was forty million dollars in debt, which we were lucky
enough to sell his company. He died so young and

(20:33):
died in such a way that we were left just
reeling emotionally, reeling, financially reeling, and then also reeling from
the fact that he was hurting himself in a way
that we were completely unaware of.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
Yeah, you know, And it strikes me too that the
phrase going through my head is this wasn't.

Speaker 4 (20:52):
Supposed to happen, right exactly, yep.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
And it ties to the documented accomplishments in a way
in which our whole culture is infected with this idea
that if you just if you do these things and
you do them in this order, that you will be
protected and if you live in this way, then you know,
you will live till you're, you know, ninety eight years old.

Speaker 4 (21:16):
And the affront in a way when that just is
not the case.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yes, it was the first time that I just felt
like life was completely unpredictable, and it really brought me
to my knees, and my stepmother too, and my brother too.
And I don't think any part of him thought that
he was going to die. I think he thought he
could take risk in all sorts of ways. He was

(21:43):
someone that had done things in the right order and
gone to good schools and worked for Bobby Kennedy and
Ben was in city council in New York then started
his own company. But he did like to take some risk.
I think that excited him in some way, and I
don't think he ever thought that it would be catastrophic.

Speaker 3 (22:02):
Yeah, so how long after your father's death did you
meet James.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
I met James in April of nineteen ninety eight, so
it was two years in a couple months. But it
still felt very fresh for me because we were still
dealing with the financial aftermath and selling his company, and
while I was working at Davis Polk these insane hours
doing work that I really did not even understand. I

(22:31):
did dwell at it because I was good at following instructions,
but I really was not interested in finance or corporations
or banks or securities. So I was doing that work,
and then I would have to take these calls. I
had an officemate, so I'd have to take these calls
in the phone booth at Davis Polk to talk to

(22:51):
lawyers and my brother and Susan trying to sort out
my father's dad, his estate, all of those things. And
it just felt very bleak and very difficult. I really
hated all of that so much, and so when I
met James, I was still suffering with that and with
the loss of my father. We started working together. I

(23:15):
was moved into his group, and I had a boyfriend
at the time, and I did not find James to
be someone I would be interested in because he was
so familiar in a lot of ways. He was from
an all boys school in New York, he had gone
to boarding school. He kind of looked a bit like
my father, same height and build and blonde hair. And

(23:38):
I just let off, that's too familiar to me. And
I was sort of stuck in this other relationship. But
it soon developed into a very very intense romance.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
And I think it bears saying that the other relationship
was with someone who was a much less safe option.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yes, he was unemployed. I did not know when he
would ever be employed again. He was living in my
apartment and not paying rent. I was not in love
with him. It was one of those situations where I
think another person would have gotten out of it or
gotten them to move out. I was very bad at confrontation,
very bad at hurting someone's feelings. So I just I

(24:22):
felt very stuck.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
I mean, this is the way in which I think.
You know, so many of the crossroads in our lives
happened right. So, you were still in your twenties when
you met James. You were, you know, far too young
to lose your dad. Your dad was far too young
to die, and you're unraveling all of this very heavy
duty family stuff and you're in the wrong relationship, and

(24:46):
you know, along comes James, and when you begin your
great romance you describe the part of him that you
most selved for was that, on the one hand, he
did have this kind of of very familiar and recognizable
trajectory and also history, but he had a little bit

(25:06):
of a bad boy history.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yes, I loved that. I loved that he was both
stable and safe and also a little bit dangerous. He
gotten a lot of trouble in high school. He'd been
arrested a few times, and he had a tattoo. So
he sorted this bad boy, cleaned up, you know who,
ended up at a great law school and a great firm,

(25:30):
And that was intoxicating to me.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
The relationship moves quickly, almost inevitably. Their romance has a
kind of sweep to it, James stepping in, taking charge,
making things feel secure and forward moving. But even in
those early days, there is one part of his life
that remains out of reach, a sort of third rail
with him not to be touched. James tells Bell the

(25:58):
abridged version. His father suffered a breakdown at around age
forty and stopped working, and his family's financial stability collapsed.
They had once lived comfortably in New York, but suddenly
they were scraping together tuition and giving up even small luxuries.
And that's the whole story. Whenever Bell tries to understand more,

(26:19):
wanting to know every part of the man she's falling
in love with, James gently but firmly shuts down the
subject is simply too painful. Bell begins to see how
that history shapes him. His relentless work ethic, his drive
to succeed, his urgency about providing it all traces back
to those years of instability, but the deeper emotional terrain

(26:42):
remains inaccessible to her. When she pushes, he withdraws, retreating
into silence. Bell senses the tenderness there and learns not
to press. Still, the relationship moves forward. One day, without
ceremony or theatrics, James pulls a ring from his pocket,
no box, no kneeling, and announces simply that they're getting married,

(27:06):
that they're going to build a life and a family together.
It's everything Bell has imagined. As they begin planning the wedding,
another sort of financial family rule quietly comes into play.
Years earlier, Bell's mother had required Belle and her brother
to sign a written agreement promising that they would one
day have prenuptial agreements. Now, as the wedding approaches, that

(27:31):
promise becomes real and James, who deeply resents the idea,
will only capitulate if one change is made to the agreement.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
In a normal pre nup, it says that you each
keep what you came into the marriage with, and that
anything earned during the marriage will be split fifty to fifty.
What James wanted was to say that anything earned during
the marriage would not be split fifty to fifty unless
we affirmatively put it in joint name. And the way

(28:03):
he explained it made sense to me. The way he
explained it was that of course we would put things
in joint name, we were going to be married and
we were going to be a unit, but that we
should decide on a case by case basis to do so.
So I went back to my lawyer to request this change,
and he told me very clearly not to do it.

