“We’re divorced,” he said angrily. “I expected you’d get over it by now!”
She laughed. “In a few weeks?” she asked incredulously. “Check back with me in a few years.” She disconnected. She looked at Adele. “Sometimes this divorce seems like it exists on another plane. In another solar system. He just said he thought I’d be over it by now. We’ve been apart three months and divorced three weeks.” She laughed again. “I don’t even know him anymore.”
“He really said that?” Adele asked.
Justine rolled her eyes. “He’s taking this all so well...” she said facetiously.
“If you think about it, Scott has never been overly concerned about anyone but himself. I mean, he seemed a nice enough guy and I suppose he was a good dad, but he had one primary concern. Himself.”
“I think you’re right. But I did think he loved me,” Justine said. “Now I wonder if he’s had many girlfriends over the years. God knows he had the time. I’ve decided not to burden myself with that question.”
“You’re different now, Justine,” Adele said.
“So are you,” Justine tossed back with a smile.
“How am I different?”
“Well, you’ve taken the world by storm. You have new confidence. Do you even realize how beautiful you are? You’ve always been, but you never seemed to wear it so well. I think it’s the combination of the new job and your new weight loss. I noticed it first with the job. Even when we talk on the phone you’re stronger and more self-assured. I’m very proud of you.”
“It started with you,” she said. “Or, more accurately, Scott. I know it must have hit you hard, but it had a wallop effect on me. I remember thinking we can’t count on anything. Or anyone. If Scott could leave a brilliant, beautiful woman like you, there is no point in counting on anyone but ourselves. It motivated me. The first thing I did that very morning after leaving your house was find a weight loss program and began an earnest research of jobs.”
Jake brought the bottle of wine to the table. “You girls just visit while I clean up.”
“Leave it, Jake,” Adele said. “I’ll get it later.”
“I’m having a good time watching you two visit. I’m happy to pitch in. Then I’ll join you.”
When he left them, Justine said, “I should have been so much more supportive of you and all you did, Addie. I regret that now. I can’t remember the last time we had a nice dinner together. I gave all that energy to a man who didn’t deserve it.”
“It makes sense that the divorce, especially after so many years, would have a huge impact on you but I didn’t expect this change. I have never seen you this relaxed.”
“I am, at the moment. But it comes and goes. When I wake up in the morning without that stomach cramp, when I realize the feeling of abandonment and betrayal wasn’t my first feeling when I woke, I just pray it lasts all day. Or that I have a few mornings in a row like that. It’s getting better. I’m learning to enjoy a day without feeling lost. And afraid.”
“I never once thought of you as lost or afraid,” Adele said.
“Law school tends to train you in the appearance of confidence even when you don’t feel it. There is something I noticed, however. Once I realized that no matter what, I would never take Scott back, I started to get a new feeling. It was the sudden realization that I don’t ever have to care if Scott is happy again. I felt like I lost a ton of deadweight.”
“Did it just happen?” Addie asked.
“Kind of,” she said. “I did get a piece of good advice. A friend encouraged me to start focusing on what I have rather than what I lost. I’m finding that very helpful. I think in a year or so I’ll be very happy. When I’m done being so pissed I could bludgeon him.”
“I’ll be happy to wipe your fingerprints off the club,” Addie said, smiling.
Then they melted into laughter.
* * *
It was nearly ten by the time Justine and her daughters left, their sides aching from laughter. Adele, Jake and Justine had told stories from the days before the girls were born, back when their parents were friends and played cards every week. They told of neighbors like Mr. Swank who fed stray cats and when he passed away it was discovered he had over forty living in his house. And Mrs. Hall who spent twenty-five years as a crossing guard and no one knew she had never been hired by the school district. There was the librarian who had a years-long hot romance with a studly lifeguard, and the pair of brothers who ran a local farm who it turned out were never brothers at all. Jake had a hundred funny stories related to running the neighborhood market.
Adele promised to leave a key under the flowerpot in case her nieces wanted to drive down from San Jose to go to the beach, since school was out and both girls had part-time summer jobs. Olivia was babysitting and Amber was working at the food court in the local mall.
