“How long will all that take?” Grace asked. “After next week, we’ve only got one week of divorce camp left. Then, Stackpole’s supposed to rule on my divorce. What if he finds out what we’re up to?”
“Leave that to me,” Mitzi said. “We’re going to gather every bit of documentation possible, and I can be very, very discreet and low-key.”
53
“Grace, can I speak with you privately for a minute?” Mitzi asked. Rochelle gave them a questioning look but retreated to the kitchen.
Mitzi lowered her voice. “How’s the condo coming along?”
Grace blinked. “Good. I went shopping Thursday and picked up a lot of things to bring in some color, since you’ve got so much white. I don’t want it to look too sterile. You’re going to have turquoise and lime green, and pops of tangerine…”
“How about the bed? I paid nearly two thousand dollars for that mattress, you know.”
Grace felt herself blushing and glanced toward the kitchen to make sure her mother was not within earshot. “The mattress is amazing. Totally.”
Mitzi smirked. “I just like knowing I’ve gotten my money’s worth.”
“Trust me,” Grace said. “You did.”
* * *
Wyatt pulled up in front of Luke Grigsby’s house shortly after ten. He’d averted his eyes as he passed his old house, just down the street. It pained him to see the smudged windows, the stack of yellowing plastic-wrapped newspapers at the edge of the driveway, and the forlorn tire swing hanging from a rotted rope tied to a spindly tree in the side yard. Mostly, it pained him to see the “Bank Owned: For Sale” sign in the weed-strewn front yard.
Losing the house to the bank, he realized, was probably more painful than losing Callie.
He glanced at the clock on the truck’s dashboard, then at Luke’s front door and, as always, felt the same familiar, simmering resentment replace his previously cheerful, even joyous, demeanor.
According to the written agreement they’d hashed out during their separation, Callie was supposed to deliver Bo to Jungle Jerry’s on the days Wyatt had custody. In reality, Wyatt usually ended up going to get his son on what he thought of as “hand-off days,” because Callie was rarely even remotely on time, which always made Bo anxious and agitated, afraid his mother would change her mind and refuse to allow him to see his father.
Wyatt tapped his fingers impatiently, the back of his wedding ring sounding a
ching-ching-ching
against the hard plastic of the steering wheel. He’d been sitting there for ten, then fifteen minutes. He was reluctant to tap his horn or even go to the front door, because the last person he wanted to see that day was his soon-to-be ex-wife.
He found his mind wandering back to the previous evening, and then this morning. He’d awakened early, as always, shortly after six. It was still dark outside, and Grace was sleeping on her side, faced away from him, moonlight silvering her slumbering form. The quilt had slipped from her bare shoulder. Carefully, he pulled it lower until her back was exposed. He marveled at the elegant curve of her spine, the way her soft brown hair spilled onto the pillow, the way her full hips flowed from her narrow waist. She had a tiny mole on her left shoulder; he could just barely see it. He’d pressed his lips to her shoulder, not really meaning to awaken her, but she’d turned, and seeing his face inches from hers, smiled lazily. He’d thought her beautiful the night before, but finding her like this, tousled and sleep-drunk, he decided she was the most exquisite woman he’d ever known.
The passenger-side door opened abruptly and Bo hopped onto the seat and slammed the door hard. He folded his arms across his chest and grunted. “Let’s go.”
His son’s face was set in anger, his eyes red-rimmed.
“Hey, dude,” Wyatt said cheerily. “Something wrong?”
“Mom’s really upset,” Bo said. “Some guy came over this morning and took her new car, and she’s been on the phone hollering and yelling at you know who. Can we just go now?”
What now?
Wyatt wondered. Callie’s car was a flashy red Mustang convertible. Bo told him Luke had given it to her for her birthday a few months earlier, complete with a vanity tag that read
HOTMAMA.
“Is your mom’s car not working?”
“No. I mean, yeah, it works good. We were asleep, and then I heard something outside and it was still dark, so I snuck out to the living room window to see if was like a burglar or something, and I saw this guy breaking into Mom’s car! I went in and woke her up and told her, and she went and got this like gun out of the dresser. Then she went running outside, but the guy was already inside her car. She was screaming at him to stop, but he just rolled the window down and threw a piece of paper at her, and then he peeled off down the street, going really fast.”
