by Marci Bolden
Jade toasted her with her wineglass of cranberry juice. “Unhealthy diet, unhealthy body.”
Darby looked at the drink in her hand and started to pour it out but then held up one hand. After taking several big gulps from her glass, she dumped out the rest. “Okay. That’s it. Kale and cranberry juice. I swear by all that is holy, I will never drink again.”
Jade was not the slightest bit convinced by Darby’s solemn vow. She glanced at Taylor, who shook her head, clearly not buying into the weak promise either.
“Listen,” Jade said, “before I got sick, I was the most uptight, career-driven person you’d ever met. I have a second chance, and I don’t want to waste it. All those things I never did, never wanted to do, I’m going to do them now. I appreciate the two of you for being concerned, but I’m not going to let a sprained ankle get in my way. I want fun and adventures. I want to try new things. I can’t watch life pass me by any longer. I have to start living. Now.”
“Now?” Taylor asked. “Like right now.”
“Yes,” Jade stated. “Right now.”
Darby toasted her with her empty glass. “That’s my girl. You gotta grab life by the cajones and take it where you want it to go.” She started to take a drink but then seemed to remember she’d tossed out her wine.
“There’s a difference between living and being reckless,” Taylor said. “Kayaking halfway across Chammont Lake with a sprained ankle was reckless.”
“I won’t do it again,” Jade said.
Taylor nodded toward the cabin. “How old is that roof, Darby?”
Scrunching up her face, Darby shrugged. “I don’t know. It was there when I bought the place.”
“When was that?”
“Um, two years ago, I guess.”
Jade furrowed her brow. “Your real estate agent let you buy it with that roof?”
“Oh, I didn’t use a real estate agent. I bought it from the owner.”
Taylor’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. “Did you have an inspection?”
Darby wrinkled her nose. “A what?”
“Are you kidding me?” Taylor muttered.
“Didn’t your attorney have someone come out and determine the value of the property?” Jade asked.
“I didn’t use an attorney.”
Jade’s eyes widened slightly. “Well, didn’t the bank require an appraisal for you to get a loan?”
Darby tilted her head and smiled with obvious pride. “I didn’t take out a loan, Jade. I had the money in savings. I was planning to take a trip to Vegas and bet it all on that spinning thing.”
“The roulette wheel?” Jade asked.
“Yes! That. But something told me that would be irresponsible.”
“So you bought a rental property without an inspection instead?” Taylor asked.
Darby’s face sagged. “Yeah.”
“Did you get the deed, Darby?” Jade asked.
Her smile returned. “Yes. Notarized and everything.”
“You two are too much. Do you know that?” Taylor rubbed her forehead like she couldn’t handle one more irresponsible act from her new friends.
Jade giggled. She couldn’t recall anyone ever being fed up with her for her lack of responsibility. She’d always been the so-called stick in the mud. She was happy to hand that title off to Taylor.
Darby looked back at the cabin. “The last owner was a sweet old lady. She was going into a nursing home, and her son sold it to me for cheap.”
“Of course he did,” Taylor said. “He took advantage of you, Darby.”
Darby started to shake her head but then stopped. “That actually happens a lot. I tend to jump in without thinking things through.”
“Well, you’re in it now,” Taylor said. “Mind if I take a closer look?”
“Um, I guess, if Jade doesn’t mind.”
Jade waved them off. “Go ahead.”
She pulled her phone from her pocket and removed it from a waterproof pouch. She’d bought the pouch from Liam as he explained how it wouldn’t be his fault if she drowned in the middle of Chammont Lake. In his opinion, she wasn’t nearly as ready for water activities as she’d thought.
For about the millionth time, she started to call Nick before she remembered that she shouldn’t. Couldn’t. Checking in with him was a habit—one she was going to have a hard time breaking, though she hadn’t been given a choice in the matter.
Tears welled in her eyes, but she gave her head a hard shake. She snagged her crutches and managed to stand without too much struggle. “Wait up,” she called. “I’m coming too!”
Five
Jade didn’t want to point out that Taylor had arrived early that morning to put up the new banister, but they had somehow ended up sitting on the beach instead. Things in Chammont Point seemed to move at a much slower pace than Jade was used to. That wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, she thought she needed to be away from the frantic life she’d had in Fairfax.
If she’d taken a little bit of time to slow down and listen to her body when things had started to go astray, her cancer treatment might have been limited to one surgery and a biopsy rather than months of poison being injected into her bloodstream.
“Earth to Jade,” Darby sang.
Jade blinked and laughed off her lack of focus. “Sorry. What?”
“Taylor has offered to man the grill for dinner. Chicken or steak?”
“Um, chicken.”
Taylor suggested baked potatoes for the side instead of corn on the cob. She didn’t like the way corn got stuck in her teeth. That comment spiraled Darby into a completely different direction that, surprisingly, Jade was able to follow. Even though she and Taylor occasionally cast confused glances at each other, Darby’s random changes of topic were starting to make sense in some roundabout way.
