She nodded. “I’ll page him.”
A few minutes later, while I was absentmindedly reading yet another headline about Jennifer Aniston—couldn’t they leave the poor woman alone?—Bill appeared, and I wondered, as always, if he colored his hair that particular shade of brassy blond. I had known Bill and his wife, Sharon, for at least ten years. We made a point of going out to dinner together at least once a summer. They were a good bit older than Greg and me, but down here, everyone was friends with people of all ages. It made things so much more interesting.
As Bill’s face came into view, it almost took my breath away. I mean, literally. My chest constricted, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Our couples’ dinners with Bill and Sharon were over. My marriage was over. Oh my God.Iwas over. For nine years I had been Greg’s wife; we had been part of a pair. We had been a family. What would become of me now? It hit me so hard sometimes, in unexpected moments like these. Everything was normal; everything was fine. Until it wasn’t. I bit my lip and looked away as tears came to my eyes, mortified at the quiet scene I was making. I had been on the verge of tears all day over Wagner’s leaving, and this put me over the edge.
Bill winked at me and, as if reading my mind, said, “Don’t think you can get out of dinner just because you had the goodsense to drop that deadweight.” He put his arm around me and squeezed me to him sideways. “I promise you, Gray, you’re better off.”
People said this kind of stuff all the time, and sometimes I could even say it to myself. But it didn’t take away the shame. I had failed. Our marriage hadn’t been perfect. Hell, even I knew it wasn’t all Greg’s fault. Yeah, he had cheated and he had been jealous of my success, but I had been too wrapped up in work and Wagner. I had been overly stressed. I had let my marriage fail. It was a hard pill to swallow, and the realization furthered that deep, dark, scary thought that I didn’t deserve to be with anyone else. I didn’t deserve to be happy.
I nodded, a little teary from Bill’s kindness. “Thanks, Bill. I’ll look forward to it.”
The older man squeezed my shoulder. “What can I do for you, Ms. Gray?”
I was so glad he didn’t say, “Ms. Howard.” Because I wasn’t. Or maybe I was, but only in name. In my heart, Howard didn’t belong to me anymore.
I shook my head. “I feel horrible.”
“Why?”
“I got Diana Harrington fired.”
He chuckled. “Oh, honey, no way. She was terrible at her job, just terrible. She was always getting orders mixed up and pictures cropped wrong and jamming the machine. You were my scapegoat.”
I was relieved, but also a little miffed that I’d come outhere to do the right thing only to find that Diana had the story all wrong. I would call and tell her that I tried to set things straight, but it wasn’t my fault she got fired after all. “You promise?”
“Oh yeah. She had a file as thick as my forearm of infractions and complaints. It’s a shame, though.” He looked down at the floor and shook his head.
“Why’s that?”
“Oh, we go way back with Diana. She cleaned our house for ten years before she went to work at the factory. Kept our kids. Hell, half raised them. Then when the factory shut down, I hired her to work for me. But she’s always been tough. She’ll figure it out.” He shrugged.
I nodded, feeling another tug of guilt. Whether it was my fault or not, here was a good, decent woman out of work. It put my ClickMarket woes in perspective. Whether I got to keep all my company or not, I wasn’t in danger of being hungry or out on the street. I thought of my parents, of how hard they had worked to make ends meet, of how many years they had lived paycheck to paycheck when my mom had been too depressed to go to work after my brother died, when the anxiety that, if she wasn’t the one taking care of Quinn and me, we would die too had kept her tethered to home and to us. I never wanted to live like that. I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t. I had thought, very naïvely, that money could protect me. It had taken me until now to realize that it couldn’t.
My phone buzzed in my hand, and I looked down to find a text from Andrew.Can’t wait for next Friday. I promise, I’mtaking you somewhere no hoity-toity blue-blooded woman in her right mind would go.
I smiled and looked back up at Bill. “Well, thanks. You’ve eased my mind. Glad I’m not responsible for putting some poor woman with a bunch of mouths to feed out of work.”
“No. And Diana doesn’t have any kids anyway, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
I nodded. “I guess I’ll see you around the club then.”
“See you around.”
I got back in my car and, determined not to let the memory of Greg ruin another day, penned a sassy reply to Andrew:Where? Your house?
Before I could even get out of the parking lot, he texted back:No way. All the ladies want to come to my house.
I laughed and raised my arm out of the top of my midlife-crisis convertible to feel the warm wind as it rushed by, the gems in my bangles sparkling as the sun hit them, my chest opening back up, my panic from only minutes earlier dissipating out the roof as my hair blew behind me. I had, like, five errands to run. Trey was right. I really did kind of need him down here. I thought about calling Diana, but when I thought about having to tell her that I wasn’t the reason she got fired I felt sick to my stomach. I could always call her tomorrow. Or have Trey call her.… No. This was something I had to take care of on my own.
diana: spilt milk and spoilt men
Life is all about patterns. I do the same thing over and over, which is why I keep getting to the same places. I don’t mean that in some figurative way. I mean, literally, the same places.
So I guess that’s the best explanation as to why I found myself steering the Impala back in the direction of that sorry excuse for a house I’d shared with Harry for eight years. Hell, I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Plus it was getting to be suppertime, and I was starting to worry that neither of us would have anything to eat. Maybe it’s because I never had any kids, but I sure treated Harry like one. Lord knows, he needed taking care of. But maybe he could get a job for a little bit to tide us over, and I wouldn’t have to worry quite so much about finding my next one. That sounded nice.
As I turned into the driveway, it was like all my insides were annoyed as the devil at me coming back to this place, but I was feeling kind of happy too about seeing Harry and him apologizing and giving me one of those big, warm hugs that you sink into on account of him being all squishy and soft like a water balloon. It would feel right nice after the day I’d had.
I opened the door and yelled, “Honey?”