Uh-oh. Sounds like the repo man had paid a visit this morning. Mr. Bigshot must have missed a car payment. Or two.
Wyatt would have found it comical, except that witnessing the unpleasant scene had clearly upset the child.
“Well, I’m sure your mom will get it figured out,” Wyatt said for lack of anything better to say.
“She’s really, really mad at him,” Bo said. He gave his father a hopeful look. “Maybe she’ll change her mind and they won’t get married, and we won’t have to move to stinkin’ Alabama.”
Wyatt was about to pull away from the curb when out of the corner of his eye he saw Luke’s front door open. Callie stood in the doorway, dressed only in an oversized T-shirt that barely touched her thighs. Her hair was mussed and rivers of black mascara streamed down her cheeks.
“Wyatt!” she screamed. And then she came running toward the truck in her bare feet.
* * *
Bo’s eyes were the size of saucers. “Stay here,” Wyatt said. He jumped out of the truck and met Callie at the sidewalk. “They repossessed my Mustang,” she cried. “It’s gone! Luke swears he doesn’t know what happened, but I know he’s lying. He lied about everything.”
Callie threw herself into his arms. He closed them uneasily about her shoulder, turning to see that Bo was still in the truck, his eyes riveted to the unfolding scene.
“Shh,” Wyatt said, patting her shoulder. “It’s probably just a misunderstanding. Maybe the car payments got posted wrong or something.”
“No,” she sobbed. “Luke’s broke. He’s been lying all along. Oh my God, Wyatt. It was all just a big lie. What am I going to do?”
“Hey,” he said softly. “We’ll figure it out. Look, this is upsetting Bo. Why don’t you go inside and get dressed. Let me take him over to the park and get him settled with Dad; then I’ll give you a call and we can talk about it. Okay?”
“A call?” Her voice was wobbly. Snot trails dribbled down her face. “Can’t you come back here and talk? I could make us some coffee…”
“Not here,” Wyatt said, his spine stiffening. There was no way he was setting foot inside Luke Grigsby’s house again. Not ever.
“Oh,” she said. “I get it. Okay. I could come over to the park…”
“God no,” he replied. “You’re not exactly Dad’s favorite person these days, Callie.”
“That was all Luke’s idea,” she said quickly. “I never meant anything by it…”
Wyatt sighed. “I’ll meet you at Starbucks in an hour. Okay? But I can’t stay long.”
“All right,” she said. “Oh my God. This is all such a nightmare.”
For once, Wyatt thought bleakly, he’d have to agree with her.
54
Callie had managed a remarkable transformation in the hour since he’d last seen her. Her hair was now clean and shiny and pulled back in a ponytail, she had fresh makeup, and she was dressed in a low-cut pink top and tight white jeans. And, Wyatt noticed, as she clutched the mug of coffee he’d just brought to the table, she wasn’t wearing Luke’s flashy diamond engagement ring.
“Thanks for coming,” she said, her voice low. “I’m sorry I got all hysterical in front of Bo. That was bad. But everything happened so fast … I completely lost it.”
“He’s a sensitive kid,” Wyatt said. “I know it’s hard to do, but, for his sake, we really have to try to keep things on an even keel.”
“I know.” Callie nodded and took a sip of coffee. She gazed out the window at the parking lot. When she turned to look at him, her eyes were brimming with fresh tears.
“It’s over between me and Luke,” she said, her lower lip trembling. “And not just because of the car. Everything he told me? Everything he promised me? It was all just a big fat lie. He lost his job. There is no transfer to Birmingham. He just told me that because he assumed he’d get a new one with another company there. He’s known for three weeks now, and he never said a word. Just kept bullshitting me. About everything.” She held up her naked left hand. “My ring? Not real. Not even a good fake. And you know how I found out? I took it to the jewelry store in the mall yesterday, because I wanted to have it sized, and the girl behind the counter actually laughed at me when she saw it. It’s a friggin’ cubic zirconia.”
Wyatt winced. “Did you ask Luke about that?”
“Yes. Of course, he had all these bullshit excuses. He tried to tell me he gave me a fake ring because he was having the real one custom-made, and it wasn’t ready yet. He’s got lies and excuses for everything.”
“Geez. I’m sorry, Callie.”
“Not as sorry as me,” she said bitterly. “What do I do now? I can’t stay with him. I won’t. I told him that this morning. I can’t marry a liar.”
