Wrong Side of Forty

by Jana DeLeon

  “Then I must still be drunk. Because I swear your skin looks better this morning than it did last night. And I refuse to believe that God would be that unfair while handing out the symptoms of a hangover. I’m going back to bed. Call if you need me. Or something with a higher caliber.”

  Marina nodded and as Halcyon headed back to bed, she poked at the skin under her eyes again. Still no puffiness. Weird.

  She shot back the remainder of her cup of coffee, then poured the rest of the pot into a thermos. Caffeine and fear might be the only two things that would keep her moving today. She grabbed her purse off the counter and headed outside. It was just after 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning, but she didn’t care. If Harold was still asleep, he’d have to get over it. She wasn’t spending one more night without her toiletries and a change of clothes. Or the stash of good chocolate she kept in a frozen peas bag in the fridge. Harold and Avery both hated peas.

  She circled the block twice before finally pulling into the driveway of Harold’s home. The moment she’d seen another woman in her bed it had ceased being hers. But she didn’t want a repeat of the day before. She didn’t think Harold would be foolish enough to allow the girl to stay overnight, but then, she hadn’t thought him foolish enough to have an affair with a girl who was young enough to be his daughter, much less an employee.

  She had a moment of pause when she spotted a man standing next to a mailbox two doors down from Harold’s house. He definitely wasn’t Old Man Johnson, the owner of the home, and she was pretty sure he wasn’t one of his kids, as he had three daughters. But he’d caught Marina’s attention because he was just standing there. Not checking the mail. Not looking at his phone. Just staring at her as she drove past, his white V-neck T-shirt and purple skinny jeans looking completely out of place in Last Chance, where the majority of the men lived in ragged blue jeans and work boots.

  Whatever, she thought as she climbed out of the car. If Harold had acquired a strange new neighbor, it wasn’t her problem. She slammed her car door, angry that she had to case the neighborhood she’d called home for almost thirty years. Angry that she was forced to worry about finding a half-naked girl inside with her half-naked husband in the bed that she’d called her own just one night before. But more than anything, angry that she cared. And she did still care. How did someone simply erase three decades of her life?

  She unlocked the front door and stomped inside. But once she caught sight of the living room that she’d spent so many nights in, all the anger drained away and sadness coursed through her as she realized she felt like a stranger. A stranger walking into a strange place. Just like that, her home had become somewhere that somebody else lived. Tears pooled in her eyes, threatening to spill over, and she struggled to maintain control. The last thing she wanted was for Harold to see her upset. He didn’t deserve her tears.

  “Marina.” Harold’s voice sounded from the hallway and she looked over to see him dressed for the office. Of course he would be dressed for work. Harold had always insisted on working Saturdays, although now, Marina wondered if it was work or play that kept him from staying home. It wasn’t like his life had exploded the day before. For Harold, it was just another day of accounting and sneaking around with his hired help. All those pesky details such as being married didn’t matter.

  “I thought you’d call before you came,” Harold said.

  Marina stared. Halcyon had warned her that Harold would likely be on the defensive. She swore that men who were caught in the act immediately lashed out with all the reasons their wives made them do it and somehow turned themselves into the victim. Marina had listened as Halcyon had explained but she hadn’t wanted to believe it.

  But there stood her husband of twenty-eight years, looking annoyed that she’d had the nerve to enter her own home without calling first.

  And just like that, she flipped back to angry. No. Not angry.

  Mad. As. Hell.

  “I wasn’t aware that I needed permission to enter my home,” Marina said.

  “This is my home. My mother left it to me.”

  “I think you might want to check with your attorney on that one. You can’t force me to leave simply because it’s inconvenient for you and your whore. I have rights, Harold. I’m so sorry that the three decades we’ve been together has placed such a burden on you.”

  “This is not the way I wanted things to go.”

  “Really? And just how did you think things would go when I found you in our bed with a girl practically your daughter’s age?”