(28:23):
He knew that I wanted to stay home with kids
for a period of time. He knew that James was
a lawyer, was going to move into the investment world,
and that it was a bad idea for someone who
may not have an income for a long time. And
I could hear him say that. I knew what he
was saying. But James was the man I was in

(28:45):
love with, he was the man I was going to marry.
He was the man I had now placed all my
trust in, and I thought, I'm going to trust him
with this. I'm going to make the change. So I
insisted on the change. It was made, and we signed
the pre up five days before we got married.

Speaker 3 (29:02):
And did you tell your mother or your brother that
you had made a change?

Speaker 2 (29:07):
I didn't. I didn't tell them, I didn't ask their advice.
I didn't tell my stepmother, who I'm very close to.
And I think that was a sign that I really
knew that it was not a good idea, and that
I didn't want them to tell me that it was
a bad idea. I didn't want them to stop me.
And this is the problem with prenups. Sometimes I generally

(29:29):
think they're a good idea, but they are often signed
days or weeks before a wedding, and at that point,
you just don't want anything to derail the wedding. You
don't want to have to, you know, send back gifts
and cancel anything, and you just are kind of really
focused on that day happening. So I think that was
a factor too. But I think the fact that I

(29:50):
didn't tell anyone in my family about the significant change
shows that I was I knew it was problematic, and
I was a shame that I had read to it.

Speaker 3 (30:01):
What do you think would have happened if you had
said no to James.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
I don't know. I actually don't know, I've never been
asked that question. I don't know if he would have
really stuck to it and either not signed it or
not gone through with the wedding. It's interesting to think about.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
So on your honeymoon, you have one fight, and you
have very few fights, and you have one fight in
Bali and it's actually over money. And James has a
real pet peeve that you do not examine carefully a
check after a meal before you sign the receipt.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yes, he got very upset because I think I handed
over my credit card and didn't open the envelope that
you get when you get a bill. And that's what
we did in my family. You just you trusted the restaurant,
you gave a big tip, always generous, always picking up checks.

(31:03):
That's just what we did. And it made him very upset,
very nervous. I was his wife at that point, and
I think he really worried that I would be a
big spender like my father, and he wanted to be
clear that we were not going to do the things
that way in our marriage. And part of me was

(31:25):
really upset and didn't like being scolded in that way.
But another part of me thought, Okay, this man is
going to make sure that I don't end up in
financial ruin. It felt caretaking in some way that this
man my father was dead. This man was going to
watch out for me and keep me safe.

Speaker 3 (31:44):
It makes sense, and as does your being really angry
at being chided?

Speaker 2 (31:50):
Yes, yes, it was both.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
Once Bell and James settle back in New York, the
next chapter begins to take shape. They want a home,
they want a family. James finds an apartment he loves
in Tribecca, slightly further out than Bell imagines living, though
still close to the subway and to friends and family
near by. It isn't exactly the place she would have chosen,

(32:16):
but she can see the life and future. It might
hold space for children, room to grow. The price tag
on the apartment happens to match the exact amount sitting
in one of Bell's trusts, money left to her by
her mother's stepfather. She makes a formal request to the
trustees to withdraw the funds, and when the purchase goes through,

(32:38):
she places both her name and James's on the deed.
To Belle, this all feels pretty natural. This is what
marriage means, right, sharing everything, It also feels like a
kind of offering a contribution to the life they are
building together in the next few years. That life indeed
builds after a difficult pregnancy. Therefore, son Finn is born,

(33:02):
then comes easy. Then Carrie Belle stays home with the children,
something she had always imagined doing, while James throws himself
into work and rises quickly at his investment firm. Their
lives settle into a familiar pattern, following classic and outdated
gender lines. He works constantly, she manages the world of

(33:22):
the home. James is direct about the division, declaring plainly,
I don't do bed, bath or homework, leaving the daily
rhythms of parenting to Belle. She does have help, but
even so, the house is full and busy, and she
is deeply immersed in motherhood. For Belle, this is more
than routine. It's an act of correction. She is determined

(33:46):
to give her children something she feels was missing from
her own childhood. Her mother, who grew up as the
daughter of Babe Paley, one of the most famous and
glamorous women of her era, saw her own mother only once.

Speaker 4 (33:59):
Alione.

Speaker 3 (34:01):
In Bell's family, generations of distance had quietly shaped what
motherhood looked like. Now Bell is doing it differently, pouring
herself into her children as her marriage moves forward on
the unspoken bargain.

