Wife-in-Law

by Haywood Smith

  Kat nodded. “I’m glad. He talked to me for a long time today. He really wants to get his life turned around.”

  Typical. His best friend just died, and he bends Kat’s ear about himself. “For the girls’ sake, I hope he does.”

  Greg’s behavior would speak far louder than anything he said. If he’d reformed, we’d see it. If not, nothing lost, nothing gained.

  Noting my skepticism, Kat added, “This really hit him hard, Betsy.”

  This was no time to discuss Greg’s egotism, so I responded, “It hit us all hard.” I turned to go. “Call if you need anything. I’m right across the street.”

  Kat hesitated briefly. “I think we could all do with a few days’ rest.” It was her way of letting me know she wanted some space, and time alone with her children.

  “Sounds good to me.” The real work would start when Little Zach and Sada went back to their lives, leaving Kat alone in that big house while the rest of the world went right on spinning. I’d be there for her then.

  Little Zach … Now that his father was gone, we’d have to stop calling him that.

  I got home to find that Greg and the kids had already left for ice cream, so I started making supper. I had just put a roast in the oven when I heard a car pull up, then the sound of Macy’s laughter. I went to the door and opened it, only to find Greg standing there with a vanilla ice cream sundae from Bruster’s in his hand, all hot fudge topping, with no cherries, just like I liked it. “Hi. I brought you a treat.”

  Macy raced past us as I accepted it. I stepped back to let Amelia and Sonny in.

  Sonny clapped Greg’s back. “Thanks for the ice cream, Granddaddy. See you tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow?

  He bent to chase Macy. “C’mere, you! It’s time for somebody to have a nap.”

  Carrying placid Madison, Amelia trailed her fingers across my shoulder as she passed. “We’re going to breakfast, then the children’s museum. You sleep in. You’ve earned it.”

  She shot a look at her father, then at me, and went into the guest room, closing the door behind her.

  Left alone with Greg on my doorstep, I felt excruciatingly awkward, but some stubborn part of me kept me from asking him in.

  “Is it okay if I come in?” he asked with a tentativeness I didn’t recognize.

  Since he’d given me the house, I decided it would be too rude to say no. “Just for a minute.”

  He stepped inside, then closed the door behind him. Glancing around, he said, “You know, I never appreciated this the way I should have.” He looked at me with intensity. “I never appreciated you the way I should have.”

  Two years ago, I’d have killed to hear those words, but now, they just made me wonder what he was after.

  He looked down at his feet. “Betsy, I’m so sorry for what happened.”

  Not what he did, what happened, like having an earthquake open up the ground and swallow him, instead of choosing to throw me away.

  He ventured a glance at my face. “It didn’t take long for me to realize what a horrible mistake it all was.”

  Translation: his secretary wouldn’t wait on him hand and foot the way I had. I took perverse satisfaction in that.

  His voice was hoarse when he said, “It’s so lonely on my own.”

  I met his eyes with a confidence born in the ashes of what I’d lost, and for the first time, I saw him for the man he was, his strengths balanced by very human flaws, just like me. Just like everybody else in this crazy world.

  Mistaking my acceptance for encouragement, he ventured, “Do you think there’s a chance … Do you think you could ever forgive me?”

  I shook my head, feeling pity for him. “I did that a long time ago, Greg, for my own survival. I couldn’t have healed if I didn’t.”

  He brightened. “’Cause I’d like to see you, if that’s okay. Start over. Give it another chance.”

  To my awe and amazement, I wasn’t even tempted. It felt so wonderful.

  In that moment of insight, I realized that I had helped make him the spoiled, self-centered man he was, but I wasn’t stupid enough to sell myself back into his service. I truly felt sorry for the guy. “Greg, for the girls’ sake, it would be nice for us to be on friendly terms. I’d like that. But I can’t see you anymore.”

  I didn’t even feel compelled to explain!

  “I swear,” he said, “I’ve changed.”

  “So have I.” Thank God, thank God. “Greg, you deserve to be loved for who you are. I hope you find that. But I’m very happy on my own now, and I don’t want to complicate things with a relationship—with anybody.”

