And One Last Thing ...
by Molly Harper.
"If Singletree"s only florist didn"t deliver her posies half-drunk, I might still be married to that floor-licking, sc.u.m-sucking, receptionist-nailing hack-accountant, Mike Terwilliger."
Lacey Terwilliger"s shock and humiliation over her husband"s philandering prompt her to add some bonus material to Mike"s company newsletter: stunning Technicolor descriptions of the special brand of "administrative support" his receptionist gives him. The detailed ma.s.s e-mail to Mike"s family, friends, and clients blows up in her face, and before one can say "instant urban legend," Lacey has become the pariah of her small Kentucky town, a media punch line, and the defendant in Mike"s defamation lawsuit.
Her seemingly perfect life up in flames, Lacey retreats to her family"s lakeside cabin, only to encounter an aggravating neighbor named Monroe. A hunky crime novelist with a low tolerance for drama, Monroe is not thrilled about a newly divorced woman moving in next door. But with time, beer, and a screen door to the nose, a cautious friendship develops into something infinitely more satisfying.
Lacey has to make a decision about her long-term living arrangements, though. Should she take a job writing caustic divorce newsletters for paying clients, or move on with her own life, pursuing more literary aspirations? Can she find happiness with a man who tells her what he thinks and not what she wants to hear? And will she ever be able to resist saying one ... last ... thing?
1 * The b.u.mbleBee and the Stinger.
Singletree"s only florist didn"t deliver her posies half-drunk, I might still be married to that floor-licking, sc.u.m-sucking, receptionist-nailing hack-accountant, Mike Terwilllger.
That"s not to say I blame Cherry Glick for bursting my little housewife bubble with her badly timed, incorrectly addressed floral offering. h.e.l.l, I don"t even blame the aforementioned receptionist for my husband"s "misstep." I put the blame where it"s due - on my floor-licking, sc.u.m-sucking husband.
To put this all in perspective, I"ll take you back to that fateful Wednesday morning, when Cherry, stinking of plant food and blackberry schnapps, ambled up to my front steps with the biggest, gaudiest arrangement of peachy-orangish roses I had ever seen.
The card read, "To my b.u.mbleBee, Happy Anniversary, With all my love, The Stinger."
"The Stinger?" I read aloud, checking the name on the envelope. Sure enough, the card was addressed to "b.u.mbleBee." Mike had never called me that. In fact, in eight years together, Mike had never given me a nickname. And it was nowhere near our anniversary. We got married on August 1, not in the second week of June.
"Cherry, honey, I think you got this delivery wrong!" I called, chasing after her with the floral albatross.
Cherry lived perpetually south of buzzed, just drunk enough to avoid thinking about the fact that she"d been married to a very handsome, as.e.xual man for twenty years, but not too drunk to drive her delivery van. She looked over her delivery list and muttered to herself.
"Nope, it"s right," she slurred. "Right here, it"s says "Rose Romance Special Deluxe" from Mike Terwilliger to... oh. This is supposed to go somewhere else. This is supposed to go here."
She took an envelope out of her back pocket and handed it to me. She swayed slightly against her van and shook her head. "Wait, no, both of them are supposed to go...
"W - where are they supposed to go, Cherry?" I stuttered.
"Um..." Cherry looked away from me, her eyes not quite able to focus anyway.
"Oh, for Pete"s sake," I snapped and tore the billing envelope open. Mike was listed as the ordering party. Next to "Rose Romance Special Deluxe" Cherry"s a.s.sistant had scribbled "Terwilliger - Office."
My stomach clenched, ice cold. Somewhere, in a rationalizing corner of my brain, I clung to the hope that maybe Mike was planning to bring those roses home to me this afternoon as a surprise... and that he was planning on giving me the nickname "b.u.mbleBee."
Oh, G.o.d. My husband was having an affair. With a woman who called him "The Stinger." And that"s when it hit me. b.u.mbleBee.
Mike"s receptionist was named Beebee Baumgardner.
"Sorry, Lacey, I"m so sorry," Cherry murmured, climbing into the van.