Speaker 4 (34:15):
She and James have made.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
This unspoken bargain between us, which started pretty quickly because
he really was such a hard worker, so devoted to
doing a good job, first at a fund of funds
and then later at a hedge fund. And I did
want to stay home at kids to cure something that
I felt in my childhood and my mother felt in

(34:38):
her childhood even more so, to just be present all
the time. And I think what happened in our family
was that his work became so much the family enterprise.
It was like everything was in service to it. It
always came first, beyond anything, beyond any birthday party, parent

(34:58):
teacher conference, any math tests, illness anything, his work, his
getting enough sleep, his being able to work on weekends,
all of that. And I admired it. I admired how
hard working he was. But I think that in that
I think it's not so much about staying home with kids.
I think it's when one person's career and ambitions and

(35:20):
dreams take over, it becomes easier for the other person
in this case me to lose sight of their own
ambitions and their own dreams and becomes harder to find
it again. It just gets overwhelmed.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
I think, you know you right at one point that
you had date night, you'd go out to dinner.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
I think about those dinners a lot, because I really
loved those dinners, and I always felt like we had
a really good time together. Who talked about his work,
but we also talked about kids, we talked about friends,
we talked about politics, we talked about our plans. It
felt intimate. It felt like he knew me and I
knew him. He was very quiet and mild mannered. It

(36:04):
never felt like a big ego that we were. It
was just all about him. But I do think work wise,
there was not a lot of room for both of
us to have that. I had an opportunity to go
back to work at one point for a job that
I think I would have been good at. It would
have been a good fit. It was at a foundation,

(36:25):
and I'd done a lot of nonprofit work and still
had my law license, and at that point where we're
just so in deep with the division of responsibility that
I was nervous about it. But he was definitive about
it that I should not go back to work. I
take responsibility for that. I think it was my responsibility

(36:45):
to say this is important to me, I want to
do it. But I do wish that he had been
able to say, it's your turn to have the focus
and to follow what you would like to do with
your life, and I will do whatever I can to
support you. I do wish that well.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
It begs the same question that I asked you before
of what do you think would have happened if you
had said no about the prenup? What would have happened
if you had said, you know what. I understand you're
concerned about this, but I'm doing it. What would have
happened there? Do you have the same feeling?

Speaker 2 (37:15):
It does give me the same feeling, and it makes
me feel a little bit sad about myself that I
didn't have the gumption to fight for that. It's confusing
when your partner is he never yelled, he was never mean,
he was never demeaning to me, he was always kind,

(37:38):
So it's harder to decipher, I think, in that when
you're being overly deferential, if that makes sense, Like I
wasn't fighting against anything clear, it felt like the tide
that we were in. But I do think that if
I had put down my foot in both those circumstances,
I don't know what the reaction would have been. I

(37:59):
don't know if he could have adjusted to that version
of me.

Speaker 4 (38:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:05):
I mean what you're describing in part is that it's
a way of being controlling that is, in the right
circumstances and with the right person, very very powerful.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
It is. It's very it's very powerful and maybe more
powerful because it's quiet.

Speaker 4 (38:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:22):
I mean, it wouldn't have worked for you if he had,
you know, been a kind of rage aholic about things
that would have that wouldn't have worked for you. Yeah,
you would have recognized that, and it would have been
you would have run for the hills.

Speaker 4 (38:35):
This is something very different.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
Different, and it felt like I was I had improved
on my childhood so much because there was no yelling
and there was no volatility in that way. But it
was its own. It had its own problems that are
still hard to like sort through, especially having loved him
so much and felt in love with him to kind
of track and figure out how I became a bit

(39:00):
smaller in the marriage.

Speaker 3 (39:04):
When Belle is in her forties. Another step in the
life she and James have built together comes into view.
A country house. It's what families in their world tend
to do, leave the city on weekends, spend summers somewhere quieter.
After looking at properties online, James visits one on Martha's
Vineyard and calls Belle while at the property to say

(39:25):
he's fallen in love with it and suggests they pull
the trigger. Belle hasn't seen it, but she trusts him
and they decide to buy it once again. The purchase
is made possible through a trust Belle inherited from her family.
She withdraws the funds, the deal closes, and, just as
she had with the Tribeca apartment, she places both of

(39:45):
their names on the deed. The vineyard house becomes part
of the fabric of their family life, another shared investment
in the future they believe they're cultivating together. The house
is part of a community vineyard Haven and a small
local clubs there. A sweet, seeming conceted place becomes central

(40:05):
to their family social life.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
So it is a private tennis oriented club. I do
not play tennis, but it's on this beautiful piece of
land on Vineyard Sound and people have been going there
for more than one hundred years. Families have had multiple generations.
It's very simple in terms of the there's an inn

(40:31):
and a little candy store, and it is very very married.
I would say I know of only a few people
who've been divorced. It is unlike any place I'd ever
been before because my family did not join private clubs,
and it was both unappealing to me because of that,
but also I knew I was going to probably stay

(40:53):
on the vineyard with my small children at that point,
and it provided a day camp. It provided a community
for us. I wouldn't have known anyone otherwise. So we
applied to join and it's a three year process, and
for the first couple of summers I really knew no one.
It was a very hard community to break into. A

(41:13):
lot of traditions, a lot of social life that it's
just hard for people to know about you or you
to know about them. But then eventually we started being included,
mostly meeting people through the kids, and it really became
a wonderful community for us for a long time, with
the kids having lots of friends, us going to cocktail
parties and dinner parties, really kind people. A lot of

(41:35):
women who like me, were highly educated, professional degrees and
had decided to stay home, so I felt very connected
to them. Sort of those heavenly days of having kids
over for art class on the lawn and then getting
pizzas and pouring white wine for the women, and sunsets
in July and all of that.

