Ladies' Night (45 page)

Suzanne patted Ashleigh’s hand. “We just don’t want to see you get hurt again.”

“I’m
not
going to get hurt,” Ashleigh said. “This is a love story. Plain and simple. Happy ever after. Is that so hard for y’all to believe?”

“It’s not that I don’t believe it,” Camryn said. “It’s just that, so far, I’ve never experienced it.”

Ashleigh tossed her hair over one shoulder. “Rochelle, you’re on my side, right? And you were married a really long time to Grace’s daddy, right? Will you please tell these people that there is such a thing as a happy marriage?”

Rochelle pressed her lips together. “Sorry, honey, that’s one thing I wouldn’t know about.” She looked over Ashleigh’s head, her eyes focused on the bar. “Dammit, there’s Miller and Bud again, taking up space and hogging the popcorn.” She stood. “Next thing you know they’ll be having their welfare checks forwarded here. I’ve gotta go chase them off.”

*   *   *

Grace watched her mother hurry away. What was that crack about not knowing anything about happy marriages? She thought back to all the barbed remarks Rochelle had made recently about Butch. At some point, Grace thought, she and Rochelle needed to sit down and really talk about this stuff. Butch had been dead three years now. Was there something about her parents’ marriage Rochelle had been keeping from her?

“Grace?” Suzanne waved a hand in front of her face. “Earth to Grace. Come in Grace.”

“What?” The others were looking at her expectantly. “Sorry, guess I zoned out for a minute there.”

“I was just asking what you thought about Paula’s assignment. You know—the action plan?”

“I think it’s a good idea,” Grace said. “I know for myself, after I walked out on Ben, I was really sort of … rudderless, I guess would be the word.”

“Paralyzed,” Camryn agreed. “After I kicked Dexter to the curb, I couldn’t make the simplest decision. And y’all know that is not like me. I pulled through Starbucks one morning, and when the barista asked if I wanted extra sugars, I just burst into tears.”

“I already know step one of my action plan,” Ashleigh confided. “As soon as I get rid of that Suchita hag, I’m taking my old job back as Boyce’s office manager. And let me tell you, I’ll be the one doing the meetings with those cute little drug reps from now on.”

“I’m sort of undecided,” Suzanne said. “Darby’s been offered a chance for early enrollment at Elon, a small liberal arts college in North Carolina. Their soccer team was NCAA runner-ups last year, and the head coach personally flew all the way here in the spring to watch Darby play. She turned it down, saying she couldn’t imagine missing her senior year of high school, but I think the real reason was that she didn’t want to go away and leave me alone so soon after Eric and I split.”

“Your daughter sounds like a great kid,” Wyatt said.

“I don’t know how I got so lucky with her,” Suzanne said. “The Elon coach is still calling the house, begging Darby to reconsider. They’d like her to come out right now, to start practicing with the team. Selfishly, I wish she would stay home, finish her senior year, and then go off to college. I want one more year of fixing her breakfast and washing her stinky practice clothes every night! But realistically, there’s no reason why she shouldn’t do early decision. Darby’s a bright kid. She’s taken enough Advanced Placement classes at her high school that college work won’t be that much of a challenge. This is a terrific opportunity for her.”

“Then let her go.”

Their heads swung around in unison. Rochelle stood with her hands on the back of Suzanne’s chair. “I know, it’s none of my business. But it sounds to me like you already know what you should do.”

Suzanne swiveled around in her chair. “Thanks, Rochelle. I guess that gives me step one of my plan. Now I just have to persuade Darby that her mother isn’t as needy as she thinks.”

“I hate to admit that Paula may finally have a good idea,” Camryn said. “But what she said tonight does make sense. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my career at the station, and where I want it to go.”

“You’re not thinking of moving are you?” Grace asked.

“You obviously don’t know much about the television news business. Women don’t move to other markets at my age. At least, not voluntarily. No, this little bit of investigative journalism I’ve been doing has been a real kick. I’ve actually been thinking this might be a good time to go off-camera. Maybe consider producing.” She grinned widely. “I’ve always been great at telling other people what to do.”

“What about you, Grace?” Ashleigh asked pointedly. “What would be your step one?”

“I’ve already taken it,” Grace said. “I’ve asked Arthur, the man who owns the house I’ve been restoring, if he’d let me rent it. If he says yes, I could move in within a week or so.”

