Secrets of a Shoe Addict (38 page)

“Moving out?”

Tiffany nodded. “Maybe Marcia will take you in.”

“But—”

“Or not. I don’t know. But all I know is that I’m not going to take the brunt of your miserable temper anymore. If you’ve got a mistress, let
her
deal with it. And if you don’t, get one. I’m sure it won’t take long.”

“But the money—”

“Will be sorted out in court. It’s not my fault you were stupid enough to be taken by your girlfriend. You’ll still owe child support and alimony. And heaven knows your job pays well enough to cover it.”

“But you’re my wife!”

“You should have remembered that a
long
time ago,” Tiffany said heatedly; then, after waiting a moment for a response that didn’t come, she walked away.

And, actually, she felt good about it.

Because, in reflection, it wasn’t about what Charlie was doing or not doing . . . at least not entirely. The main problem with their marriage was how he made her feel. How
bad
he made her feel almost all the time. So she already knew that ending it was inevitable.

That he had given her such a maddening—and convenient—out was just a bonus. But she was going anyway.

And now she was gone.

Chapter
      
24
  

T
iffany pushed the grocery cart through Giant Food, talking on her new Bluetooth earpiece. She’d gotten it so she could multitask while working, but she’d found it was a miraculous little thing for driving, shopping, whatever, and now that she was single, it was even more of a bonus because she had a lot less to think about and worry about since Charlie wasn’t at the house anymore, hovering, ready to criticize her at any given moment.

Tiffany loved being wireless.

She also loved shopping for just herself and the kids. No more big old steaks. No more ten-pound bags of potatoes.

“So everything’s paid off?” she asked Loreen as she walked through the cereal aisle and opened a box of Cheerios for Andy, who was in the petri dish of a seat.

“Everything. Plus we have an extra hundred and fifty-eight in the
coffers for programs.” Loreen sighed. “All we need is another four hundred and fifty.”

“Bingo the Clown is six hundred bucks?” Tiffany cried, then hushed herself. “You can’t be serious.” She handed Andy some Cheerios to munch.

“No, it’s not for Bingo. I thought we decided to go with Merle the Spelling Wizard.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Tiffany stopped in front of the coffee. She loved the General Foods International Coffees, but they were getting so expensive. “Still, six hundred bucks . . .”

“That’s with a discount,” Loreen told her.

“Ouch.” Tiffany tossed a can of Café Français into her cart. She’d work a little longer and pay off the $4.75. “I hear he’s worth it, though.”

“Oh, totally. I saw him at an Urbana Elementary function once. I can still spell
acquiesce
, thank you very much.”

“How apt.” Andy threw a Cheerio and hit her hair.
“Stop it!”
she hissed at him.

“What?” Loreen asked.

“Let’s do it. If we keep the business going, there’s no reason we can’t pony up personal donations. You know, they’re probably even tax deductible.”

Tiffany stopped to get some unsalted almonds from the bulk section. “I like it. The Happy Housewives have been good to us,” she agreed.

Tiffany thought about it for a moment. Initially this was supposed to be just to pay off the PTA stuff, but they’d gone to a lot of trouble to come up with the name, form the business, put together a Web site, and piece together models, to say nothing of the ten employees
they now had. She hated the idea of just demolishing it all. “Let’s do it,” she said. “Get the best programs we can. No one needs to know how we paid for them.”

“Okay.” Loreen sounded a little giddy. “Does it say something bad about me that I don’t want to give it up?”

“If it does, it says the same thing about me,” Tiffany said, then lowered her voice. “Who would have thought professional phone sex—no, make that phone
acting
—could be so much fun?” Her phone started to beep. “Hey, my battery’s dying, I’ve got to run.”

“See you tomorrow night?”

“Absolutely. Bye.” Tiffany snapped her phone shut and cursed the stupid battery. Perhaps from the amount of use it had been getting, the charge seemed to be going quicker and quicker. Sometimes it felt like she got only fifteen minutes’ use out of it. It was a huge drag to be tethered to the electrical outlet by the dryer during her calls.

She stopped and dug a spare battery out of her purse and clipped it in. Now that she was a single parent, she had to be available to the school at all times, in case of emergency.

She turned the phone on again, then pushed the cart around the corner and almost ran smack into Deb Leventer.

This was one of the consequences of living in a development with only one grocery store within ten miles.

“Deb!”

“I thought I heard your voice,” Deb said, tipping her frosted head to the side. “And here you are.”

“Here I am,” Tiffany agreed, and Andy threw another Cheerio.

Deb would undoubtedly consider that bad breeding.

“I hear we have Merle the Spelling Wizard coming to give a
presentation,” Deb said, tipping her newly frosted head. “How on
earth
did you swing that?”

“Just good fortune, I suppose.” Tiffany wheeled her cart toward checkout four, where Mary—who Tiffany had long thought was the fastest cashier there—was working. “Will you be bringing Poppy?”

