The Cost of Happiness: A Contemporary Romance (33 page)

Could she get a job with another firm? She didn’t think so but even if she could, did she want to go through all this again?

Fast food. She’d get a job at minimum wage in fast food. Or maybe become a chambermaid at a hotel. That was good, honest work. Once the restitution was paid, she could find something else. Maybe train to be something, she wasn’t sure what, work for state government somewhere.

Maybe she should move to someplace cheaper to live. Like Iowa? No, she wasn’t going back there. Tomorrow she’d go to the library and research where it would be cheapest to live.

Okay. She had a plan. She stood up, turned off the water and reached for a towel. When she opened the bathroom door, she could hear the knocking.

Better get this part over with. She pulled on a robe and wrapped her hair in a dry towel. When she opened the door, both Kassie and Dan were standing there. Kassie looked terrified, her eyes slightly pink from crying. Dan looked like he wanted to murder someone, but when he saw Meghan, his jaw softened.

“You might as well both come in,” she told them. “I’ll boil water for tea.”

“What happened? I left you a note.” Dan pulled his card out of his tuxedo jacket pocket.

“And I left you a note,” Meghan said quietly. She turned the heat on under the kettle. “It’s on the back.”

Kassie sat at the breakfast table. “When Dan came around, I freaked out. I was so sure you were in here, doing—doing something—oh, God, I don’t know. Pills. Something bad.” Kassie sniffled as the tears started again. Meghan handed her the kitchen box of tissues.

Dan flicked at the business card with his forefinger, making it snap. “What does ‘no happy ending’ mean?”

Meghan tugged the two sides of her robe together and tightened the sash. She willed the kettle to boil. When it finally did, she made a pot of herbal tea and carried it over to the breakfast table, along with three mugs, three spoons, the honey bear and the sugar bowl. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any lemon.”

“Fuck the lemon,” Dan said. “Talk to me. Talk to us. Why did you rush off like that?”

Meghan pointed to the other chrome-and-vinyl chair and motioned for Dan to sit there. Kassie blew her nose, twice, while Meghan pulled her desk chair over to the breakfast table. She stirred some sugar into her tea. That was good for shock, wasn’t it?

Finally, when it was apparent they were both waiting for her, Meghan opened her mouth.
Don’t cry
. “Vicky showed me a page from your personnel file. Your emergency contact is Susan Wolfson, whose relationship is listed as wife.” She looked at Dan, who’d paled.

“You’re married?” Kassie shrieked. She looked like she wanted to pour hot herbal tea over his head.

Meghan put her hand on Kassie’s knee. “He’s not living with her, Kass. They’re separated or something.”

“But why didn’t you tell Meghan?”

“Oh, Christ.” Dan ran both his hands over his eyes and up into his hair. “I did tell you about Shana.”

“Who’s Susan?” Meghan asked.

“Her Hebrew name is Shana. It means pretty. It’s like a pet name that her family uses so I use it too. She goes by Susan professionally. She’s a junior partner at Bradford Wayne.” Dan looked exhausted, like he’d collapsed three feet short of the finish line. “How in the
fuck
did Vicky get my personnel file?”

Meghan took a sip of her tea. “She broke in, or she’s got a friend in HR, or she made up some story about why she needed it. Who knows? And you can’t accuse her. She’d lie and say I did it.”

“Fuck.”

Kassie had been watching this like a tennis game, her eyes darting from Dan to Meghan and back again. “Who the hell is Vicky?” She held up a hand. “No, I take it back. I don’t want to know. What I want to know is why you didn’t tell Meghan you were married.”

Dan’s shoulders slumped. “We dated in law school. Then we lived together. Her parents were excited about her marrying me even if I wasn’t Jewish. And my parents were thrilled with such a smart woman. And we looked good together. Somehow we got talked into having a wedding. I don’t think we even put up much of a fight. If it made our families happy, why should we argue? We kept our heads down at our Wall Street law firms, totally focused on our careers.”

He played with his spoon. “So one July weekend, we got married in Scarsdale, New York. No honeymoon—we told ourselves we were too busy—so we just went back to work. We were both twenty-six.”

Meghan could tell he’d looked at her but she wouldn’t meet his gaze. He went back to turning the spoon over and over.

“Two years later, I got the job in the US Attorney’s office here. Shana got a job at Bradford. I think the first clue our marriage was over was when we couldn’t agree on where to live. I wanted a house, she wanted a Rittenhouse Square apartment, very expensive, very sleek. We didn’t fight, but we also couldn’t be bothered to work it out. We rented a place on Spruce. Six months later, she wanted to move. So did I. Just not to the same places.”

Kassie leaned forward. “Wait. Your marriage ended because you couldn’t agree on where to live?”

Dan crossed his legs and played with the inseam on his tuxedo trousers. “No. Our marriage ended because it never began. We loved each other, we just had no business getting married.”

“So why’s she still your wife? Why not divorce each other?” Kassie’s tone demanded answers.

Meghan listened to Dan’s explanation—something about how the divorce lawyers got the paperwork wrong—but it wasn’t penetrating. It was just more stories, devised to quiet a whiny child.

Meghan remembered sitting at the huge round oak table in Pops’ old-fashioned kitchen. Bianca—“Don’t call me ‘mommy,’ dear. It ages me so.”—would explain why the toys had to go back where they came from. She was always quick to point out that Meghan had gotten to play with them for a week. “You had fun, didn’t you?”

If Bianca had just had depression, would that have been better? Never the mania? No presents, no lightness, no parties to plan? Was the week Meghan got to play with the dollhouse, or that amazing doll with the real hair, or the bicycle—was that time worth it?

“Meghan?” Dan touched her hand and she flinched away. She looked at him, confused. Why was he here, and wearing a tuxedo? Oh, right. The Formal.

