Nothing But Trouble (25 page)

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Authors: Bettye Griffin

BOOK: Nothing But Trouble
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Chapter 34
I
rene sat in her Grand Am a few houses down from Dana's. She didn't know what she expected to see on this quiet block. Tuesday morning at ten-thirty
A.M.
was an unlikely time for Gil to be at Dana's. He'd be at work this time of day. Normally she would be as well, except for a dental appointment for a teeth cleaning.
Dana, on the other hand, was sure to be inside. Irene knew from general small talk with Dana that she began work before dawn, transcribing documents for her full-time job, before devoting time to running the business she owned with a couple of partners.
In her rearview mirror, Irene caught sight of a mail truck a few houses behind her. Whoever had this mail route didn't have to do much walking. The carrier merely deposited mail into the curbside mailbox, and then drove a few yards to the next house and did the same thing. Knowing the mailman had seen her loitering prompted her to make her move. She drove down the street until she was right in front of Dana's driveway, where she recognized the Camry Dana drove. She pulled into the driveway until her car was right behind Dana's.
Irene walked with brisk steps up the short front walk. She rang the doorbell and waited, deliberately standing close to the door so that Dana couldn't see her from the office window upstairs.
Irene heard footsteps bounding down the stairs and then a pleasant voice calling out, “Who is it?”
“Irene Albacete, Dana.”
The door immediately opened. Dana stood inside, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a surprised expression. “Irene.”
She struck a perfect balance of congeniality, polite without being overly friendly, Irene noticed. “I had an appointment over this way this morning, and I found myself stopping over here. I hadn't planned to.”
“You must want to talk to me about something. Why don't you come in?”
“Thanks.” Irene stepped inside and sat down in a stiff-backed chair in the formal living room. She waited for Dana to settle in a corner of the floral-print sofa before speaking. “I wanted to ask you to consider not seeing my husband anymore.”
Dana had never looked entirely comfortable from the time she first opened the door, but now her features hardened. “I think maybe your coming over wasn't such a good idea, Irene.”
“In other words, you won't do it.”
Dana leaned forward earnestly. “Irene, no one set out to deliberately hurt you. Sometimes things just ... just happen. No laws are being broken, nor is anything morally wrong. You and Gil are divorced. I've noticed you like to refer to him as your husband, but he isn't. He's your
ex
-husband.”
“I call him my husband because I know he still loves me. You're interfering with my family, Dana. We're trying to heal after a difficult period for all of us.”
“The healing will come from accepting your marriage is over, Irene. I don't believe Gil is still in love with you. He respects you as the mother of his child, yes, and he probably does still love you in a special way, but not the way a husband loves a wife. Insisting that I'm destroying your happy home is just nonsense.”
Irene stood up. “If you're not willing to listen to reason, I guess there's no point in continuing this conversation.”
Dana stood as well. “As long as you're being unreasonable, I guess there isn't.” She crossed to the front door and held it open. “Good-bye, Irene. I'm sorry you're so unwilling to see things as they really are.”
“Well, just remember, God don't like ugly,” Irene said as she swept past Dana, using an expression she'd heard one of the girls at work say. Seconds later she heard the door close behind her, none too gently.
Well, she'd tried. Dana refused to leave Gil alone, refused to let him come home to her and Vanessa so they could be a family again. All Dana cared about was herself. She didn't care who she hurt, whose life she made miserable.
Irene slowed down as she approached Dana's mailbox. The mail truck had moved a half block down the street. She turned quickly and scanned the front windows of Dana's house. No sign of her.
Irene made her choice quickly. She opened the box, pulling out a sale circular from JCPenney, a utility bill from JEA, and a couple of envelopes addressed to CDN Transcription. The latter two she found most intriguing, and she held on to them and quickly closed the box. She'd open them when she got to work.
As soon as Irene removed her keys from the ignition in front of the small consulting firm where she worked as office manager, she tore open the envelopes. To her delight, they both contained checks, one for six hundred dollars and the other for eighteen hundred.
Irene smiled triumphantly. Her little hunch had paid off.
Now let
Dana
feel some interference in her life and see how she liked it.
 
 
Dana glanced through the curtain at Irene's retreating form. What nerve. The woman must be crazy with the statements she'd made about her husband and her family.
She makes it sound like I started seeing Gil when he was still living with her as husband and wife.
She'd go call him now and tell him about it.
Dana turned and walked away from the window, missing Irene's pause by her mailbox. Gil had to know about this right away.
“And then she had the nerve to say to me on her way out that God don't like ugly,” she said to Gil. “Can you believe that? Like I'm some temptress getting you to commit adultery.”
“Irene has been trying to get back with me ever since I left. And I'm not saying that because I want to build up my ego, Dana. It happens to be the truth. I think she's convinced herself that you're the obstacle to reconciling with me. I'm sorry. If you don't want to see me again, I understand.”
“Don't want to see you again? Because of one little visit from your ex-wife? You're being silly, Gil.”
“I'm not so sure.”
 
