Nearlyweds (13 page)

Taylor extended her forearm to spritz a sample of body splash on her wrist. A blast of vanilla-scented chemicals assaulted my nostrils.

I started sneezing and couldn’t stop. My eyes squeezed shut as I braced myself against the counter with one hand and tried to cover my mouth with the other.

“Ugh,” Taylor said loudly. “It’s so inconsiderate to go out in public if you’re sick. Stay home and keep your germs to yourself.” Then she looked up from her vial of vanilla long enough to meet my eyes. “Holy shit.”

“My sentiments exactly.” I crossed my arms, rocked back on my heels, and took a good, long look at the woman who’d been married to my husband before me.

Brenda Porter had the long, reddish hair, porcelain complexion, and regal composure of a titled English lady. Her face looked like one of the old oil portraits hanging in the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown. In her well-cut black trench coat and knotted silk scarf, she looked like the kind of woman who’d never made a fool of herself or raised her voice—not even when giving birth to her demon spawn. Mark told me she’d been standoffish and hated to try new things, but as I looked at her, I was consumed with envy. She’d been with the
man I loved, and look how much better she’d handled herself.
She’d
held on to him for fifteen years.
She’d
always kept her home warm and inviting, with no anarchist dogs.
She’d
convinced Mark to have babies (even if they had turned out to be demon spawn).

Basically, she was everything I wanted to be when I grew up, and I really had to fight the urge to cram the entire bar of peppermint soap down her throat.

“Well, speak of the devil.” Taylor turned to her mother with a smug little smirk. “Mom, this is Stella, Dad’s new—and soon-to-be ex-wife.”

“How do you do.” Brenda extended her right hand.

Taylor looked pointedly at my left hand. “I notice you’re still wearing the diamond.”

“Oh my God.” My voice was sharp. “Why are you so obsessed with this little piece of rock?”

“There’s nothing little about it.” Taylor fluffed her hair. Brenda didn’t encourage her daughter, but she didn’t make any move to intervene, either. “You could put someone’s eye out with that thing.”

“Don’t give me any ideas.”

Taylor lifted her chin. “See, Mom? I told you she was immature.”

“
I’m
immature?” I squeaked with outrage. “I’m not the one who ruined Thanksgiving!”

“You’re the one who burned the entire meal, then let the
dog eat it all, then started screaming and left your husband. So actually, I’d say you
are
the one who ruined Thanksgiving. Plus, you robbed me of my rightful convertible.”

“Here.” I grabbed my engagement ring and yanked it off. “Here! If a car means that much to you, then here! Take the damn thing and go cash it in!”

I slapped the diamond into her hand, hoping the ring’s prongs might nick a vein or two.

Taylor tried to shove it into her coat pocket, but Brenda stopped her. “Taylor, you can’t take this.”

“Oh yes, she can,” I said.

“She can’t.” Brenda handed the ring back to me. “Taylor, you go on ahead. I’ll meet you at Crate and Barrel.”

Taylor shot me a venomous death glare, then stomped off toward the door. My cheeks burned with shame as I visualized her and Brenda sitting around the breakfast table with Marissa tomorrow, cackling about my public meltdown.

“Stella.” Brenda patted my arm and gazed into my eyes with what almost looked like compassion. “Like it or not, we have something in common: we both married Mark. I lived with him for fifteen years.”

“So what are you saying?” I crossed my arms defensively. “You know him better than I do?”

“No.” But she was obviously lying. “I’m merely saying I have some insight into how he handles relationship problems.”

“And?”

“And you might want to hold on to that ring. The first year of marriage is hard, particularly when you’re married to Mark, but he adores you, Stella.”

I shook my head. “But Taylor just said…”

Brenda laughed softly. “Champagne and ‘good riddance’? Taylor has a flair for the dramatic, but she’s not always a stickler for factual accuracy. Here.” She pressed the ring into my palm. “Mark and I have kept in touch since the divorce, and he’s dated a lot of women. But you’re special to him. He loves you very much.”