She knew. Soused, silly Cherry Glick had figured out my husband was having an affair before I had. Oblivious to the fact that my front door was standing open, I tugged my keys out of my pocket and ran for my Volvo. I tossed the roses into the pa.s.senger seat and, for some reason, took the time to secure the vase with the seat belt.
The next thing I remember was sitting in my car outside Mike"s new offices on Spring Street, watching through the picture window as Beebee answered phones. She"d worked for Mike for a little over a year, replacing old Mrs. Keach after the secretarial dinosaur literally died at her desk. I had a healthy respect for the sunny, girl-next-door exterior G.o.d had given me, but Beebee scared me with her stunning good looks, the kind of fine features that made me feel like my face was drawn with a crayon. Her hair was so dark it seemed to absorb the light around it. It fell in soft, careless waves around her face, the kind I was always aiming for but ended up with crazy blond Shirley Temple curls instead. But I couldn"t even complain that Mike only hired her for her face... or her perfect heart-shaped a.s.s... or the b.o.o.bs she was still financing. She was very professional, had excellent typing and filing skills, was great at handling the clients. She answered the phone with a smile on her face. And she even made better coffee than I could manage.
It was odd that Mike and Beebee seemed to be alone in the office. Mike had two accountants working under him, the a.s.sociates in "Terwilliger and a.s.sociates." He complained that all they did was hang around the lobby, ogle Beebee, and plow through pastries. Still, it was possible they were out on client visits.
I sat there in an idling Volvo, feeling very stupid. Nothing was going on. I"d been sitting there for thirty minutes and Mike hadn"t even come out of his office. I was about five seconds from hauling the roses inside, explaining Cherry"s funny, schnapps-fueled mistake and having a good laugh with Mike when I saw him emerge from his office door. He grinned at Beebee and she smiled back with a familiarity that sent a little twinge through my chest. I tamped it down, ashamed of my disloyalty. I told myself it was nice that Mike had found someone so friendly to fill the receptionist spot. I was glad he enjoyed being around someone he had to share office s.p.a.ce with for eight hours a day.
And lots of people give their secretaries affectionate shoulder squeezes, I told myself, watching after he crossed the room to rub his hands under her blouse, across her bare collarbone. It was borderline inappropriate, but not an indicator of an affair. And lots of people drag their secretaries out of their chairs like a character in a tacky romance novel. Lots of people kiss their secretaries... with tongue.
Especially when they"re having an affair with them.
Sweet merciful c.r.a.p, they were going at it in front of a huge window, apparently not caring who could pa.s.s by and see. h.e.l.l, his wife was sitting less than twelve feet away from them and they hadn"t noticed me.
A whimper stuck in my throat, gagging me. How long had they been doing this? Who else had seen them? Who else knew? How many people would be chewing this over with their dinner tonight? My hands didn"t seem to work right. They wouldn"t close around the door handle so I could march into the office and toss the vase at their heads. I took a few deep steadying breaths, but instead of opening the door, my hands put the car in gear and steered toward home. I don"t remember much about the drive, except that at one point I saw a vinyl sign advertising Terwilliger and a.s.sociates with Mike"s stupid smiling face on it. And I ran it down.
When I got home, I braked hard to avoid running the car into the garage door. The roses bounced onto the floorboard, vase and all, spilling stems and plant water all over. I rushed into the house, the door still standing open, and grabbed some paper towels. Mike was crazy about keeping the cars clean. A dirty car"s resale value fell by forty-five percent.
I tossed the empty vase and the flowers into the garbage can. Kneeling, the hot concrete sc.r.a.ping my knees, I wrapped my hand in toweling and started blotting. The sickly sweet smell of wilting flowers and plant preservative rolled off the upholstery and hit me like a blow. I ran into the gra.s.s, doubled over, and threw up until tears and mucus hung in long threads from my face. I fell on my knees and waited for the second wave.
"Lacey, you all right, honey?" Our neighbor, Mrs. Revel!, yelled from her yard. She gave me a knowing wink. "Ginger tea and saltines help with that."
