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 it was.”
“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.
