Small Change (16 page)

Before she could answer he slipped past her and walked down the hall to their bedroom while she stood frozen in place. A moment
later he was back with a satchel in hand. “Good-bye, Tiff,” he said, and then walked out the door.

Oh, God, oh God, oh God
. She suddenly couldn't get her breath. What had she done?

“You shouldn't have bought that stuff on eBay,” scolded her conscience as she stood in the doorway crying.

Well, too late. It wasn't like she could return it.

But she could sell it. She didn't need that Juicy Couture bag anyway. She didn't need a lot of things.

One thing she did need was Brian, and there was only one way to get him back. She had to kick her shopping addiction once and for all. All those things she bought hadn't filled up the empty places anyway, so there was no point wasting any more money on them.

It's all about you
. Was Brian right? Was it all about her? Why hadn't she noticed? Why had she been so selfish? And stupid? Why had she bought all this … stuff?

She set her jaw, marched to the hall, and scooped up all her packages. Then she got to work unpacking them, staging them, and taking pictures. These were all going up for sale. Well, except the postal scale and the book. But everything else, and some of the junk she had kicking around the house, too. She was going to make money hand over fist any way she could. Before the year was over those charge cards would be paid off and Brian would want to come back.

What if he didn't? She burst into tears at the very thought. He'll come back, she assured herself. And when he did, he'd find he'd returned to a new woman. That would be a good deal for both of them, because she sure didn't like the irresponsible shopaholic she'd become any more than he did. She wanted the Tiffany she used to be, the woman who was always happy no matter what, the
Tiffany who didn't hide things under the bed or lie to her husband.

She'd get her husband back and her life back, and most important of all, she'd get herself back.

“
O
kay, are you going to give me the silent treatment all night?” Michael demanded.

“I might,” Jess said, and slammed his plate of leftovers down on the table. She started to leave the kitchen.

“Where are you going? Aren't you eating?”

“I'm not hungry,” she called over her shoulder. Simply looking at her husband when he came through the door had made her angry all over again, and the last thing she wanted to do was sit down and enjoy a meal with him. It was going to be a long time before she'd enjoy doing anything with the man. She went to the piano and sat down on the bench.

A moment later he was sitting next to her, perched on the edge. “I know you don't agree with me on this.”

She launched into the theme from “The Phantom of the Opera.”

“But can't you allow Mikey and me to work this out between us?”

She stopped playing and turned to frown at him. “Not when I'm caught in the middle.”

He frowned back. “You're not caught in the middle. This is between us.”

“Well, I'm being affected.” She played on. She knew Michael was frowning without even looking.

“Jess, we haven't always agreed with each other on how to handle the kids.”

It was a diplomatic way of saying he hadn't always liked her parenting methods any more than she had his. That was true. Each of them had blown it as parents any number of times, but together they'd still managed to raise good kids. And they'd had a good relationship with both their children. Until now.

She fingered the piano keys. “Mikey needs to know that you still love him.”

“Jess, he knows that.”

Jess gave Michael her most penetrating look. “Sometimes you're pretty hard on him.”

That wasn't anything new. “Always try your best” was his motto when Mikey played sports, and since Mikey's best had been great that had been no problem. But when he decided he didn't want to play in Little League anymore Michael had not been happy. “Quitters never win and winners never quit,” he'd lectured.

Mikey had quit anyway, preferring to play video games with his friends and, when he got older, to tinker on cars.

Dropping out of baseball hadn't been the only bone of contention between father and son. When it came to grades, Mikey's best had never been good enough. “You can get a B in World History. Come on, son, try harder. You don't want to go through life just being average.”

As if being average was a crime. A person couldn't be stellar at
everything. Maybe a person didn't have to be stellar at anything if he didn't want to be. What was wrong with simply being happy?

“He's never been good enough for you.”

“That's not true,” Michael protested. “Just because I want him to do well and have a successful life …”

“We don't all have the same definition of success,” said Jess. “Look at me.”

Michael smiled. “I like looking at you.”

“I never finished college, I never became a star.”

“You're my star,” he said, and planted a kiss on her neck.

A kiss on the neck could always start a fire between them, but not tonight. She scooted away. “If you'd just get off his case …”

“He'd live at home and sponge off us forever,” Michael finished for her.