  Harold flushed and she could see his jaw clench. Clearly, he’d thought Marina was going to slink silently away, avoiding conflict as she always did. Making sure everyone else got what they wanted without regard to her own needs. Well, too bad for him. That Marina had died and gone the moment she saw him standing there in all his arrogance, questioning her for being there.

  “Chastity is not part of this,” he said.

  “Seemed like a big part yesterday. Unless there was a town vote and every man of maturity is required to sleep with her. Oh wait, every man of maturity has slept with her. I suppose you got sloppy eight-hundredths.”

  He turned beet red and clenched his hands. Marina had never seen him this mad before, and now she simply couldn’t take it seriously. He looked like an angry, yapping dog. Ineffectual. Irrelevant. And mostly just annoying.

  “I’m filing for divorce,” he said. “You cannot stay here.”

  “I’ll be happy to go. Just as soon as you cough up some equity.”

  “I don’t owe you any equity. This is my house. Inheritance is not marital property.”

  “A judge might see the twenty-five years of salary I put into this place differently. Not to mention all the work I did without any help from you. I’d say that gives me an equity interest. Would you like to test that theory?”

  “That’s blackmail.”

  “No. That’s divorce. This is all on you, Harold. So either pony up some money or I’ll drag this and your indiscretions through the court system. Loudly. But first, I’ll tell my sad story of woe to the local newspaper. What will that do to your business, Harold? How many of your clients will remain with a man who makes a mockery of his wife with a girl not even half his age? And what will your daughter think? How many boyfriends did she lose to Chastity when she was in high school? She’ll be thrilled to know her parents are divorcing over her.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!” he sputtered, but she could see the glimmer of fear in his eyes.

  “Try me. Either I get some money or we both explode into the fiery pit of shame called bankruptcy. Your choice.”

  “How much?”

  Marina blinked. She hadn’t expected him to cave so easily. Which meant something was up. She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “You’re not thinking of marrying that twit, are you?” she asked.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Given that you’re currently married to me, I’d say it’s definitely my business.”

  “I’m not marrying her. But she needs a medical procedure and it’s going to be expensive. I might not have the cash to give you.”

  “Your firm carries insurance. If she needs legitimate medical help, she’s covered. So what nonsense have you agreed to—vacation to France, luxury car, boob job?”

  His eyes flickered down on the last one and she gasped.

  “You have got to be kidding me!” Marina yelled. “You’re trying to weasel out of giving me money I damn well deserve because that hooker you took up with wants new boobs? Here’s a news bulletin—I don’t give a damn what she wants. I only care about what I’m due. Twenty thousand for the house, and that’s a bargain. And half of your retirement account. I already transferred my half of the money in the bank into my holiday savings account last night.”

  He stared. “You’ve lost your mind. I don’t have twenty thousand dollars.”

  “Sure you do. You can borrow against this house that you’re so proud to keep. But yo
u should double that loan amount. Chastity might need a vagina replacement soon. God knows hers has a lot of miles on it.”

  She shoved Harold out of the way and headed for the master bedroom. No longer her bedroom.

  “I need to pack!” she yelled. “I expect you to give me two days. If you see my car here, I expect you to keep driving. If I show up here, I expect you to leave until I’m gone. Understand?”

  The front door slamming was the only reply.

  She walked into the bedroom and slumped down onto the bed as all the strength and energy drained completely out of her. Putting her hands over her face, she started to sob. How had things gone so wrong so quickly? She was forty-eight years old and what did she have to show for her life? She wouldn’t take anything from the house except her personal belongings. A lot of the furniture had come with the house, and the rest was well worn, and she’d never liked it much anyway. Besides, given that she had exactly no place to live, she couldn’t fill up a U-Haul and head out.

  This was it. A couple boxes of clothes, some books, pictures, and toiletries.

  Her entire life would fit in the trunk of her car.

  She brushed the tears from her face and rose from the bed. It was pointless to sit here feeling sorry for herself. Especially here, where she could see the edge of the sapphire-blue nightie peeking out from under the bed. There would be plenty of time to wallow in her failure later. When she and her paltry collection of belongings had a place to live.

