How could I tell which lawyer was the best from Google? Who would I have to call to verify?
My mother. My five-times-wed mother, Heidi Stutz Vance Smith Rodriguez Malone Quarles. She would know who to call.
My eyes stung and my cheeks burned. I couldn’t call my mother, because she was the one person in the world who could now tell me, “I told you so.”
I put my wineglass down on the counter and dug the heel of my hand into my forehead.
You just had to be smug all these years, didn’t you.
Oh, I might not have originally wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, but I’d never missed a chance to remind my mother that I did all the things she didn’t: clean, cook, fetch dry cleaning, organize bake sales for the PTA, host Christmas parties for Mitch’s employees. In a hundred little ways, I’d implied I could keep a husband—unlike her—because I was aperfectmother and wife. She’d warned me and warned me and warned me. She nagged me about going back to school, nagged me about having a separate checking account, nagged me about having a marketable skill.
And I did not listen.
Well, I didn’t listen well enough.
How ironic was it that I did actually have my own stash of money thanks to the fact my father, her first husband, had passed away three years ago? Mitch had wanted to use that inheritance to buy a mountain cabin or a condo in Florida, but, for once in my life, I had put my foot down and said the money was to be saved. When Mitch pressed me on the issue of what I could possibly be saving for, I’d told him I didn’t know, but I’d tell him when I figured it out.
And that was the end of that.
You’re going to have to call her eventually.
“Eventually” was the key word.
My eyes locked on the banana tree at the end of the counter. I felt like those bananas—bruised, blackened, unwanted. I couldn’t get used to not buying so many now that Dylan had gone off to college.
Dylan.
My heart lurched forward as if to protect him. I grabbed the cool counter to steady myself against the dizziness.
What the heck could I possibly tell my only child? That I was a failure as a mother? That I hadn’t managed to keep his parents together?
Whoa. Stop.
It took two to tango, and breaking up certainly wasn’tmyidea.
If Mitch wanted a divorce, thenhecould explain to his son why he was breaking up our family.
I reached for the bananas.
I did my best thinking while cooking, and it was time to make those almost rotten bananas into something delicious. If I could salvage the bananas, then maybe, just maybe, I could salvage myself.
Chapter 4
The good news was that I successfully lost myself in baking. The bad news was that I forgot to eat supper. A quick glance out the breakfast room windows told me night had fallen. I pressed a hand to my aching lower back and looked around me: two loaves of banana bread, one batch of brownies, a batch of sugar cookies, and a pound cake.
Good heavens, Vivian, are you trying to throw a one-woman bake sale?
I sat down at the café table in the breakfast room. My stomach growled, and I looked down at it in wonder. So I still got hungry? Interesting.
I couldn’t convince myself to get up and eat something—not even with a counter full of baked goods.
That was when I heard my phone ping. Apparently, lots of people had been trying to get in touch with me while I was having my baking moment of Zen. Two missed calls from Mitch, then a text:
Sorry. Had to stay an extra day. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Pain and anger and grief roiled around inside me. How dare he stay an extra day and prolong my suffering! Should I call him? If I did, what would I say?Hey, found some divorce papers. Something you want to tell me?
Just the idea sent me racing to the bathroom in fear I might throw up.