I paused. “Shouldn’t
he
be telling me this?”

“Confrontation has never been his forte. I know I shouldn’t meddle, and I’m sure you don’t appreciate it.” She adjusted the strap of her purse. “Children have a way of complicating things between a husband and wife.”

No kidding.
I nodded and opened my mouth, but nothing came out. What was the appropriate way to thank your husband’s ex-wife for marriage advice?

Before I could string a sentence together, Brenda pivoted on the heel of her immaculate black boot and followed Taylor into the crowd.

Still reeling with shock, I squeezed my engagement ring, then slipped it back on my finger. He adored me. He missed me.

He refused to have children with me.

I wandered up and down the aisles, breathing in the heady blend of spice and florals, and picked out a bottle of lavender bath oil. Just in case.

As the clerk rang up my purchase and handed me my receipt, my cell phone started to ring. Mark.

S
o did you call Mark back yet?” I asked Stella, who was fondling her cell phone while pretending to be engrossed in a cable broadcast of
White Christmas.

“No.” Stella stared at the phone as if she could force it to ring again via psychic powers. “I want to, but—”

“But what?” I prompted.

“But nothing’s really changed between us.” She snuggled back into the throw I’d knitted from soft Irish wool and tucked her feet up underneath her. Stella had been camped out in my apartment for the last two days, cocooned in flannel pants, Mark’s old sweater, and multiple blankets, leaving the sofa only for bathroom breaks. And she still looked like Jennifer Connelly, damn her.

“Well, you need to get up and find something to do,” I ad
vised. “This whole sitting-around-doing-nothing routine? Erin says it’s a one-way ticket to Prozac Junction.”

“I went shopping with you guys,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, on Friday. And ever since we got back from the mall, you’ve been sprawled out on that couch like a beached whale.”

Stella scowled. “Are you calling me fat?”

“Only if a size four is fat.”

“Okay, then.” She helped herself to another double chocolate chip cookie and stroked Maisy the cat, who had curled up next to her. “I miss Cash. He’s the worst dog ever, but he’s sort of growing on me. I hope Erin’s taking good care of him.”

“Why don’t you go visit him? Man problems plus a vegetable state of inactivity equals serious depression,” I warned again. “Take it from someone who’s been there.”

She dragged her glassy gaze away from Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney for a second. “Is that why you’ve been so busy this weekend?”

“I just like a clean home.”

“Yeah, well, there’s clean and then there’s totally obsessive. You, my friend, have crossed the line.”

“What? I’ve just been trying to get the place presentable for company.”

“You reorganized the silverware drawer.” She started on another cookie. “You took a toothbrush to the grout on the bathroom floor.”

“You weren’t supposed to see that.”

“Have a seat.” Stella patted the couch cushion next to hers. “Join me on my journey to Prozac Junction.”

I shook my head. “I have to get up early tomorrow to open the store. Inventory. And before I go to bed I should wash the towels, scrub the sinks, put together the grocery list—”

“Casey.” She covered her ears. “Stop. You’re making my head spin. Sit your butt down and travel to a magic, black-and-white wonderland of Christmas carols and cute guys in uniform.”

I walked over to the sofa and tried to sit down, but as soon as the backs of my legs touched the cushion, I bounced right up again. “I can’t. I can’t sit still. I have to stay busy.”

Stella gave me a look. “This is about Nick, right? Has he called yet?”

“No.”

“Have you packed up all his stuff?”

I glanced down the hall toward the hamper, where Nick’s dirty socks and boxers still mingled with my whites. “No.”

She clapped her hands. “Then let’s go, girl, he’ll be home any minute, right?”

“It’s not that easy. Nick and I…it’s complicated. I know that sounds like a cop-out, but I’m not ready to give up on him yet. This isn’t like you and Mark; it’s not an all-or-nothing issue.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And we’re never going to solve our problems if I change the locks and make him sleep out in the snow.”

“Didn’t you say his parents live like five miles away?”

