by Robyn Carr
Adele couldn’t really remember all the details of Justine and Scott’s early years together, but by the time her nieces were born when she was in high school, it was obvious that Scott made sure the girls got what they needed but he didn’t go much further. Justine stopped at the store for groceries on her way home from work, sometimes at ten at night. She spent her days off doing laundry, and if she couldn’t stay up until midnight working on briefs, she’d get up at four in the morning to work. And then Scott would criticize her for not working out and complain about the toll her long hours took on the family. But he somehow justified an expensive country club membership. Scott did most of the cooking, but it wasn’t much of an effort. He didn’t like labor intensive meals after a rugged day of playing golf. Adele witnessed a lot of those squabbles because she was a frequent babysitter when her nieces were little.
But none of that was Adele’s fault! Now she feared Justine would go back on her promises and take advantage of her again.
She thought about canceling the movie date with Jake because she knew she wouldn’t be good company, but she didn’t have the heart after he’d been so sweet to offer. So she got dressed and was ready when he picked her up. “What are we going to see?” she asked when she got in the car.
“Anything you want. There are plenty of sexy leading men for you to choose from,” he said. Then he grinned.
“Anything is fine.”
So they chose the latest hit movie, bought popcorn and drinks, and she stared at the screen blankly. He asked her three times what was wrong, and three times she said she just had things on her mind. The movie was over before she’d really let herself enjoy it. Jake grabbed her hand and said, “Come on.” He pulled her up and out of their row, out of the theater into the dimly lit hall that led to the lobby. “We’re going to Maggio’s. We’ll get a dark booth in the back and talk. Whatever it is, it’s better to get it out.”
“What makes you say that? I’m a little moody, that’s all. You’ve seen me—”
He was shaking his head. “You’re not just moody,” he said. “Any time you don’t stare with big cow eyes at Bradley Cooper, the man you hope to marry, we’ve got us a problem. So, we’ll go have a little wine. Maybe some pasta or pizza but wine for sure.”
She raised a brow. “You think you’re going to get me loose and talking?”
He nodded. “As only a good friend could.”
They drove to Maggio’s, a little hole-in-the-wall Italian pizzeria. It was one of his favorite places. Jake pulled his truck into a small parking lot behind the restaurant. They did a huge takeout business, but there was a small dining room with only eight booths. It was compact, each booth could hold six people so the maximum they could serve wasn’t even fifty, and in all the years Adele had known about the restaurant, it had never been full. The front of the store, where people picked up their meals or pizzas, was always hopping, and there were a couple of tables on the wide sidewalk where people could sit outside in nice weather.
Adele and Jake entered through the back door because Jake knew the owners and most of the staff. People hollered “Hey, Jake” or waved a hand in their direction. They slipped into the restaurant and found a booth near the back. Adele loved that it was dimly lit and decorated with plastic grapes. They slid into the booth and sat across from each other.
“Hey, Jake,” the waitress said, slapping down a couple of napkins. “Haven’t seen you in a long time.”
“It hasn’t been that long, has it?” he returned. “You know my friend Adele, don’t you?”
“Yeah, sure, how you doin’? And what can I start you off with?”
“A glass of cabernet for me,” Addie said.
“Same,” Jake said. “And we’ll look at the menu for a while.”
“I bet you know it by heart, Jake,” she said, smiling prettily into his eyes. “I’ll be right back.”
“All the women in town like you,” Adele said. “Why don’t you ever take any of them out?”
“They don’t all like me,” he said. “And Bonnie, there, I think she’s been married a bunch of times.”
“Really?” Adele asked.
“Well, at least twice. Been there, done that.”
Adele remembered too well—it was a scandal in the neighborhood at the time. Jake was in his midtwenties, Adele still in high school, when he married Mary Ellen. It didn’t go well. Jake’s mother complained to Adele’s mother that there was a lot of bickering, and in no time Mary Ellen had become Jake’s unhappy wife. Though she never missed a word of their mothers’ gossip, the only thing she actually saw was that her friend Jake was suddenly alone, miserable, brokenhearted and inconsolable. Mary Ellen left him after a year, and they were divorced by two years. She had now passed her third divorce, been with numerous men she hadn’t married and was said to be keeping company with a much older guy who left his wife of almost forty years for her.
“Yeah, I’d love to know what happened there, if only to understand it,” Adele said. Jake was handsome, sweet natured, smart and most importantly, kind. His market was like the cornerstone of the older section of Half Moon Bay. He’d served on the city council for a couple of years and was greatly respected. By comparison, Mary Ellen was attractive but not very smart. But she must have some serious skills—she certainly had no trouble getting a guy though she did have short attention span. Adele suspected an abundance of pheromones. She also seemed to be cunning.
“Maybe when I understand what happened, I’ll share,” Jake said.
Their drinks came, they ordered a pizza to share and Jake went in for the kill. “How about if you tell me why you didn’t drool over Bradley,” Jake said.
She told him Justine had come by for a brief visit, complaining about having some job and therefore financial issues, and that she might not be helping out as much as Adele had expected. “It emphasized all the things I haven’t done,” she said. “I was going to change my life, you know—starting with a makeover of myself and the house. Neither has had much attention for the past few years. I was waiting for the inspiration to kick in.”