“Sweetheart,” he tried again.

“Hmm?”

“Talk to me. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that we’d been married, but it’s just an annoying clerical error, I swear.”

“Clerical error. Right.” Meghan could see Bianca, pacing around the room, screaming that the stores had fucked up, gotten the prices wrong, overcharged her, billed her too soon, something. Didn’t matter. Pops would take the toys back.

Meghan focused on Dan’s tuxedo, the crisp white shirt, the black bow tie, the smooth sheen on his jacket.

Maybe Bianca’s aborted birthday parties would have been okay, except for Tobias. He was a panda bear with a red ribbon around his neck. He wasn’t the fanciest of the toys. He couldn’t have been that expensive. Only Meghan knew that she’d fallen in love with him. When he was returned, it broke her heart.

Of course, her heart had healed. Hearts always heal. But she’d learned never to like any of Bianca’s presents after that. Meghan would unwrap them, admire them, say thank you. Bianca never noticed that Meghan left them in the original packaging, ready to be returned. A gift was never hers to keep, only Bianca’s to give.

Meghan stood up. Both Dan and Kassie looked at her, Dan with hope in his eyes, Kassie with apprehension, probably worried that she’d make a scene.

“I’m sorry, Dan, that I ran out without talking to you. I should have explained. I’m sure it was inconvenient to come to West Philly.” To Kassie, she said, “And I’m sorry I worried you. You did a wonderful job turning me into Cinderella. Too bad an evil witch had to confuse her fairy tales, and show up with a poisoned apple.”

She smiled at them both.

“I’m going to bed. Please help yourself to more tea.”

Dan left Meghan’s apartment without another word. He felt spanked. Unfairly punished for a much bigger crime than the one he’d actually committed.

He walked out to his car, barely aware that it had started to rain.

No matter how Dan characterized his blunder—a gamble that didn’t pay off, a childish effort to get away with breaking a window, the desire to skate past a foolish mistake—he couldn’t see why it should be so upsetting to Meghan. She’d looked destroyed. She could barely make eye contact let alone yell at him and then accept his apologies.

As he drove home, he tried to see it from her perspective. Worst interpretation was that he’d deliberately lied to her so he could…only that was where it broke down. What was the fear—that he and Shana were still sleeping together? But he’d made it clear their relationship was over. Okay, so the name thing was unfortunate. He should have said that he and Shana had gotten married. Then, when Vicky—and that was a can of worms he’d have to deal with on Monday—showed her the personnel file page, at least she’d think, “He said his wife’s name was Shana but this says Susan. Hunh.”

He tried calling Meghan on Sunday. No answer. He drove over, but Kassie saw him and said that Meghan had looked okay when she went out for a walk.

“She’ll be back later.”

“I think her phone’s turned off,” he said.

Kassie pursed her lips. “Yeah, she just needs time.”

On impulse, Dan asked, “Are you still mad at me?”

She tilted her head to one side. “Nah, I think you screwed up, but your intentions were okay.”

“Will Meghan forgive me, d’you think?”

“I don’t see why not. She really lo—really likes you.”

It should have been good news, but Dan had a sinking feeling that the fallout from Saturday night was going to be an unmitigated disaster.

He went back to his apartment and cleaned the oven, which hardly needed it. Then he called Shana.

“Hey, there. Talk fast, I want to watch
Sixty Minutes
.”

“I screwed up.”

“What, with your girl?”

“Meghan.”

Shana laughed. “Right. Meghan. I want to meet her. Does she understand that you and I are friends?”

“Someone showed her a copy of my personnel file sheet that lists you as my contact, and as my wife.”

“Lemme guess. You never told Meghan that we were married?”

“I was hoping to be unmarried before the issue arose. I didn’t take into consideration the machinations of a bitch like this fifth-year associate.” He explained about Vicky.

“How does a fifth-year associate get her hands on your personnel file?” Shana asked.

“I have no idea. And I doubt I could prove it even if I tried to get her disciplined. I have to come up with a better punishment than that.”

“You do that. She invaded your privacy.”

“No shit.” Dan scowled at the cooktop, which actually did need cleaning.

“Okay, so what’s the problem, again?”

“I’d told Meghan about you, at least to the extent that we were together through law school and after, but I never mentioned that we got married. It seems so insignificant.”

“Yes, to us. We know what happened. We know why we got married—because we let other people define our relationship—and we know why we stopped living together. But, c’mon, Dan. You have to admit—it looks really stupid for two lawyers to stay legally married because between them they can’t manage to get the damned paperwork filed correctly.”

“I gather Alec hasn’t complained about your marital state?”

“He just laughs. But then we’re only dating, not picking out metaphorical wedding china. Your situation is different.”

Dan thought about that. He’d tried to get the problem sorted out in time. He should have told Meghan the truth. “It was because we were already in this weird cliché situation. You know, the partner and the paralegal on the road? To then say, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m married but it means nothing. We live apart.’”

“’My wife doesn’t understand me.’” Shana volunteered.

“On the contrary, my wife understands me all too well,” he admitted.

“And I like you. You’re a good man. You can take care of this.”

“I don’t know. She—last night— You should have seen her, Shane. She was completely calm. Her friend Kassie and I did almost all the talking while Meghan had this faraway look in her eyes. Then all of a sudden, she stands up and goes to bed. We had to clean up and let ourselves out.”

“You called today?”

“And drove by. She’s not there. But Kassie seems to have forgiven me.”

Shana laughed. “Seriously, that’s a good sign. When the best friend likes you, it’s much easier.”

“Right. As I recall, your friend Mary from college took a long time to see my intrinsic charm.”

“Mary doesn’t like a lot of people.”

“What’s she doing now?”

“She’s a guidance counselor at a high school in Maryland.”

“Figures.”