Mrs. Revell thought I was pregnant. Great. By the time Mrs. Revell stopped making calls, not only would I be poor Lacey Terwilhiger whose husband had the bad taste to have an affair with his secretary, I would be poor Lacey Terwilliger, whose husband had the bad taste to have an affair with his secretary after he knocked up his unsuspecting moron wife.
2 * Worst Case Scenario.
Every women"s magazine I"ve ever read says there are five signs a man is cheating on you. All married women, h.e.l.l, all women in a committed relationship, know them by heart.
Repeat them, if you will, ladies. Diminished s.e.xual appet.i.te. Finding reasons to work late. Cutting you off from his communications - leaving the room when his cell phone rings or changing an e-mail pa.s.sword without explanation. Unexplained charges on the credit cards. Finding fault with you because it makes him feel justified in cheating.
In my defense, the age-old standard didn"t exactly help me. I"d always felt so safe, so stupidly smug in the security of my marriage, I never even thought of them. Again, because I"m a moron. Mike"s s.e.xual appet.i.te had never been exactly ravenous. He regularly worked ten-hour days, twelve to fourteen hours during the January to April tax season. So many of his phone calls dealt with clients" financial issues that it was normal for him to take business calls in another room. I never saw our credit card statements because Mike handled all of our bills. And he hadn"t found more fault in me than he had when we first got married, which wasn"t really a compliment to either of us.
As I was vomiting on the lawn, this list of cheating signs bounced through my head like a Buddhist chant. With more purpose than I could fathom, I cleaned up the car mess and ran into the home office. Mike and I had separate e-mail accounts, again for business reasons. When I logged on to the quickmail.com server, believe it or not, he was dumb enough to have left in the user box and checked "Remember this address."
Mike"s e-mail pa.s.sword had always been a combination of my phone number from college and my middle name: 64l0agnes. But it was not working. I tried it three times and made sure the capslock was off.
The son of a b.i.t.c.h had changed his pa.s.sword. Honestly, where was the trust? I tried combinations of his birthday, his middle name, my birthday, the street we lived on, our wedding anniversary. Nothing. Finally I tried "b.u.mblebee."
"Please tell me this isn"t it," I muttered.
"Welcome!" the monitor yelled, showing me a list of Mike"s new messages. I thunked my head on the desk and sobbed, "d.a.m.n it!"
Mike and Beebee must have had complete confidence that I was far too stupid to figure out Mike"s new pa.s.sword, because his in-box was a treasure trove of divorce court exhibits. First up, we had several digital photos of Beebee, who was apparently very proud of her recent purchase of lingerie and her new tattoo. Her poses were enthusiastic and ... detailed. Then there were several messages outlining their plans to meet at the Royal Inn outside town on nights when Mike was supposedly meeting with clients or attending dinners with the Rotary Club. Other post-rendezvous mash notes described what they"d done, where they"d done it, and how good it felt. One charming missive detailed the night Mike returned late from a romp with Beebee and slipped into bed with me, reeking of her perfume. The phrase "She doesn"t suspect a thing" was repeated enough to prompt another vomiting run.
Well, at least he"d left a paper trail. I managed to keep it together enough to print out copies of everything and hide them in the bathroom drawer where I kept my feminine supplies. Mike was almost clinically phobic of Tampax. I also forwarded the entire contents of his in-box to my own e-mail address. Including the pictures. That done, I ran for the newly retiled comfort of our shower and huddled there, the spray burning needles into my numb skin until the hot water ran out. Waterlogged and shivering, I bundled into my ratty old blue robe and crawled under the covers. I just couldn"t seem to warm up.
It felt like life had thrown a pie right in my face. And that pie was full of bricks.
Across the room, there was a bank of matching silver picture frames on a table that had been Mike"s great-grandmother"s - a happy blond couple on vacation in the Bahamas, at a Fourth of July barbecue, sitting in front of a Christmas tree. In each of them, I"m smiling blithely into the camera, secure in my position in a life where nothing could possibly go awry.