Three days into her visit to Chammont Point, and Jade couldn’t quite believe she was sitting by the lake, discussing corn with two women who, for all intents and purposes, were strangers. Yet she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so at ease. There were no deadlines looming in her mind. She wasn’t panicked over balancing her day-to-day life with the aftereffects of chemotherapy. And, unless she let her mind wander, she wasn’t obsessing about Nick.
Sitting by the water with her new friends really did seem to have the calming effect Taylor told her it would. That should have been the first sign that her day was going to go to shit. The calm never seemed to stick around for long in Jade’s life. The phone in her lap rang, and her heart sank to her stomach when Nick’s name flashed on the screen. She hadn’t spoken to him in two days. Even if she’d wanted to, she hadn’t trusted herself to not make a bigger mess of things. Her emotions were a roller coaster peaking with all-consuming rage and then plummeting to bouts of crying and confusion, only to slowly start the rise again.
Jade wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not, but Darby and Taylor had done a great job at keeping her distracted. Whenever depression started nagging at her, Darby said or did something ridiculous or Taylor started talking about what she might do next. Darby sold her clothes online and suggested Taylor find something she could sell. Taylor didn’t think she had the skillset for that, but Darby insisted she had a million ideas for how to make money that didn’t involve what most people would consider a “real” job, and she would help Taylor find her niche.
That had led into a long discussion of all the various jobs Darby had held over the years and even more laughs at her colorful stories. Jade’s mind was never on Nick for too long thanks to their constant companionship.
That couldn’t save her now, though. The second ring filled her ears, combating with the thumping of her heartbeat.
“It’s my husband,” she said numbly to Darby and Taylor.
“What do you think he wants?” Taylor asked with a sharp edge to her voice that seemed excessively protective given they’d just met a few days prior.
“I don’t know,” Jade said, and part of her didn’t want to know.
“I don’t know,” Jade said again. “I guess I have to.”
“Actually, you don’t,” Darby said.
The fourth ring.
“It could be about the kids,” Jade said. “I should answer it.”
The muscles in Taylor’s jaw clenched for a moment. “You don’t take him back without sufficient begging. He broke your heart.”
Jade offered her a soft smile. “Somehow I don’t think he’s calling to tell me he’s changed his mind.”
Darby offered her a weak smile as she stood. “We’ll be close in case you need something.”
“Thanks.” Jade drew a deep breath for courage before answering his call on the fifth ring, the last one before her voice mail would have picked up. “Hey.”
“Hey,” he responded, sounding just as uncertain as she felt. “How…how are you?”
Jade ground her teeth so the sarcastic response didn’t leave her and ran through the other possible answers.
Fine? But she wasn’t.
Okay? Nope, that wasn’t true either.
Confused, hurt, and angry. Yeah, that was it. But she didn’t think she should say that for some reason. Probably because admitting how she was really doing wouldn’t do anything to change the outcome. His leaving was inevitable. Apparently, it had been for a long time.
So why did it matter how she was doing? Why did it matter that she felt weak and tired and depressed? Did he even care that she was mad as hell? He was doing this to her when she’d barely gotten her body on the right track. Did he really care that she was a mess? Probably not.
“How’s the leg?” he continued.
Jade lowered her face and pressed her fingertips into her forehead. “Small talk, Nick? Really?”
Nick exhaled slowly, as he did when he was nervous. “Look, I don’t like how we left things. You were so angry.”
“Oh, gee. I’m sorry.” She instantly regretted the snark. She wanted them to have an actual conversation, and they couldn’t do that if she didn’t contain her anger.
“I was caught off guard the other night,” Nick said.
“Yeah,” she said, forcing away the bite from her words, “so was I.”
“I’m sorry about that, Jade. I really am,” he said. “Amber felt terrible.”
“Oh, I’m really sorry I upset Amber.” Saying the other woman’s name made Jade’s stomach turn and her throat tighten. Jade hadn’t even considered that she hadn’t known the other woman’s name. As many times as she’d caught herself wondering how much time that woman may have spent in her house, in her bed, with her husband, she hadn’t once wondered what the bitch’s name was.
She hadn’t wanted to know.
Jade dug her toes in the sand and watched her bright blue nails disappear. In an attempt to cheer her up, Darby had carried over an entire mani-pedi set to Jade’s living room early that morning. Resistance was futile. No matter how much she’d tried to avoid the pampering, Darby had insisted a new nail color would change her outlook. Once her nails were electric blue with little white bubbles drawn on them, Darby had used a curling iron and more hair spray than any one person needed to add volume to Jade’s hair.
Darby had been right. By the time Jade’s nails had dried and her hair was poofed up, she’d felt better than she had in days. However, she suspected that was Darby’s nonstop chatter about her various careers, women who had vexed her, and all the other ramblings that took Jade’s mind off Nick.
“I meant…” Nick continued. “Neither of us wanted to hurt you, Jade. We wanted to make this as easy as possible for you.”
Her eyes started to fill with tears. “You knew I was going to be blindsided by this.”
“I did,” he said softly. “I wanted the conversation to be more thought-out. I wanted to have a clearer mind on what I needed to say to you so this was easier for both of us. I wasn’t prepared to face you yet, and I didn’t handle it as well as I’d hoped I would. I’m so sorry. I saw how hurt you were and… I should have been more prepared.”