“We’ve been over this,” Jake said. “You have plenty of time for all that. And you don’t need a makeover. The house could use a little paint, but other than that...”
“I haven’t even made a list,” she said. “I kept thinking I was making plans but they were just fantasies. Plans require at least a list. Not to mention the purchase of a bucket of paint...”
“Well then, let’s talk about what you’d like to do and you can go home and make a list, but Addie, stuff like this doesn’t usually cause you to ignore a good movie. Or—” The pizza arrived just as he finished his thought. “Or ignore your best guy, Bradley.” He peeled off a piece of pizza and gestured toward her plate. “I can help with this, you know. I remodeled my mother’s house, and I’ve done a lot of my own work in my house.”
“You’re so busy,” she said, chomping off a mouthful of pizza.
“Even if I’m not available to pound nails or paint trim, I know a lot of contractors, who to call, where to find them, and if you ever run into a problem—I know how to talk to them. You never saw my mother’s house after I did the kitchen and both bathrooms. Damn good for a grocer, if you ask me.”
“I’m sorry, Jake. I should have gone to your mom’s to see your work. I’ll be sure to go now. She always came to see my mom, to read to her.”
“You know she enjoyed that,” he said. “Sometimes she spends an hour at the store, visiting, talking to shoppers. I’d see one thing in her cart, but just couldn’t get her to leave. I told her I could bring her what she needs, but walking to the store is good for her. I won’t complain until she starts coming in five times a day, and then—”
His voice faded to a low buzz as something caught Adele’s eye. The couple in the front left booth, sitting together so they faced the front door, backs to Adele, leaned their he
ads together for a deep kiss. The man’s reddish-brown hair curled around his collar, just a little long. The woman’s short white-blond hair was teased up all spiky in a slightly dated style.
Then Adele’s brain started to play tricks on her. It looked like Scott, her brother-in-law, his tongue down the woman’s throat, his hand cupping the back of her head. They broke apart, laughed into each other’s open mouths and she stroked his cheek briefly, saying something that made him kiss her open mouth again. It was Scott. He must think that even though Adele lived in Half Moon Bay, she would never be out on a Saturday night, having a pizza. It was a good bet, since that was a very rare occurrence. Adele would have pizza delivered. And a date? Forget about it.
Then Scott and the unknown woman became other people as a very old and painful memory rose to the surface. Hadley and his wife materialized in their place. Hadley, her psychology professor, with whom she’d had a steamy affair. She’d taken the class because he was so hot. Hadley, the father of her baby. He had told her it was impossible for him to leave the wife he claimed to hate, to marry Adele. He told her the university might fire him for falling in love with a student. They decided she would terminate the pregnancy. He would then divorce his wife, they’d have a fresh start, begin to date as if the affair and the baby had never happened. They’d marry and eventually have a family. Everything would be fine and they’d live happily-ever-after. And she’d been naive enough to believe him.
She did what many a woman her age would do—she drove by Hadley’s house a dozen times a week. Then one morning she saw what she should have known she would see. He stood in the doorway with his beautiful blond wife, an arm around her waist. She still wore a robe or dressing gown. There was a small blond child holding on to his leg. The child was also beautiful. Angelic. Hadley’s wife had a small baby bump. Hadley pulled her against him and covered her lips in a loving kiss. A deep and long kiss. One of his hands cradled her head while the other ran smoothly over the bump.
Hadley wasn’t kissing his wife as though he was planning on getting a divorce.
Adele was supposed to have an abortion while Hadley got the gears moving on his separation and divorce. He said he’d try to scrape up some money for the procedure, but he couldn’t be obvious about it or his wife wouldn’t let him go. They would have to be discreet.
Eight years later, she still couldn’t believe she’d bought those lies. She didn’t go through with the abortion but her baby slipped away, stillborn. And Hadley never came looking for her. While she cared for her parents and mourned the loss of her son, she’d heard he was suspected of other affairs with students.
Scott and the woman he was with materialized again. The bastard was stepping out on her sister. She briefly thought about rushing over to them and pouring something over their heads, like a pitcher of beer. Luckily, she didn’t have anything like that on hand.
She noticed out of the corner of her eye that Jake looked at her, looked in the direction of her stare, looked back at her. Her mouth was open and gaping, and a large piece of pizza drooped limply in her hand.
“Addie?” he asked.
“Shit,” she muttered. She closed her mouth and looked at him. “Jake, I need a favor. Can we get a box for the pizza and leave? Right now? I can explain when we’re in the truck.”
“Something happened,” he said. “What happened?”
“Shh,” she said, hushing him. “Can you go back to the kitchen, ask for a box, pay the bill and get me out of here? Quietly?” she whispered. “The guy in the front booth with the blonde—that’s my brother-in-law. And that is not my sister he’s making out with.”
Jake couldn’t resist. He looked again. “Whoa,” he said, probably recognizing Scott at last. Then he slid out of the booth and made tracks to the kitchen. He was back with a box very quickly, and they transferred the pizza into it.