“That’s not the point.” I bristled. “He’s my husband—well, sort of, anyway—and I can handle him. People change, you know. It happens.”

“Uh-huh.”

The phone rang, saving me from the rest of this conversation. “See? That’s probably him right now!” I snatched up the cordless phone on the kitchen counter. “Hello?”

“Casey?”

It took me a full five seconds to recognize the voice. “Tanya?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Listen, I know we haven’t really talked for awhile—”

“What happened to your voice?” I asked, hurrying into the bedroom and closing the door behind me. “You sound hoarse.”

“I’ve had a long day. Brett left me.”

“Again?” My sister’s two-year relationship with her live-in boyfriend could best be summed up in two words: train wreck.

“Yeah. We had a huge fight last night. He’d been drinking a little too much and I’d been working overtime a little too long, and you know how that goes. I yelled at him for not being supportive of me and the boys, and he said I’m never happy and he can do better than me.”

I sank down onto the bed. “Tanya. You don’t have to take this crap from him.”

“But I love him.” Her voice cracked. “And I keep thinking, if I can’t make it work with him, then who can I make it work with?”

Someone who’s not a selfish, lying jackass?
“Stop beating yourself up. You can do so much better.”

“No, I can’t.” Her voice went flat as she pulled herself together. “I can’t. And I know you told me not to come crying to you with the same old problems—”

“It’s okay,” I soothed. “I just wish you wouldn’t let him do this to you over and over again. Brett’s a lost cause. He’s never going to change.”

I remembered what I’d just told Stella:
“People change. It happens.”
As much as I disparaged my sister for clinging to a man who took advantage of her blind devotion, wasn’t I guilty of the exact same thing?

Tanya sounded empty and defeated. “I just keep thinking, maybe if I’d tried a little harder, if I hadn’t nagged him so much…”

“It’s not you,” I said crisply. “It’s him. Forget about him and move on. You’ll be better off.”

“That’s easy for you to say—you’ve got Nick.”

I didn’t reply.

“I mean, look at my life and then look at yours.” Her laugh was low and wistful. “No wonder you didn’t want to spend Thanksgiving with us.”

My cheeks burned with shame. “Tanya—”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that. I just…I’m glad you’re
happy. And I understand. If I married a guy like Nick and had a marriage like yours, I wouldn’t want to deal with our family, either.”

Ten years had gone by since high school, and Tanya and I were still exactly the same: the Nestor girls who were never quite good enough, who never fit in. While my sister went on and on about how lucky I was to have snared the Golden Boy, I finally admitted that the qualities that most embarrassed me about her were the ones I still struggled with myself. I’d distanced myself not because she hadn’t changed since childhood but because I was afraid
I
hadn’t.

I heard call waiting click on Tanya’s end of the connection.

“Oh, gotta go,” my sister said. “That might be Brett.”

“So what if it is?” I asked, incensed. “I thought we just decided—”

“Call you later, Case. Love you!” She left me with a dial tone.

I sat on the bed for a few minutes, replaying the conversation I’d just had. Tanya and I might be more similar than I wanted to admit, but that didn’t mean we had to continue down the same path.

“Hey, Stella,” I yelled, opening the bedroom door. “Get in here and help me pack up Nick’s stuff!”

She peeked in, eyes wide. “What happened to ‘He’s my husband and I can handle him’?”

I reached into the closet and pulled out a stack of Nick’s jeans and folded shirts. “This
is
how I’m handling him. I’m
mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. Grab that duffel bag and throw his shoes in.”

Stella started to laugh when she saw the inside of our closet. “You color code your wardrobe?”

“Less jawing. More packing.”

“Remind me never to work for you.”

“Come on,” I teased, “you’re such a natural with dogs.”

She nibbled her lower lip. “Speaking of work, I’m going to have to find a job now. Do you think there are any families out here who need nannies?”

“Only the summer people,” I said. “But you could apply at some of the preschools, right?”

