|
Excerpt from Hope Street
"So, we're not going to tell them," Curt said. His gaze remained fixed on the road ahead. Dusk spread a warm pink glaze over the asphalt, the forest of pine trees lining the road and the windshield of his BMW Z4. His "midlife crisis," Ellie had dubbed the coupe when he'd bought it last year. Not that either of them believed an expensive sports car was the solution to a crisis. But his daughters were grown and gone, and a man turned fifty only once in his life—if he was lucky enough to live that long.
He loved the car's snug cockpit, the burled wood dashboard and the upholstery's leather smell. Right now, however, the coupe seemed too small, too intimate. They should have taken Ellie's old Toyota. Maybe he would have been able to breathe in that car.
"We're not going to tell them," she confirmed. "We've already decided the girls are the first people we'll tell, and we aren't going to dump this on them over the phone. They'll be home for Thanksgiving. We'll discuss it with them then, face to face."
"And in the meantime, we're just supposed to pretend everything is fine."
"I think we can fake it for an evening, don't you?"
He sighed. They'd been faking it for a long time already, he supposed. He wasn't sure exactly when in the past few months he and Ellie had decided to get a divorce, at what point they'd crossed that line, what moment they'd acknowledged that certain wounds just weren't going to heal. But the word divorce had finally invaded their conversations, and neither had flinched or backed off from it. They'd been moving in this direction for a long time, and now the destination was in sight.
So how the hell were they supposed to get through dinner with Ellie's parents tonight? "It's Ellie's fiftieth birthday," his mother-in-law had pointed out. "Curt got himself that expensive hot rod when he turned fifty. The least you can do is let us take the two of you out for dinner to celebrate Ellie's milestone." She'd made a reservation at a historical inn twenty miles west of Boston, one of those quaint, pretty places that Curt and Ellie had always intended to check out but never had.
Curt got along with his in-laws—sometimes better than Ellie did. He was the Harvard Law School graduate who'd married their headstrong daughter. How could they not adore him?
But he sure as hell didn't want to spend the evening with them, listening to them sing "Happy Birthday" to Ellie when he and she were already mulling over who should get custody of the snow-blower and the china.
He could feel the tension wrapped around her like a silent hum as she sat in the scoop-shaped seat beside him. He didn't have to look at her to picture the tight line of her mouth, the clench of her jaw, but he glanced in her direction anyway. Her hands lay rigid in her lap, as if she was struggling not to curl them into fists. He could practically see her nostrils quiver with each breath she took.
Ever since she'd come home from Ghana, she'd looked... Fantastic, damn it. She'd lost weight while she was gone—not that she'd been fat, but she'd accumulated a little extra padding during the past few awful years, and it had melted away beneath the African sun. Her profile was sleek, her cheeks almost gaunt, making her eyes appear twice as big as before. She'd cut her hair short, but it had grown back a bit and now fell in a chin-length pageboy, the brown laced with strands of silver. No more of those reddish-blond highlights she used to have bleached into her tresses at the salon. He'd never been a big fan of that streaky hair coloring. Silver was more honest, more stripped down—like everything that remained of their life together.
She also dressed differently since returning from Africa, favoring shapless, swirling outfits in bold patterns and neutral colors, fabrics that draped over her taut body and emphasized her slenderness. She'd abandoned the fancy jewelry she used to love—the diamond stud earrings, the tennis bracelet, all the glittery, expensive trinkets Curt had lavished on her over the years. Tonight she had on simple gold hoop earrings and a necklace made of rough-hewn chunks of amber.
And her wedding band along with the diamond eternity ring he'd given her as a tenth-anniversary present. If they were faking it, she needed to wear her rings.
He wore his wedding band, too. He'd removed it a month ago in a final concession to the inevitable. She hadn't been wearing hers when she'd arrived home from Ghana. He wondered exactly when she'd removed it, if she'd taken it off for a specific reason. He'd asked her more than once, and her refusal to offer a straight answer was still eating at him.
Fake it, he reminded himself, pushing his anger away. Just for tonight. Get through this evening.
Pretending to be her devoted, loving husband for the time it took to eat dinner might just be the most costly birthday present he'd ever given her.
|