Jess frowned at him. “Nice thing to say about your only son.”

“I'm not going to encourage him to be lazy. He has to learn to take care of himself. If he doesn't he'll be crippled all his life.”

“He'll be emotionally crippled if he thinks his father doesn't love him.”

Michael's jaw tightened. “It will be fine,” he said, and rose from the piano bench.

“Where are you going?” Jess asked, hoping he'd answer that he was off to call Mikey.

“To watch TV,” Michael called over his shoulder.

Jess glared at his retreating back, then brought her hands down on the keys, hitting every minor chord in range, songwriting as she went.
Why do men have to be the way they are? Sometimes I want to hit him with my car. He's making my heart break. I want to drown him in the lake. Oh, yeah.

She sighed heavily and let her hands fall in her lap. All right.
She didn't want to kill her husband. But she wasn't averse to inflicting enough misery to motivate him to make things right with their son and get their lives back to normal.

She returned to her songwriting, going in a new direction.
No sex for Dad. Sad, sad. 'Cause Mamma's mad. Mad, mad. And when Mamma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy, especially Daddy.

Not bad, she thought. Maybe she'd finish that song. Then she'd play it for Michael and see what he thought of it. With an evil smile, she went in search of paper and a pencil.

After her fun shopping adventure, Rachel's solitary dinner felt anticlimactic. The novelty of having time to herself had worn off days ago and she felt the absence of her children like a gnawing toothache.

They would be in New York by the end of the week and the grandparents had plans for them for the rest of the month— everything from museums to Broadway musicals … and, of course, shopping. Claire was expecting to get an entire new wardrobe out of her visit and was ecstatic. Rachel had to remind herself how good this was for the children and a good deal for her, too. Her daughter would get a new wardrobe and she wouldn't have to pay a cent—a true win-win. Still, she sighed unhappily as she put her scant load of clothes in the dryer. How could Girl Camp compete with shopping in New York? At least David would be ready to come home. Of course, it wouldn't be because he missed his mother. Stuffed in a posh New York apartment, the boy was bound to go through basket-ball withdrawal.

Rachel sighed. Both her children were growing up so fast. This month was a taste of loneliness to come.

So you'd better build a life for yourself,
she thought as she went to her computer to make a blog entry.

Blogging was rather a small building block, but it was some-thing, and Rachel was pleased to discover that she was already getting comments. “I love the idea of making small life changes,” wrote one woman. “I'm going to check your blog every day for tips.”

Every day? Talk about pressure.

“Instead of getting so much fast food I'm going to make time to cook more meals from scratch,” wrote another visitor. “That should save me a bundle.”

A third woman wrote, “I kept thinking I needed to make a ton more money to fix my life, but you've got me thinking that what I really need to do is learn to manage what I already have.”

Rachel couldn't help but feel warmed by what she read. She'd had a vague idea of helping other people when she wrote her first entry, but to actually see women responding was heady stuff indeed. Maybe she should post a picture of herself in her new bargain clothes.

She paired her new black top with some jeans and slipped on her hot sandals. Checking out her reflection in the bedroom mirror, she liked what she saw. “You diva on a dime, you,” she said to her reflection. She grabbed her digital camera and snapped a shot, then looked at the image on the screen. A shot of her taking a picture of herself looked goofy. She needed a photographer.

She called Jess. “Are you guys still eating dinner?” she asked when Jess answered.

“I'm not,” Jess said irritably. “What's up?”

Something was obviously up at Jess's house, and it wasn't good. “Is everything okay over there?”

“Not particularly.

“Oh, no.”

“Not to worry. What can I do for you?”

“Nothing. Never mind,” said Rachel. She remembered Jess's grumpy mood earlier, and the fighting she'd heard the night before. Jess and Michael had the perfect marriage, the perfect family. The sound of raised voices coming from their house had felt unnatural, like aliens had somehow taken over next door. Things obviously still weren't right and Jess didn't need the added aggravation of a high-maintenance neighbor demanding a photo shoot.

“Come on, out with it,” Jess commanded.

“It sounds like this isn't a good time. Really, it was nothing,” said Rachel.

“If you don't tell me what you want I'll come over in person and find out.”

“Well, I was wondering if I could get you to take a couple of pictures of me in my new bargain wardrobe. I want to put them up on my money blog. But really, it's no big deal,” Rachel added, feeling guilty. “We can do it some other time.”

