And One Last Thing...

by Молли Харпер

  I probably deserved much worse than that, so I took her bemused, exasperated tone with a grain of salt. “I may have gone a little too far, comparing Beebee to an Oompa Loompa,” I conceded. “I can’t say thinking had a lot to do with it. Mostly it was a reaction fueled by rage. Can I claim diminished mental capacity?”

  “Well, you certainly deserve it more than most of my clients, but I don’t think that would help. Professionally required scolding aside, I did think it was pretty funny. Just don’t ever, ever do it again. At least, don’t put your name on it, if you do. You’re just inviting threats to your legal/financial/physical health.”

  I handed her a file folder containing copies of Mike and Beebee’s e-mails and photos from Mike’s inbox. “It was just a onetime thing, I’m sure. Do you need me to sign something to that effect …?”

  Samantha quirked her lips. “I don’t think that will be necessary. Well, the good news is that there is precedence for judges, as in the case of the angry blogging ex-wife, to rule that these types of publications are protected by the First Amendment.”

  “That’s good!” I exclaimed, letting out a shaky, relieved breath.

  “Of course, in other cases, the courts have stated that these communications are inappropriate and the author should, in one judge’s words, ‘Shut the hell up and show some class.”

  “That’s bad.”

  She cleared her throat. “Now, on to the questions I ask every client: You need to decide how far you want to go. Do you want to get even? Do you want to recover some dignity? Or do you want to slink away and hope we can depend on the common sense of the court and win the defamation suit?”

  “Can I have some of column A and a little of column B? I don’t really want to skin him,” I admitted. “I just want what’s fair. Hell, half the stuff in that house, even the house, I don’t want it. I don’t want the condo. I don’t want the cars or the bass boat. And I could care less if he ends up paying me alimony. In fact, I don’t think I want monthly contact with him, even if it’s just through a check. I just want - I want enough to start over, to get on with my life.”

  Samantha smiled. “I take it you just happen to have detailed financial records for the entirety of your marriage?”

  “Um, no. I know this is going to sound pretty cliché, but Mike took care of all of our finances. He was an accountant. I trusted him. It just made sense at the time.”

  “Let me guess, when it came to loans, bills, and tax returns, you just signed where he told you to?”

  I nodded, staring at the twisting hands in my lap.

  “Don’t worry about the records, Lacey. The discovery process makes my clerk feel useful. The first thing we’re going to do is make sure that Mike’s house is in order, that there’s nothing illegal or unethical going on. And if he’s up to something illegal or unethical, we’ll do what we can to make sure you aren’t liable for any of it. Then we use it as leverage.”

  I chewed my lip as I considered that. “As much as I would relish the idea of Mike showering with his back against a prison wall, I don’t think you’re going to find anything but aboveboard business with Mike. He’s ambitious and materialistic, but also dull as a box of mud and straight as an arrow. Frankly, I didn’t think he had the guile to carry off an affair.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Samantha said.

  “I’d really rather not be surprised again,” I muttered.

  “The fun part is that we can ask for every piece of financial information Mike has handled since your wedding. You have every right to see it and searching for it will be a gigantic pain in the ass for Mike and his lawyer. And if you want to have some real fun, we can demand that every cent Mike spent ‘entertaining’ Beebee be paid back to the marital pot. We might even get the judge to consider her salary part of his maintenance of the affair. We’ll have my associate go over every receipt and credit card charge, pick out all expenditures, like two thousand dollars spent at a jewelry store or three days at a resort. If you don’t remember getting a diamond anklet or a weekend getaway in Hot Springs, then we assume that Mike spent that money on Beebee, and not, say, his mom.”

  “Yes, let’s do that, please. But you should know his mom is also a strong possibility.”

  “Ew.”

  I nodded. “Exactly.”

  We talked for another hour or so and I found it oddly therapeutic, even if Samantha mostly kept her head down to take a copious amount of notes. She nodded. She grunted. She occasionally muttered something in Latin.

