Exposed (Rosato & DiNunzio #5)(39)
“—I know—”
“—I’m not a legal snob—”
“—I know you’re not, it’s not that—”
“Not at all.” Judy’s lower lip buckled. “But I don’t know if I should go with you, if you leave. You also work more hours than I do and you have to go at a moment’s notice, like you’re on call all the time. I like my own schedule and I want time to paint—and guess what, I didn’t even get to tell you, I bought a loom.”
“A loom, like, for weaving things?” Mary smiled. Judy was so cute, always finding new things to do, like weaving things that you could buy already woven.
“Exactly, it’s so much fun! There’s so much to learn. It comes next week. The only bad thing is it’s going to take up my whole bedroom. I’m never going to get another boyfriend. I don’t have room for sex.”
“So weave something. A blanket.”
“A sex blanket!”
Mary smiled. “Or do it standing up.”
“Whoa, Mare!” Judy’s eyes flared in fake shock. “You’re married.”
“Hey, it happens.”
“How often?”
“Once, until I fell down,” Mary admitted, and they both laughed.
Judy’s smile faded. “So I don’t know if I’d be happy doing what you do. I don’t know if I should come with you, if you go. Are you going?”
“I think so,” Mary had to admit, though she couldn’t believe it herself.
“Oh no.” Judy’s eyes glistened. “I’m not crying.”
“Don’t, or I will. We’re still friends, that’s the key thing. We can still see each other every day.”
“Right.” Judy wiped her eyes, flushing under her fair skin.
“Probably more than we do now. We’ll make a point of it. Lunch, right here, like always.”
“Totally.” Judy nodded. “They say that after a divorce, the dad sees the kid more.”
“Right.” Mary forced a smile because Judy was trying to cheer them both up. “And you can always come with me, but no pressure.”
“I know, thanks. I can always come with you, but I have to think about it. Can I think about it?”
“Of course.” Mary felt heartbroken, and it was even worse to know that she had nobody but herself to blame. She was breaking her own heart. And Judy’s.
Suddenly Mary’s cell phone pinged with an incoming text, and she pulled it out of her bag and checked the screen. The text was from Simon, and it read: Can you come to the hospital? No emergency but ASAP.
Mary rose instantly. “I’d better go,” she said, concerned.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Bennie lowered the car window, traveling the winding roads through the proverbial rolling hills of Pennsylvania, which really existed, dense with woods and underbrush this time of year. She’d texted Declan that she was driving out to see him, and he’d texted her back a heart emoji because he’d turned into a big mushball, which she secretly loved.
Wind blew through the open window, messing up her hair and buffeting her eardrums, a not-entirely-pleasant sensation, but at least it was fresh air. It felt good to be outside in summer, not boxed in, climate-controlled, bounded by concrete and skyscrapers. She realized she hadn’t had a vacation in years, and there were plenty of days at work when she never felt the sun, at either end of the day. Now it warmed the skin of her left forearm, resting on the side of the car, and she had to put down her visor, even with sunglasses.
She inhaled a lungful and smelled the heavy sweetness of wild honeysuckle mounded by the roadside, then brush roses that bordered people’s front yards as she passed through one small town after the next, each with colonial clapboard houses set right at the curbside, having been constructed in an era when the only thing on the road was a horse and buggy.
An hour passed, and Bennie reached Voxburg, a former mining town that held a post office, a middle school, a medium-sized office park, and an enclave of old and new homes, including the converted Victorian in which Declan rented the first floor for his law firm. It was on the far side of town, set at the top of the hill, and she pulled off the road onto its gravel driveway and traveled upward, catching sight of the place, which was lovely.
The house was a true Painted Lady, three stories of crisp white clapboard, navy-blue curlicue trim on its eaves, and a slate roof with a pointed turret in one corner, which Declan took for his own office. Bennie’s favorite feature of the house was its magnificent wraparound porch, with an old-fashioned porch swing. She reached the end of the driveway, parked next to a few other cars belonging to the dental offices on the other floors, then cut the ignition.
“Perfect timing!” Declan came through the screen door with a grin, holding two bottles of Rolling Rock by the necks.
Bennie got out of the car, her mood improving. Declan Mitchell was good-looking in a way that had never attracted her before; clean-cut with conventionally handsome features and dark hair that he kept unfashionably short. He was dressed as casually as he ever got, in a blue Oxford shirt with khakis and loafers with white socks. Declan had been a state trooper with the mounted division when she’d met him, on the other side of a case that had changed her life. They’d lost track of each other, then reconnected after he’d become a lawyer, but he still carried himself like a cop, coming off taller and less fun than he actually was. She’d fallen in love with him the first time she saw him kiss his horse.