Wish You Were Gone(21)
When Emma pushed open the door of Kelsey’s room she banged her toe on the dresser and cursed under her breath. Everything was in the wrong place. Neat as a pin, but totally wrong.
“When the hell did this happen?” Emma muttered to herself. Clearly, she had been checked out lately—something she promised herself she would remedy posthaste. She wasn’t about to become one of those moms who let her kids go off the rails after a tragedy. Not that moving furniture around was a sign of imminent breakdown, but really—the layout was entirely illogical.
By the afternoon, she was starting to get tired and disgruntled and was beginning to daydream about her bed and her DVR, but when she walked past the game room she smelled something off and knew it was time to deal with the gift baskets. She went to the kitchen for a box of garbage bags and got to work throwing out semi-rotted citrus fruit and fully rotted peaches. She stacked boxes of chocolates and nuts on the pool table and struggled to fit the hard, Styrofoam bottoms of the larger baskets into the Hefty bags. After balling up all manner of cellophane and ribbon and snapping quite a few rubber bands, she noticed that the sky outside was starting to turn pink and she was a sweaty, bedraggled mess.
Had she even showered today? She couldn’t recall.
Emma lifted the final basket off the floor—a behemoth filled with sweet and savory snacks that had been sent by last year’s NBA MVP—and behind it was the briefcase.
Emma’s heart gave a lurch. “How the hell?”
She grabbed it off the floor—it felt light—and sat down in the nearest comfy chair, her back facing the window, which afforded the room’s only light—already dwindling at that. The bag smelled like James, like leather and bourbon and a hint of his aftershave. The scent brought angry, regretful tears to her eyes and she ran her fingers over the stamp of his initials: JTW.
“Okay,” she said, breathing out. “Let’s do this.”
She opened the briefcase and realized why it weighed next to nothing—his laptop wasn’t there. There were a few folders inside. Random pens. Three opened rolls of mints—of course. She dug through the side pockets and found business cards, a bottle of Advil, and then a prescription bottle. She hadn’t known James was taking anything. She tugged out the bottle and read the label. Lipitor. Cholesterol medication. When had he started taking that?
Quickly, Emma searched the rest of the bag, hoping to find his cell phone, but there was nothing else of interest. Just a packet of tissues and some other people’s cards. A couple with notes scrawled on the back: solid guy or annoying but useful.
That’s my man, Emma thought ruefully.
Where had he left his computer? Where was his phone? She thought to check the bag of clothes again—maybe the phone was in his suit pocket. Then, she noticed the tab on one of the folders. It was labeled Emma.
Her heart all but stopped. She tugged the folder out. It was new—crisp—unlike the few others that were creased and worn. Placing the briefcase at her feet, she laid the folder flat on her lap. Her pulse beat an erratic rhythm inside her wrists. She held her breath and opened it:
COMPLAINT FOR DIVORCE
* * *
SHE HAD THOUGHT the shower would calm her. It didn’t. Emma stood in front of the foggy mirror in her bathroom, hands braced against the vanity, bent forward and feeling like she was going to throw up or scream or break something or some combination thereof.
Every detail of that night came rushing back at her as if she were living through it all over again. There was supposed to be a party for Garrison & Walsh, or G&W as it was referred to in the industry, at some new venue downtown. They were forever throwing themselves parties to pat themselves on the back for various accomplishments—Emma had lost track of what it was for this time. But she’d told James a month prior that she would go, knowing even then that she was going to divorce him.
That she was going to divorce him.
She had found herself a lawyer—not Gray, even though divorce was Gray’s specialty, because if there was a line in friendship that had to be it—and gotten started on the process, right around the time she’d finally decided to buy the cottage on the far side of town. It had always been a dream of hers to flip a house on her own, and she’d been making excuses for years—not enough money, the market was down, her kids needed braces—not that they didn’t have the money for braces, God knew. But it wasn’t her money, and she’d struggled to imagine how she would explain her dream to her husband. Could never quite picture him reacting with anything other than a scoff, or worse, a sneer. But then her father had passed and left her a nice chunk of change, and six months later, when one of the cottages became available, it was like a sign. That three-block stretch of homes was her favorite in all of Oakmont, and one of few areas in dire need of revitalization. When she’d looked at the place, she’d known instantly, like love at first sight. She’d also known that if she was going to be brave enough to do this, she wanted to do it on her own terms. She needed to get the hell out of her loveless, volatile, long dead marriage.
She’d gotten the papers that Monday, and hadn’t told a soul about any of it. She’d decided to just get through the weekend. Let James have this last party, play the good wife one last time, then sit him down for a talk on Sunday night. But then, he’d come home that Thursday in rare form, practically foaming at the mouth, slamming around his man cave in the basement like an animal. She had been trying to herd the kids out of the house when he’d come back upstairs and gone after Kelsey, spouting nonsense, getting right in Kelsey’s face. Emma had screamed at him to stop, but he hadn’t stopped. And then Kelsey had run, and James had lunged at their daughter. He’d chased her outside, Hunter on his heels, Emma screaming and reaching for the phone.