Speaker 3 (41:55):
It was really wonderful for a long time. During these years,
life is well, lovely. The family spends time at the
vineyard house, and James begins commuting there by seaplane. From
the outside, everything appears smooth and lush and successful. Nothing
to see here, and yet inside the marriage the balance

(42:19):
quietly shifts. James increasingly takes control of their finances, asking
Belle to account for nearly every purchase. Eventually she opens
a second credit card, just for small things. She knows
that he might question. It's not meant to be a
secret exactly, but it becomes one.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
He was very stringent. He was very stringent about vacations expenses.
We've lived in this apartment for twenty three years. I
wanted to do some updating renovations. He was very very
stressed out about that as an example, and I think
I've thought a lot about this, about why I handed
so much over to him. And he did the meetings

(43:02):
with the financial advisors, he reviewed the tax returns. He
really had a handle on our whole budget and all
of our assets. Knew where everything sat. And I don't
think it was a question, definitely no question of anything illegal.
It wasn't like he was refusing to show me things.

(43:24):
I just got very, very comfortable with him handling it.
It felt like this is how he was going to
take care of our family. There was something that felt
just wonderful about that. But I also think some peers
are the same way about this that it felt like
I was helping him feel good about himself, like I
was helping his self esteem having married into this family

(43:47):
with money. It felt like an equalizing in a way,
like I trust you with this, You're going to be
in charge of this. And it's maybe the male ego
in some way that I was pumping up in that.
And then I think the more you touch with it,
the more you convince yourself you can't understand it. And
I'd been in meetings with bankers or lawyers who would

(44:08):
only speak to him. It was like I was some accessory,
and they would use unnecessarily complicated acronyms and talked over me.
And I think you convince yourself that it's too hard.
But I'm a former corporate lawyer. I know did securities
deals and with prospectuses and drafted really complicated debt covenants.

(44:30):
I could understand it. I think anyone can understand it.
But it's I think easy to convince yourself you can't.
So I lost touch with our big picture and I
signed our tax returns because he gave me the page
to sign, and I didn't read all the pages that
came before it, again not hiding anything. I could have
looked through it. I could have seen what his bonuses were,

(44:51):
but I did not.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
Yeah, and so interesting because he did not want you
to not because he was hiding anything from you, but
because that would have been, in a way a blow.
That's how I'm reading it, you know, a blow to
the ego of dicycle.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
I'm a blow to the ego.

Speaker 4 (45:08):
You do you, I'll do me. Everything will be fine.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yep, yep. It felt like it would be a statement
of lack of trust, or not even trust, but like
lack of admiration, like of course you can handle this.
I don't need to question things.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
By twenty fifteen, James's career is accelerating. He helps lead
the sale of the investment firm where he's worked for years,
then moves to a hedge fund and quickly rises through
the ranks.

Speaker 4 (45:38):
Again.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
From that unreliable bird's eye view, everything looks like success
upon success, but something in the atmosphere around him begins
to change. He spends more time with colleagues, wealthy, competitive
men who travel together, play tennis, take guy's trips, and
move easily within a world of money and power. Bell

(46:01):
senses this shift, a sheen of entitlement that begins to
surround that world. But still lives go on, and theirs
is no exception to the rule. The kids are growing up,
and the train of their family continues to chug forward
along familiar tracks. Some years pass. In twenty nineteen, the

(46:21):
couple meets with their lawyer to review their wills and
estate plans. At the bottom of the agenda sits one
unresolved issue, extinguishing the pre nup they had signed years earlier.
But when they get to this item, James suggests they
table the conversation, saying he has to get back to
the office, Bell lets it go the way she has

(46:42):
so often deferred to the urgency of his work. Then,
in March of twenty twenty, the world begins to shut
down as the pandemic spreads. Bell and her family retreat
to their house on the vineyard, assuming the lockdown will
be brief. At first, the days feel strangely peaceful, cooking together,
long dinners, fires in the fireplace. But one evening the

(47:05):
phone rings. Bell picks up. It's a man she's never met,
and he tells her that James is having an affair
with his wife. The accusation seems impossible, does not compute.
When Bell confronts James, she expects some explanation that will
make the call disappear. Instead, he admits it, says there

(47:28):
was an affair, but it was short and meaningless. Meanwhile,
in the city, the other couple is having the same confrontation,
a parallel reckoning unfolding in another home. The night stretches
on in shock and confusion. James sleeps in the guest room.
When morning comes, everything will be different. James will ask for,

(47:52):
well demand a divorce.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
His whole affect had changed. It just had gone so cold,
almost icy.

Speaker 4 (48:02):
Had you ever seen him like that before?

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Never? Never, And he was fully dressed, he had carrying
the bag, and he said, I thought I was happy,
but I'm not, and I'm leaving right now. And he
got in his jeep, got on a ferry and.

