“Jesus. What are you going to do?” She pushed her hair out of her face.
“I don’t know. Shit. I don’t know, I don’t know,” she kept repeating. I suggested we pay and get out of the store. We did just that and practically ran to the car.
“You gotta tell Ethan,” Derek said, his voice rising in a panic. “We know he’s here, and apparently still mad. What if he comes after you?” She shook her head and gripped the steering wheel tighter.
“He’s not- it’s fine. I’ll deal with it. This doesn’t have to be a big deal. Calm down.”
“If you don’t tell him I will.” We were suddenly jerked forward by Cleo slamming on the breaks. The seatbelt jutted into my chest; it burned the bare skin. She whipped around to look at him in the backseat.
“If you tell anyone I’ll tell everyone your secret,” she said in a voice that I had never heard from her before. Derek shrunk in his seat and closed his mouth. The rest of the trip home was pure, icy, silence.
Derek and I practically fled the car. Mark took one look at me and asked what was wrong.
“Nothing,” I told him and took my vodka and pear juice to the kitchen. I began mixing my drink when I heard Cleo ask Ethan to come inside.
“Can we have the kitchen?” Cleo came in and asked, her voice weak. I reached for Mark and pulled him back outside. Derek was sitting with Adrian and Chase silently.
Moments later we heard shouting. I sighed deeply and put my hands on my face and leaned on the table. Right as the shouting started it abruptly stopped. Derek and I looked at each other. He stood up.
“I’m going to go check on them.”
He returned a few minutes later, not any more relaxed.
“She told him,” he told me. Looking around at his friends he explained the situation.
“Is that even legal? They were married.”
“Technically you can sue for anything. Whether it will hold up in court is another thing,” Chase said. The police officer in him coming out. “I’ve seen lots of weird cases. It’s hard to say.”
After a long, hour they both came out. Cleo had been crying and Ethan immediately lit a cigarette. After he took a long drag, he looked over at us.
“My lawyer is on it. He thinks he’s just trying to wrack up her money in legal fees.”
Wiping her face, she sat down with us. Laughing she spoke.
“He said he’s so traumatized by finding out the truth that he has a hard time loving his wife and actual daughter.” Her laugh was cold and emotionless.
“He had a hard time loving his first wife too, I wasn’t the cause of that.”
“What exactly does he want?”
“A couple million dollars. He says because of me he can’t find a job. His career was ruined. Holly can’t work either because she’s so ashamed of the whole scandal.”
“What a crack of -” Cleo held up her hand to stop Mark.
“I know. I swear when things are really good one of our exes gets bored and decides to start trouble. God, maybe we should introduce them to each other. They can make each other miserable.”
Ethan came to sit with us and reached for his wife’s hand. He lifted it and kissed it.
“Thank you for telling me right away,” he told her. Cleo’s eyes flickered to mine and I looked away.
The party started to fizzle after that. They wanted to leave to see their lawyer, and Adrian and Chase wanted to get Rocky to bed. Derek had something he had to do, so he left as well. Once everyone had left and the dogs had come in for the night we went back into the nursery.
Mark decided to test the rocking chair and called for me to join him.
“It won’t break, it feels pretty sturdy.” I sat on his lap and he hugged me. “This whole week has been kind of crazy.” He nuzzled his face against my neck.
“It really has. I feel like our lives changed overnight. We’ve still got a long way to go, but it feels just a little more real.”