  We finally came to the subject of the newsletter, how I’d found the information, how I’d written it. When I told her I’d forwarded the actual messages to my account, her smile was a mile wide. Samantha assured me that even if Mike had deleted the e-mails from his account, that her forensic computer analyst would be able to prove the messages were sent from Mike’s IP address at work, where I didn’t have access.

  Sammy went on to explain that the lawsuit would be handled separately, but she would handle both cases. Apparently, in the course of her divorce court experience, she’d handled quite a few defamation suits - which made me feel a little bit better. She assured me that as long as information in the newsletter was proven to be true, there was nothing the court could do to prevent the publication or punish the author.

  “We shouldn’t have a problem then, because it was all true,” I told her. “Everything I wrote was based on finding those e-mails. Wouldn’t the pictures alone be enough to just cancel this whole lawsuit thing?”

  “Well, no, you would have to respond to the suit either way, particularly since Mike and Beebee’s complaint states that the e-mails were spam and Mike has no idea who they’re from. They’re claiming that the woman in the photos isn’t Beebee, that this is a horrible case of a nosy wife who found bad information while snooping and wreaked havoc with it. They’re saying you’ve defamed both of their characters, have damaged Mike’s reputation/ earning potential, and harmed Beebee’s standing in the community.”

  “Oh, what standing in the community?” I snorted. I opened the file folder with the e-mailed photos. “Besides, you can tell it’s Beebee, just look at this…”

  I sifted through the photos, tamping down the flare of rage ignited by seeing them again. But as I thumbed through, I realized that none of the pictures showed Beebee’s face. I gasped. How could I not have realized that I never saw her face?

  “Crap,” I moaned.

  “Exactly,” she said. “These pictures are more anatomical in nature.”

  There were no face shots.

  “He’s going to win, isn’t he?” I sat back, deflated. For the first time, I realized that as scared as I was, up until that moment I sincerely believed that I was going to come out of this unscathed. My marriage couldn’t be saved, obviously, but I honestly thought I would be able to emerge from this ordeal able to carry on a normal, productive, not-working-as-a-french-fry-technician life. I wasn’t aware I was even capable of that kind of optimism, so I wasn’t willing to let it die just yet. “Wait!” I snatched up one of the pictures. “Look! The bumblebee tattoo. Beebee has a bumblebee tattoo on her inner thigh. Can you subpoena her thigh?”

  “Not as part of the divorce action, but to defend you from the lawsuit, yes. We can ask for an inspection of her thighs as proof of identity,” Sam said, examining the photo. “That’s a good catch on the tattoo. Even if she tried to remove it before the suit goes to court, it would still show up.

  “But for now, do me a favor,” she said. “From this point on we need you to appear to be the brokenhearted discarded wife, not the angry, possibly crazy, woman scorned. Do not discuss the newsletter with large groups of people. If you see Mike or Beebee in public, do not cause an ugly scene. Do not call, e-mail, write letters to, or otherwise contact Mike or Beebee without contacting me first to see if it’s a good idea. When you do appear in public, try to look sort of, well, beaten and tragic.”

  “That shouldn’t be difficult, thank you.”

  “
In fact, if you’re comfortable with therapy, you might start seeing a counselor,” she suggested. “It will help establish the psychological trauma Mike has inflicted on you. Since you obviously enjoy writing, it would also help if you started a journal to document your hellish, slow recovery from said trauma. How is your current financial situation? How are you getting by day to day?”

  I shrugged. “Actually, it’s okay. I don’t have a lot of living expenses. I’m staying with my parents, which I don’t think can last much longer. I’ll probably have to find an apartment soon. But I have a little savings cushion. If the case drags out, I have some investments I can cash in if I need to.”

  “I’ll be honest, you’re probably going to need to,” she told me, pinning me with those frank seawater eyes. “It all depends on how contentious negotiations are going to be. And I doubt Mike is going to be forthcoming or cooperative with us. I’ve had some cases that only took sixty days. Then again, I’m still involved in negotiating a canine custody agreement that has dragged a divorce settlement out for almost three years.”