  I could tell he was shocked. He’d probably thought I would fall into his arms and beg him to come home.

  Men.

  I could see the wheels turning in his brain. “Okay, friends, then,” he said. “We could see each other as friends.”

  Translation: “I’ll wear her down.”

  I took Greg’s arm and steered him toward the door. “Time to go. I’ll see you tomorrow when ya’ll get back from the museum.”

  Greg hadn’t gotten as far as he’d gotten by giving up. “Come with us. It’s not a date. Just family time.”

  I opened the door and steered him toward the porch. “Go home. I’m exhausted. Or have you forgotten? We buried your best friend today.”

  “I haven’t,” he said. “And I don’t have a home to go to, just a house, with nobody there.”

  The world’s smallest violin played “Hearts and Flowers,” but I couldn’t blame him for trying. “Nice to see you. Bye.”

  To my horror, he spun around and took my face in his hands, drawing me hard against him the way Richard Gere grabbed Guinevere in First Knight, one of my favorite movies. Then he planted a foul, demanding kiss on me, his tongue trying to part my tightly closed lips.

  Gross!

  Instinct told me to knee him in the groin, but a deeper wisdom sent me absolutely inert, teeth locked behind compressed lips and arms rigid at my sides.

  It took a few seconds for him to realize the siege hadn’t worked. He let me go and stepped back. “Sorry. I … I just miss you so much, and I wanted to … sorry.”

  It was pretty funny, actually. “Had to try that, did you?” I asked, deadpan.

  Greg smiled like a kid caught with his fingers in his mother’s wallet. “I thought …”

  I put my splayed hand on his chest and shoved him out the door. “Well, now that you know, go forth and find somebody to love. With your money, that shouldn’t be hard. Good luck, and good night.”

  He stood there in dismay as I closed and locked the door, then armed the alarm. “Good night!” I repeated through the door.

  And it had been a good one. A very good one. No more ghosts hovered on the corners of my heart or my house.

  Greg would find somebody else to take care of him.

  I just never in a million years imagined it would be Kat.

  Eighteen

  Three years ago. Eden Lake Court

  A week after I got home from visiting Amelia in California, my phone scared me awake at one o’clock in the morning. Fearing the worst, I groped for the cordless receiver on my bedside table, then fumbled with the buttons in the dark.

  I hit the red one instead of the green one, and the ringing stopped.

  Rats. Who’d be calling me at this hour, and why?

  I sat up and turned on the two-fifty bulb in my bedside lamp, blinding me as I squinted down at the bedside table and poked around for my reading glasses amid the cable remote, my night cream, the ceiling fan control, my lip balm, and my bedtime pill minder. I found them hiding under the TV listings from the paper. By the time I got my glasses on and looked to see who’d called, the phone rang again in my hand, jarring me so, I almost dropped it. This time I hit the green button and answered with an anxious, “Hello?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me he was getting married?” Mama’s voice accused.

  “Lord, Mama, you scared me half to death. It’s
one o’clock in the morning!”

  “Well, it’s only ten in L.A. where Amelia lives.” Mama scolded. “She just called me and spilled the beans. So that sorry ex of yours has taken up with that hippie girl, right across the street, in your face. I’d scratch the bitch’s eyes out. And his.”

  This was why I hadn’t told her. I’d never hear the end of it. I didn’t respond.

  “According to Amelia, this has been going on for months,” Mama accused. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Mama, that’s none of my business anymore. I’ve told you a hundred times, I’m over Greg. What he does and who he sees is none of my business.”

  “That’s the biggest load of hogwash I’ve ever heard of in my life,” Mama countered. “Why in God’s good green earth would that woman want anything to do with him, in the first place? She has to know how many assets he hid from the courts during your divorce. The man’s nothing but a liar and a cheat.”

  “No, Mama,” I countered, amazed to find myself taking up for Greg. “He lied and he cheated, but that’s not all he is. He was a wonderful husband to me for more than twenty years, and a great father to the girls. What he did when we broke up doesn’t erase that.”

