Some Women (16 page)

“Oh yeah. Clearly you don't know Annabel.”

“Can't say that I do. But aren't they getting divorced?”

“Yup. Doesn't matter, though. He's still her husband.”

“Shit.” Lucy stared down at her phone.

“What?”

“Piper just texted me back. Same woman.”

“Crap.” Mackenzie exhaled. “I had a feeling.”

“And she needs me to leave now and come help her on location.”

“Oh, okay. That's no problem. I can stay here and eat something until they leave.”

“Are you sure?” Lucy asked, already standing to put on her coat.

“Of course! Far be it from me to get in the way of Mead Media business.” Mackenzie smirked. “Go on. I'll take your seat so I have a better view.”

“Okay, thanks. Well, it was, um, nice to see you.”

“Nice to see you too.” Mackenzie nodded and smiled kindly as Lucy hurried off. She could tell Lucy felt awkward around her, and she realized then that Lucy was probably around the same age as she was, if not a couple of years younger. In an alternate universe, they could have been friends. Lucy could have been her college roommate or her equal colleague. It was amazing to think how one chance meeting with Trevor all those years ago had set her on such a divergent path from most women her age.

•   •   •

Ten minutes later, Mackenzie was sitting contentedly in front of a bowl of tomato soup with a heaping side of sweet potato fries, willing herself not to grunt every time Red Suit Lady—who today was wearing a figure-hugging navy blue suit instead—threw back her head in laughter. As Mackenzie lifted a spoonful of piping-hot soup to her lips, she noticed a familiar-looking man walking directly toward her.

“Mackenzie Mead, right?” He stopped in front of her. She couldn't place his face, but she definitely remembered his swoon-worthy dimples, smooth olive skin, and pale gray eyes.
Comforting
eyes.

“That's me.” She grinned. It wasn't the first time someone had come up to her in a public place. It was rare, but occasionally people recognized her from a photo they'd seen of her with Trevor or CeCe in the society pages of a local magazine.

“You probably don't remember me,” he started. “I hope you don't mind me saying hello. I was the doctor in the emergency room when your friend brought you in a couple of months ago.”

“Yes! I'm so sorry. It took me a minute. And I forgot the hospital is just around the corner. I was a little out of sorts that day.”

“Of course. Understandably so.” He extended his arm to shake her hand. “I'm Dr. Blake. James Blake.”

“It's all coming back to me now.” She glanced around the packed restaurant. “Are you here with someone?”

“Nope. Just a short break between shifts.” He noticed what she was eating. “Looks like you've got it right. Their tomato soup is killer, as are those fries.”

“You're telling me.” She motioned to the seat across from her, still keeping one eye focused on Henry and his lunch companion. “Why don't you join me? I couldn't possibly finish all of these fries,” she lied. She very well could finish each and every one herself. And had planned to. But she didn't want to be rude.

“Are you alone too? I don't want to impose.”

“All by myself. My friend had to skip out for work at the last minute.”

“Okay, then.” He sat down just as Henry and his date stood to leave. Should she follow them? It felt impolite to leave James as soon as he'd sat down, but at the same time, she'd come here on a mission.

“Would you excuse me for just one minute? I have to run to the ladies' room.”

“Sure.” He stood when she did, like a proper gentleman.

“I'll be right back.” She trailed slowly behind Henry, so as not to alert him to her presence. She watched them walk out the front door. And then she watched the woman lean in and place a lingering kiss on Henry's cheek, just a bit too close to his mouth for her liking. “Shit.” Mackenzie sighed, returning to the table and James moments later.

“Everything okay?”

“Yup, all good.” She tried to eradicate the grimace from her face. Annabel was not going to be happy if she told her everything she'd seen.

“I'm glad I bumped into you today, Mackenzie.” James pilfered a French fry from her plate. She could feel his eyes on her. Those
comforting
eyes.

“Thank you.” She smiled and met his gaze. “I'm glad you did too.”

“So, what brings you over to this side of town?” He motioned to the waitress for a fresh glass of water.

“A little business, a little pleasure.” It wasn't her intention to come off as elusive, but, really, what choice did she have? She couldn't very well divulge the real reason she'd selected this particular restaurant. How absurd would that sound? “Then it's back to the office for me.”

“Me too.” His lips curled into a grin. “And then the opera tonight.”

