Her Better Half

PROLOGUE

Rosedale, Toronto

O n the day my husband left me, we were in the middle of a wicked heat wave in Toronto. Inside the bedroom of our estate home, air-conditioning masked the high temperatures and humidity. I actually felt cool as I watched Gary stuff a select few of his belongings into a backpack.

I noticed that his pants were loose around his waist. He’d dropped a few pounds since he’d adopted the vegetarian diet.

That had been six months ago. It had not been my first clue that my life was going to take a dramatic and unexpected turn. There’d actually been many, but I hadn’t seen them at first. Or maybe I’d seen them but just refused to accept them for what they were: evidence that my husband was growing apart from me.

“I still think we ought to try counseling.” I was proud of how calm I sounded. I would not be one of those shrieking women who went crazy and broke things and swore they’d kill themselves, or him, if he didn’t stay.

“Counseling won’t change anything. This has been a long time coming.”

Too bad no one had told me.

But maybe I was letting myself off the hook too easily. I’d been the one to sign Gary up for the meditation course last winter. I’d seen his simmering anger, his mounting stress.

He’d been a man at the breaking point.

Until he’d found yoga. Or was it the yoga instructor? I still wasn’t sure.

“Losing my job was the best thing that could have happened to me.” He went to his sock drawer and picked through it, leaving all the fine wool dress socks behind. “It was a sign that I’m finally on the path to healing.”

Oh, for Pete’s sake! I was so sick of hearing about the “path to healing.” This path didn’t feel anything like healing to me. It felt like betrayal, and hurt and abandonment.

“Getting fired wasn’t a sign, Gary.” Who in their right mind considered losing a job a green light to desert your wife and children to go backpacking around the globe?

“How would you know, Lauren? Not to be cruel, but you’re not exactly in tune with your spiritual side.”

Despite the air-conditioning, my internal temperature jumped up a few degrees. “Oh, really?”

“You’ve never understood. Yoga isn’t about postures, or fitness, or even relaxing. It’s about spiritual growth. About achieving clarity and— Forget it. I can see you’re not listening.”

“I am listening. It’s just that I don’t happen to agree. Why can’t you study yoga and achieve enlightenment here in Canada?”

It was time for my trump card. “What about the twins?”

But even that argument didn’t move him.

“Jamie and Devin are almost grown up.”

“They’re fourteen.”

“Well, they’ve always been closer to you, anyway. They’ll be fine. They’re good kids.”

“Yes. Good kids who deserve more from their father.”

“What do you want me to do? Go out and get another job with another investment bank? Return to working twelve-hour days and six-day weeks? End up croaking from a heart attack at fifty like my old man?”

I couldn’t stand the way he was talking to me. Like he was the intelligent, rational adult while I was the mental equivalent of a temperamental toddler. He was treating me and our marriage like an encumbrance to be gotten rid of in the same way as a bothersome outstanding balance on a mortgage.

“Don’t you love me anymore?”

The question just came out. I hadn’t planned to ask it. As I stood there waiting for his answer, I found myself remembering the girls when they were little, scrambling out of the pool after a swimming lesson, wet and shivering, waiting for me to wrap them in a towel.

Now I was the vulnerable one, waiting for Gary to throw me something. If not a towel, then maybe a facecloth.

“Lauren.” He sighed. “I’ll always love you. But things are different now.”

I summoned my courage. “Is Melanie going on your backpacking trip, too?”

His mouth tightened. “This has nothing to do with Melanie.”

“So she’s not going?”

He didn’t say anything.

Damn him. The bastard.

“I have an appointment booked with my lawyer this afternoon,” I said. “Where should I have him send the papers?”

He straightened slowly. “You mean divorce papers?”

The D-word hung in the air between us. I couldn’t believe I’d found the courage to deliver the ultimatum.

Please, please, please, I found myself praying to an unknown, unimagined entity. Let Gary realize what I mean to him. What our family means to him.

But he nodded, as if a divorce had been in his plans all along. Rather than trying to talk me out of legal action, he grabbed paper and pen and wrote down an address.

Melanie’s no doubt.

Gary added one more pair of socks to the pack, then closed the flap.

“That’s it? That’s all you’re taking?”

“You can sell the rest,” he said, as if all the belongings he’d amassed over the past twenty years—the gold cufflinks, the Cartier watch, the twenty Harry Rosensuits lined up on his side of the closet—meant nothing to him.

I sank onto the bed. In stunned silence, I let Gary kiss me on the forehead. I watched him sling the backpack over his shoulder, then walk out of our bedroom without a final glance.

“Don’t forget to write.” Ha-ha.

I collapsed onto the down comforter and wondered how I was going to tell the girls when they came home from camp.

CHAPTER 1

Dovercourt Village, Toronto

One year later