  “Canine custody agreement?”

  “Both parties want sole custody of Bobo the Pomeranian. Lacey, I can’t say that your literary aspirations are going to help us in court because some judges around here are pretty old school. But I have to tell you, I thought it took a huge pair of Spaldings. A lot of the people who come through that door are just so caught up in being a victim that they can’t see straight. It’s part of the job, but it’s pretty damned annoying. It’s refreshing to meet someone who’s not helpless. You are not what I expected.”

  “You’re not what I expected either, Ms. Shackleton.” I rose and shook her hand.

  “i you need anything, you call me.”

  “By that, do you mean, ‘It’s eleven p.m. and I just need to talk’ or ‘It’s three am. and I need bail money’?” I asked.

  Samantha grinned. “Urn, neither of those.”

  “Fair enough.” I nodded.

  “You’re going to be one of those ‘interesting’ clients, aren’t you?”

  I arched a brow at her. “You’re just now figuring that out?”

  8

  Doubly Screwed by the Fourth Estate

  It was starting to feel crowded at the old home place.

  Daddy returned from his reunion a few days after Mama and he was less thrilled to have one of the baby birds back in his empty nest. Other than repeated inquiries as to whether I would need extra boxes when I moved out, he refused to discuss anything with me. If I came into a room, he left it. If I happened to catch him long enough to ask him a question, he answered it in as few syllables as possible. I’m pretty sure the only reason he ate at the same table as me was that Mama refused to serve his meals anywhere else. Daddy was smart enough to know he couldn’t survive on his own cooking.

  Daddy was never what you’d call a hands-on father, but he’d never been so distant. When he was disappointed in us, his usual MO was to tell Mama and have her relay the message. Even when Emmett finally, quietly, came out to my parents, Daddy told Mama to tell my brother to be careful. And that was about it.

  Daddy seemed to be employing more of a scorched earth policy these days. I think he believed if he made the situation uncomfortable enough, I would give up this whole silly divorce and go back to my own house. He was particularly irritated by the way Mama had managed to insulate me from the phone calls, the insistent visitors, Wynnie’s repeated efforts to talk some sense into me.

  “You’ve got to quit coddling the girl,” I heard him grumble through their bedroom door on one of my nightly wanderings around the house. “She needs to face her own music. Personally, I don’t blame Wynnie and Jim for being pissed. Or Mike. Do you know what kind of jokes they’re making about Mike and Beebee down at the golf course? And Lacey? I just don’t understand what was going through her head when she did this. We didn’t raise her to -”

  “To what?” Mama demanded. “To stand up for herself?”

  “To make a damn fool out of herself,” Daddy countered. “How would you feel if somebody wrote this sort of thing about one of our kids, Deb?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Mama hissed. “And our kids wouldn’t be sleazy enough to cheat.”

  “Well, if Emmett does cheat, he’d better not tell Lacey about it; God knows what she’d do.”

  “Walt, are you upset because you’re embarrassed or because you want her out of the house?”

  “Well, she’s never going to leave if you keep stuffing her with pancakes and grilled cheese sandwiches!” he cried.

  “Oh, she’s not even eating them,” Mama said. “She doesn’t eat anything. She doesn’t sleep. She just wanders around the house all night, which is why you should keep your voice down!”

  I backed away from the door. I didn’t want to hear any more. I was going to have to leave the house, soon. Besides the loser factor, I couldn’t stay at my parents’ house, causing tension and problems for the two of them. There were enough failed marriages in our family.

  As I watched my parents’ marriage from a newly enlightened adult perspective, I noticed little things about them I hadn’t before. Little things, like when my dad got my morn a glass of water, he ran the tap for a while, to make sure he was getting her the coldest, least faucet-tasting water possible. Mike used to just stick a glass under the tap.