  “Blah, blah, blah,” Mama responded. “You might be able to put that baloney over on the girls, but this is Mama. I don’t buy it.”

  Fuming, I told her, “Greg made a big, fat, wretched mistake that ruined things between us, but that doesn’t define him. I loved him once, so it makes sense that somebody else might love him too.” I meant that, but it came out sounding hollow, even to me.

  “That hippie girl has betrayed you,” Mama accused for the jillionth time.

  Mama had only met Kat twice, and briefly, decades ago when Kat had ridden with me on my food runs. Mama had been so rude both times that Kat had avoided her ever since, staying in the car whenever she’d accompanied me after that.

  Mama’s harangue went on. “She never has been worthy of your friendship. Havin’ you arrested. Goin’ around lookin’ like some old washerwoman who just fell out of a hayloft.”

  “Mama, if you start in on Kat again,” I warned, “I’m going to hang up and unplug the phone for three days. I mean it.”

  A disgruntled pause followed, then, “Well, if you ask me, it’s adding insult to injury, them living there across the street in sin.”

  “Mama,” I scolded.

  “And that wedding. Of all the places in all the world, they’re getting married there?” Mama let out a derisive snort. “I can’t believe they’re rubbing your nose in it that way.”

  That did it. Miserable, I hung up, then unplugged the phone and turned off the light. Flouncing back under the sheet, I tried to shoo away the hurt and anger that had bloomed inside me, but Mama had laid the situation out straight, and her resentment was contagious.

  Maybe they were rubbing my nose in it, but seeing it that way would only make me miserable, and I had no intention of letting that happen.

  After ten minutes of tossing and fretting, I got up and went to the bathroom, then took five milligrams of Ambien. On further consideration, I took another five milligrams, then drank a cold bottle of water from the white minifridge on the far side of the bed, and promptly fell asleep.

  As I began to come back from the depths of oblivion the next morning, I dreamed that Kat and I were in her kitchen, both of us wearing the wedding rings Greg had bought us, arguing with him over some awful, elusive thing. In the safety of my dream, I finally felt the anger I hadn’t allowed myself when he’d betrayed me. As Greg screamed at me, blaming me for everything he had done, I surrendered to my fury for a terrifying, exhilarating ride, and Kat was riding with me.

  Then, without warning, Kat turned and stabbed Greg right in the stomach, releasing a fire hose of blood. Eyes and mouth open wide in surprise, Greg looked at the life spurting from him, then toppled like a fifty-foot pine. Shocked, yet eerily calm, I bent to find his pulse, but there was none. And the awful thing was, that made me happy.

  Kat dropped the knife, then hugged me hard, repeating, “It’s over. It’s over. It’s over.” A tidal wave of relief brought me awake.

  Then, immediately, guilt and practicality pounced on me.

  Horrible, to wish such a thing on the father of my children. And stupid, to be glad Greg was dead.

  Greg carried a shipload of life insurance, but he’d told Emma that Kat was the beneficiary now. So if he died, Kat would be sitting pretty, and I’d be left high and dry—since his pension had gone with the wind, along with Arthur Andersen—with just half his Social Security to keep up my house and sky-high taxes. Not a happy prospect.

  Since the divorce, I’d supplemented my alimony by doing makeovers for business types and special occasions, but I could never live, even modestly, on what that brought in.

  So I definitely didn’t want Greg dead. I needed him alive and paying alimony.

  Just not across the street.

  Three years ago, the third Saturday in July. Eden Lake Court

  The day of the wedding dawned clear, but as hot and muggy as the butterfly house at the botanical gardens. Emma was still sleeping when I went down to the mailbox at eight to get my paper before breakfast. Three steps into the humidity, I felt perspiration coat my whole body like a soggy blanket. The weatherman said it was the hottest decade in recorded history, and I believed it.

  How had I managed, growing up in heat like this without air-conditioning?

  I remembered taking off my nightgown as a child and standing in front of the roaring box fan in my window, the night air like an oven as it blew past me. Mama wouldn’t run the attic fan, because it sucked up the bills and junk mail that were lying all over everything stacked in the hallway.