How could he cheat on me? Was Beebee his first ... was "girlfriend" the right word? Had there been others? Did he even think about how this might make me feel, or was I even a consideration before he unzipped his pants? Was she better in bed than me? Did she know special tricks?
How dense could one person be? I didn"t even bother asking about his Lions Club or Rotary meetings anymore. After hearing "Oh, nothing new" so many times, I just a.s.sumed he wouldn"t want to talk about them. I never questioned how many nights he was spending away from home. He came to our marriage bed with her stink on him. And I didn"t see (or smell) any of it.
I was the stupidest woman on the planet.
I slipped off my wedding ring set and stared at the tasteful solitaire. My hand felt so light without that empty circle, that hideously appropriate symbol. I laid it on the nightstand and wondered if Mike would notice that I wasn"t wearing it. Our wedding portrait had been sitting on the nightstand for so long, I"d almost forgotten it was there. For the first time in a long time, I looked, really looked, at the pretty blue-eyed girl in the white dress and the handsome man smiling down at her. She seemed so bright and full of promise. Capable, confident, just a smidge sa.s.sy. What the h.e.l.l happened to her?
I was someone in my own right before I married the Tax King of Hanmet County. I had plans. I was going to be a newspaper reporter. As my Gammy Muldoon always said, everybody has a story, the trick was finding a way to tell it that didn"t bore the h.e.l.l out of people. (Gammy was a colorful woman.) I loved finding the story. And I was good at it. I even won a couple of minor awards writing for my college newspaper. Right after graduation I was supposed to take over a general a.s.signment position for the local newspaper, the Singletree Gazette. But I got so wrapped up in planning the wedding that I agreed when Mike and Mama suggested I should just wait until after we were married to start working at the paper. Daddy was an old golf buddy of Earl Montgomery, whose family had run the paper since 1890. Earl agreed to keep the reporting job open for me until after the honeymoon. And then we bought the house and Mike said we should finish moving before I started working. Moving became renovating, renovating became redecorating, and Earl finally told me that he"d had to fill the position while I was waiting for wallpaper samples to be shipped in from Tulsa. I was disappointed and embarra.s.sed, but I understood. And soon it didn"t matter, because Mike"s business took off and he finally admitted that he didn"t want me to work because none of his friends" wives worked and it would be "uncomfortable" for him.
So I stayed home. I never considered myself a homemaker because that always made me think of those scary ladies who organized the baking compet.i.tions for the county fair. I was Mike"s at-home support. I joined clubs, women"s organizations, charitable boards. I approached planning benefits and auctions like it was a career. My job was to live and breathe the image of a happy wife of a successful, capable accountant so that people would bring their finances and tax problems to said accountant. I worked full-time to make sure Mike"s accounting firm seemed as prosperous and thriving as possible, even before it was prosperous and thriving.
At work, Mike was the ultimate go-getter, motivated and energetic, meticulous to a fault. But when he came home, he shut off. He honestly believed that because he paid the bills, I should have to handle all of the messy details of our life together. He just wanted to show up and be there - like when he used to live with his mama. I took care of booking Mike"s dental appointments, vacation plans, shopping for gifts for his parents. Mike didn"t want to get a pool or a dog because it was too much maintenance. He had halfheartedly broached the subject of having a baby, but seemed relieved when I put him off for reasons even I couldn"t explain. This turned out to be a good thing as I would hate for our children to currently be witnessing Mommy"s snot-coated, terry-cloth-wrapped breakdown.
What was especially ironic was that part of what had attracted me to Mike was his plans, this unrealized potential that I found adorable and anchoring. When we were in college, he would talk about traveling and seeing the world together, about the family we would raise. When we were married, he made promises about putting shelves in the garage or putting a rose bed in the backyard. Neither of those ever materialized. He was always going on about his boat, this little sixteen-foot wooden sailboat that he had been building for the last five years. When we were at parties or holidays or any gathering where there were more than two people, he waxed poetic about his connection to the water, how a man could only master a vessel he"d built himself, until I wanted to gouge my ears with a shrimp fork. He spent thousands of dollars on tools and materials, despite the fact that he"d never completed so much as a birdhouse. So far, he had the basic structure of the hull, which he"d a.s.sembled in the first year. He hadn"t added anything to it since. So pardon me if I no longer believed his boat was going to be anything more than some sort of nautical dinosaur skeleton in his workshop.
