The Penny Pinchers Club (32 page)

Velma said, “Go on, Kat. Get to where Sherise and I slapped you with a reality check.”

I recounted that magical and frightening day when the Penny Pinchers descended on my house, Opal rifling through my pantry, Steve just strolling into my bedroom. “As carefree as could be,” I said, much to Viv’s delight, “supposedly to check out my TV.”

Steve said sheepishly, “All I cared about was the TV.”

Viv said, “Yeah, right. You snoop.”

“And then?” Velma said. “Come on. Get to the good part.”

“And then, Sherise and Velma went through my records, even though Velma was not allowed to, by law . . .”

Madeleine said, “Why?”

“Skip it.” Velma dismissed her question with a flick of her knitting needle. “Immaterial.”

“Which was when,” I finished,“I found out that we were $37,000 in debt and that if I wanted to save up enough money for a divorce, I had better change my spending drastically.”

“Whoa!” Madeleine shook her head. “In eight months? How much did you save?”

I wrote the number on the notepad. “By cutting back on utilities, by getting rid of my car payments, lowering my insurance, ditching TV, cable, and movies, as well as, of course, slashing our grocery bills, I was able to save an average of $1,650 a month. Not $15,000, but close.”

Turning the notebook around, I showed them the figure. $13,200.

“Also, we slashed our credit card debt to almost nothing.” My proudest accomplishment, though I’d done that largely through my freelance interior design work.

Everyone applauded except for Madeleine, who gaped at me in shock. Viv blew me a kiss and mouthed,
I’m so proud of you
.

“My, that certainly is progress,” Velma said. “I can’t say I’ve saved anything, except that the group does allow me to live on my retirement. Oh, I also gave approximately $6,000 last year to The Women’s Prison Project, which fights recidivism.”

“Velma!” Steve exclaimed. “On your fixed income? You amaze me.”

Indeed. How did this little woman with no income to speak of manage to save $6,000 to give to charity?

“It wasn’t hard,” she said. “When you give, you get, you know.”

Steve said,“I saved four grand for my kids’ education. Not bad for a widower.”

Viv patted his thigh. “Not bad at all.”

“Hope I don’t have to use it for bail,” he said, half kidding. According to Viv, his sons were more than okay. Good, strong boys who benefited from seeing their father sacrifice himself for the community’s protection.

My sister, I feared, was so in love she was a goner.

Sherise said, “How about you, Libby? Since we’re sharing our success stories.”

Underneath her eyelashes, Libby shyly eyed Wade, whose hand she’d been holding throughout the meeting. And for good reason, I noticed, my heart doing a little leap. Because something bright on her left ring finger had just caught the ray of the June sun. “Do you want to tell them?” she asked. “Or should I?”

Wade lifted her hand and kissed it. “Not quite sure how to put this, but I’m thinking maybe Libby and I . . . this will be our last meeting.”

Everyone in the room stirred.

“It’s no secret in this group that I come from, well, means. Until recently, I’d been denying that because, you know, more money means more problems. I can’t tell you how freeing it’s been to live simply, to find food on my own, to find the love of a good woman.” He kissed her hand again. “Which is why I decided last night to ask Libby, if she could put up with me, would she mind being my wife.”

Sherise burst into tears.

“Hah!” Steve clapped once, loudly. “You did it, you fool. Now you’ll have to move her.”

Wade put his arm around Libby. “I don’t mind. Right now, I’m so over the moon, I could move heaven and Earth.” He gave me a warm smile. “Right, Kat?”

“I certainly hope so,” I said, overflowing with admiration for him and happiness for Libby, as well as love for this whole group of odd, but wonderful, people. “No. I’m
sure
of it. The two of you together? Anything’s possible.”

“Of course this means I’ll have to help Sherise move, too,” Steve said, pretending to be begrudging. “I can’t let him be the only man here.”

“Also,” Viv offered, “your sons. A little physical labor never hurt any boy.”

“Good point.”