“Now is fine,” Jess insisted. “I'll be right over.”

A moment later she was walking through the front door. “Look at you,” she approved, taking in Rachel's outfit. She crooned a line from “You Sexy Thing.”

“Yes, I am, aren't I?” Rachel agreed, pleased with herself.

“We should take several shots,” said Jess. She looked critically at Rachel. “And we should get Tiffany to come over and fix your hair.”

“Oh, my hair is fine,” said Rachel with a wave of her hand. “I don't need to take every wife in the neighborhood away from her husband.”

“Mine is probably happy you took me,” said Jess with a frown.

Rachel laid a hand on her arm. “Okay, spill. What's going on? Are you guys okay?”

Jess scowled. “Michael is being a stubborn jerk and Mikey is staying with a friend. Maybe it's a good thing we don't live on the lake. My husband might have had a sad drowning accident.”

“You know you don't mean that,” said Rachel.

“Well, not now. But a while ago I was seriously considering it.” Jess heaved a sigh. “Men. Can't live with 'em. Can't drown 'em. We'll work through it,” she added. “We always do. But meanwhile, it won't hurt him to stew in solitary for a while. Go ahead and call Tiff, too. Brian's Jeep is gone so that means she's home alone, and you know how much she hates being alone.”

“Good point,” said Rachel and snagged the phone.

Tiff must have seen her name on the caller ID because she didn't bother with “hello.” “Brian's left me,” she wailed.

Rachel blinked. “What?”

“He … he …” The sentence ended in sobs.

“Get over here right now,” Rachel commanded. “I'll break out the chocolate.”

“What's wrong?” Jess asked, following as Rachel started for the kitchen.

“He left her, the bastard.”

“What?”

“What is wrong with that man?” Rachel growled.

“Maybe there's something in the water.”

Tiffany was in the house now. They could hear her sobbing her way to the kitchen. Jess went to meet her and returned with her arm around Tiff's shoulder. Rachel stuffed a chocolate in her mouth
and led her into the family room and settled her on the sofa. “Okay, what happened?”

Between crying and chewing, Tiffany wasn't able to give an immediate answer.

“I'm sure he's not gone for good,” said Jess.

“Why did he leave?” Rachel asked.

Tiffany swallowed. “He found my eBay stuff.”

Rachel was confused. “The things you're selling?”

“Nooooo. The things I bought.”

Jess and Rachel exchanged looks. So much for getting her spending under control. Tiffany had plugged up one leak in the financial dam only to spring another somewhere else.

“My life's a mess,” she sobbed. “Brian hates me.”

“No he doesn't,” said Jess. “He'll be back. He probably needs to cool down. That's all.”

“You have got to get yourself under control,” said Rachel, and Jess shot her a look that said,
This is hardly the time for a lecture.

But Tiffany didn't take offense. Instead she sniffed and nodded. “I know. I don't need all this stuff. I really don't. I just need Brian.” This started a fresh round of sobbing.

Rachel patted her arm. “That's a real epiphany. Have another chocolate.” The phone rang and she picked it up. The number on the screen wasn't one she recognized. “Hello?” she said uncertainly.

“Hi,” said a deep voice on the other end of the line. “It's Chad.”

Excitement swirled inside her. Tiffany was still sobbing, so she moved out to the patio.

“Is this a bad time?” he asked.

“I have a friend having a crisis, but we're dealing with it.”

“Well, I wondered if that dinner offer was still open. I'm coming over to the house to do some work tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow will be fine,” said Rachel. She'd wear one of her new outfits. “How about around six?”

“That suits me. See you then.”

Tomorrow. She had a date tomorrow. She'd barbecue chicken and make a potato salad. They could eat out on the patio. And look at the overgrown grass. Okay, she'd mow the lawn first thing in the morning before it got hot. Speaking of getting hot, what might dinner lead to? It wasn't difficult to envision herself in Chad Alvarez's arms.

The sound of her friend crying brought her back into the present with a jolt. Poor Tiff. Brian was a rat to jump off the sinking ship and leave her to try and bail out alone. What was going on here, anyway? Maybe there really was something wrong with the water here in Heart Lake Estates. Or maybe there was something wrong with the men. Or just men in general?