“I don’t know, Mother. I can ask him when he gets home.”
My mother shook her head, and her hair didn’t move an inch. “No. Just do not allow Bernard to sit at the bank’s tables. Make sure he’s in the back. Behind a fern.”
To say there was no love lost between my mother and father was obvious. My mother loathed my dad, but she still missed him. I heard the longing in her voice. Once when she’d had too much bourbon on Christmas Eve, she’d cried over him. I had never seen her cry before, and it had been somewhat horrifying and frankly a relief. Because I had always wondered if she missed him . . . or if she’d even loved him. Always hard to know with my mother. “I’ll talk to Melissa Peete, who’s in charge of corporate sponsorships. And you know Daddy. He probably won’t come anyway. He hates coming to Shreveport.”
I could make no promises. If Scott insisted, I would relent. The bank had two tables. I would ask that my mother be seated far from my father and Crystalle if they did, indeed, show.
My mother flinched before taking another sip. “Better he stay away.”
An hour later, I waved as my mother drove away, hoping she’d be okay to drive. The martini hadn’t been strong, and she lived two streets over in a huge colonial house with a pool that had been featured in NWLA Columns last year. The title had been “Backyard Oasis,” and my mother had bought and mailed copies to all our cousins in Baton Rouge.
As soon as I closed the front door, I scrambled to the office.
It didn’t take me long to confirm what I already knew. I paid the house bills, but the bank paid for Scott’s cell phone. A quick call to May, Scott’s assistant at Caddo Bank and Loan, got me his account number. The next call to AT&T landed me a chatty rep who helped me into the iCloud. And since Scott frequently used the same password, SCOTTGOLF1, so I could log on to our household accounts, I easily accessed his texts for the past month. The dumb butt had been sexting one Stephanie Brooks. The same Stephanie Brooks I wrote a monthly check to at the country-club tennis center for Julia Kate’s lessons. No mistaking things like “I’ve been dreaming of your lips” and “What are you wearing?” as convo about Julia Kate’s tennis stroke.
What I had thought was an inordinate interest in sharing his passion for tennis with his thirteen-year-old daughter was actually Scott sharing himself with the bouncy Stephanie.
Or maybe he wasn’t sleeping with her yet—those texts could be simple flirting. I just couldn’t reconcile Scott with a guy who slept with his daughter’s tennis coach. It seemed so far-fetched.
But Scott was at the very least entertaining the idea of jumping the net to a younger, hotter option.
My first inclination was to drive down to the club, pull out a racket, and beat the ever-lovin’ crap out of that little bitch. All those times she’d chirped hello and talked about how much Julia Kate had improved her backhand, smiling into my eyes, suggesting I consider taking lessons, too. The woman had to have balls of steel under her tennis skirt, though how she hid them under something that short was beyond me.
My second inclination was to call the dirtiest divorce attorney in Shreveport and make Scott wish he’d never been born.
My third inclination actually happened. I dropped to my knees on the new carpet I had put in last January and shattered like a snow globe tossed onto cold marble. The slivers of my self-worth glittered and throbbed. I was doomed to never be whole again. I cried until my head hurt, curled into a ball, Pippa sitting beside me looking helpless and reluctant to make eye contact. But she stayed, sinking onto her haunches with a sigh that mirrored the desolation inside me.
And at that moment, I didn’t regret giving in when Julia Kate had begged for a puppy. As much as I bellyached about feeding, bathing, and cleaning up after her, Pippa beside me, a stalwart friend seemingly sympathetic to my sobbing, was better than having a hamster . . . which is the pet I had countered Julia Kate with. And speaking of Julia . . . my poor baby girl. Her daddy was a lowlife. We’d both been duped by him.
After a good thirty minutes of ugly self-pity, I struggled to my feet and walked to the bedroom I shared with Scott. What else was he hiding? I knew he was texting inappropriate things, but what more did I not know about the man I slept beside?
That’s how I had found the box under his unused chukkas in his closet.
Sucking in a breath, I unfolded the flaps and looked at the package inside. It took me a minute to comprehend the fuzzy ears and the bushy tail. What? A Halloween costume? What in the world . . .