Unless it related to the business, these things never seemed to get done if Mike was left to his own devices. In fact, even though it was for the business, Mike couldn"t be bothered to write his monthly office newsletter. Every month I dutifully wrote it, laid it out on seasonal stationery, and trudged down to the bulk mail office to ship it to hundreds of Mike"s family, friends, and clients. Part public relations, part brag sheet, part actual business correspondence, it was chock-full of vital information, such as "Lacey is learning to crochet, badly. She"s either making a tablecloth or a very large potholder." For some reason, our friends and family seemed to love the fact that I made fun of myself while promoting Mike"s firm.
I"d suggested that we switch to an electronic format to save paper and postage. I"d even gathered the vast majority of the recipients" e-mail addresses in a spreadsheet and loaded them into E-mail Expo, an online marketing service that allowed users to design ma.s.s messages using ready-made templates. It would have meant the difference between my spending two hours or two days every month on the newsletter. But Mike was afraid of alienating his older, less techno-savvy clients, so I just kept buying that stupid themed stationery. It became another thing I was expected to do to make Mike"s life easier.
He loved the idea of the report. He loved the friendly personal touch with the clients and what it did for the business. He just didn"t want to have to do it himself.
It was now 4:24 p.m. Mike was due home in an hour. I had a roast in the oven and it would dry out it if I didn"t check on it in the next ten minutes. But the idea of getting out of bed was a mountain I was not prepared to climb.
"Get up," I muttered to myself. "Get up."
But my limbs stayed where they were, leaden, tired, stubborn. Maybe I would lie here long enough to die and Mike would have to explain the soggy, woebegone corpse in his master suite.
After convincing myself that I didn"t want to be found dead in my bathrobe, I crawled back into the shower, running it on cool to try to take the swelling down in my face. I looked into the little shatterproof shaving mirror and swiped at my eyes, which seemed to be a little less puffy. I didn"t like having the mirror in our shower because the suction cups left weird little soap-sc.u.m circles on the gla.s.s door. But Mike insisted that his mornings would be much easier if he could just shave in the shower, so I"d spent the better part of an afternoon hunting down the best mirror I could find. Just like I"d spent countless afternoons doing countless stupid little errands because they were important to Mike. I"d wasted most of my twenties doing his stupid little errands.
Somewhere in my stomach, the tight, miserable little ball of tension bubbled to my lips in the form of: "a.s.shole!" I screamed, yanking the mirror off the door and throwing it against the wall. "How could you f.u.c.king do this to me, you miserable, d.i.c.kless piece of s.h.i.t!"
I picked up the mirror again and brought it crashing down on the floor, stomping on it, doing my best to break it. But the d.a.m.n thing was shatterproof. I was just making noise, empty, stupid pointless noise that no one would hear. I slid down the tile wall, collapsing in a heap on the floor.
I wasn"t going to cry anymore. I was tired of making empty noise.
I blew a shallow breath through my teeth and pushed to my feet, putting my face under the cool spray. I wondered how close Mike was to the house. Was he actually coming home tonight or did he have another "meeting"? Either way, I didn"t want him to find me like this. I needed time, to think, to decide, to plan. I needed focus to keep myself from knocking him out the minute he walked through the door and supergluing his d.i.c.k to the wall.
"Get up, you giant cliche," I said, my voice stern, cold. "Get up. Get your a.s.s out of this shower and stop re-enacting scenes from every Lifetime movie ever made. Get up. Get up. Get up!"
I sat up, brushing the wet, snaggled hair out of my face. "Now brush your d.a.m.n teeth."