When they said goodbye, they all hugged as though they’d just wrapped up a holiday dinner.
“I’ll call you,” Justine promised Adele.
“And I’ll call you. We’ll have to do this again.”
Then they were gone, and Adele and Jake stood on the front porch, waving goodbye until the car was out of sight.
“I guess I’ll shove off,” Jake said. He draped an arm across her shoulders. “This was a nice surprise, Addie. Thanks.”
“I guess you should thank Justine. I need to see more of my sister. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had that much fun with her. I should find a way to put a few pounds on her without putting pounds on myself.”
“I’m going to tell you what I told Justine—you look great, but you were always beautiful. You just never seemed to know it.”
“I think I did it to myself,” she said. “I became a shut-in. I called myself a caregiver and I did help. I did take care of my mother the last few years. But I had a broken heart and I was hiding away.”
He gave her shoulders a light massage. “There was a lot you didn’t tell me.”
“Do you want to come in for a while?” she asked him.
“Sure, but you don’t have to tell me.”
“Thanks. Let’s see what comes naturally.”
“Can you handle it if I have a bowl of ice cream?”
“Sure. Of course.”
So they went inside. Jake had ice cream and Adele talked. She told him about some of the problems she had come to know in her new job, no names or descriptions, of course. She explained how she was starting to relate to them. She’d shut herself away for years because it was easier than facing the world and risking her poor heart again. Even though Jake knew all about her pregnancy and the stillborn baby, they had never talked beyond the surface of it.
“I guess I was traumatized,” Adele said. “Well, my dad’s injury was bad. He was in and out of the hospital so many times, having surgeries on his back, stuck in a wheelchair, and here I was, my belly growing bigger by the day. I hardly even cared that he was angry with me for getting pregnant and having no husband. I made a nursery for the baby, did you know that?”
“I’ve never been upstairs,” Jake said. “My mother was the one who told me the baby didn’t live.”
Jake had sent flowers at the time. Adele hadn’t had a proper funeral for her baby. She had her mother, father and sister and they buried him in a lone plot, not a family plot. He had died before he was even born. She didn’t talk about it, she didn’t tell Hadley, who she assumed couldn’t care less anyway, and she didn’t get any kind of help for her grief. Her parents, not in the best shape anyway, seemed relieved that she didn’t want to talk about it.
“This counselor I’ve been talking to, she wonders if maybe I need a little closure on that. On a lot of things.”
“Hmm,” he answered. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. My whole life has started to change, and I almost feel like a normal person. For the first time in years.”
“Addie, I don’t know all that much about counseling and stuff, but here’s what I think. I think you do whatever makes you feel like you’re growing into your best self. You seem happier these days because you’re active and you’re with people, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you’re needed at that new job.”
“I am feeling that way, slowly but surely. You’ve been just about my only friend the past few years.”
“Nah. Everyone in town knows you, Addie. Everyone waves, honks, yells hello. You know a lot of people. You just haven’t been too social.”
“Yeah, but I’m talking friend, Jake. I want you to know that I’m really grateful.”
Chapter Nine
“Is it too late?” Justine whispered into the phone.
“No,” Logan said. “I’m watching a movie. I’ll pause it. Everything okay?”
“Yes, better than okay, and I just wanted to tell you. I had a beautiful day with my girls and my sister, a day like I haven’t had in a million years. We went shopping with Addie. She’s lost a lot of weight and needed new clothes...”
“But you said you and your girls go shopping all the time,” he said. She could hear him sitting up in bed, getting a little less comfortable.
“Not like this,” she said. “We always need something, so we have to hurry, can’t waste any time, rush, rush, rush. Today we were all about getting good deals and nice clothes and laughed a lot. Then we went to Addie’s house, the house I grew up in, and I made dinner. We kicked back, took our time, laughed our heads off, and didn’t worry about when we got home. I’m at home tonight. Tomorrow night I’ll be in Jean’s guest room. But Monday I’m back on the prowl, checking out law practices. After spending the evening in Half Moon Bay, I remember why I liked it so much. I like the speed.”