Deb shrugged. “I’m not sure. Frankly, Merle’s act is a little old at this point. I was hoping we might get the Pluto Group to come talk about the solar system.”

“Why don’t you mention that at the next PTA meeting?” Tiffany suggested. “We’ll see what we can do.”

Deb raised an overly dark eyebrow. “I’ll just bet you will.”

A large, very hairy man rounded the corner holding a family-size bag of chips. “I’ve been carrying this all over the place, looking for you.” He dropped the bag into the cart. Then he looked at Tiffany. “Oh, hey. Did I interrupt something?”

“No, we were just discussing PTA business,” Deb said. “This is Tiffany Dreyer,” she added, with a distinct
the one I told you about
tone. “She’s in charge of the programs.”

“Mick.” He held out a hairy hand. “Like Mick Jagger.”

Tiffany’s breath caught in her throat. Did every guy named Mick say that? In that same particular way? Or was this, in fact, her regular caller?

The one who was so proud of using his own name.

Her eye fell on a bag full of zucchini in their basket.

Tiffany knew her face was turning pink, and she was barely able to hide the laughter that threatened.

Deb Leventer, high and mighty, was married to a regular Happy Housewives patron!

“Where’s Poppy?” Deb asked her husband.

“I thought she was with you.”

“No, she was with
you
.
Find her!
”

“That little sneak,” Mick said. “She’s probably in the cookie aisle.” Without another glance back, he went off, looking at the signs at the end of the aisles.

Little sneak
, huh?

Mick was
Mick
all right.

This was incredible.

What a stroke of luck.

“Excuse me,” Deb said. “But I have lots to do.”

“Well, it was good to see you, Deb,” Tiffany said, meaning it more than she ever could have before. “And I just loved meeting your husband.”

Deb just looked impatient. With a toss of her new hair she said, “Ta ta,” and started to wheel her organic-food-filled cart away, but the wheels caught on the wheels of Tiffany’s cart, and tipped it over. Tiffany grabbed Andy from the seat just in time, but food, soda cans, and the contents of Tiffany’s purse spilled across the floor.

“Oh, no!” Looking genuinely embarrassed, Deb bent down to try to pick the items up, along with Tiffany. “I didn’t mean to do that,” she said a bit defensively.

“I know.” Tiffany shifted Andy onto one hip, then grabbed her prescription bottles with the other hand and plopped them back into her purse.

The confusion was multiplied when the bag boy showed up and started putting the food into Deb’s cart instead of Tiffany’s, which got a rise out of Deb.

Finally, with each cart sorted out and everything but a few dimes
and pennies Tiffany didn’t feel like chasing down in place, Tiffany went through the checkout line and took her bags, and her boy, out to the car.

She had a new bounce in her step and she knew it.

“Mommy happy?” Andy asked.

“Yes, Mommy is very happy. Are you happy?”

He nodded. “I happy.”

“If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands,” she said in a singsong voice, and Andy picked up the tune.

She joined in, but all she could think about was getting home and finding some privacy so she could call and tell Loreen what had just happened.

The ringing phone was driving Deb crazy. She’d left the grocery store, dropped Mick off at the mechanic’s to pick up his car, then gone on to the post office and Target, and everywhere she went, she heard that obnoxious song.

“Mom, what’s that song?”

“I don’t know,” Deb said as they pushed a cart through the girls’ department. “But you hear it, too?”

“It’s coming from your purse.”

Deb bent down to put her ear closer to her purse. Sure enough, that’s where the noise was coming from. What the heck was that? She reached in and fished out her cell phone. At least, she
thought
it was her cell phone. But now that she looked at it, it didn’t have the crack in the screen from when she’d thrown it at Mick last week after he forgot her birthday.

And, of course, it didn’t have her ring.

She fished in her purse some more and produced the cracked phone. So where had the extra one come from?

Then she remembered. When Tiffany Dreyer had run into her cart, everything had spilled. She must have grabbed Tiffany’s phone, thinking it was her own.

“I want the Bratz pajamas,” Poppy said, grabbing things off the racks and throwing them into the cart. “And that jean skirt.”

“That’s too short,” Deb told her, still holding on to the phone. She looked down at it and noticed she’d pressed a button and it was dialing. She pushed
END
quickly.

“It is not!” As usual, Poppy went from zero to ten in less than one second. “All the other girls get to wear them. You’re so mean!”

“I don’t care,” Deb started, but then the phone rang again.

Tiffany’s phone. The caller ID said
UNKNOWN
. Ooh! A mystery caller!

The curiosity was too much for Deb to resist.

“Go try the skirt on,” she told Poppy. “Take that shirt, too,” she said, pointing to a pop princess shirt she objected to on every level but which she knew Poppy would want to try.

Sure enough, Poppy skipped off to the dressing room happy as can be.

With only a fraction of a second’s hesitation, Deb opened the phone. “Hello?”

“It’s Ed from the relay center,” a voice said. “I got a call from your phone. Are you logging in?”

“Can I have the skirt in black, too?” Poppy called from the dressing room.