“There’s nothing you can say for yourself. Maybe behavior like this is why I was planning to break up with you.”
“Ken, really—”
“No, you listen. You’ve always asked too much of me. Maybe I should’ve ended things before I started seeing Eloise—that’s on me—but our relationship had been over for a while. Falling in love with Eloise ... just happened. Maybe I want to have a wife to come home to, did you ever think of that?”
“You told me—”
“Just like you to pull one of your childish pranks. Eloise was in tears. She’d engaged a photographer to take pictures of us in the square after the ceremony. Did you know that?”
“No, I—”
“Sure it was a justice of the peace wedding, but she still had expectations, and it was very difficult to explain to her why I was covered in glitter. You ought to be ashamed. You—”
“Ken, so help me, if you say one more word without letting me answer—”
“No, I’m not done here! You—”
In a haze of anger, I walked up to Ken and performed a perfect leg sweep. He landed on the floor, the wind knocked out of him. The crash of the stools he knocked over as he went down silenced the pub.
“Now, you listen to me,” I said as he gasped for air. “I did not send the glitter bomb. Honestly, I wish I had, because listening to you just now has shown me exactly how much of our personal history you have rewritten. Also, there is no excuse—none—for not breaking up with me before starting a relationship with Eloise. You can rationalize your actions any way you want, but that’s the truth.”
“Stella—”
I put a foot on his chest. “Nope. I’m talking now. You told me you didn’t want to get married. That was fine with me. You told me you didn’t want to have children. Also fine with me. You told me you were looking for someone to be your partner in all aspects of life and then convinced me to leave law school. That is why I trained to be a private investigator. So we could build a business together. That’s alsowhy I took those courses on accounting, a subject I detest. So I’m sorry Eloise was in tears, but maybe that’s because you married a child. After taking up with me when I was little more than a child. Only having relationships with younger women won’t keep you from growing older, you sad little man.”
At first I thought the noise in the bar was the pounding in my ears, but no. It was applause.
Stunned, I took my foot off Ken’s chest. He scrambled to his feet, but his face, now a dangerous shade of red, twisted into an expression of pure anger.
A chill washed over me, and it was all I could do not to take a step back. As someone who’d done surveillance for a lot of divorce cases, I knew better than most the truth behind Margaret Atwood’s observation that men were afraid women would laugh at them while women were afraid men would kill them.
People in the pub, including women, had laughed at Ken. If looks could kill, his glare would’ve already ended me.
His lips upturned in a Grinchian grin, and I had to wonder if he’d thought of a punishment worse than death. “You’ll be apologizing to me for everything if you want the title to your car.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
The pounding in my ears was back. Apologize to him?
“No.”
“How about a thousand bucks, then. For handling your paperwork.”
“I don’t have a spare thousand, and you know it.”
“Fine. Good luck when they come to repossessmycar.”
Satisfied that he’d found a way to get the last word, he turned on his heel to leave.
He might’ve won this skirmish, but he wasn’t going to win the war.
“He can’t do that, can he?” Salcedo’s voice held the outrage of youth.
I sighed deeply. “Unfortunately, he can. Know how we have to pay our car registration every year before our birthday?”
“Yeah.”