Speaker 4 (48:19):
Left the island. He also told you that he was
leaving everything.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
Yes, he said, you can have the house and the apartment,
you can have custody of the kids. I don't want it.
I don't want any of it.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
It's just unfathomable. But you know, in a way he
was so confronted. This affair was obviously as affairs are
a secret that he probably intended to keep a secret,
and then it all blew up and then he was trapped.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
Yes he was, and not just trapped in terms of
me knowing, but trapped in terms of COVID, which I
see as a intensifire and accelerator, because we were in
this house together with no ability to leave, although he
did leave, and yes, I think he was unmasked in

(49:11):
some way and he didn't know what to do with that.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
He doesn't take good bye to the kids, and he
leaves you in a state of complete shock and also
having to contend with what in the world you're going
to say to your children.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Yes, what I'm going to say to them, And also
just being so decimated emotionally that I was literally on
the bathroom floor or in bed, unable to move, with
two girls twelve and fifteen, one who actually was aware
of what was happening she read a text on my iPad,
and one who is unaware and deciding on the advice

(49:47):
of the therapist not to tell them. So doing this
kind of dance with my older daughter where she's pretending
she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed
me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything,
and me, you know, appearing like swollen face and like
just disheveled and pretending like everything was fine. And I

(50:09):
regret that because I think she obviously knew, And my
younger daughter ended up being upset that I hadn't told
her for all that time and that she was unaware
of this huge thing that had happened in our family.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
And to just add that your son was riding out
the pandemic with some boarding school friends of his in
the Hamptons, so he was there not knowing he was
with a family yep, and not knowing what was going
on for a period of time. So it's then late
April and you insist that he return and tell the kids.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
I said, it's time, we have to tell them, And
at first he said he didn't want to and that
I should tell them alone. And initially I agreed with
him because he was in the middle of New York
City having an affair and it was the height of
COVID April twenty twenty at that point. But then his
boss called me and said he really needs to be there,

(51:06):
and so I relented and he came up. He said
he had only ninety minutes to be there. His boss
had lent him a seaplane and pilot. And it was
then that we had the conversation with the girls, and
we facetimed our son to tell him. And it's a
horrible conversation for any family. I don't think anyone ever

(51:28):
forgets it.

Speaker 4 (51:30):
So there are two things about that.

Speaker 3 (51:31):
One is that in the middle of this horrible family moment,
he turns to you and says, I'm hungry.

Speaker 4 (51:40):
Can you make me a sandwich?

Speaker 2 (51:42):
Yes, he does.

Speaker 3 (51:43):
We have just told them, and you don't just make
him a sandwich like you go into the kitchen, You're like,
I'm going to make him the best fucking sandwich he's
ever had in his whole.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
Life, exactly. And I think there was a part of
me that wanted to say, make your own sandwich. You've
lived here for twenty years. But I wanted to model.
I had that you know, mom track in my brain,
like I want to model for my daughter. The older
one was still in the room that I'm going to
be kind and we're going to be friendly with each other.
So yes, I went in and I tried to make
the best sandwich I possibly could so that he would leave,

(52:15):
and thank God, how can I leave this woman who
makes such great sandwiches. Of course, the sandwich also represented
you know, everything at like the home that we had
built together, the wharves, the family. But he, I think,
just ate the sandwich and didn't think about it at all.

Speaker 4 (52:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:34):
And then the other thing that is very notable about
that day is that he excuses himself from the room
and he goes down to the basement or wherever you
keep your records and files, and he's searching for the prenup.
The thing about that that I found really striking was
that in the interim from that horrible night in March

(52:56):
and his leaving the next morning, I had actually already
gone down there and had done exactly that in this
very careful, methodical way, so that it wouldn't be clear
that files had ever even been looked at I did.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
I did that a couple of weeks after he left
the first time, and I used a box cutter. I
opened up every box, even the ones deep in the basement.
I took out every piece of paper looking for the prenup,
because we had not been able to find it in
our emails, on any files in New York. And I
was starting to have this real hope that didn't exist,

(53:35):
that we had never returned it to our lawyers. Maybe
we'd never signed it, maybe it had been lost in
a move. And I started to have that hope, and
I thought, God, if it is in one of those boxes,
I'm going to get rid of it, which is hard
to admit as a member of the bar. But I
never found it. But if I had, I would I
think I would have burned it.

Speaker 4 (53:54):
What were you most afraid of?

Speaker 2 (53:56):
I knew at that point I had not received any
discovery yet, he had not filed for divorce, but I
knew that I had put both our names on our deeds,
which were my primary assets, so he would be entitled
to half. And he worked at a hedge fund at
that point. He had worked at another fund and sold

(54:17):
that fund, and I you know, when you're not entirely
conscious of things, but your brain knows that he had
probably accumulated some wealth. I didn't know how much, and
there was a very very limited chance that he had
put my name on any of those accounts. He was
also sending me balance sheets at that point, which seemed

(54:41):
to emphasize my family's wealth, even though it wasn't my money,
and so I had a sense that he was creating
a story where he would keep all of his assets,
and I started to really worry about that.

