Life and Other Near-Death Experiences(13)

“No, I am not.” I could have spread it out, made a scene. But I’ll admit—I wanted it to be over. “It turns out that the State of Illinois decided that divorce should be a long and painful process.”

“I already told you. I don’t want a divorce.”

“You don’t, Tom, but you will,” I said. I felt a sob bubbling up from deep within me. I swallowed it and steadied myself. “So without further ado—”

I glanced around to see if his colleagues were within earshot, and darn if he didn’t duck like I was about to pull out a gun.

“Get up, fudgewit,” I said sharply.

He rose slowly.

“Tom Miller,” I said, “I, Libby Miller, divorce you. I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you.”

I was expecting shock, but as my eyes met his, all I saw was hurt.

This is not your fault, Libby, I reminded myself. Don’t let his pain emotionally derail you. He’s the one who threw you on the tracks.

“Good-bye, ex-husband,” I said quietly. Then I turned and left his cube without looking back—not to make a point, but because I was not certain that I would be able to keep myself from rushing at him with apologies, acceptance, and absolution for us both.



Slightly shaken but still committed to my original mission, I arrived at Ty Oshira’s office just as Chicago began to take lunch. The office occupied the bottom half of a brick row house tucked in a tony neighborhood just outside of downtown. I rang the doorbell, said Ty’s name into the black box as prompted, and was immediately buzzed in. I found myself in a sitting room filled with antique furniture and large oil portraits, any one of which would appraise for more than my net worth.

Ty entered through a set of mahogany double doors. “Libby,” he said in a tone that was kind, but hardly oozing with the eager testosterone I’d been anticipating. “What brings you here?”

“Hi, Ty,” I said, flustered. We were already off script—and why was his expression one of platonic curiosity?

“Let me guess: things with Jackie aren’t going so stellar,” he said with a smile.

Tom, I thought with panic. You mean Tom. Remember? I laughed nervously. “You could say that.”

Just then, a woman walked through the doors. I’d like to describe her as waddling, but alas, even at a good seven to eight months pregnant, she was all but gliding on air, a lithe goddess with a basketball of fertility attached to her abdomen. She was very pretty, and she beamed at me as though we were old friends. Then she put her hand on Ty’s lower back in a decidedly un-coworker way. I was momentarily puzzled—had I confused his home and work addresses?

“Libby, this is Shea Broderick,” Ty said.

I stared blankly. “As in—”

“Broderick Media,” said Shea, just as Ty said, “My wife.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, my goodness. How wonderful.”

“Isn’t it?” Ty said, grinning at Shea. “We were just married a few months ago.”

“It looks bad, doesn’t it?” Shea smiled. “With me being forty, and Ty’s boss to boot. But I couldn’t have known when I hired him that we would fall in love.”

If she was forty, I was fast approaching four hundred. No wonder my body up and quit on me.

“Libby, can you blame me?” Ty said.

I opened my eyes wide as though I understood completely, even as I began to pray for the rapture: How’s now for you, God? Because now is definitely a good time for me.

“I mean, in the past year alone, Shea has funded literacy programs for—how many kids is it, baby?”

“Oh, you, stop it!” Shea said, all faux humble.

“Seriously! Libby, did you know that almost forty percent of people in Chicago proper can’t read?”

No, I did not, I told him, as I glanced around for a window to jump out of, never mind that the door was right behind me; rational thinking was now a distant, almost unfathomable memory, like a land before e-mail.

“It’s true!” Ty enthused. “And with Shea at the helm, Broderick Media has funneled nearly a hundred thousand dollars to the city’s most effective literacy program. I mean, it’s just astounding.” He tilted his head back, regarding me like I was a rescue puppy wagging my tail and begging him to pick me. Which was not entirely off base. “You should come work for us, Libby.”

Us. I wanted to throw us in a bonfire. I wanted to stuff us in a bottle and toss it into the Gulf of Mexico during hurricane season.

Instead, I plastered on a deranged smile. “You know, I’d love to, but I just quit on Jackie to start my own nonprofit. For, um, children who’ve lost parents to cancer. That’s why I’m here, actually. I was hoping you and Shea could give me some pointers,” I fibbed, as though I hadn’t just learned that in addition to running one of the few profitable publishing companies in Chicago, Ty’s secret wife just happened to have a heart of gold.

“Mentoring is one of my core competencies!” said Shea. “I’d love to chat more, but right now, baby Broderick-Oshira is starving! You know how that is.”

I did not.

“Do you have a card you could leave, Lizzy?” she asked sweetly.

Again, I did not, and Ty didn’t tell Shea that she had just mangled my name. He seemed relieved that I was about to exit his personal Eden. “Well, I should be able to look you up,” he said, extending his hand.