In the other room, his father and mother were arguing about where to place a picture Georgia had bought last week.
“Aren’t you going to measure it?” Georgia asked impatiently.
“Why?” Frank responded. “I can tell I’ve got a stud right here. Why not let me hang it and be done?”
“Because I want it centered.”
“It is centered. I can see that it is. If you don’t let me put the nail here, the weight of the picture will pull it right out of the wall.”
“Oh, for crying out loud. Keith works at the hardware store. He can get you one of those special doohickeys that works even without a stud, if we need it.”
Their voices filtered through his mind as Keith gazed at the envelope. As great as his parents were, living with them was no picnic. He missed Reenie. He missed Liz. He missed his children, clamoring to wrestle with him or climb onto his lap, and he missed the money he used to make…
What about the counseling they’d discussed? he wondered. That was supposed to save their marriage. She seemed willing to go to a therapist the last time he called. But she hadn’t told him to disregard anything he might receive from her attorney.
His heart thumped erratically in his chest as he opened the envelope. He knew what it would contain, and yet the sight of the Divorcement Decree hit him hard. Reenie was divorcing him. The woman who’d always loved him so passionately.
“Doesn’t she understand what I’m giving up?” he muttered to himself. What about Liz? And Chris and Mica? His sacrifice had to mean something to her.
Vaguely he heard his mother come into the room, but he was so devastated by what he held in his hand that he didn’t bother to hide the documents from her.
“What’s that?” she asked.
He swallowed hard. “Reenie’s divorcing me,” he said, his words sounding as hollow as the rest of him.
“What?” She came closer to peer down at the papers. “Honey, she must’ve started that before she agreed to counseling. Have you called her since you got this?”
“No.” The truth was that he was afraid to call her, afraid she might say she was going through with the divorce, after all. Until this moment, he never really believed she would.
“Well, don’t just stand there, looking like someone shot you,” she said. “Get on the phone.”
His throat was too dry, too tight. “I’ll call her tonight.”
“Call her now. This is more important than anything.”
“I’ll deal with it later.” When he could breathe….
“If you put it off, you’ll lose her for good, Keith. Deal with it now.”
Taking a deep breath, he tossed the divorce papers onto the table to get them out of his sight and went to the phone.
Reenie answered on the fourth ring, but she hardly sounded like the woman he knew. “Reenie?” he said.
“What?”
“Have you been crying?”
When she sniffed but didn’t answer, the lump in his throat nearly choked him. “I’m sorry, babe. I’m so—”
“Why’d you call?” she asked abruptly.
He blinked, fighting his own tears. “I got the papers.”
“Please sign them right away,” she said. “I…I want to put this behind me.”
Squeezing his eyes closed, he pressed a hand to his aching chest. “What about counseling? You said—”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“Why?”
“Just go back to Liz, Keith.”
“I don’t want to go back to Liz. I want to make things right with you. I—”
“There’s no way to do that! Don’t you understand?”
“I won’t sign the papers, Reenie.”
“Then I’ll go to the police. What you did was illegal, Keith.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. Would she really turn him in?
The doorbell rang, drawing his mother away from the kitchen.
“You must’ve loved Liz once,” Reenie said.
Grateful for the privacy his mother’s absence afforded him, he struggled to come up with an answer for what he’d done that she might understand. He had loved Liz. In many ways, he still did. But not on the same gut level that he loved Reenie.
In the end, he decided there wasn’t any way to make Reenie understand. He didn’t understand, completely. So he tried to take the focus off Liz by putting it back on their own marriage. “You and I have been together since we were in high school, Reenie. That’s half our lives. We have three children. You’re not going to throw all that away, are you?”
“I’m not the one who threw it away, Keith,” she said. “You did. Now I just want to be left alone to raise my daughters. I don’t want Liz’s kids attending the same school as mine. I don’t want to bump into her when I buy gas. I don’t want—”
“What are you talking about?” he asked. But Reenie didn’t get a chance to explain before his mother interrupted.
“Keith, there’s a woman here to see you.”
Fresh panic clutched at his throat. “Who is it?”
His mother wore a puzzled, distraught expression. “She says she’s your wife.”
Keith’s heartbeat seemed to echo in the room. Thump, thump. Thump, thump.
Evidently, Reenie had heard Georgia. “Liz’s there?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said numbly, amazed to hear no surprise in her voice.
“Maybe you can make your second marriage work, Keith,” she said. “For—for your other children. But please, take Liz and her family back to California.”
“You can’t be serious,” he said. “We need to talk….”
Only a dial tone answered him. She’d already disconnected.
LIZ HAD NEVER FELT colder in her life. She sat primly on the sofa in Keith’s parents’ living room, waiting for her husband while staring at her mother-in-law—a woman she’d thought was dead. It was pretty easy to recognize the gleam of animosity in Georgia O’Connell’s eyes. Keith’s mother didn’t want her here. Keith’s mother didn’t even want to know she existed.
“I’m not trying to cause trouble,” Liz said.
“Then what do you want?” she responded coldly. “My son is married to a lovely woman. Together they have three children. His wife’s parents are good friends of ours.”