“I hope everything was okay,” Bonnie said as they were leaving.
“Oh, it was fine, I just remembered I left the stove on,” Adele said with a smile. By the time she got to Jake’s truck, she felt weak. When he got in and closed his door, she was shaking. “That bastard!”
“What’s he doing here?” Jake asked. “He lives in San Jose, right?”
She held out her hands, examining her trembling fingers. “He probably thinks no one knows him here, which except for me, maybe no one does. And he probably thinks I’d never be out for the evening, because what are the odds? While my sister is home worrying about her job, her husband is out deep kissing some woman—”
“Cat,” Jake said.
“Huh?”
“Cat Brooks. She owns that kayak and snorkel shop on the beach. Cat’s Place. It should make a killing, but it’s been through three or four owners in the last dozen years. I think she owns it with her brother or something.”
“Well, that makes sense,” Adele said. “Scott works part-time at a sporting goods store in San Jose where he gets a discount on all the gear he can stuff into his car. That’s what he does—plays. He loves to kayak. And golf and scuba dive and play ball and you name it. I bet his salary doesn’t even cover the cost of his toys. Justine works such long hours, he complains that she works so much and this is what he does instead.”
Jake put his truck in Reverse and backed out of the lot.
“And I’ll have to tell her,” Adele said.
“You have to?” he asked. “Why do you have to?”
“Come on!” she said. “I can’t let Justine get caught unaware! Telling her now might not even help. Clearly he’s into something serious, and he can’t support himself and his fun times. Justine has been the primary breadwinner for at least twenty of their twenty-eight-year marriage! And he has the nerve to complain about her hours. As if the income would just materialize while she took time off to entertain him. Oh! I want to kill him right now!”
“Addie, don’t do anything too soon here,” Jake said. “I’ve seen it before. She might hate you for telling her.”
“Now why would she do that?” Adele asked.
He took a breath. “It was Marty who told me Mary Ellen was cheating. I hit him in the face.”
“Because you didn’t believe him?”
“No. Because he ruined the illusion I had that I could make it work in the end. It was like a knife to the heart. It was in that instant I knew it was over. And it was going to get ugly.”
“I’ll tell you what’s going to get ugly—me driving to San Jose.”
* * *
Justine felt confident she’d made an impression on Adele. Surely her younger sister would finally get serious about getting her life on track so that Justine wouldn’t feel obligated to support her forever. Just from looking at the comparable sales in the area, she judged the house to be worth roughly six hundred thousand, and it was paid off, free and clear. If she could get her own Realtor and decorator involved in cleaning up and staging the property, it could be worth more. She’d worry about how to scrape up the money to help in that effort later.
Adele would probably have to put off going back to school for a little while. She had to get a job. Justine was determined to make it up to her. Somehow. Eventually.
It was true that her company was struggling right now, downsizing here and there, and the stress was overwhelming. But she was hoping she could repair her real problem before she talked to anyone about it.
Scott had informed her that he didn’t love her anymore. He was sorry but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t have much hope for the marriage; he thought it might be best if they broke up. He wanted to cash out. She was holding him back, expecting too much from him.
She was completely caught off guard. She had been asking him to apply himself a little more to what she thought had been a pretty satisfactory partnership. Their relationship was hardly perfect, but then whose was?
They’d been seeing a marriage counselor for three months, and s
he had no grasp of how that was working out. Some days Scott would say, I think we’re making progress here—I know I’m feeling better about things. Other days he’d grumble that she wasn’t really involved in the marriage, or their family life for that matter. He told her she was “emotionally unavailable” too often. “When was the last time you watched me play ball?” he asked. “When was the last time we went to a movie?”
Her work was very difficult and demanding, what more could she say? If she wanted to keep her job, she had to be on top of it. She worked sixty hours a week and brought work home, as well.
It was when he started saying things like, “I feel like I have a hole in my heart,” and “I’m not really living, just existing,” she began to suspect there was another woman. Those were women’s words. Scott didn’t say things like that. In fact, he had trouble sitting through a chick flick with dialogue like that. It made him roll his eyes. Now he was saying those things to her with a straight face.
In their thirty years together, two dating and twenty-eight married, she had suspected there were other women now and then, but there was never any clear evidence. Just a name that came up too frequently, that faraway look in his eye, a very unreliable schedule. He’d go MIA for a while. During their first decade of marriage, he traveled all the time while he was in sales. She’d had trouble getting pregnant and blamed his travel schedule. When she passed the bar, he was more than happy to take a less demanding, less lucrative job to improve their odds at reproduction. Seventeen years ago she had Amber and eleven months later, Olivia. He was a stay-at-home dad and she was so happy; her baby daughters were everything to her. She was a successful businesswoman with a supportive husband and two beautiful daughters. She didn’t have a jealous bone in her body.
But she had to work. She was the bread and butter of the family. Getting home to her husband and babies was her reward for every hard penny she earned. She was successful, Scott urging her on every day while he stayed home and planned their vacations. In more recent years when he had so much time on his hands because the girls were self-sufficient and he only worked part-time, she never wondered where he was—he was busy every minute. They texted and spoke several times every day.