  My parents had that something. Something Mike and I didn’t have. I didn’t know what it was and that was what was driving me insane. I’m not going to say Mike was a total monster. I mean, there was the year that he got me an air purifier for my birthday, but only because I’d mentioned that the infomercial was interesting. I shared some blame in that. We had no connection. No dependence on each other, no real intimacy. We started dating in high school because we ran in the same circles and our parents approved. We got married because that was what you were supposed to do when you’d been dating for a while and were graduating college. It seemed like the next step and we couldn’t think of a better one.

  There were things I didn’t expect, a rush of longing when I smelled Tide detergent, a scent that would forever remind me of Mike’s shirts. Not having someone to rub my cold feet against under the covers. Someone to eat my pizza crusts, which I always left behind and Mike called the “pizza bones.” But I think these were signs that I needed a roommate, not Mike. Or maybe a neutered cat.

  Yes, Daddy drove Mama nuts with his constant need to be around his stupid adolescent college buddies. But reconnecting, nay, dwelling, on his past kept Daddy happy. And that made Mama happy.

  She compromised, she didn’t settle.

  I woke up the next morning to find that my car had been towed. Mike had removed my name from the title more than a year before and I just hadn’t noticed. When I called the county clerk’s office to try to order a copy of the title paperwork, I found that Mike had also managed to cut off my American Express, my Visa, and my MasterCard. I was still on the phone with MasterCard when Mama came into the kitchen wearing a bathrobe, staring in horror at the morning edition of the Singletree Gazette.

  She turned the front page toward me so I could read the headline, “Scorned Local Woman Sued for Scathing E-Mail.”

  “Oh… no,” I groaned, dropping the phone on its cradle.

  Reporter Danny Plum, whose byline hovered over my own personal nightmare, was an industrious little bastard. He’d found the bridal portrait we’d included with our wedding announcement years before in the newspaper archives. It was front and center, just under a smaller subhead reading “Widely Forwarded Anti-Adultery Missive Sparks Divorce, Community Debate.”

  Mama’s face was as white as the newsprint. “Baby, I didn’t mean it. I didn’t know he was writing it down. I’m so sorry.”

  I took the paper from her shaking hands. “Unable to return to her marital home, Mrs. Terwilliger is reportedly staying with her parents, rarely leaving the house except to consult her attorney, Samantha Shackleton.” I read aloud. “When contacted by the Gaze
tte, Mrs. Terwilliger’s mother, Deb Vernon, insisted that many wronged wives would follow in her daughter’s footsteps, ‘if they thought of it.’

  “Everybody thinks Lacey’s gone crazy, but that’s not true.

  She knew what she was doing,’ Mrs. Vernon said in a phone interview. ‘She was just pushed too far. And yes, she overreacted a little bit. It happens to the best of us, but I don’t want to comment. Of course, if Mike didn’t want to be publicly embarrassed, he shouldn’t have run around town chasing some hussy like his pants were on fire … but I don’t want to comment. I just wish people would mind their own business. Really, I have nothing to say.”

  My mother cringed as I made a sound somewhere between a groan and call of a dying crane.

  “I declined comment! Declined!” she cried. “And he’s twisting what I did say all around! I’m going to strangle that little weasel reporter!”

  I picked up the ringing phone without thinking about who could be calling. Samantha’s voice, frustrated and weary, came through the receiver. “I know I didn’t specifically tell you not to have your mama defend you to the press, but I thought I made it clear that you needed to keep a low profile.”

  “Mama says she declined comment,” I told her, giving Mama an exasperated look.

  “Did she say ‘off the record’?” Samantha asked. “Those are the magic words. Unless she said, ‘off the record,’ anything she said, even in passing conversation while she was declining comment, can be quoted. You should know this stuff. I thought you had a background in journalism.”

  “Yeah, the ethical kind, where reporters don’t screw people over when they say they’re not interested in being quoted. She didn’t mean it, Sam. Mama couldn’t stop him from writing a story, but she wasn’t trying to make it any worse. Of course, it would have been helpful if she had told me she talked to a reporter in the first place.”

  “I didn’t want to upset you,” Mama whispered. “I was trying to screen your calls!”

  “Why would they want to write about a divorce case in the first place?” I asked. “Don’t I have the right to privacy?”