Sherise blew her nose and dabbed her eyes. “I just realized something. Who’s going to be left after I go? Libby and Wade are going to be living high off the hog. I’m going to be in New York. Opal’s going to be fighting for justice and the American way.”

“I’m moving to my sister’s in Florida,” Velma said. “Now that I can cross state lines. No more Jersey winters for me.”

Velma! In some ways I’d miss her most of all.

“Okay, so,Viv, Steve, and Kat. That’s going to be—”

Steve interrupted. “Actually, they’re switching me to weekdays, Monday through Friday, seven to three, so I can be on my boys’ schedule. Wednesday mornings are out, therefore. Sorry.”

Sherise shook her head. “So that leaves Kat and Viv. The sisters.”

“I’m okay,” Viv said. “I just came to support Steve.”

All eyes turned toward me. But, honestly, what did I need the Penny Pinchers for? I’d saved my money, or enough of it. I’d learned how to stack coupons and the value of store rain checks, the importance of sending in those rebates and plugging appliances into power strips. I didn’t need the tips or the coupons.

I needed
them.

“I guess that’s it,” I said, tears coming to my own eyes. “We’re no longer a group.”

“Never.” Sherise took my hand between both of hers. “We might not be up to our ears in debt. We might not be out of control with spending. But we will always,
always
be a group.”

I thought:

A group of friends with whom you can openly and honestly confide about money, who will listen and not judge you, who will hold your hand when you have to open those bills, who will give you their coupons, drive you across town to the discount grocery stores, who will teach you how to forage through Dumpsters for food, and who will make you laugh all through the whole journey.

Now
that
was priceless.

 

“I can’t believe the group disbanded.” Viv sighed.

“These things have life cycles,” I said as we sat in my driveway. “Someday someone will find themselves with $30,000 in debt and another person will end up with fifty pounds of chicken parts and they’ll realize they can’t handle it alone, that they need a group.”

Viv peered through the windshield. “Why are there lights on in your kitchen?”

It wasn’t like me to ever leave the lights on—all that energy wasted! Laura’s car wasn’t here. Jasper was asleep in the garage, so it couldn’t have been a burglar. Which meant . . .

Griff!

Without saying good-bye, I opened the car door and ran to the house, dashing through raindrops.

He’d come home to me. Here I’d been afraid that he’d stay in Alaska with Bree forever, but he came home!

“Griff?” I called, throwing my purse and keys by the phone and checking the kitchen. Nothing. He wasn’t in the living room, either.

I ran upstairs, a strange sort of panic overcoming me.
Where is he?
“Griff?”

Why isn’t he answering?
I thought as I searched all the bedrooms, even the bathrooms.

Finally, I found him in the basement. At the computer.

He looked good, scruffier, but good. His face was tanner from the midnight sun and he’d let a slight beard grow. But it was not a friendly face and he was not glad to see me.

“I won’t be staying.” He went to the printer and retrieved some papers.

A shot of anxiety. “What do you mean not staying?” It was like my heart was ready to leap out of my chest. All these months of planning for this moment and still I was unprepared. “You can’t go. This is your home.”

Griff didn’t reply. Walking around the desk, he handed me the papers. Legal documents. Contracts. Divorce papers of some sort. Separation decrees. Icky things.

I couldn’t look at them. I refused.

“Kat.” His voice was serious. “Read these and they’ll explain about the money and the bank account and the MasterCard. I didn’t tell you last year that I got a New York publisher for this book or an advance because, well, frankly because I needed the advance to cover my research expenses and I was afraid . . .”

“I’d spend it.” With one eye, I glanced at the papers. They had nothing to do with my marriage. They were copies of book contracts, the $10,000 highlighted in yellow.

“I’m sorry that you read my emails and that you thought I was leaving you after Laura’s graduation. My plan was to tell you after Laura’s graduation because by then the book would be mostly researched and there’d be no money left for you to take. The MasterCard was strictly for tax purposes, to make sure research expenses didn’t mix with our home expenses.”