  Just thinking about it gave me a hot flash.

  Grateful that I didn’t have to go back to that life, I hurried into the house and splashed cold water on my face, then wiped my arms and neck with a cool, damp paper towel. Outside, I heard the roar and jingle of a truck, and looked out the sidelight in the foyer to see a lawn crew pull up and start cutting my grass.

  Guess Greg didn’t want anybody thinking I wasn’t well provided for.

  Worked for me.

  Happy to have it done, I made the coffee, then fixed my usual breakfast: three pieces of bacon microwaved inside thick paper towels till it was crisp and dry, and three scrambled eggs with just a little water and margarine. I’d been doing low-carb to get rid of the pounds I’d gained in L.A., and I was almost back down to a bearable weight of 150. With my height and big bones, I looked almost slim at that weight—if I dressed very carefully, which I always did, even when I was just home by myself.

  The truth was, I was afraid not to. Sure as I let myself go, some rich, gorgeous, caring unattached male would turn up on my doorstep, and there I’d be, looking like the Wicked Witch of the West. Plus, image was my business. I had to look my best.

  At the sound of air brakes out in the cul-de-sac, I left my halfeaten eggs and looked out to see an Aaron Rents truck pull into Kat’s driveway and start unloading white-slip-covered gilt chairs for the wedding. And unloading. And unloading.

  How many people had they asked to this thing, anyway?

  Not that it mattered. I’d just be glad when it was all over and things settled down again.

  Pouring my Eight O’clock coffee, I wondered idly where Kat and Greg were going for their honeymoon. Greg took me to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, but he’d probably take Kat somewhere expensive and exotic. Not that I cared. At least they’d be gone for a while.

  A fleeting thought of arson flitted through my mind before guilt extinguished it.

  I had just settled down to finish my eggs and bacon when my phone rang.

  I looked at my watch. Eight-thirty.

  Probably Mama.

  Rats.

  I considered not answering, but got up and went for the receiver anyway. It might not be Mama. Maybe it was Kat, telling me she’d come to her senses.

  It wa
sn’t Kat; it was Amelia, calling at the wee hours in L.A.

  “Hey, honey,” I answered in a worried tone. “Is everything okay?”

  “Oh, Mama,” she said, her nose stopped up from crying. “I just can’t stand that Daddy’s doing this to you.”

  Oh, for heaven’s sake. “Sweetie, he’s not doing this to me. He’s doing it for himself. I’m glad he’s turned his life back around. He has a right to be happy.”

  “Not after what he did to you,” she said. Her tone dropped for a menacing, “I want him to suffer, the way he made you suffer.”

  I had to laugh. “Honey, you don’t mean that. He’s your father, and he loves you. And anyway, if I’m okay with this, why aren’t you?”

  “Because I know you’re not, not really,” she countered, “not down inside. You’re a one-man woman, just like me.”

  I didn’t want to tell her that I’d never felt the passion for her father that she felt for Sonny. “Sweetie, I am currently a no-man woman, which suits me absolutely fine. I wish I could convince you. Why won’t you believe me?”

  “Because I can’t stand for you to be so alone now, that’s why.” She blew her nose, but it didn’t help. “Why don’t you come here and live with us?”

  I heard a groggy, startled, “What? You said what?” from Sonny in the background, but Amelia ignored him.

  “I mean it, Mama. You could sell the house and make a new start. Prices here are better than they’ve been in decades. You could have a fabulous condo. It would be fun.”

  Not for me.

  I liked breathing, and I was too firmly rooted. “Sweetie, you know I can’t leave your grandmother.”

  “Well …” Amelia paused to consider, then resumed with a bright but stopped-up, “I know. We could find her a little place out here and fix it up really cute, then give her a Mickey Finn and keep her knocked out till she wakes up in her new house. Fly her by air ambulance.”

  Amelia, Amelia. She just didn’t get it.

  “Honey, she can’t leave her home or her things. It would destroy her. She’s too sick to make an adjustment like that.”