“He sees me as the mother of his children and the person who delivers a hot meal to the table at night and a clean shirt to his closet. It’s as if he’s lost sight of who I really am, who he fell in love with. I wantedto do something to show him this new side of me, this fun, athletic, fit, maybe even sexy woman he’s married to.”
“You are sexy, darling,” Sylvia said. “Any man who fails to see that is a fool, an absolute fool!”
Milly brushed away her comment. “Part of the reason I rented out my guest cottage for Bal Week was so that Lloyd couldn’t move into it! That would be the final nail in the coffin, and then once I started earning a little money, I used that to pay for my lessons. It gave me some power back. That’s why I agreed to let Mr. Rutherford stay, so I could keep on with tennis.”
At this Adele took two wineglasses out of her buffet and poured them each a generous serving. They deserved it.
“To secrets,” Adele said, holding up her glass.
“To secrets,” Milly and Sylvia repeated, clinking their glasses with hers.
Adele spent the next few days alone, gardening in her yard in the morning hours, or staying inside the house, doors locked the rest of the time. She was grateful for a light drizzle of rain because she had a good excuse to cancel her lessons. She’d be losing out on her earnings, but that would be over as soon as the news came out about her, anyway.
She’d been making good money during those past few weeks of coaching, double what she’d made at the Fun Zone, and for fewer hours. More importantly, she’d been enjoying it. With all this time back on the court she’d even felt the itch to play again, just for fun. She’d have to find someone who could keep up, of course, and if that coach Robbie hadn’t been such a jerk, she might have asked him, but that was a pipe dream now. There would be no coaching and no playing. Not unless she wanted to be watched, photographed, and shamed.
She didn’t know how she was going to return to a life of seclusion, nothingness. Shockingly, she had begun to enjoy Milly’s and Sylvia’s company; she’d even enjoyed the other women, Joan and Sadie specifically. She’d looked forward to their lessons together. She hated to admit it toherself, but she even enjoyed hearing little tidbits about their lives, the funny things their children would say and do, the ridiculous amount of effort they put into making dinner, cleaning house, and looking good for their husbands. She’d found it humorous and sometimes even charming.
She stretched her body, feeling stiff without the brisk walks or bike rides to and from the club and without her constant movement on the courts. Adele realized now that she had pegged Sylvia all wrong, assuming she didn’t have a care in the world with all that money. She’d heard the other women talk on the courts, of course—how could she not?—and she knew that something must be very wrong if they had to move into that dingy property next door. That place was only decent enough to hit a tennis ball against, but she just hadn’t believed that something so devastating could happen to Sylvia, who’d always seemed invincible. She could imagine Sylvia’s pain in trying to protect her daughter from her husband’s mistakes. Adele’s relationship with her own father had been so fraught, so complicated. If only he’d protected her instead of throwing her out to the wolves and putting so much pressure on her at such a young age.
And then her mind went to Milly, with two young children and an absent husband, and how she would be treated when he left her for good. People around here would distance themselves from her. No one liked a divorcée, especially if children were involved. It was like an illness that everyone was afraid of contracting. The fact that Milly was willing to send that reporter on his way and give back the money he’d paid for rent said something about her character. Maybe she’d underestimated both of these women.
Restless, she sat down on the armchair in her living room and flipped through the pages ofAmerican Lawn Tennis, but she’d already read it cover to cover. It always opened to the image of Althea Gibson. She stared at her picture. What would Althea do about Jonathan Rutherford if he continued to hang around? She saw Althea’s smile and that look of determination in her eye, despite all the times she’d had the door slammed in her face, all the times she’d been turned away from atournament and shunned or ridiculed because of the color of her skin. The thought of all Althea had fought for, and all that Adele had hidden from, made her cringe. She picked up her racket, laced up her shoes, and went out into the back alley to do the only thing that helped in situations like this, before remembering that the cottage next door was no longer vacant. She was forced, instead, to think.