I am an emotional person. It"s one of the reasons Mike said I would never make a decent accountant. (That and needing a calculator to perform long division.) Mike was always in control of his emotions. Though, not apparently, in control of his p.e.n.i.s. He would not expect me to remain calm, cool, and unaffected in the face of his pantsless office hijinks.
So I got up, got dressed, and waited. I smiled when Mike managed to make it home for dinner and served him pot roast. I told him about my Junior League meeting that morning and acted like the problems we were having printing this year"s charity cookbook were the biggest worries on my mind. And I slept beside him, having to concentrate hard to prevent myself from smothering him with the pillow.
It was the last thing he would see coming. The calm thing, I mean, not the smothering. Though he probably wouldn"t see the pillow coming either.
In my weaker moments, I considered forgetting this whole thing and staying with him. For one thing, you can"t discount eight years of history. My parents were very fond of him. My parents and his parents seemed to enjoy spending time together, a rare and precious coincidence that meant I never had to split my holidays. And Mike was safe. He was stable. Apart from the receptionist-s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, he had been a decent husband to me. I didn"t have to worry about bills being paid or him drinking too much or watching an alarming amount of SportsCenter.
We"d made a life together. It wasn"t perfect, but I was proud of what we"d built. Even if he"d smashed it all to h.e.l.l by betraying the unspoken rule I thought we"d both agreed to - don"t have s.e.x with other people.
And at other, angrier moments, I found my hands gripping the edge of the kitchen table as I stared at my husband. Mike had retained the blond, boyish good looks that had drawn me to him when we were seniors in high school. The sun-streaked sandy blond hair that curled just at the ends. The guileless brown eyes that crinkled when he smiled. The little cleft in his chin that his mama called "G.o.d"s thumbprint."
Mike was equally tense. He wouldn"t look me in the eye. His knee was bouncing steadily under the table, a sure sign he was nervous about something. He didn"t even complain about our dinner menu of blackened catfish and Mama"s "Light Your Fire" cheese grits. Mike hated spicy food with a pa.s.sion. He treated Taco Bell like exotic third-world cuisine.
I said I was trying to behave as normally as possible. I didn"t say I was a saint.
Finally, he cleared his throat and asked, "Honey, did Cherry Click stop by here with some flowers a few days ago?"
So that"s why he was wound so tight, I mused. He"d been stewing for days, wondering where Beebee"s anniversary flowers had ended up. "No." I said, concentrating on every muscle and nerve in my face to keep it a pleasant, blank mask. "You sweet thing, did you order me flowers?"
He paled ever so slightly as he stammered, "N - no, one of my clients lost his mama. I sent an arrangement, but I don"t think it arrived at the funeral service in time."
Well, that was a far more interesting lie than I would have previously given him credit for. I gave a breathy little gasp. "Oh, no, whose mother died?"
I watched him squirm as he searched for the right answer. "Oh, n.o.body you know," he said, picking at his plate. "It"s a client over in Quincy."
"Oh, well, it was so thoughtful of you to send something. I can call Cherry and double-check whether it arrived."
"No! No, I"ll take care of it," he said, far too quickly.
"I don"t mind," I told him, willing my lips not to curve upward.
"It"s okay, really. Don"t worry about it," he a.s.sured me.
"All right," I said, shrugging blithely.
His shoulders relaxed and the tense little lines around his mouth disappeared. He was comfortable again, sure that I was still in the dark. My fingers gripped my fork, my teeth grinding ever so slightly as I imagined jabbing the tines right into his forehead.
"So, um, how"s the old monthly report coming?" he asked around a mouthful of catfish. "Remember, we have to get it out by next week. You only have a few days left to mail it out."
I hadn"t looked at it in a week. And somehow I just didn"t think descriptions of Mike"s golf game and repainting the office were going to cut it this month.
"It"s fine," I lied.
"Be sure to mention the condo. And call down to the office and talk to Beebee," he added before downing half of his gla.s.s of water.
I dropped my fork. But considering my usual level of clumsiness, he didn"t notice. "What?"