Linda was the one who got me through it.
Linda lives across the street. She’s sixty-two, a retired nurse, divorced herself twelve years ago. She has short silver hair and a laugh you can hear from two houses away. She grows the best roses on Maple Court and has an opinion about everything.
She came over the second day after Gary left. She didn’t knock. She just walked in with a casserole dish of baked ziti and a bottle of wine and put them both on my counter.
“Eat this,” she said. “Then cry. Then eat more.”
She came over every day for two weeks. She made me get dressed. She made me take walks around the block. She sat with me on the porch at night and let me talk about Gary until I was sick of my own voice.
One night, about three weeks in, we were sitting on my porch swing, and I said, “What if he comes back?”
Linda looked at me.
“Do you want him to?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Part of me does. Part of me thinks I’d take him back in a second if he showed up on that porch and said he was sorry.”
Linda was quiet for a long time.
“Well,” she said finally, “if he ever comes back, and you decide you don’t want him, you call me. I’ll come stand right next to you while he gets his things. I’ll stand by my rosebush with my arms crossed and glare at him. I’m very good at glaring.”
I laughed for the first time in three weeks.
“Deal,” I said.
Then, slowly, things got better.
Not all at once. A little at a time.
In August, I signed up for a night class at the community college. Introduction to Accounting. I’d always been good with numbers. Gary used to tease me about it, about how I balanced the checkbook to the penny. He called it “Debbie’s little hobby.” I’d always wanted to go back to school. Gary always said we didn’t have the money.
Turns out we did. Gary just had other plans for it.
I loved that class. I loved sitting in a classroom with a notebook and a pencil, learning something new. Something that had nothing to do with Gary. Something that was just mine.
In September, I met with a divorce attorney. Her name was Patricia Moore. She was in her fifties, calm and sharp and very kind. We started the paperwork.
Gary wanted out fast. He wanted a “clean break,” he said. He didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want the house. He said he wanted to start over in an apartment downtown with his girlfriend. So Patricia worked out a buyout. I’d pay Gary for his half of the house, from my retirement savings and a small loan. He’d sign it over to me.
He signed the papers in October without reading most of them. He just wanted the check.
The house transfer was finalized at the end of that month. The divorce itself would take longer. In our state, there’s a waiting period. So we were still technically married. But the house was mine. Only mine. My name on the deed.
In November, I painted the kitchen.
Gary had always hated color. For twenty-two years, our kitchen was beige. Beige walls, beige cabinets, beige countertops. He said colors were “tacky.”
I went to the hardware store on a Saturday morning and stood in the paint aisle for an hour. Then I picked a deep, beautiful blue called Harbor Night.
I painted the cabinets myself. It took me all weekend. Linda came over Sunday afternoon to help with the trim, and we drank wine and played old Motown records and sang “My Girl” at the top of our lungs.
When I was done, I stood in the doorway and looked at it.
My kitchen. Blue.
I loved it.
That same week, I had the locks changed.
All of them. The front door, the back door, the side door to the garage. A nice young man named Tony came out and did it in an hour.
When he handed me the new keys, I held them in my hand for a long time.
Nobody else in the world had a copy.
So by the time Gary showed up in my driveway four months later with his suitcases and his golf clubs, I wasn’t the woman he’d left in June.
I just didn’t think he knew that yet.
“Come on, Debbie,” Gary said. He was still smiling. “We’ve been married forever.”
“Funny,” I said. “You remembered that right after she kicked you out.”
He made a face. He set down one of the suitcases on the walk.
“She said I was selfish,” he said. “Can you believe that?”
Then he looked past me, into the house.
“What’s for dinner?”
I stared at him.
Four months. Four months of not one phone call to ask how I was doing. Four months of letting our son tell me “Dad says hi.” Four months of signing papers without reading them and cashing a check for half my house.
And he wanted to know what was for dinner.
“Whatever you cook,” I said, “at your next address.”
He laughed. He actually laughed, like I’d made a joke.
“Very funny, Deb,” he said. “Help me with these bags.”
“Did your girlfriend pack them?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“That was nice of her,” I said. “I would’ve charged you.”
He sighed. He rolled one suitcase a little closer to the porch steps. He did it very casually, like he wasn’t doing anything at all.
“She said I was selfish,” he said again. “Can you believe that?”
“Did she explain why?”
“She wouldn’t stop explaining,” Gary said.
“Sounds difficult,” I said.
He rolled the suitcase up onto the bottom step.
“So where should I put my things?” he said. “The guest room’s fine for a few nights, I guess. Until we sort things out.”
“Gary,” I said. “You left me for another woman.”
“And I’ve learned my lesson.”
“In four months?”
“Three and a half, technically,” he said.
Four months ago, that would’ve made me cry.
Now I had to try very hard to keep from smiling.
Of course he’d brought his golf clubs.
Of course.
“Debbie,” Gary said. He put on his serious face. The one he used to use when he wanted me to agree to something. A new car. A golf weekend. A boat he never ended up buying. “I just want things to get back to normal.”