  The savings and checking accounts hadn’t yielded much, about five thousand between the two, which had given her a moment’s pause. Harold had always handled the finances. It had made sense, him being a CPA, but they had never lived extravagantly. So where was the money? They’d agreed to save as much as possible for Avery’s schooling as soon as she’d announced her intention to be a doctor. Her scholarship covered the university, but there was still medical school to consider. Had Harold kept school money in a separate account? Invested in the stock market, maybe?

  She shook her head, mentally cursing herself for not knowing her financial status. Yes, Harold was the financial guru but that didn’t mean she should have stayed ignorant about their money. She supposed she was going to have to hire an attorney to find out where all their money was in order to get her share and protect Avery’s future. And she was equally as sure she wasn’t going to like the details of where some of it had gone. Was Chastity the first indiscretion Harold had succumbed to? Or was she simply the first Marina had found out about?

  Harold had always traveled for business. He claimed it was for workshops and continuing education that he needed to keep his license, but was it really? Marina had never asked many questions because accounting talk of spreadsheets and tax returns bored her half to death, but maybe she should have been paying more attention. Maybe she needed to go through their bank and credit card records and see if she could decipher what else Harold might have been up to besides workshops. But then, she didn’t have access to the CPA firm accounts. If Harold was going to route money away from the family, she would have never known it existed in the first place.

  She blew out a breath. This was going to be a mess. Halcyon had warned her it would be, and her sister would know. With four husbands in her rearview mirror, Halcyon probably knew more about ending marriages than most divorce attorneys. To be fair, she’d married her second husband only weeks after meeting him and he’d died two months later. But there had still been a flurry of legal activity surrounding his death when a woman who looked ready to birth any second showed up at the funeral claiming the child was his.

  In keeping with her promise to never be upstaged, Halcyon had cut a patch of hair off his head, right there in the coffin, stuffed it in the woman’s purse, and ordered her to leave. The child had turned out to be his, but since his worldly possessions consisted of a leaky bass boat and debt, the woman had never been seen again. After that, Halcyon had made a vow to never marry a poor man, and she hadn’t. But she’d never quite managed to avoid losers. Still, her sister had a nice house that was paid for, a Ford F-250, and enough alimony that she could squeak by without having to work. Now, Halcyon stuck with “gentlemen callers,” claiming she was done with the whole relationship thing.

  Although she’d never said so, Marina had always thought Halcyon was doing it all wrong. But here she sat, staring at the hem of her used-and-not-by-her nightie, with five thousand dollars and an old Honda Accord to her name, and she realized that life held no guarantees. Especially when you’d pinned your security on someone else. Maybe Halcyon hadn’t been completely wrong when she’d decided to put herself first.

  Maybe it was something Marina needed to learn to do.

  Chapter Four

  Adelaide Blanchard hurried down the sidewalk, brushing cat hair from her blouse. As the town’s official old maid, Adelaide found it in keeping that she should always have a cat—or eight—around her place. It gave her something to do and everyone else something to talk about. Plus, the constant layer of cat hair covering all her furniture cut down on drop-by visitors. Visitors, in general, were the bane of her existence, but drop-by visitors had a special place in hell.

  Normally, Adelaide spent Saturday morning in her garden. She’d never managed to grow anything worthwhile, but Southern women couldn’t shirk their duty. Any Southern woman worth her salt spent at least one day a week digging around in the dirt. So far this year, Adelaide had managed to wipe out tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, and a peach tree. Technically, she’d run over the peach tree with her car, so it wasn’t a legitimate kill, but she was still counting it.

  Instead of wearing her normal Saturday outfit of comfortable jeans and rubber boots, Adelaide had on her “good” black slacks, Hush Puppies, and a bright red blouse—the one considered too racy for church—and she was walking down Main Street. There were goings-on in Last Chance, and not the good kind. Normally, Adelaide loved juicy gossip and sordid tales of woe, but not when the fallout was on someone she liked. Since the people she liked were a short list, she didn’t find herself in this state of concern often, but this time was different. She had to find out if the rumors were true, which meant visiting the one place Adelaide tried to avoid.