Speaker 3 (55:00):
Will be back in a moment with more family secrets.
In the weeks that follow, Bell remains on Martha's vineyard
as the pandemic settles in. The world is quiet, and

(55:24):
in some ways that quiet protects her. There are no
big gatherings, no crowded dinners, just long daily walks that
become a kind of lifeline as she moves through the
shockwave of what's happened. But even in isolation, news travels.
The Vineyard is a small community, and Bell begins to
feel a subtle shift that often follows a divorce. Friends

(55:47):
circling the wagons, stories forming before she even has time
to process her own. Slowly, she realizes that others are
beginning to write the narrative of her life, and if
the story is going to be told truthfully, she will
have to tell it herself.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
It felt like I went overnight from being a part
of something to being something different, being something that people
were not sure how to deal with. And I'm not
sure if I were encountering someone in my position, I
would have been any different. I always want to make
clear there was incredible kindness, people really going out of

(56:27):
their way to move towards me, to embrace me. But
there were some less kind moments and some commentary about
who should remain a member of the club, that kind
of thing, and it was really painful. I think I'd
had these sort of pillars of how the structure of
my life. My husband, then my financial security, then his

(56:52):
family stopped speaking to me, and then I encountered the
community as they came back for the summer, and then
also felt very unsure of my place there suddenly, And
you know, I don't want to sound too sorry for myself.
There are definitely a lot worse things that people go
through in life, but it was a really strange and
destabilizing time. But while that was happening, while these kind

(57:15):
of pillars were crumbling, this part of myself that I
did not know existed came out, which was first appeared
when he said to me a week in that we
should tell people that the divorce is mutual, that it's amicable.
And I knew instantly when he said it that I
was not going to comply with that storyline because it

(57:38):
felt like lying about it or covering it up was
going to make this unsurvivable for me. The only way
through it was going to be me being truthful about it.
I was emotionally bleeding, and I could not handle a
conversation with someone without being open about that. So it
was like I had this crumbling and at the same time,

(58:00):
I'm this kind of like emergence of a very different
side of me.

Speaker 3 (58:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (58:06):
No, that's so striking.

Speaker 3 (58:08):
And then that also ties into your beginning after thirty
years to write again, and you have this burning desire
to start setting words on the page to return to
that first love of yours. And also maybe Bell, like

(58:30):
what you're describing, that the same impulse or instinct to say,
he left me. Here's the truth, right, or here's my story.
Nobody else is going to tell the story that is
not my story, and so you begin doing that.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
Yes, And I think it was a month after he left.
I had to file something in court for one of
my legal cases, and I think I was a mess
edit at first, but putting words to a page then
that brought me back to life a little bit, and
I started writing it. It was for myself alone. I
wanted to write down exactly what happened. It felt like
there were all these whispers and narratives out there that

(59:10):
were not mine, that were twisted in some way, that
were not the truth. And I wanted to write the
truth of it. And then when I wrote it down,
something happened where I really started getting interested in the
art of it again and in building suspense. When does
the phone call come in? When? How do you end it?
How do I keep it? How do I stay a

(59:31):
reliable narrator, not being too angry, not being too building
of a case against him. So all those things I
started getting interested in that.

Speaker 3 (59:46):
At a point during her writing, Bell looks up the
submission guidelines for Modern Love, the New York Times column
devoted to personal essays about the complexities of love and relationships,
and decided to see if she can compress her story
into that format. She signs up for a memoir writing class,
just observing at first saying very little. She's afraid that

(01:00:09):
sharing her work will create another experience like the one
she had her freshman year of college. But she summons
her courage and in the next session she reads her
piece aloud. It's emotional, but the room feels safe and supportive.
It is safe and supportive. When the class ends, Bell
sends the essay to Modern Love, not expecting much. The

(01:00:33):
column receives thousands of submissions, and almost none are chosen,
but somehow hers rises out of the pile. The essay
will be published, and almost immediately it will go viral,
resonating with readers who recognize something in her story. For
the first time. Bell will feel like she's telling her

(01:00:53):
own version of events, reclaiming the narrative that others had
begun shaping around her. But before this can happen, before
she can truly find exuom her voice. Another story is unfolding.
James is now officially filing for divorce and asks the
court to enforce the prenup. When Bell confronts him, stunned

(01:01:16):
by the suddenness of it all, his response is cool,
almost bureaucratic. He insists he didn't leave her. He simply
changed residences. Another attempt. Belle realizes to rewrite what has happened, a.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Total rewrite, and that happened a number of different times
where he just changed it into something that served him really,
that was, you know, everything is fine, This is fine,
this is normal, kids are fine. I didn't actually leave you.
I just changed locations, change residences, and you know, the

(01:01:53):
implication is, why are you so upset? Why are you
so confused? Why are you making this into something bad?
As like a hysterical woman, kind of that trope.

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
And he also continues to want no custody. He gets
an apartment that the kids would never be able to
stay in, and he's like, well, the kids are never
going to stay here.

Speaker 4 (01:02:16):
I don't want custody. I don't want vacations.

Speaker 3 (01:02:18):
And he's in a world where people are saying to him, yeah,
they're old enough, it's okay, you know, you can just
have dinner with them once a week.

Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
It was stunning to me because as a kid of divorce,
I really wanted fifty to fifty, even though that would
be have its own pain, and so delivered a fifty
to fifty agreement to him, and it came back like
the heaviest black line, where with all of the time
taken out dinner on Thursday nights, which ended pretty quickly.