“You’re moving?” Rochelle looked stricken.

“Don’t turn my bedroom into an office just yet,” Grace warned. “Arthur didn’t seem all that wild about the idea, but he didn’t say no. He said he’d have to talk it over with his wife. But I’m hopeful.”

48

Grace mopped the floor while Rochelle counted down the cash register and bundled up the money for the morning’s bank deposit. She double-checked the front door to make sure it was locked and flipped the switch for the neon sign. Then, she went behind the bar, poured herself a glass of wine, and took a seat on the barstool next to Rochelle.

“It’s after one,” her mother said, looking up from her counting. “I don’t mind the company, but you’ve been getting up and leaving pretty early most mornings lately.”

“I’ll go to bed in a little while,” Grace said. “Can I ask you something?”

“Hmm?” Rochelle was jotting figures in the ledger where she always recorded each day’s tally. “This divorce group of yours is good for business. Last year, this same date, we did eighteen hundred dollars. Today, we did twenty-one hundred. And the softball guys didn’t even have a game tonight.”

Grace closed the book. “Mom, what did you mean earlier, when you said you didn’t know anything about happy marriages?”

“Nothing,” Rochelle said casually. “You know me, sometimes I run my mouth without thinking.”

“Sometimes you do, but I don’t think that was the case tonight. Lately, you’ve been dropping these little … I don’t know, hints? Is there something about you and Dad’s marriage that I don’t know?”

“Your dad’s dead and buried, Grace. That’s all old history.”

“I don’t think so,” Grace said slowly. “Come on, Mom. Be honest with me.”

Rochelle took off her reading glasses and buffed them on the hem of her blouse. “Your dad was a good man, Grace. He loved you beyond all reason and was so proud of you and the life you were building. That’s what’s important for you to know.”

“Nuh-uh,” Grace said, shaking her head. “There’s more to it than that. Ever since I started this divorce-recovery group, you’ve been hanging around, super interested in everything everybody has to say…”

“I’m a nosy old lady,” Rochelle said.

“What was going on with you and Dad? Whatever it is, I need to know.”

Rochelle let out a long sigh. “Since you insist, I’ll tell you. Four years ago, I was ready to divorce your dad. I’d hired a lawyer. I’d even found an apartment to move into. And then we found out he was sick. I couldn’t walk out on him like that. He was dying. So I stayed. End of story.”

She saw the stunned expression on Grace’s face. “I’m sorry, honey. I really never meant for you to hear this, but you asked, and I just couldn’t keep dancing around the truth any longer.”

Grace felt like she’d had the wind knocked out of her. “Why? What did Dad do? Please don’t tell me he had another woman.”

Rochelle opened the ledger again. “Some things are best left unsaid, you know? And this is one of them.”

“Just tell me, please? So, he had an affair? Was it somebody I knew?”

“It was nobody. A snowbird from Buffalo whose husband used to keep a boat here in the marina during the winter. Her husband died the summer before, and she was down here by herself, and I guess … she got lonely.”

“Oh, God.” Grace felt physically sick. Her father? Butch? The same guy who wore loud Hawaiian shirts and loved country music? The man who gave both Rochelle and Grace the same Whitman Sampler of chocolates every Valentine’s Day? Butch had a girlfriend?

“It didn’t last very long,” Rochelle said quietly. “Your dad was a lousy sneak.”

Grace swallowed hard. “How … how did you figure it out?”

“He was acting funny. Not like himself. You know how Butch was; he liked his set routine. But that January, he switched barbers. After twenty years of the same haircut, he grows sideburns, for God’s sake. He started taking an extra shower, in the middle of the day. You know how I always went to the wholesale house for supplies, right? Well, suddenly, he insisted he should be the one to go pick up our order. He’d be gone two, three hours. One time, he came back without the paper napkins and take-out containers. He had some lame excuse that they were out. Of paper napkins?” She shook her head. “He never did have much of an imagination.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Grace said. “You must have been devastated.”

“Mad as hell, more like. Because he’d promised—promised on his mother’s grave—he wouldn’t put me through that crap again.”

“Again? It wasn’t the first time?” Grace found herself staring into her own image in the mirror behind the bar, and then at herself, and then at Rochelle, and at Rochelle’s image. Who were these strangers?

