The Other Wife. Shirley Jump

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СКАЧАТЬ few uncharitable thoughts about God just then, ones that I was sure were going to get me sent to hell, so I turned away from my husband to do what needed to be done.

      Face the other wife.

      She skipped signing the guest book and had stopped at the casket, her hands gripping the velvet-covered rail, tears flooding her eyes. Now that she was closer, I could see that she wasn’t Marilyn Monroe—she was a mess, all wrinkled and jumbled. The perfectionist in me wanted to get out the iron and the starch, maybe a lint roller, too, and straighten her out before sending her back out the door.

      She was pretty, I’d give her that. Buxom and blond, the typical other woman. Except, I was a blonde, too. Just not so well endowed.

      Had it been that simple? He’d needed some 36Ds to keep him company so he’d married another woman? My 34Bs weren’t enough? I could have gotten a Miracle Bra, for God’s sake.

      Her diamond ring, the same shape as mine—apparently Dave hadn’t been inventive enough to get something other than a marquise cut when he proposed a second time—sparkled in the muted light. Her mascara ran in dirty little rivers along her cheeks, and for a moment, I felt sorry for her. Had she known about me before today?

      Had she loved him?

      And would it really make a difference to me if she had?

      She stepped back from the casket, but hesitated, clearly wondering if she should do the receiving line. Always the polite girl I had learned to be, I stepped forward, reached for her hand. “I’m sorry,” I said, before she could turn away or, worse, say it first.

      Her eyes widened with surprise. “Me, too,” she said softly. “I really am.”

      I wanted her to be some evil demon who’d stolen my husband with promises of chandelier sex and perfect Baked Alaska. But as I looked into her blue eyes—such a vibrant color compared to my own plain brown ones—I couldn’t hate her. But damn it, I wanted to. It would have made the whole thing a lot more convenient.

      “I didn’t know,” she said, taking a step closer, lowering her voice. “Not until I read the obituary in the paper.”

      I decided to believe her. If he’d fooled me for fifteen years, surely he could have fooled her, too. A hundred questions filled my mind. But then his mother was reaching for me, wanting to introduce me to some distant cousin I’d never see again, so I gave the other wife a slight, dismissive nod, and slipped back into the perfect portrait of what everyone expected of me.

      Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her walk away, those crazy shoes sparkling in the muted light of the funeral parlor. We were members of the same club now, she and I.

      I hoped like hell I wasn’t going to find anyone else with a membership before this day was over.

      CHAPTER 2

      Somehow, I got through the wake without smearing Dave’s good name or shrieking like a lunatic. My sister Georgia, Dave’s brother Kevin, and Dave’s mom were all there, keeping me company in the line beside the casket. That was it for family. My parents had died when I was seventeen, my grandparents shortly thereafter. Dave’s father had passed away seven years ago from a heart attack, leaving Lillian to begin retirement as a widow.

      I went home the night of the wake and cleaned a house that didn’t need cleaning, organized closets that were already perfect and went through every pen in the house, scribbling the tips across an old magazine, looking for duds.

      For something to do, to keep me from thinking.

      At the funeral the next day, I did everything I was supposed to do. Laid a white rose on his casket before they lowered it into the ground, said thank you to everyone who offered their sympathies, turned down the offer of another casserole I wasn’t going to eat. After a funeral dinner hosted by the ladies of the same church that had married and now buried my husband, I sent my sister home, telling her I would be okay. I thought of trying to talk to Dave’s brother, to find out what he knew about this other woman, but right now, I wasn’t strong enough to handle one more thing.

      The other wife didn’t show at the funeral and for an hour or so I pretended I was the only woman in Dave’s life, that the words the pastor said about my late husband were true. “Good man…loving husband…devoted son.”

      At the end of the day, I slipped into the limo beside my mother-in-law to go back to the house Dave and I had bought a month ago.

      The house where we were going to start a family.

      He’d told me it would bring good luck, this change of residency. We’d been discussing the idea of kids for ten years, but I’d always had an excuse, a reason we should wait. I’d put him off and put him off, hoping that someday, Dave would just give up on the idea.

      But then, finally, after Christmas, I had relented, finally conceding my fight to add anything more complicated than a potted plant to our lives. Because I was thirty-seven and Dave forty, we’d gotten checkups to make sure nothing was wrong. It wasn’t his fault, the doctor had said. Dave had plenty of sperm to go around.

      I stifled a laugh in the back of the limo. He’d had plenty of sperm to go around, all right.

      My mother-in-law gave me a sharp glance, then let out a sigh. “Are you okay, Penny?”

      “Yeah.” As fine as I’m ever going to be after coming face-to-face with my husband’s extracurricular life. “Lillian, if you want to stay at my house for a few days—”

      “No. I’m going back to Florida, back home.” She averted her face, watching the pastel tones of spring pass by the window. “I’m best going through this on my own. Do you understand, honey?”

      She’d flown up as soon as I’d called her from the hospital and hadn’t left my side since. I couldn’t blame her for wanting some time away from this, to deal with her loss.

      “Yeah. I feel the same way.” Though I wanted to be alone for an entirely different reason, so I could sort out the mess of my husband’s life and figure out how I could have been so easily duped by the same man whose underwear I had washed every Saturday. How could I have been handling those Fruit of the Looms and never realized he was a cheater? A bigamist?

      A stranger?

      I reached out and clasped Lillian’s hand, giving it a squeeze. A tear ran down her face. She smiled at me, her eyes kind and worried. I’d always liked my mother-in-law, figuring I’d gotten awfully lucky to have married into a family where the normal jokes hadn’t applied. Considering my own parents had been the dysfunctional poster children for how not to parent, I had latched on to Lillian soon after meeting Dave.

      “Thanks for being here for me the last two days,” I said. “I needed the support.”

      “I needed you just as much, dear,” Lillian said, then sighed. “He’s gone for both of us.”

      And for someone else. I bit my tongue. “He would have hated this, you know. The big funeral. The music.”

      “The flowers.” Lillian laughed. “God, how Dave hated flowers at funerals. Said they were a waste of good landscaping plants.”

      I thought of the mums in our garage, the ones we’d planned on planting this weekend. He’d СКАЧАТЬ