“What’ll you do?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I have no idea. I just know I won’t stay under the same roof with him. Not another night. I can’t have Bo exposed to somebody like that.”
“Well, of course, Bo can stay with Dad and me for as long as you need him to. But where will you go?”
“Good question. I don’t exactly have a lot of options. Most of my girlfriends? As far as they’re concerned, I’m the slut who cheated on her husband. They all made it pretty clear they couldn’t stand Luke.”
“What about your family?”
“Ha! My parents are barely speaking to me since our breakup. They always thought you walked on water, Wyatt. Anyway, I’m not about to move back to South Carolina. What would I do there? Get a job selling made-in-China sombreros at South of the Border? Anyway, Bo would hate it there. And the schools suck.”
You didn’t care what Bo thought about Birmingham when you thought you and Luke were moving there,
Luke thought.
“What about Kendra?” he asked.
Her lips twisted. “My baby sister is just itching to get a chance to say, ‘I told you so.’ She never liked Luke, either. Guess maybe I should have polled all my friends and family before falling in love with him and ruining my life, huh?”
Funny how it didn’t occur to Callie that she wasn’t the only one affected by her affair with Luke Grigsby. She probably just considered her husband and son as collateral damage.
“You’ve always gotten along with Kendra. Surely she wouldn’t turn you away, right? Until you get things figured out?”
“Maybe.” Callie didn’t sound convinced. She grabbed a paper napkin from the stack Wyatt had brought to the table and used it to blot her eyes.
“Oh God, Wy,” she whispered. “How could this have happened? You were the best thing that ever happened to me. And I let you walk away. Can you ever forgive me?”
Wyatt twisted his own paper napkin into a tightly wound ribbon. “What’s done is done.”
What does she want from me?
he wondered. “You just need to figure out how to get your life back on track, with the least amount of disruption to Bo. He’s had more than enough of that in the last year.”
“I know, I know,” Callie agreed. “I’ll call Kendra right now. I can probably stay with her for tonight, at least.”
“What about a car?” Wyatt asked.
“That bastard Luke traded my Civic in when he got the Mustang,” Callie said. “I drove his old Jeep over here. And he’s crazy if he thinks I’ll give it back. He owes me. Big-time.”
“At least that’s something,” he said. “Look, Callie. I’m sorry, but I really need to get back to the park. We’ve got a group of thirty kids coming in with a day camp in an hour, and they’re expecting a guided tour and a performance from Cookie.”
“I know you’re busy,” Callie said. “You don’t have time for my soap opera. Go on. I’m just going to sit here for a while and try to get my wits about me before I go back to Luke’s and start packing up my stuff.”
He hesitated. “So … we’ll plan on keeping Bo at the park, at least through the weekend. Is that okay with you?”
“Sure,” she said, shrugging. “What are you going to tell him? About Luke and me?”
“Nothing,” Wyatt said. “I’ll leave that to you to figure out. You should probably call him later today, when you’re calmer. You don’t have to tell him the gory details yet. Just let him know you’re okay.”
Callie reached across the table and squeezed his hand, clinging to him. “I will. And I won’t cry anymore. Not in front of him, anyway. Thanks, Wy.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, slowly sliding his hand away from hers. “Good luck with Kendra.”
* * *
On Monday, Grace was just unloading the last of her second batch of painting supplies from her car when Arthur’s car pulled up to the driveway.
It took him a few minutes to emerge from the car, and when he did, Grace thought he looked tired. Tired and defeated. He walked, stiff-legged, toward where she stood, right outside the front porch.
“Hi, Arthur,” she called.
“Hi there, Grace.” He looked down at the buckets of paint she’d stacked on the porch steps and sighed and looked away. His shoulders slumped.
“I know, it’s a hit to our budget,” she said. “But hopefully the insurance will pay for it, right? Anyway, Wyatt and I managed to get all the paint off the floors and the appliances, so I’m just repainting the walls in the bedroom and the kitchen cabinets. And the kitchen floor. Again. That’s a pain in the butt, for sure. We’ll have to get a floor guy to take a look at the scorched floor in the living room, but maybe that can just be patched.”
“Come on inside, Grace. I need to talk to you.”
Theirs footsteps echoed in the high-ceilinged rooms. Arthur looked in at the kitchen, and the bedroom and bathroom.