“You want a proper welcome home?” I said.
He brightened right up.
“Now you’re talking!”
“Then give me five minutes,” I said.
I stepped back inside and closed the door.
I went into the kitchen, under my blue cabinets. I picked up my phone and called Linda.
She answered on the first ring.
“Remember,” I said, “what you offered to help me with if he ever came back?”
There was a pause.
Then Linda started laughing.
“He’s actually there? He’s actually moving back in?”
Linda had watched him pull into my driveway. She’d seen the suitcases. But until I called, she hadn’t realized he genuinely expected to just move back in.
“He brought his golf clubs,” I said.
“Oh, this I have to see,” Linda said. “Give me two minutes to put on real pants.”
When I opened the front door again, Gary was standing on the top step of the porch now, with both suitcases beside him. The golf bag was leaning against my porch railing.
He smiled at me.
“I knew you’d come around,” he said.
“Of course,” I said. “But before you come in, I did something for you.”
His smile got even wider.
“What’s that?”
“I packed the last of your things,” I said. “Everything you left behind in June. They’re in two boxes in the garage.”
He blinked.
“You packed my stuff?”
“The things you left behind,” I said. “Your winter coat. Your fishing tackle. Your old high school yearbooks. Those awful ceramic frogs your mother gave you. Linda offered to stand beside me when you came to collect them. I just called her.”
He stared at me.
“I thought you were going to help me move in,” he said.
“I never said that.”
His smile disappeared. All at once. Like somebody had wiped it off with a rag.
He stood there on my porch, blinking, trying to find something to say.
“You’re seriously going to make me take two boxes and leave?”
“You wanted a fresh start, Gary,” I said. “I’m just helping you finish it.”
For twenty-two years, I’d been the one who made things easier for him.
I’d picked up his socks. I’d remembered his mother’s birthday. I’d made excuses to his boss when he was hungover. I’d smoothed things over with his brother after Thanksgiving fights. I’d balanced the checkbook and paid the bills and scheduled the dentist appointments and bought the toilet paper.
Apparently, he expected that arrangement to survive us separating.
“Debbie,” he said. He lowered his voice. “Can we not do this out here? In front of the whole neighborhood?”
Across the street, I saw a curtain move in the Petersons’ front window. Next door, Mr. Abernathy had come out to get his mail and was taking a very long time about it.
Linda’s front door was closed. She hadn’t come out yet.
“Oh,” I said. “Is this a little embarrassing for you?”
He dragged one suitcase closer to my front door.
“Look,” he said. “I know you’re upset. I get it. But we can work through this. People work through stuff like this all the time.”
“Really?” I said. “That’s all you have to say? About all the chaos you caused?”
“Come on, Deb,” he said. “I know you love me.”
The nerve of this man was honestly impressive. I’ll admit that.
I had missed him. I want to be honest about that.
Those first few weeks after he left, I’d missed him terribly. His ridiculous commentary during crime shows. It’s the butler, Deb. It’s always the butler. It was never the butler. The way he warmed up my car on freezing mornings. The way his keys hit the kitchen counter at six-fifteen every night.
I’d missed the sound of somebody else in the house.
But I hadn’t missed feeling like everything I wanted was an inconvenience to him.
I hadn’t missed that at all.
He leaned to the side and looked past me into the house.
“You painted the kitchen?” he said.
“Last Saturday,” I said. That wasn’t quite true. It had been three Saturdays. But he didn’t need to know that.
“Blue?” he said.
“I like blue.”
He frowned. Gary always hated blue. He said it made rooms look cold.
Then his eyes landed on the front door. On the shiny new brass lock.
“That’s new too,” he said.
“I had it changed.”
“Without telling me?”
“You weren’t living here, Gary,” I said.
He looked offended. Genuinely offended. Like I’d moved something that still belonged to him.
“Can I at least have some water?” he asked. “I’ve been driving around all afternoon.”
“Sure,” I said.
I closed the door and went back into the kitchen.
My accounting workbook was sitting on the kitchen counter, next to a container of leftover pasta from the night before. I had a test on Thursday. Chapter Seven. Depreciation.
Under the workbook was a blue folder from Patricia Moore’s law office. The buyout papers. The deed transfer. A copy of the separation agreement with Gary’s signature on every page. I’d finished all that paperwork last month but hadn’t gotten around to filing it away.
I filled a glass with tap water.
My phone rang.
It was Linda.
“I was just about to come over,” Linda said. Her voice sounded different. Not amused anymore. Serious. “But first tell me something, Debbie. Why exactly is Gary back?”
“His girlfriend threw him out,” I said. “So now he wants to move in with me.”
There was a pause on the line.
“Debbie,” Linda said slowly. “That’s strange.”
“Which part? All of it’s strange.”
“Carol called me this morning,” Linda said.
Carol is Linda’s younger sister. She lives two streets over on Birch Lane. She’s in a book club with half the women in the neighborhood.