“No. Not the first time.” Rochelle’s lips were set in a grim smile. “You were only three the first time he cheated. I found out then, and I left. I took you to my cousin’s house in Jacksonville, and we stayed three weeks. Butch was heartbroken. He couldn’t stand the idea of not having his baby girl around. He knew he’d messed up. He begged me to take him back, said he’d be a different man. And he was, for a long time.”

“I just…” Grace swallowed hard. “I don’t know what to think. You never said a word. The two of you never fought. My friends’ parents were splitting up while we were in high school, and they used to tell me they envied me, because Butch and Rochelle—you know, Butch and Rochelle were solid.”

Rochelle reached out and stroked Grace’s hair. “Maybe I should have divorced him back then, after the first time. But where would I have gone with a little kid in tow? I had no real job skills; certainly I didn’t have any money. And I was too proud to admit to my parents that I’d made a mistake. So I did the easy thing. I went back to Butch. And I stayed.”

“All those years? When I thought you guys had the model marriage? That was all a lie? You only stayed together because of me?”

“It wasn’t
all
a lie,” Rochelle said. “We had some good times. We made a life here, had friends. Had you. I don’t want you to think it was a bad life, Grace, which is why I never told any of this to you.”

“You could have told me. Especially once I was an adult. I would have understood,” Grace said. “It makes me sad to think that you were that unhappy, and I was just … oblivious.”

“You weren’t oblivious. You were busy, spreading your wings, starting a career. A marriage. But now I think, I wonder, if I didn’t set you up for failure by giving you unrealistic expectations of your own marriage. Does it make me pathetic, how much vicarious pleasure I got seeing what an amazing woman you were becoming?”

“You’ve never been pathetic,” Grace said. “But what made you finally decide to leave?”

Rochelle fidgeted with her glasses. “Besides Edwina? That was her name. Edwina! I’d say it was just a slow build. One morning, Butch was fussing at me, because I’d bought Chock full o’Nuts instead of Folgers without consulting him.”

Grace rolled her eyes. “God. Dad and his coffee.”

“I picked up the whole bag of beans and dumped it in the trash. I walked upstairs, packed a bag. When I got downstairs, he looked at me like I’d lost my mind. ‘You’re leaving over a bag of coffee?’ So I looked at him and I said, ‘It’s not about coffee. It’s about Edwina.’”

“Did you think about going to counseling?” Grace asked.

“I went to counseling. Your dad refused to go. He thought it was a waste of his hard-earned money.”

“That sounds like Dad,” Grace said with a sigh. “I still can’t believe you got as far as hiring a divorce lawyer without telling me. Wait a minute. Mitzi? Mitzi was the lawyer you hired?”

Rochelle nodded. “You and Ben hadn’t been married that long at the time. You were deliriously happy. I didn’t want to upset you. And then, of course, we found out how sick Butch was. I wasn’t even gone a week.”

“Did he beg you to come back?” Grace asked, teary-eyed now, thinking about her father’s last months of life, growing thinner, using a walker, and then, finally, a wheelchair.

“Butch? Never. He didn’t have to ask. I knew he needed me, so I came. We never even discussed that week. It was like it never happened.” Rochelle got a glint in her eye. She laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Grace asked.

“Nothing. I was just thinking about the coffee. When I moved back here, that first morning, I went out to the kitchen to make coffee. There sat a brandnew bag of Chock full o’Nuts. That was Butch’s idea of an apology.”

Grace laughed until the tears were rolling down her cheeks. “Mom? You know what I remember that last year? When Dad was so sick? You were so strong. You kept the bar running, took him to all his doctor’s appointments, to chemo. You bathed him and spoon-fed him when he was too sick to eat, fixed his bed in the living room so he could look out at the water those last few weeks.”

Rochelle blinked back her own tears. “He made me promise I wouldn’t let him die in the hospital. It was a small enough thing to do.”

“So you forgave him?” Grace searched her mother’s face for an answer.

“You know? I guess I did,” Rochelle said, wonderingly. “At the time, I told myself I was doing it for you—because he was your daddy. But now, I think maybe I did it for me. I hated what Butch did—cheating on me—but I guess at the end, even after everything, I did still love him.”

“I’m glad you told me,” Grace said. “Thanks for that, Mom.”