Susan Wiggs - Just Breathe

“Why would I want that?” she asked Jack. She’d spent most of the cross-country drive thinking about the way things were. The hours and hours of driving alone had forced her to confront the harsh truth about her marriage. She’d been fooling herself for a long time about being happy. She’d been acting like a contented, fulfilled wife, but that wasn’t the same as being one. It was such a lousy thing to realize about yourself. She took a deep, steadying breath. “Jack, why would I want to go back to the way things were?”

“Because it’s our life,” he said. “Jesus—”

“Tell me about the bank accounts. All four of them.” A strange feeling came over her. Deep inside, she discovered a core of calmness that radiated outward like a general anesthetic. “How soon did you put a freeze on them? Did you remember to zip your pants first?” Actually, she knew the answer. He had made his move within hours of the pizza delivery. In Omaha, she had stopped at an ATM to make a withdrawal from their joint checking account, only to find that the card was declined. The same was true of the other three accounts. Fortunately for her sanity, she had a credit card she used for syndication business. And, though she had never seen it that way before, she had an ace in the hole. There was a large sum of money in an account she held in her own name. On the advice of their CPA and Clive—who, up until now, she had considered a friend—she had opened the account when Jack’s cancer had been discovered. If the worst happened, there might be some decisions she would have to make on her own.

The decision to divorce her husband had not occurred to her back then.

“I did that to protect both of us,” Jack said.

“Both of us? Oh, I see. You and your lawyer, you mean.”

“It’s clear you’re not thinking straight. I got a call from the bank about a transaction with State Line Auto Sales—”

“Ah, so that’s what’s got you worried,” she said, suddenly realizing the true reason for his call. “And here I thought you called about me.”

“Now you’re trying to avoid the subject.”

“Oh, sorry. I traded the GTO for a car I actually want.”

“I can’t believe you did that. Of all the childish, immature things…You had no right to trade in my car.”

“Sure I did, Jack. I bought the thing, remember? The title’s in my name.”

“It was a gift, dammit. You gave it to me.”

“Boy, you sure know how to scold a girl about a car,” she said. “I’d like to hear what you have to say about something really bad, like…oh…infidelity?”

He didn’t bother responding to that. How could he? “I wish I could take back what I did, but I can’t. We have to move on, Sarah—together. We can heal from this. I need a chance to make it up to you. Please come home, sugar-bean,” he said, using his pet name for her in a voice that used to beguile her.

Now it just made her queasy. With a curious feeling of detachment, she stared at the scene in front of her—a sleepy seaside town. Two women chatting on the sidewalk. A shy-looking mongrel flashed around a corner, furtively looking for scraps.

“I am home,” she said. Birdie had explained that there was an advantage to initiating the divorce from California, a community property state. She had warned Sarah that Jack’s lawyer would probably fight it tooth and nail.

“What about everything I gave you?” Jack reminded her. “A beautiful home, anything you wanted or needed. Sarah, there are women who would kill to have those things…”

Jack was still talking when she turned off the phone. He just didn’t get it and probably never would. “Those things were worthless.” Her hand shook a little as she fitted the key into the ignition. Nerves, she thought. Rage. She knew enough about divorce to realize she was in for the entire painful spectrum of emotions. She wondered how and when they would strike. Would she be smacked down as though hit by a truck, or would the pain creep up on her and lodge like a virus under her heart? Now, for the first time, she fully understood how Jack had felt before undergoing his first treatment. The absolute terror of what she was about to do was excruciating.

She sat and watched the only traffic signal in town turn from yellow to red. At the main intersection, a school bus lumbered to a halt and its stop signs cranked open like a pair of large ears. Sarah suspected it was one of the same buses she had ridden all her life. The sides were stenciled West Marin Unified School District. Judging by the ages of the kids who emerged from the bus, this was from the junior high. She watched a group of schoolkids with back-packs walking down the streets, pausing in front of the candy store to dig through their pockets for change. Some of the boys were smooth-cheeked while others sported a five o’clock shadow. The girls, too, came in a variety of shapes and sizes, their manner ranging from awkward to cool.

One of the cool ones—Sarah could spot them a mile off—was a self-possessed blond demigoddess who made a big production of lighting a cigarette. Sarah flinched, wondering where this girl’s mother was and if she knew what her daughter was up to.

Once again, Sarah told herself it was a good thing her quest to get pregnant was over. Kids were a constant challenge. Sometimes they were downright scary.

The last to emerge from the bus was a remarkable-looking girl. Small of stature, she had shining jet-black hair, pale skin and the perfect features of a Disney princess. There was a flawless, other-worldly quality about her that made Sarah want to stare. The girl was Pocahontas, Mulan, Jasmine. Sarah half expected her to burst into song at any moment.

She didn’t burst into anything, of course, but walked over to the fire department pickup truck. The driver was talking on the phone or a radio. The girl got in, slammed the door and they drove off.

Sarah was a watcher, not a doer. She’d always been that way, watching others live their lives while she lived inside her own head. And it struck her—hard and against her will—that even though she was the wronged party in her marriage, she wasn’t blameless for its demise. Ouch.

The black-and-white dog feinted away from a group of boys horsing around, and darted out into the street. Sarah jumped out of the car and dashed toward the mongrel. She shooed it back onto the sidewalk. At the same moment, she heard the thump of brakes locking up. She froze in the middle of the roadway, a few feet from the chartreuse pickup.

“Idiot,” the driver called. “I almost hit you.”

Embarrassment crept over her, quickly followed by resentment. These days, she was bitter about all men and in no mood to be yelled at by some tattooed redneck in a baseball cap. “There was a dog…” She gestured at the sidewalk, but the mongrel was nowhere in sight. “Sorry,” she muttered, and headed back to her car.

This was why she was a watcher and not a doer. Less chance of humiliating herself. Yet now, thanks to Jack, she had discovered that there were worse things than humiliation.

Flames leapt at the face of Will’s daughter. Each individual golden tongue seemed to illuminate a different facet of her pale skin and shiny black hair. The overfed charcoal fire roared at her, seeming to lick her eyelashes.

“Jesus, Aurora,” he said, running to the patio to clap the lid on the barbecue grill. “You know better than that.”

For a moment, his stepdaughter merely stared at him. Since coming into his life eight years before, she’d owned his heart, but when she did things like this, he wanted to shake her.

“I was firing up the barbecue,” she said. “Did you pick up the stuff for the Truesdale Specials?”