“She told me her friend Rachel, from book club, threw her boyfriend out yesterday,” Linda said. “She caught him changing his stories. About his past. About his marriage. He’d been telling her for months that he was divorced.”
I didn’t say anything.
“And then,” Linda said, “Rachel throws her boyfriend out yesterday, and Gary shows up on your porch today because his girlfriend kicked him out.”
“Lots of men lie about being divorced,” I said.
“I know,” Linda said. “But the timing made me wonder.”
I looked toward the front door. I could see Gary’s shape through the little window, standing on my porch, checking his phone.
“You think they’re the same man?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Linda said. “Maybe it’s a coincidence. But Rachel’s at Carol’s house right now. She went over there after the breakup. She’s been crying all morning. I’m going to call Carol and ask her for a picture of the boyfriend.”
“Linda,” I said. “This could just be a coincidence.”
“Exactly,” Linda said. “That’s why I want to check before we say anything to anybody. Keep Gary outside until I call you back.”
She hung up.
I stood in my blue kitchen holding a glass of water. I was trying to figure out why Linda suddenly sounded worried instead of amused.
Outside, Gary knocked on the door.
“Deb? You making that water from scratch?”
I opened the door about six inches and handed him the glass.
“Thanks.” He took a long drink. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “So. Are we going to talk like adults now?”
“Depends,” I said. “Are you going to answer a question?”
“What question?”
“How long were you seeing her,” I said, “before you moved out?”
Gary twisted the glass between his hands.
“Why do you want to dig all that up?”
“Because you’re asking me to pretend it never happened,” I said. “So I’d like to know what itwas.”
“I told you,” he said. “It was a mistake.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
He looked across the street toward Linda’s house.
“Maybe we should go inside,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because Linda’s nosy.”
“Linda isn’t even home,” I said. I’d seen Linda’s car pull out of her driveway a minute before, while I was getting the water. I didn’t know where she was going.
“Still,” Gary said. “I’d like a little more privacy.”
I watched him take another sip of water.
“Did you tell your girlfriend we were divorced?” I asked.
His hand stopped halfway to his mouth.
“What?”
“It’s a simple question, Gary.”
He lowered the glass slowly.
“I told her we were separated,” he said.
“Were we?”
“Debbie, you know things were difficult.”
“Were we separated?” I said. “When you started seeing her? Were we separated then?”
He set the glass down on my porch railing next to his golf clubs.
“Look,” he said. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I pulled it out.
It was a text from Linda.
Carol sent me a picture of Rachel’s boyfriend. It’s Gary. I’m picking them up now. Five minutes.
I read the message twice.
Gary was watching me.
“Who keeps texting you?”
“Linda.”
“What’s she saying?”
“She found something interesting.”
“About what?”
“Your girlfriend,” I said.
His face went tight.
“What does Linda know about her?”
“Apparently,” I said, “more than I do.”
He reached for the handle of his suitcase. Then he let go of it.
“Debbie,” he said. His voice was different now. Lower. Quicker. “Let’s just go inside and talk. Just you and me. Like we used to.”
“I think I’d rather stay right here,” I said.
He glanced over his shoulder toward the street.
For the first time since he’d pulled into my driveway, he looked genuinely nervous.
A few minutes later, Linda’s red Honda pulled into her driveway across the street.
Linda got out from behind the wheel. Then the passenger door opened, and a woman climbed out.
She was in her late forties, with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and a navy fleece jacket. Her eyes were red and puffy. She had the strap of her purse wound tightly around her wrist, so tight I could see it from across the street.
Carol stayed in the back seat with the window rolled down.
The woman walked across the street, slowly. She stopped at the bottom of my walkway, at the edge of the lawn.
Gary dropped the handle of his suitcase.
“No,” he said.
“Hello, Gary,” the woman said.
Gary turned around and looked at me.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing yet,” I said.
Linda came up my walkway and stood beside me on the porch.
“Debbie,” she said quietly, “this is Rachel.”
Rachel looked at me. Then she looked back at Gary.
“You told me,” she said, “you’d been divorced for two years.”
Her voice was shaking.
I looked at Rachel.
“He moved out four months ago,” I said. “We’re still married. The divorce isn’t final yet.”
“I told you the marriage was over,” Gary said to Rachel.
“You know things were difficult, Debbie,” he said to me.
“Difficult,” I said, “isn’t divorced.”
Rachel was staring at him.
“And your name isn’t James,” she said.
I turned to Gary.
“James?”
“It’s my middle name,” he muttered.
“You never told me that,” Rachel said. “In seven months, you never once told me that your name was Gary.”
Linda touched my arm.
“After we talked on the phone,” she said, “I called Carol. Rachel was sitting right there in Carol’s kitchen. So Carol asked her for a picture of the boyfriend and texted it to me.” Linda shook her head. “I recognized Gary immediately. From his golf shirt. That ugly orange one with the alligator. That’s when I went to get them.”
I looked at Gary.
He was staring at the pavement.