What was she supposed to say to that? Was she supposed to apologize for screwing up his plans to break her heart gently? This was on him, and she wasn’t going to let him make her feel guilty it didn’t go according to his lousy plans.
“Are you even going to give me a chance to fix us?” she asked, hating how weak her voice sounded.
He was quiet for too long before saying, “We were together for a long time. We had a really good run, but it didn’t work out, Jade. I don’t want to fix this. I want to move on.”
“You gave up without talking through this with me first. You decided that our marriage is over without even talking to me. This isn’t fair to me, Nick. This isn’t fair to our kids. We’re a family.” Up until that moment, until she’d spoken of their children, the feeling of raw desperation had been something buried deep beneath her anger and shock and betrayal. Until she reminded him about Xander and Owen, she hadn’t allowed herself to fully feel the impact Nick’s decision was going to have on all of them. “You’re tearing us apart, and you never even gave me a chance.”
“Jade,” he said softly, “look at what we’ve been through in the last year. If my heart was going to change, it would have when you were sick. It didn’t.”
The fist around her heart tightened. “This isn’t just about us,” she said. “What about the kids?”
“They’re grown.”
“So it’s okay to rip our family apart because they aren’t little anymore?”
“I stayed longer than I wanted to,” Nick said. “I stayed for Owen to finish school, and then I stayed to help you get healthy. But I have to leave for me.”
His words were the final blow her heart could take. She pulled her sunglasses off and dropped them into her lap so she could press her hand against her face as her tears started. She did her best not to sob, but emotion churned in her chest until it forced its way out.
“I didn’t want you to find out like you did,” he said, “but there was never going to be a right way to tell you. I hate how much this is hurting you, but I don’t know how to stop that.”
“You’ve known for a while that you were going to leave me, Nick. You’ve had a long time to process what you were doing. Please don’t act like this is painful for you.”
“It is,” he whispered. “It’s not the same, but it’s hurting me because it’s hurting you and I don’t want that. But I can’t stop it. I hate that I can’t make it easier for you. I don’t want this to be harder than it has to be, Jade.”
She sniffed and forced herself to swallow hard. “Look, divorce is permanent. Maybe we should separate and—”
“No,” he stated. “I’ve thought about this for a long time.”
“You’ve made that clear, but I’ve only had a chance to think about it for two days, Nick. And I can’t wrap my head around why you are so adamant about ending things.” Reality punched her in the gut and stole her breath. “Are you in love with her?” she whispered.
His silence said what she didn’t want to know. Her husband was in love with someone else. Jade forced herself to swallow so she didn’t break down while he was on the phone to hear her.
“We grew apart a long time ago,” Nick said. “For years we’ve been friends living in the same house, raising the same kids, but not being together. Even when we were, we lived in two different worlds. I thought that was okay. I thought as long as we were happy, even if we rarely came into each other’s orbits, that was normal. It’s not. And it’s not what I want.”
“So why didn’t you tell me that? Why didn’t you give me a chance? You’re walking away from everything we’ve built together without even trying, Nick. Do you understand how unbelievably selfish you’re being right now?”
“I don’t want to go down this road.”
“What road?” she snapped. She hadn’t wanted to be angry, but damn it, he wasn’t being logical. He simply didn’t love he
r after all their years together? So that’s that. The end. Game over.
“You can be angry,” he said.
“I don’t need your permission.”
He sighed into the phone. “The fact you didn’t see how far apart we were says a lot about you, too, Jade. Your career—”
“Supported your business, paid for our kids to get braces, bought them a really nice house to grow up in, and is single-handedly paying for their education.” Her intention to be calm and reasonable ended. This was the one area where she wasn’t going to be blamed. They had made a decision together, years ago, that her job would be the financial backbone of their family unit. She wasn’t going to be chastised for the hard work she’d put into making that a reality.
“Was more important to you than I was,” he said. “And that started to take a toll.”
“A toll that could have been repaired if you’d had the courage to point it out.” She closed her eyes to stop another bout of tears from forming, but it was too late. Two streams fell from her eyes like a dam breaking. “I cannot believe you’re doing this.”
“Jade,” he said, sounding as if he were barely containing his frustration. “You worked hard, you brought home the bacon. I know that. I appreciated that. But that doesn’t make a marriage. We have a nice house, and the kids have straight teeth and are going to good schools. None of that means our marriage is good or solid. Or happy.”
“Maybe not, but those are things you tell your wife, Nick. You say that something is wrong and needs to change. You don’t decide one day that you want to leave without trying.”
“It wasn’t just one day. It built up over time until it was too big to ignore.”
“So why didn’t you say something?” Jade pressed yet again.
“Because you weren’t around to hear it,” he barked out.
“That is a piss-poor excuse for your unwillingness to save our marriage.”
“Maybe,” he said flatly, “but it’s enough for me. When are you coming home?”
Wiping her face and sniffling, she again scanned the lake. “I rented the cabin until Saturday.”