 
Dana had resumed her work when Cécile called. “Do you mind if I skip next week's partners' meeting? Michael and the kids and I have plans to go through everything in the house and the garage this weekend. We're going to pack up whatever we can get by without.”
“When do you close on the new house?”
“Next month. The closing on this house is scheduled for a week later, so we'll have plenty of time to get moved out and come back and straighten up here.”
“I'm happy for you, Cécile. I haven't moved in a long time, but with the size of your family it must be a real nightmare.”
“Oh, it'll wear me out, all right. But I can deal with that. What I'd like to avoid is having Norell stare at my stomach like she wishes it would explode.”
“Come on, Cécile. Surely she's not still doing that, not after you guys made up.”
“She doesn't stare like she used to, but I still caught her eyes latched onto my belly a couple of times yesterday when she thought I wasn't looking. It's never going to go away completely. That's what makes me uncomfortable. I feel like she's going to bring me bad luck.”
“We have to try to be patient with Norell, Cécile. After all, it probably would have just about killed me if I'd been told I couldn't have children. Brittany was the one reason I had to keep going on when Kenny died.” Dana drew in her breath, immediately recognizing that for the first time she had admitted Kenny was dead, not merely the victim of an accident. “And look at you. Your kids are your life.”
“Dana, you'd been through a major psychological trauma, losing your mother and sister, and then hearing your father say what he did. God wouldn't be that cruel to you to deny your having a child. And as for me, my whole life, all I knew was taking care of kids. Since I was the second oldest and the oldest girl, I was my mother's right hand growing up. I always knew that I'd have my own kids one day. Not this many, of course,” Cécile added with a laugh.
“Most girls dream of having kids when they're growing up. Norell's no different. It's hard for her to see you and me with our children, that's all. She doesn't want anything bad to happen to us.” She chuckled. “After all, I've made her Brittany's official guardian in case I die or become incapacitated.”
“I'm glad you've made plans for Brittany's sake, but I'd watch my back around her if I were you. She's likely to drop cyanide tablets in your soup.”
“Cécile, you're exaggerating. But I understand your being uncomfortable around her. Once you have the baby it'll go away, and Norell will hold it and coo at it and make silly faces just like everyone else. So you go on and get your packing done. Don't worry about missing the meeting. I'll fill you in on everything that happens and e-mail you a copy of our freshly updated financials. I'm expecting a couple of checks this week.”
Although a few other checks did arrive, by Friday nothing had come in from either the sports-medicine clinic or the dermatology practice. This struck Dana as unusual. Both always sent their checks within days of being invoiced, and the invoices had gone out ten days before. She made a mental note to give both offices' bookkeepers a pleasant nudge if the checks weren't in Monday's mail delivery.
 
 
Monday's mail contained no checks, but both bookkeepers she spoke to insisted that they'd mailed their checks last week. She should have had them by now. CDN kept a post office box as their official mailing address to meet home-business regulations, but she, Norell, and Cécile all agreed it would save time if they used Dana's home address on the envelopes they enclosed with clients' invoices. This allowed payments to be promptly received and deposited without having to make extra trips to the post office to retrieve checks. Now she was faced with either waiting for a delayed delivery or going through the further delay of requesting that the clients issue a stop-payment order on the checks.
She discussed the matter with her partners. “Give it until the end of the week,” Cécile said.
“How much money are we talking about?” Norell wanted to know.
“About twenty-five hundred, total.”
“In that case I'd ask for a stop payment now,” Norell advised. “It'll probably be at least two days before they can reissue the checks. This way you'll have it wrapped up by the end of the week.”
Dana sighed. “Maybe I should. Cécile thought I should wait until the end of the week.”
“Cécile wouldn't be so patient if somebody owed her twenty-five hundred dollars personally.”
“You're right, she wouldn't. Okay, I'll call.”
“Let me know what happens.” Norell hung up the phone. It rang again before she could reposition her fingers over her ergonomic keyboard. “Hello.”
“Hey, beautiful.”
“Well, hello to you, too, handsome,” she said, immediately falling into the flirtatious mood Vic set.
“I was thinking, how'd you like to have dinner at Harry's tonight?”
“I just put a roast beef in the oven.”
“Well, save it for tomorrow. Or better yet, slice it for sandwiches.”
She laughed. Her first thought had been to say, “Vic, I can't,” and she was glad she'd caught herself. He'd been so sweet these last couple of weeks, coming up with spontaneous suggestions for dinner or the movies. He hadn't squawked once when she announced after dinner that she had work to complete. CDN now did overflow transcription for a local medical center. They had hired three part-time MTs, women with families hoping to make a few extra dollars. Between them they got in maybe seven hours of work a day, but even that made a dent in the hospital account. At least the director of medical records, who had hired them, was pleased with their work.
Best of all, she and Vic were getting along now like they had in their early days together. All she'd ever wanted was for him to give her emotional support, both with CDN and with her infertility struggle. He'd been way too slow to react to both, something she still found hurtful.

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