“Since then,” he said, looking so sad it made my heart break, “there’ve been developments.”

My knees began to shake. They weren’t going to hold me and I had to lean against the desk simply to remain upright. “What kind of
developments
?”

“Some good ones, like the publisher is increasing the print run in light of the Hunter Christiansen interview.”

“Congratulations.” That was good news, though it was humbling to realize Bree had learned of it long before. “And . . .”

“And others that have had me thinking.”

“About Bree?”

He closed his eyes. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that Bree and I don’t have that kind of relationship.”

“But you work together. Constantly. You email and call.”

“So do you and Liam.” His jaw clenched. “That’s what I mean by other developments.” Softening somewhat, he took my hand and led me over to the couch where Sherise had taken me before to break the news of our debt.

“Throughout our marriage, there’s always been Liam.”

“But—”

He placed a finger over my lips. “I’m not saying that’s all your fault. Your mother, for example, won’t let the guy go. She seems to think he’s the second coming. It wasn’t so bad when he was married and out of our lives. Now, though . . .”

“Now, he’s back and you’re with him.”

He had that wrong. “I am NOT with him, Griff.”

He smiled that patient smile he used with students when they were trying to bullshit about why their papers were overdue. “Don’t lie, Kat. Or, rather,
stop
lying. It was bad enough that you did the renovation for his house and didn’t tell me. But spending a night with him at the Shore the night Laura got sick in New York . . .”

“How did you . . .”

Griff turned grim and cold. The silence between us was suddenly so loud it was almost deafening. “I thought as much.”

He didn’t know. He’d
tricked
me into admitting it.

Like a robot, he got off the couch, grabbed a bag he’d packed, and headed toward the stairs.

“Nothing happened!” I twirled around and ran after him. “We haven’t even kissed or anything. We just talked.”

He took another step. “The fact that you even had to say that, Kat, speaks volumes.”

“No! Wait!” I ran after him, up the stairs, and out the door. “I don’t love him,” I shouted. “I love you!”

But I’d lost my chance. Griff backed out in his old beat-up car and headed out of the neighborhood. He was gone for good.

One week before Laura’s graduation, right on schedule.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I
had $13,000, little credit card debt, and no husband. If I wished, I could have called Toni Feinzig and told her I was all systems go. I had done as she’d instructed, photocopied all the documents I needed. I was prepared like I was supposed to be.

All except for my heart.

As a steady rain poured down, beating mercilessly on the roof, I sought my one and only refuge of a bathtub. But this time, I couldn’t call Griff to tell him what had happened, that my best friend and love of my life had walked out the door never to return. Viv, who’d called as soon as she got back to her place, was no comfort.

Nothing anyone could say, no money I had saved, could solve the worst crisis of my life. As I lay in the cooling water, staring at our cracked ceiling, listening to the rain, sobbing softly so Laura couldn’t hear, it occurred to me that the last time I’d felt so overwhelmed was not in my bath, but in the basement when Sherise and Velma made me own up to spending my family into disaster.

And yet, I had managed to pull myself out of that dark hole to vanquish what then had seemed like an unconquerable monster, one that threatened to steal our very home and send me hurtling into bankruptcy.

A calm feeling of quiet strength came over me as I reasoned that if I could overcome my financial crisis, then I could overcome a marital one, too. It would require the same sort of determination and confidence that had freed me from debt. It would require the same honesty.

And so, though it was almost midnight, I forced myself out of the bath and into clean clothes. Then I headed for Liam’s to take the first step in mending the hole I’d torn in the fabric of my marriage.

Liam was awake. Perhaps that was the most amazing thing, that he was up at that hour when I banged on his door like a crazed woman. If the house had been dark, I might have run off and my marriage wouldn’t have stood a chance.

It wasn’t until he opened the door in his navy cotton pj bottoms and nothing else that it crossed my mind I might have interrupted him with another woman.