“Cora, morning,” he says, walking over to me. I know Paige was going to tell him the gist of what’s happened, so he’s probably still in a bit of shock. I’m not surprised to see him, exactly, but I guess I’m reading into the suitcase if I’m honest. Although it’s absolutely none of my business. He looks to Lucas’s house.
“Crazy what’s happening. Paige told me you saved the woman’s life.” He nods his head to the house again, meaning Nicola.
“I don’t know about that,” I say. “You must be—I can’t imagine the shock of hearing everything and about Avery, and—Are you doing okay?” I ask, and he smiles, the sun reflecting his dark eyes and making them sparkle, the first I’ve seen them do in at least a year.
“Despite everything, I’m thrilled. Yeah.”
“Good,” I say, not sure if I mean it. Of course I mean it, but there is something leaving my body in this very moment as I see him, not as the man I kissed and became so close to—that I could have run away with if things were different—but as a neighbor, my friend’s husband, someone so unavailable to me it aches. Is this what hopelessness feels like? I nod to his suitcase.
“Going somewhere?” I joke. He looks at his house and back to me. There is a kindness in his eyes. It’s not pity. It’s maybe something mixed with a recognition of what could have been and an apology for the something that was between us. I don’t know, but I do know what he’ll say next.
“No, staying this time, actually. Moving back in,” he says, and I nod and close my trunk. I want a satisfying slam, but it closes automatically with a soft click. A disappointment.
“That’s great,” I muster. “I’m happy for you.” We offer one another an awkward flash of our palms as a goodbye. He goes inside, and I get into the car to pick up my serial-cheater husband.
As I drive across town, I think the sadness will hit me—that the loss of something that was never really mine will take its crushing toll on what’s left of me, but somehow it doesn’t. After a few miles, I find my mood lifting. It’s not just the fantasy of taking a bat to Finn’s man cave, smashing his Xbox, eighty-inch TV, and gold memorabilia—but no, not a bat. I could use his clubs. The putter could take out his forty-year-aged Glenfiddich. The wedge, whatever the fuck that is, could do some nice damage to the felt on his hideous pool table. Ohh, I was feeling...
No, that’s not what is making me keep it together. I guess, if I’m honest with myself, it’s that I feel more hopeful knowing that Grant is going back to Paige than I would if he and I pursued something. No matter the hell she put him through, he waited. He knew it was the insurmountable pain talking, and he still loved her. And what kind of love must that be?
That is what gives me hope right now. It gives me pleasure to imagine Finn jumping out the door of my speeding car, but Grant’s character is what is keeping me from falling apart today.
When I pull up to the jail, I still can’t believe this is my life—that I’m someone who’s getting used to this otherworldly setting every day. Last week I hosted a Girl Scout craft fair, and now I’m...what, exactly? Very different, that’s what.
There is waiting and more paperwork before they release Finn. They act like they’re doing me a favor, reuniting us or something, when they open the door and he steps into the lobby. I want to cup my mouth with one hand and yell,You can keep him!I almost chuckle because it’s funny to me. Maybe funny because it’s so new. My desperate need to cling to him my entire adult life has not only dissolved but become hard and bitter. Exactly where I should have been long ago. It feels...invigorating.
He looks hollow and emasculated somehow. His eyes are watery, and his chin has grown shaggy in a couple days. He smells strange, and I don’t feel sorry for him. His shoulders twitch toward me like he wants to embrace me, but only momentarily. I’m sure he can see that I have no intention of doing anything but picking him up, and I’m only doing that to fill him in because he’ll need that story I fed him later on, when this case blows up and goes to trial.
We walk to the car in the cold, bright morning without speaking. We drive a few miles before he says anything.
“So are you going to tell me what the fuck’s going on?” he asks.
“I already told you when I visited, and you’re out, aren’t you?”
“You said Lucas did this. Are you serious? I feel like you’re so off in left fucking field I don’t even know what I’m supposed to think. All of a sudden they drop the charges against me?”
“He did do it. But we needed to make all that circumstantial stuff around you go away. So you weren’t lying, exactly. You were backing up the truth. Don’t worry. There is plenty of proof he did it.”
“So why are you doing this for me?” he says.
“Oh,” I say, and a laugh escapes my mouth before I can stop it. “It’s not for you. Not even a little. It’s just the truth,” I say, and I can see him frown and sigh and look out the passenger window.
“Wait. Where are we going?” he asks. And for a second I think again about him jumping out of a moving car or, better yet, me pushing him, and I smile. “What?” he asks again.
“I’m dropping you at Jerry Tucker’s. I already called. Well, I called his ex-wife, who said you two like to hang out at nightclubs together. Funny, I always thought Jerry was just a golf buddy. And I didn’t know people over thirty went to nightclubs still, but anyway. I packed a few bags for you, and you can stay there,” I say, calmly, matter-of-factly. “Oh, and I’ll drop your car off so you can take Mia to practice at three.”
“Or I can stay at my own goddamn house. Enough with the bullshit, Cora,” he says, and I wonder if he actually thinks that we live in some parallel universe where I will overlook all of this just because it turns out he’s not a murderer and just go back to business as usual.
I don’t have to say the wordprenup. I just reach into the back seat with one hand and hand him a manila folder with preliminary paperwork I had my lawyer draw up for the divorce. He doesn’t even open it. He sees our lawyer’s name on the envelope and tosses it into the back seat again.
“You always get it wrong, don’t you?” he says, as I pull onto Jerry’s block.
“Yep!” I agree, not buying into whatever bullshit argument he’s trying to pursue.
“You think I’m a...what? A murderer! And you put me in fucking jail because you’re pissed. That’s way more psycho than me having an affair.”
“Zzz,” I add.
“What?”
