Just Breathe

Gloria sent him a weary smile. “Thanks, but I have plans.” She patted him on the sleeve. “See you around, partner.”

The Mini still had that new-car smell even though Sarah was its second owner. Following her meeting with Birdie Shafter, she got behind the wheel, feeling wrung out. She didn’t know what to do next and didn’t really have a road map.

She told herself there was no shame in being back in Glenmuir. Soon the whole town would know she had returned home in defeat—a woman betrayed—and that her perfect life in Chicago had been a sham. But so what? People started over all the time.

Her phone was ringing. She checked the screen, tamped down a jolt of panic and took the call. “How did you get this number?”

“We should talk,” Jack said, ignoring her question. “My folks think so, too. Everybody does.”

“I don’t. My lawyer doesn’t.” Actually, Birdie hadn’t said so specifically, but she had advised Sarah not to give him any more information than necessary at this point.

“You have a lawyer?” Jack demanded.

“And you don’t?” She suspected he had called Clive Krenski the moment—the very second—he had thrown on his clothes that day, still sticky with Mimi Lightfoot. His hesitation confirmed it.

“I already gave her Clive’s number,” Sarah said. From the brick-paved town parking lot, she had a view of the harbor and of Glenmuir’s picturesque square. It looked as quaint and pristine as the set of a nostalgic movie, with striped awnings over the shop fronts, bowls of water set out for any dog that might pass, lush flower baskets suspended from the light poles and businesses that respected the town’s resistance to change. There were no franchise stores or glaring signs, just an air of simpler times past.

“Don’t do this.” Jack sounded drained and stressed-out.

Her old habit of worrying about every breath he took threatened to kick in. She stiffened her spine against the seat back. “Her name is Bernadette Shafter—”

“Oh, perfect—”

“—and I’mnot going to discuss certain things with you.”

“Then how about you listen?”

She stared out at Tomales Bay. A flotilla of brown pelicans bobbed on the water under a late afternoon sky of layered blue and cotton candy clouds. Jack hadn’t liked Glenmuir. He considered it a backwater, a place where old hippies might go to die…or become oyster farmers. Though years had passed, she still remembered that jab at her father. It had bothered her then and it bothered her now. The difference was, now she was doing something about that and all the other little hurtful things he’d said and she’d swallowed while making excuses for his lack of consideration.

“I’m listening,” she said.

“You can’t just piss away five years of marriage—”

“No, you did that.” She watched some seagulls rise in a flock, creating a shadow on the water. “How long have you been with her?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t want to talk about her. I want you to come back.”

Sarah was stunned, not just by his words but by the fear in his voice. “You want me to come back. What for? Oh, here’s an idea. We can get tested together. Yes, Jack. As if being cheated on isn’t bad enough, I’m going to have to get tested for STDs. We both are.” She blinked back tears of humiliation.

“That’s not a factor. Mimi and I are exclusive.”

Are. Not were. “Really? And you know this…how?”

“I just know, okay?”

“No, it’s not okay, and you have no idea who she was with before you.”

“She was—” Jack fell silent for a moment. Then he said, “Sarah, can we not just throw this away? I’m sorry I said I wanted a divorce. That was stupid. I hadn’t thought anything through.”

Oh, my. Apparently Clive had explained the fiscal pitfalls of running off a perfectly good wife. “So are you saying you’ve changed your mind?”

“I’m saying I never meant it in the first place. I was scared, Sarah, and embarrassed and guilty. To hurt you that much…it’s the last thing I wanted. I was in panic mode, and I handled it badly.”

She actually felt torn, she noted with an unpleasant jolt. Although she was clearly the injured party, she was at war with herself. The part of her that was conditioned to love him, the part that had carried her through his cancer treatment and her fertilization attempts melted at the sound of his voice. At the same time, the part that had just endured the overwhelming humiliation of the attorney’s office was still choking on the devastating memory of seeing her husband screwing another woman.

“I have a headache, Jack. It doesn’t matter to me whether you handled it well or badly.”

“Forget what I said that morning. I didn’t mean it. We can get through our problems, Sarah,” he told her, “but not this way.”

The flock of birds disappeared, leaving the bay flat and empty, beautiful in the afternoon light.

“Well, guess what?” she asked. “I’m doing this my way for a change.”

He hesitated. “We need to talk about us,” he said. “About you and me.”

“You have no idea what I need.” Sarah wasn’t angry. She was so far past anger that she had entered a red zone of emotion she had never felt before, didn’t even know existed. It was a tight, ugly place with dark corners where rage festered and gave rise to images she never realized she could conjure. These were not pictures of her doing horrible things to Jack, but to herself. That was what frightened her most of all.

“Sarah, come home, and we’ll—”

“We’ll what?”

“Deal with this like people who care for each other instead of communicating through lawyers. We can’t just call it quits. We can fix this, go back to the way things were.”

Ah. Initially he’d spoken from an angry, impulsive, honest place. After the lawyer explained what this would cost him, he was filled with remorse.

She saw a chartreuse-colored pickup truck merge onto Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and troll slowly northward. The side door bore the seal of the city of Glenmuir, established 1858. There were red conical lights on the top, a big tank with some sort of pump in back. A sun-browned, tattooed arm, with the sleeve rolled back, was propped on the edge of the window. The driver turned a little and she caught a glimpse of a baseball cap and dark glasses.

“Why would I want that?” she asked Jack. She’d spent most of the cross-country drive thinking about the way things were. The hours and hours of driving alone had forced her to confront the harsh truth about her marriage. She’d been fooling herself for a long time about being happy. She’d been acting like a contented, fulfilled wife, but that wasn’t the same as being one. It was such a lousy thing to realize about yourself. She took a deep, steadying breath. “Jack, why would I want to go back to the way things were?”

“Because it’s our life,” he said. “Jesus—”

“Tell me about the bank accounts. All four of them.” A strange feeling came over her. Deep inside, she discovered a core of calmness that radiated outward like a general anesthetic. “How soon did you put a freeze on them? Did you remember to zip your pants first?” Actually, she knew the answer. He had made his move within hours of the pizza delivery. In Omaha, she had stopped at an ATM to make a withdrawal from their joint checking account, only to find that the card was declined. The same was true of the other three accounts. Fortunately for her sanity, she had a credit card she used for syndication business. And, though she had never seen it that way before, she had an ace in the hole. There was a large sum of money in an account she held in her own name. On the advice of their CPA and Clive—who, up until now, she had considered a friend—she had opened the account when Jack’s cancer had been discovered. If the worst happened, there might be some decisions she would have to make on her own.

The decision to divorce her husband had not occurred to her back then.

“I did that to protect both of us,” Jack said.

“Both of us? Oh, I see. You and your lawyer, you mean.”

“It’s clear you’re not thinking straight. I got a call from the bank about a transaction with State Line Auto Sales—”

“Ah, so that’s what’s got you worried,” she said, suddenly realizing the true reason for his call. “And here I thought you called about me.”

“Now you’re trying to avoid the subject.”

“Oh, sorry. I traded the GTO for a car I actually want.”

“I can’t believe you did that. Of all the childish, immature things…You had no right to trade in my car.”