“You like the opera?” Mackenzie had yet to meet a man her age who appreciated either a new production or a classic revival. She'd brought Trevor once and only once, to see Gioachino Rossini's
The Barber of Seville
, and he'd slept from the moment the curtain opened all the way through to the final bow.

“I don't think anyone likes the opera. You either love it or you hate it. The former is true in my case. It's a bit of an obsession, if I'm being honest. My grandmother used to take me as a child and it sort of became part of the fabric of my being.”

“For me too!” Mackenzie nearly shrieked with excitement. “I grew up in a rural city in Georgia, so, as you can imagine, no opera house there. But when I moved to New York City, a friend brought me for the first time. It was life changing.
Life changing
. I went through two packs of tissues.” She felt herself chattering. “Where do you go?”

“The Met.” He nodded, as if it was the only answer.

“Of
course
. Amazing.” She took a deep breath. “What are you seeing?”

“Tonight?
La Bohème
.”

“Ah, Puccini.” She released a sigh. “I'm so jealous.”

“You're welcome to join me some time. I have season tickets.”

“I would absolutely love that. If you're serious.”

“I never joke about the opera.” He laughed softly. “And I usually go alone, so I'd appreciate the company. That is, if your husband is okay with it.”

“Oh, Trevor wouldn't mind at all. He hates the opera.”

“Excellent.” James cleared his throat. “I'm sorry I have to run, but work is calling.”

“Absolutely. It was such a pleasure to chat with you.”

“The pleasure was all mine.”

The thing about grief is there is no way to control it. No way to prevent it from whistling toward you like a freight train and flattening you to the track like a ribbon of fettuccine. There were days when Annabel had been able to keep it safely at bay, hold it at arm's length, engaging in whatever means of distraction she could find. Sometimes it was an exercise class. Sometimes it was lunch with an old friend, ideally an old friend she hadn't seen in a while, thereby allowing her to immerse herself in everything new that was going on in her life, rather than dwelling on her own. Sometimes all she needed was an inane television show and a chilled glass of Pinot Grigio to scare off the demons, even though in her gut she knew they were skulking just around the corner, waiting to pounce on her when the first opportunity presented itself. The very second she let down her guard down and let her mind wander.

Those were the other days. When something—anything, really—could send her into a vicious downward spiral about the state of things in her household. Last week it had been driving by Henry's office that had nudged her off the ledge. She hadn't even realized she was in his neighborhood until she was. Apparently, her car had steered its way there on autopilot. Annabel had taken a long, deep breath before approaching his block. She'd told herself she was fine. That she'd barely ever come to his office when they'd been married. Or not divorced. Whatever they were to each other in the awkward limbo they'd been existing in for the past few months, as their lawyers negotiated a settlement they would both deem fair. She'd tried to convince herself she could get through it. She didn't even have to look at his building. Only she had. And that had been all it took. Her eyes had sprouted fresh tears, and her heart had cinched in her chest. She'd gone directly home and cried the afternoon away, unwilling to burden anyone with what she reckoned to be self-imposed misery.

After all, people got divorced all the time. Every day. Probably every minute. It was the same as everything else you speculated about along those lines. Like when you were brushing your teeth and you thought,
I wonder if anyone else is brushing their teeth at this very moment.
Yes, they were. Or when you were having a dance party with your kids and evoking throwback moves like the Running Man and the Roger Rabbit from the 1980s, and you thought,
There's no way anyone else is having a dance party with their kids and evoking dance moves from the 1980s at this very moment.
Sorry, but they were. As Henry had once explained to her, there are simply too many people in the world, too many like-minded people, that nothing, absolutely nothing we're doing
at any given moment isn't being done by someone else—whether that person is down the street or across the country. She'd never really believed it until now. Yet every time she told another person that she and Henry were going through a divorce, they always and immediately said they had at least a half dozen other friends who were also splitting up. Annabel was never sure if she should feel relieved or appalled that she was in such vast company.

And why was it that people just threw in the towel so easily these days? One of the recently divorced moms at Harper and Hudson's school had confided in her that it was her husband's loud chewing that had sealed the deal. “I couldn't bear to listen to him crunching and munching for another minute. And the way he inhaled his food like someone was going to steal it out from in front of him if he didn't finish every last morsel in record time. I couldn't even hear myself think, much less enjoy my own meal,” she'd lamented. It had seemed petty to Annabel. Who gave up on twelve years of marriage because their significant other couldn't manage to eat quietly enough?