(01:02:44):
And our youngest was twelve, which is not a baby,
but she really wanted a room there and that was
really painful for her that she could not have a
bedroom there. And I really tried to convince him of
what is to be gained by living with kids. You know,
you learn so much about them when they're making a
smoothie in the kitchen or taking a shower in your
bathroom or whatever it is waiting up for them at curfew,

(01:03:07):
and he just didn't want to do it. He really
felt that that part of his life was over. That
they were fully formed human beings, is what he said.

Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
The other thing that you then learn during this, because
you're going to go to trial after being someone who
just was so constitutionally unable to fight back in your marriage,
in your life. You had not inherited the burden fiery temper.
This was not your nature. You fight back, and there's

(01:03:38):
going to be a trial. And so there's discovery, and
you then see what James's You had some sense, but
you then really see what his earnings have been and
the wealth that he's accumulated over the course of these decades.
And you're write, he had not hidden it. I had
chosen not to look. I had chosen not to know.

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
It was a real blame to me, like called discovery,
and it was really a discovery for me because I
had not kept track, I had not checked, I had
not read the text returns, and there it was staring
me in the face that he had accumulated all these
assets and I would have no part of them under
our prenup.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
And that he was going to enforce the prenup or
requesting that the prenup be enforced, in the sense that
he was going to insist on the fifty percent of
both properties that you had purchased.

Speaker 4 (01:04:32):
And and you.

Speaker 3 (01:04:34):
Know, and what's interesting there too, is that there was
no earthly reason for this financially, no reason whatsoever for
him to be asking for fifty percent of your residences.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
No, it would I always think about that. It would
have been very easy for him really to let me
keep those and give me financial security, but that was
not something that he could tolerate. So we went up
to the wire with me being deeply, deeply afraid that
I would lose both homes because I didn't have enough

(01:05:10):
money to buy them out, so I would have had
to sell them. And now as I talk about this,
I'm fully conscious of how privileged I am, and even
in those circumstances, in much better shape than most women
going through divorce. But at that time I couldn't see that.
I just felt such fear because I was trying to

(01:05:31):
keep my kids live stable. I was trying to make
sure that I could be able to support them, I
was trying to get through COVID, I was trying to
keep the structures of our life together in some way,
and it felt really just awful also to lose the
things that my father and my grandfather had given to me.

Speaker 3 (01:05:58):
Just an hour before the trial is set to be
James makes an offer to settle, but the terms are absolute.
If Belle questions anything, if she pushes back at all,
The deal disappears and the trial moves forward, where Bell
knows she could lose everything. The negotiation happens almost entirely
by email, outside the usual protections of the courtroom. Once again,

(01:06:23):
the dynamic of control is unmistakable. James can appear generous,
but only if he remains firmly in charge of the outcome.
As long as he's in control, then he can be magnanimous.
As he says, Bell understands the stakes immediately. Instead of
fighting every detail, she focuses on what matters most, keeping

(01:06:44):
the apartment, the house, and securing support for their children.
In that moment, survival means narrowing the fight to what
will allow her life and her children's lives to continue.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Like I was just threading the needle, trying to stay
very very calm to get to that point and conceding
on things that I knew would not be critical for me,
and not giving in on things that I knew were
essential for me. So I had to be just very
mature and very very focused, and we did. We literally

(01:07:21):
signed the agreement forty five minutes before we were supposed
to appear in front of the judge for this trial
that would not have gone well for me.

Speaker 4 (01:07:28):
Do you think that was James's endgame all along?

Speaker 2 (01:07:32):
It's hard to know. I don't know if something changed
for him, if someone convinced him to not do this,
But if it was a negotiating tactic, it worked because
it completely brought me to my knees and put me
in a position where I could have no hope of
any leverage or any hope of any settlement from him

(01:07:55):
in terms of his assets.

Speaker 3 (01:08:00):
In July of twenty twenty two, the divorce is finalized.
Of course, before this moment, Bell had already written the
essay that would change everything, her Modern Love Piece for
The New York Times. At the time she first submitted it,
the editors asked for something that felt impossible. She would
need to share the essay with James, to fact check

(01:08:20):
it with him before publication during the divorce. That request
felt unthinkable. The idea of asking James for permission, of
handing him any control over her writing meant the piece
had to be shelved. But then the divorce proceedings are over.
It's done, the legal battle is behind her, the marriage

(01:08:41):
officially finished, and for the first time, Bell feels she
can step forward on her own terms. She shows James
the essay not out of obligation, but because the story
is hers to tell.

Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
I show it to him because I could not let
it go. I just was like, I let it go
for two months. I thought I cannot show it to him.
He will really refuse and that Times won't publish it,
and then why would I take that risk? But I
just could not let it go. I really wanted to
see this in the paper, and so I sent it
to him. I said, I started writing again. I really

(01:09:18):
want to publish this. I was very careful with my words.
And he didn't answer for a while for about ten days,
and he first said that he was scared to read it,
and then he said that he read it. It was good,
hard to read. I'm supportive, and I took a screenshot
and send it to the Times editor and it was

(01:09:40):
published two weeks later.