  The beauty salon.

  She stepped into the Cut & Curl and gave the owner, Patricia Martin, a wave before casting a suspicious glance at Dottie Prejean. The wife of the former mayor—God rest his soul—was the closest thing Last Chance had to royalty, and Adelaide had to admit the old biddy wore it well. No matter the season, time of day, or weather, Dottie looked as if someone had just varnished and ironed her. Not a hair out of place. Clothes that didn’t wrinkle. Adelaide was convinced it was some form of sorcery.

  And since Adelaide was also certain that Dottie had just been to her regular stylist in New Orleans earlier that week, she knew good and well that Her Highness was in the shop today for the same reason Adelaide was. Normally Adelaide would have been put out that Dottie had beaten her to the punch, but this time was different. This time it wasn’t about getting a juicy piece of gossip that she could carry to church on Sunday. This was about making sure a good woman like Marina Trahan wasn’t handed a raw deal. On that, she and Dottie could agree.

  “I wondered if you could fit in a quick roll for me,” Adelaide asked. “I can take it out later and style it myself—I’ll return the rollers this afternoon, of course. No worries if you can’t. I’ll just pick and fluff and spray the heck out of it.”

  “Helen can handle it,” Patricia said. “That shouldn’t take long at all. Why are you in such a rush? Is something wrong?”

  “My cousin decided on a last-minute visit and even laster-minute notification, and I can’t do things up as quickly as you girls,” Adelaide said.

  Patricia waved her to an open chair. “We can’t have you looking poorly for family. You know they pull that last-minute crap just to try to catch you at your worst.”

  Adelaide crossed the salon, silently asking forgiveness for sullying her
cousin’s character. But right now, a little bit of white lying was necessary. She gave Dottie a hard stare as she took her seat, and the other woman gave her a barely imperceptible shake of the head, indicating she hadn’t gotten down to the real business at hand yet. Adelaide wasn’t too late after all.

  “I don’t suppose Marina can do it, can she?” Adelaide asked, figuring she might as well get straight to the real reason for her false claim of a hair emergency. “She manages a really tight curl. I can’t ever get it to hold as long as she does.”

  Patricia glanced at Helen and frowned. “I’m afraid not. Marina’s had a bit of trouble. I’m not sure what her plans are.”

  “What do you mean?” Adelaide asked, pretending confusion.

  “Well, I probably shouldn’t say but her husband left her,” Patricia said.

  “Harold died?” Adelaide asked.

  “No,” Patricia said. “Why would you think that?”

  “Because a man who looks like Harold shouldn’t leave a woman like Marina,” Adelaide said. “She was always too good for him.”

  Patricia sniffed. “I guess it’s all a matter of taste. But I have to say I’m not really surprised. I mean, Marina was kind of cute, I guess, when she was young, but she’s let herself go the last couple years.”

  The haughty, holier-than-thou tone in Patricia’s voice made Adelaide want to strangle her with a blow-dryer cord. But then, ever since she’d been crowned homecoming queen thirty years ago, Patricia had thought she was better than most people in town. Why, Adelaide had no idea. She still had the same squinty eyes and crooked front tooth that she’d had when Adelaide taught her in high school. And the stick up her butt hadn’t moved an inch, either.

  “Gaining a few pounds hardly constitutes letting yourself go,” Adelaide said. “I think we’ve all gained a few pounds in our later years.”

  “Isn’t that the truth,” Dottie agreed. “Besides, Marina has had a lot to deal with. That daughter of hers is smart as Einstein but stubborn as all get-out and convinced she knew better than everyone else by the time she hit elementary school. And no one has ever kept Marina’s mother out of trouble. Quite frankly, it’s a testament to her character that Marina didn’t turn to drink before she got Letitia into that assisted living facility.”