She'd read an article online written by another woman who'd admitted that her husband had never cheated on her, never yelled at her, never so much as looked at her the wrong way, but that he'd been a lifelong, avid fisher and she could no longer take the way he smelled when he came back from his regular fishing trips. “The scent lingered for what felt like forever. I'd wash our bedsheets six or seven times and they still stank!” Granted, it didn't sound pleasant, but a divorce over Dover sole?

Of course, Annabel wasn't stupid. She knew that the chewing and the fishing trips were merely the straws that had broken the proverbial camels' backs. That there must have been weightier issues
in those marriages—ones that had been ignored, not identified, or kept close to the vest for fear of humiliation. Still, she couldn't help but feel that Henry's reasoning hadn't been that much more concrete. Perhaps not as trifling as wayward munching or a pungent odor, but incomplete nonetheless. And shocking all the same.

If she was being honest with herself, there were instances when she'd sensed his frustration. When she'd realized that he'd felt stifled by her need to have everything just so. Still, she couldn't understand what was so wrong with that. He went to work all day, every day, often late into the evening. He wasn't the one who dealt with everything for the house, for the kids, for himself. So why was it, then, that he resisted letting her run things the way she wanted to? Wasn't she sort of the CEO of their life? She certainly would never have waltzed into his office and started spouting directives or tried to demonstrate how he could do things more efficiently. How many times had he paused before doling out constructive criticism, as he'd called it, or thanked her for putting dinner on the table every night, even if she hadn't necessarily cooked it from scratch? Never. How many times had he offered a note of gratitude for the fact that, no matter what was going on for her on any given day—whether she was sick with a stomach bug or physically exhausted from a sleepless night—she still drove the kids to school and picked them up when they didn't want to take the bus, and she carted them to every extracurricular activity, made sure they were fed, bathed, and loved, all while ensuring that Henry's dry cleaning was collected punctually, stripped of its plastic covering and wire hangers, and hung neatly on polished wooden hangers in his closet? The wooden hangers she'd purchased so that everything appeared uniform, which he never would have cared
about if she hadn't made it look so nice in the first place. Sometimes she wondered if all of her wheel spinning had ended up coming back to bite her in the ass.

Apparently it had, according to Mackenzie, who'd called her the previous afternoon to convey the details of her lunch “with” Henry, who'd clearly been distracted by a female companion of his own. Annabel had said she was fine with it. That she'd expected the worst and it didn't sound quite that bad. Yet. Mackenzie had been dubious, but Annabel had held her ground. Keeping the grief at bay. She'd even managed to keep it there all evening, distracting herself with her regular duties—bath time for the boys, followed by dinner and then snuggles in her bed. Henry had never allowed them to snuggle in their bed at night. He'd felt strongly that it created bad habits. But now that he was no longer around, she could do what she wanted, and she delighted in taking those liberties, as did Harper and Hudson. Anyway, the bed was far too big for one person.

Only once they'd been tucked away in their rooms and Annabel had retreated to her own, she'd no longer been able to distance herself from her anguish. It came charging at her like a stampede of bulls. And she'd been crushed. Physically and emotionally. She'd wept ferociously until she'd fallen asleep against a damp pillow, and awakened with eyes so puffy she could barely pry them open with her fingers. That was when she'd called Mackenzie and Piper. She must have sounded distraught, because they'd both rushed over immediately with rations of junk food, trashy magazines, and effusive affection.

“Let's keep this in perspective.” Mackenzie opened a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and tilted them toward Annabel, who was curled into a ball under a large, fuzzy blanket on the couch in her
family room, gripping a box of tissues like her life depended on it. Mackenzie and Piper were seated on either side of her like bookends, trying to keep her emotionally balanced. “We don't actually
know
that anything is going on between them.”

“We know he's fucking her.” Annabel spit out the words, as if their bitterness left a bad taste in her mouth.

“We absolutely do not know that!” Mackenzie shook her head.

“I do,” Annabel grumbled and plunged her hand into the bag of chips.

“It was just a kiss on the cheek, sweetie. Isn't that right?” Piper looked to Mackenzie for confirmation.

“That's right.” She nodded.

“Still, it was a kiss. Another woman
kissed
my husband.” Annabel shoveled a small handful of Doritos into her mouth and continued to speak while she chewed. “How would you guys feel if Trevor or Todd were going around having lunches and dinners with some other chick and then
kissing
her?”