Speaker 3 (01:09:42):
There's this beautiful moment where you imagine your maternal grandmother
or Babe with you during this time energetically or just
in your memory with you, and you imagine Babe saying
to you, be brave, claim it, say it, break this up.
And that's such a powerful, powerful thing because yes, you

(01:10:06):
do come from tremendous privilege, and you know, as a
society somehow that becomes like, well then everything is okay,
and life doesn't work that way at all, and the
breaking the cycle a combination of things of maternal absence,
of women contending with infidelity again and again and again,

(01:10:29):
you know, for generations, and feeling almost like it's just
part of their cross to bear, or the way it
is to be with a man you love. And this
was on you, It was thrust upon you, but it
was on you that you were going to be the
one to be brave and claim it and say it
and break the cycle.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
It was strange to me that she was so present
for me, my grandmother during starting in the first days
after James left, really like she was speaking to me
as I slept in somewhat and I wrestled even in
the first couple of months about I thought I had
changed my family trajectory by marrying someone so steady and calm,

(01:11:12):
compared to my mother and grandmother, who married very public figures,
very dynamic, charming people who were unfaithful in a serial way.
And they had been taught and had taught for their
daughters that we are meant to stay quiet about it,
to be graceful, to keep private things private, but also

(01:11:34):
really to protect the man in the story, to protect
his belief in his own importance, to make sure their
reputations weren't tarnished. And I grew up with that in
my bones, you know, I grew up with that being
how you interacted with men like that. And so here
I was having repeated this family legacy in a spectacular way.

(01:11:55):
But somehow, as surprise to me and everyone around me,
I was not going to do that. And as I
said clear from the very beginning, I was not going
to do that, and then clear when I really could
not let go of publishing Modern Love and then eventually
to write this longer book, that I was going to
do this differently for myself because I think these things

(01:12:18):
live in you and keeping them secret really is corrosive,
but also to hopefully, and I can't promise it'll work,
but hopefully change that pattern for my kids.

Speaker 3 (01:12:35):
When Bell's memoir Strangers is published in January, something extraordinary happens.
The book doesn't simply arrive in the world, It explodes
into it almost overnight. It lands at number one on
the New York Times Bestseller list, a rare debut that
few books ever achieve For someone who has long thought

(01:12:57):
of herself as private, careful, confrontational, the moment feels both
surreal and deeply validating, because what the world is responding
to is the voice Bell fought so hard to claim.
After years of silence, control, and others shaping the narrative
of her life, she has finally written the story in

(01:13:19):
her own words, and now that voice, once tentative, once hidden,
is reaching readers everywhere, opening the question of what comes
next and who Belle might become in the year still ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
It feels like a strange combination of things because I
am being challenged to be a public person, to speak
at events, to have conversations like this, to really use
my voice and articulate myself and put myself on the
page in a very raw and open way. And so

(01:13:57):
now when I meet people, they know a lot about me,
and this is hard. I didn't event last night where
my face was just right read the entire time. So
it feels like this very strange position to have put
myself in by choice. But at the same time, as
uncomfortable as that is, it is this incredible thing for

(01:14:18):
me as a quiet person to have this connection with
humanity all over the world, but then up close too
in person. That feels incredible. And also I just felt
driven on a clear mission that this will help people.
And I don't mean in a self help way. I

(01:14:39):
mean in a way where I felt so alone and
so filled of a shame when this happened that I
longed for a text like this. I longed for company
in it, to feel less alone in it. I don't
think my book's going to save anybody, but I think
I longed for this connection, and that my hope is

(01:15:01):
that the book will make other women feel less alone
in this and other types of loss and things that
happen that you don't expect in life. So it has
felt like this tide of support, which also feels really wonderful.
And as far as ten years, I'm hoping in six
months or least that some of this will die down.

(01:15:21):
I feel very lucky for it. It's wonderful, but that
it will die down and that I can get back
to writing, because if ten years from now, I am
a writer and that's my life, in addition to hopefully
still being a lawyer. That to me is the most
like exciting thing. It's so hard, as you know, but
that that could be my life, and that my life

(01:15:42):
is expanding as I fifty six. Now, if I'm sixty
six and I'm writing, I just think that would be
the greatest thing.

Speaker 3 (01:15:56):
Here's Belle reading one last passage from her room remarkable
memoir Strangers.

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):
I don't know how long he stayed with the woman
with the alliterative name, or she is still in his life.
I don't know if he cheated throughout our marriage, or
if she was his first and only affair. I don't
know if he made the decision to leave suddenly after
being caught, or if he carefully planned his exit for years.
I don't know what role the pandemic played. I don't

(01:16:29):
know how much of it was about money. I don't
know how much of that was about me. I don't
know why he left. I don't think I ever will.
I still think maybe there will be a final act
in the play, an end to the story when I'm
given my answer. But the years go by without one.
There is only silence.

Speaker 3 (01:17:01):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zaccur is
the story editor and Dylan Fagan.

Speaker 4 (01:17:07):
Is the executive producer.

Speaker 3 (01:17:09):
If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
eight secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
find me on Instagram at Danny Rider. And if you'd
like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
check out my memoir Inheritance.

Speaker 1 (01:17:51):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.