“Yeah. Back to the minimum-wage world.” Stella looked less than enthusiastic about that prospect. “My mom’s going to be
pissed.
When I tell her I left Mark…” She shuddered. “Pray for me.”

“She wants you to give the marriage a try?”

“She wants me to stay married long enough to void the prenup,” Stella corrected. “Ten years.”

I had to laugh. “Oh please. No one is that mercenary with their own child.”

“That’s what you think.”

We both froze at the distinctive sound of snow tires crunching over the icy parking lot in front of the building. I peeked out the bedroom windows to see a tall, shadowed figure emerge from the passenger side of an SUV.

“Is it him?” Stella whispered, though obviously Nick couldn’t hear us from outside.

I nodded.

“Did you put the chain lock on the door?”

“I think so. Maybe.”

We raced down the hall to the front door. My heart pounded in time with the muffled thunks of footfalls on the stair treads.

Keys jangled, the doorknob turned, and Stella and I leapt back from the threshold as the door jerked open a few inches, impeded by the small brass chain I’d slid into place.

“What the…” Nick peered through the crack with one eye. “Casey?”

I tried to sound casual. “Yes?”

“Open the door; it’s cold out here!”

I stood motionless, torn between wanting to stand my ground and wanting to fling open the door.

“Casey?” Nick mashed his face into the crack of the door frame. “Who else is in there?”

“Stella Porter,” I said crisply. “She’s staying here for a few days.”

He snorted. “Since when are you friends with Stella Porter? I thought you said she was a—”

“Never mind her,” I said quickly. “I want to talk about us. I take it you got my voice mail?”

He paused. “The one about not being married anymore?”

“Yes, Nick, that one.”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“You got that message and you didn’t bother calling me back?”

“Yes, but—”

“You were gone for four days! Including Thanksgiving! And you didn’t call me once!”

“I was trying to give you some time to cool off!”

“I am cooled off!”
I shrieked.

“It’s not like I was doing lines of coke at a strip club, Case, it was just a football game.”

“For four days!” I repeated. “For all I knew, you were lying dead in a ditch.”

He stamped his feet on the welcome mat. “Okay. I see your point. You’re right. I should have called.”

I practically dropped dead of shock. “Did you just say I’m
right?
”

“Yeah.” His eye reappeared at the door. “I was a tool, and I’m sorry. Now will you please open the door?”

I considered it for about half a second. “No.”

“Casey.” His teeth started chattering. “Seriously. I’m dying out here.”

“That’s not really my problem, is it?”

“Look, it’s been a long couple days, and we’re both upset,” he said. “But I love you and we’ll work it out. Let’s sleep on it and talk everything over tomorrow.”

That’s probably exactly what Brett had said to my sister.
“No. I’m through talking to you. I’m sick of being the one who always has to compromise.”

He paused. “
You
always have to compromise?”

“That’s right! I have to do everything myself because when I wait for you to do it—”

“Are you kidding me? You have to do everything yourself because you can’t stand it if everything doesn’t happen on your secret timetable!”

I started pushing the door shut, nearly severing his nose.

“Wait! No! I know I haven’t been the man of your dreams lately.” Nick pushed back against the door. “But I’ll make it up to you. I’ve been thinking a lot since you left me that message. I need to make some changes.”

I wrapped my arms around my torso. “Yeah, you do.”

“And I will, honey. I swear. We’ll start over.”

“You have to make more of an effort,” I warned him.

“I will.”

“You have to take the initiative.”

“Done.”

I nibbled my lower lip. “You have to go down to the courthouse with me—tomorrow—and get married again.”

Silence.

“Nick?”

I looked at Stella. Stella looked at me.

“Nick?” I raised my voice.

“Can’t we please talk about this tomorrow when we’re both feeling a little more—”

“Cop-out,” Stella intoned.

“Excuse me,” Nick said. “This is between me and Casey.”

“Well, are you going to marry her or not?” Stella had become the curfew-obsessed, overprotective father I’d never had.