“Obviously, we would be upset too.” Piper tried to pacify her. “But I think Mackenzie's correct on this one. We need more evidence before we convict him. Innocent until proven guilty, remember?”

“You mean like O. J. Simpson? I highly doubt Nicole Brown Simpson or Ron Goldman would agree with that.”

“Henry isn't a murderer.” Mackenzie tore into a pouch of Peanut M&M's and spilled some into Piper's palm.

“He murdered our life.” Annabel sniffed.

“And there goes the perspective.”

“I'm sorry, but I don't want to have perspective right now. I just want to be pissed. And angry. And all of the other adjectives like
those. It's so embarrassing. I mean, how long do you think this has been going on? For all I know, it's been months. Years!”

“I highly doubt she'd still be kissing him on the cheek if it had been years,” Mackenzie reasoned.

“Oh, my God.” Annabel started to cry without warning. “Do you think he's
in love
with her?”

“No!” Mackenzie and Piper answered at the same time.

“Honestly, she looked way more interested in him than the other way around.”

“So she did look really interested in him.” Annabel released a sob. “I knew it.”

“That was not meant to be the takeaway.” Mackenzie exhaled. “The point is that we have no reason to believe that he loves her or is in love with her or even that something is going on.”

“Then why do they keep going out together?” Annabel blew her nose loudly into a tissue.

“It's only been twice,” Piper added, and placed her hand on Annabel's arm.

“That we know of,” Annabel snapped, and then immediately apologized. “Sorry. It's not you I'm upset with.”

“It's okay. I understand.” Piper smiled supportively.

“The thing is, for all we know, she could be shacking up at his apartment every night.”

“I don't suppose the kids have mentioned anything?” Mackenzie treaded carefully.

“No, I don't think he'd do that.” Annabel sat up straight and tucked her hair behind her ears. “Let's not talk about this anymore. I need a break.”

“That sounds like a great idea,” Mackenzie agreed, exchanging a knowing glance with Piper.

“What's going on with you guys?” Annabel asked, ready to invest herself in someone else's issues. Anyone's issues other than her own.

“Well, let's see,” said Piper. “Max has been harassing me via text messages to see Fern. And it's like, dude, you disappear for a decade and
now
you're in touch three times a day?”

“And?” Annabel raised an eyebrow.

“And I'm not prepared to discuss anything with him yet. It's too late for any of his explanations to make any difference to me. Of course, Fern is still fuming at me. In an ironic turn of events, she'll communicate with me solely through Todd, who, if I wasn't so miserable about the whole thing, might actually be able to derive some pleasure from their newfound bond. Also, have I mentioned that Todd seems to be a little out of sorts ever since Max reappeared on the scene?”

“Can you blame him?” Mackenzie crunched down on an M&M.

“Of course not! I just don't know what to do. I mean, I kind of assumed Max would be gone by now. All of a sudden he wants to be father of the year? What the hell is that all about?”

“Have you asked him?” Annabel leaned forward, relieved to be fully engaged in Piper's predicament. “Maybe it wouldn't be the end of the world to let him see her. That might be enough to satisfy him and send him on his way.”

“That's true,” Mackenzie concurred. “I say set up a lunch in a public place for the three of you to talk. And remember to keep Todd in the loop on everything and continue to bolster his confidence in your relationship. Men need that.”

“How did you get so wise?” Piper took a large gulp from a bottle of Diet Coke.

“You mean because she's barely a day over fifteen?” Annabel smirked.

“Very funny.” Mackenzie stuck her tongue out. “It must be from watching all those episodes of
Dr. Phil
.”

“Speaking of doctors. How's the baby making going?” Annabel softened her expression to one of concern.

“Um, nice transition there.” Mackenzie cocked her head to one side and rolled her eyes good-humoredly. “Actually, it's not going. I suggested seeing a fertility specialist to Trevor, but he's not convinced we need it.”

“That's surprising.” Piper lifted a piece of red licorice from the junk-food stash on the coffee table. “Wasn't CeCe the one who originally suggested it?”

“Yup.”

“And doesn't Trevor agree with his mother most of the time?”

“He sure does. Wait—you must work at Mead!” Mackenzie laughed. “I'm not sure what's going on. But I made an appointment anyway.”

“Without telling him?” Annabel pointed to the bottle of Diet Coke on Piper's side of the coffee table, and she passed it to her.