My heart melts at his anticipation and his inclusion of Xandra in our growing family. My heart should have been melting six months ago, but here we are and it’s time for me to make my move before the next contraction comes and I can’t eek out anything other than profanity.
“Leo, I want my ring back,” I say, covering my mouth over the phone, hoping Courtney can’t hear me. I was going to text it to Leo that now that I’m in labor the prospect of being an unwed mother is much less appealing. I thought I had weeks to create the ultimate venue to profess my idiocy and my love. Instead, right now will have to do.
“What’d you say? Arrrggghhhh I can’t hear you, too many people are honking at me to move, but I’m staying here until I see Xandra. They can honk all they want.”
“I want the ring back,” I say louder, relinquishing my privacy in an effort to fight the sounds of airport traffic for my future. Courtney’s been pretending to mind her own business and drive, but I can see the mention of a ring in front of a slighted wife hits hard. Her knuckles turn white on the steering wheel.
“Yes, when I have your daughter, I’ll ring you back. Damn, gotta go, airport security is making me move.”
Click.
I don’t have time to process the miscommunication with Leo before animal instinct takes over and I grab Courtney’s forearm and bear down. “AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH.” Without flinching Courtney drives on, her hands steady at ten and two.
“There should be a bottle of water under your seat. You don’t want to get dehydrated before the main event starts.” Courtney smiles at me as I grunt and sweat in her front seat. “This is an exciting end to my very shitty night.” In my moment of agony, I had forgotten that the pixie of a woman chauffeuring my ass to the ER just exposed the hottest Royal-Hawkins gossip in well over a decade. Even at the center of it, she had let it rip. I have about four minutes to get to the bottom of the Winn-Geoff affair before I reenter my pain cave.
“About that check,” Courtney throws out, turning left. Aha, I should have known. There really is no such thing as a free ride. So, what, Courtney wants to swing by Wells Fargo before this baby crowns? “I need to explain something, especially given my outburst at the board meeting. I swear that wasn’t planned, but it’s been a difficult couple of months coming to grips with Geoff’s affair.”
“How long have you known? And, so you know, I often feel like I want to punch Winn Hawkins in the face too,” I offer, establishing a common connection.
“HA! Thanks for that, Nina.” Admitting my feelings about Winn to another board member is probably the least professional thing I’ve ever done, but I like that I was able to make another woman laugh in the midst of her personal hell. “Well, Gemma and I have been friends since she and Winn moved back from Australia. I confided in her late last spring that I suspected Geoff was having an affair. She’s a great friend and a smart woman, and she suggested I plan an extended family trip over the summer to put some distance between Geoff and his lover.”
I choke a little. Everyone has a word or two that gives them the heebie-jeebies. Mine’s lover.
“That’s why we went to Costa Rica for July and August under the guise of Daisy being a budding conservationist. Please, that child spent the whole trip whining for takeout and begging to drive an ATV.” I’m about to jump in and tell Courtney there’s still hope for Daisy to save the Amazon rainforest, but she looks at me wistfully, tears pooling. “We had a great time as a family. Geoff was totally present. I started to believe that maybe I had been making the whole affair up in my head, reading too much into Geoff’s previous elusive behavior.”
“Female instinct is as reliable as hard evidence,” I say to validate Courtney’s line of thinking, and I believe it. Or at least I did until my intuition about spending my life with Leo betrayed me and I’m now exactly where I didn’t want to be again, a single mother.
“Yeah, a woman’s gut is always right, because by the start of school my suspicions were back on high alert. Then one night in October the four of us were out together, and Geoff and Winn went outside to have a cigar after dinner. A loooong cigar. At the table Gemma broke down that she suspected Winn was stepping out on her. She pulled herself together in time for our two men to reappear at dinner flushed and rumpled. That’s when I started to think more creatively about my suspicions.” Courtney pauses.
“Wow, all that time I was weirded out that Winn was ogling me or maybe some of the moms at school, but he was horny for the husbands.”
“My husband to be exact,” Courtney corrects me.
Right. That was a little insensitive of me. I place my hand on her forearm and give it a rub. This woman has been hit hard on the home front, and I want her to know I feel for her.
“So, what’re you going to do? I hope you know the school is here to support you and Daisy any way we can. It’s what we do.” I’m riding right into the maternity ward wearing my head of school hat.
“That’s where the check comes in, Nina. Once I suspected Geoff was having an affair, though I never imagined it was with a man, I began distributing his money to charities and organizations all over Southern California. Every time Geoff told me he’d ‘be at work late’ or had a ‘work trip,’ I turned around and wrote a check. I know our divorce will be brutal, and he’ll fight to the bitter end to make sure I walk away with as close to nothing as possible. That’s how he played it with the first Mrs. Dunn. So, I figured if I can’t have it, others who actually need it can. There are loads of people all over Los Angeles County super happy with me right now. Geoff’s not one of them.”
“Damn, Courtney Dunn, I underestimated you and misjudged your intentions. You are fierce!” I say, shocked but profoundly impressed. This is a woman Marisol and I could be friends with.
“Thanks for that, Nina.” Courtney rolls her shoulders back in the driver’s seat. “Once I started to suspect Geoff’s affair was not with a Winifred, but with a Winn, that’s when I decided to get a little closer to Winn and figure out for myself what was going on. I did it for me and for Gemma. Do you really think I care about high school basketball?”
“Well, anything’s possible,” I remind Courtney.
“Don’t I know it!” We both laugh, in on the joke that truth is far stranger than fiction. “My push for you to cash the check was for purely selfish motivations. I’ve been trying to spend Geoff’s money as fast as possible. I believe I wrote you that check when Geoff left for a ‘work retreat’ in Cabo and missed the kids’ holiday concert. I spent the entire afternoon craning my neck around the gym trying to find Winn. Instead, I found Gemma there, also alone.”
“Hold on, Courtney.” I want to hear the end of this private school parable I could have never conjured up if I tried, but my insides are about to tear apart. “GOOOOOOOODDDDDD LOOOOORRRRDDDDD are we almost there?!” I scream between the twisting of my insides.
“Hold on. Two, three minutes tops, I promise,” Courtney assures, flooring it through a yellow light. “Anyway, this is enough of my family drama for one night, I just want to let you know I didn’t plan to blow up at the board meeting tonight. I really didn’t. My plan was to tell you about the affair and why I needed the check cashed ASAP in our one-on-one after the meeting. But then Winn, with Jared as his pawn, shared their plan for those young Burns boys, and I completely lost it.”