The Penny Pinchers Club (33 page)

“Remember those dark nights you warned me about?” I began. “Well, this might be one of them.”

He squinted. “Kat? You look like a drowned rat.” He pulled me in and shut the door. “You’re soaked.”

“It’s not raining that hard. I was in the bath.” I slipped off my hood and watched his expression shift from curiosity to alarm.

“What happened?” He went into the living room and returned in his maroon robe and holding a blanket.

“Griff left me tonight.”

“Holy . . .” He took my coat, threw it on the floor, and wrapped me in the blanket. “Come on.”

I followed him into the living room, where he pushed me on the couch. “Sit,” he said, though I was already sitting. Then he opened a cabinet and pulled out a bottle with something dark inside. Pouring a shot or two into a glass, he handed it to me and said, “Single malt, twenty years old. It helps.”

The scotch burned and warmed.
Twenty years,
I thought,
how apropos
.

Pouring himself some, he pulled up a leather hassock and positioned himself across from me. Liam could have been a model in a Chivas ad, handsome in his opened robe that allowed a tantalizing glimpse of his bare chest. Perfect age, not too old, not too young. Wealthy. Mature. In control, as always.

“Okay, tell me everything.”

I did, sparing nothing. I told him how he had always been a presence in our marriage, how when he stopped being a presence my mother would do her best to bring him back. I confessed to being in deep money woes.

“You should have told me. I could have loaned you whatever you needed.”

I gave him a look. “
Loans
were what sank me, Liam. But, thanks.”

Then I filled him in on the fight Griff and I had on the phone the day I left Avalon and how I’d lied about where I’d been.

“Understandable,” he said. “Go on.”

Finally, I delivered Griff’s rational explanation for the emails. “He’s had a book contract all along and he didn’t want me dipping into his funds. That’s why he had the MasterCard.”

“Probably he was advised to keep a separate account,” Liam said, taking a sip of his scotch, “for business and tax purposes.”

“You got it. But that’s not why he left. He left because he thinks I’m still in love with you.”

Liam stared down at his drink. “I see.”

I wondered if this was a victory for him, that having destroyed the marriage that had broken his heart, he, vindicated, could get on with his own life.

We sat for a while saying nothing. There was nothing to say.

“So, I suppose the obvious rejoinder to that,” Liam said, getting up and helping himself to more scotch, “is . . . what are your feelings for me?”

“I don’t know.”And that was the truth. I didn’t. “It’s been a helluva night. My husband who hasn’t spoken to me for a week has come to tell me he must be going and you’re standing there drinking single-malt scotch looking like you could swing as a
GQ
centerfold.”

Putting my drink down, I clutched my head, wishing for the gift of rational thought.

“Then, let me help you out.” He sat across from me again and put both hands on my knees. “I love you.”

The words hung there like a smoke
ka-boom!
in a cartoon.

“I have always loved you,” he continued. “Ever since we first met at PharMax. I remember, you were coming back from a sale . . .”

“In my case,
not
a sale.”

“. . . and you were crossing the parking lot lugging a big bag of samples. I was new to the place. In fact, Charlie Worthy was showing me around and I took one look at you and said . . . ”

That’s my future wife.
I’d heard the story a million times.

“But, then, you know what I said because I’ve told you so often.” He smiled to himself. “It wasn’t a joke and years later I never forgot the feeling of knowing—just
knowing
—you’d be my wife. I had no idea if you were married or single. We hadn’t been introduced. I just knew.”

It would be so easy for me to have taken this gift of his love and cherish it. It wasn’t just the security or protection Liam offered, it was his uncanny ability to instinctively know what I needed before I knew myself.

Most of us want to believe we have found and married our soul mates, and yet, how many of us in the hard light of day can be honest with ourselves and admit we haven’t. That somewhere out there is the person we’re meant to be with and that each day is a day wasted with the wrong one.

I said to him, “I sense a big
but
coming on.”

He rubbed my knees. “There is a big
but
, as you would say. And it doesn’t mean I love you any less or that if you gave me the least little sign I wouldn’t take you in my arms and take you upstairs and never let you out of my bed.”

My cheeks felt hot and it wasn’t only because of the scotch.

“
But
... as a survivor of divorce—and I use that term tentatively—I love you too much to be a party to putting you through that torture.”

I looked up, studied him, tried to get a clue. “You want me to stay married to Griff.”

“I know you love him, Kat. I’ve given you numerous opportunities to take our relationship back to what it was. I purposely created those opportunities. And you know I would have been more than discreet, would have never jeopardized your marriage. Yet, with all those open doors, you never once stepped in. . . . Kat, look at me.” He lifted my chin with one finger. His blue eyes shone with sympathy. “I love you and I’m always here for you. But Griff’s your soul mate, not me.”

I would never know if Liam himself believed that or if he said those words because he knew I needed to hear them in order to save my marriage. What I did know was that true love is proved not by what it does for us, but what it makes us do for those we love.

“Thank you,” I whispered, leaning over and kissing him for the very last time.

 

Elaine followed me through the house, making notes on her clipboard as she went. “You’re wise to put it on the market now, before July. Last two weeks of June are my best weeks.”

She was trying to make me feel better, but nothing could make me feel better about selling our family home.

“And, with Laura moving out to go to college, you’ll need the money.” She opened and closed the linen closet, took one glance at my mess of poorly folded towels, and said, “It’ll help if you clean the place out a bit, remove some of the clutter.”

We walked down the hall, past the line of framed photos, snapshots of our family life. I didn’t dare look at them in case they made me cry. Again.

“Coffee?” I suggested, heading toward the kitchen.

“Kat.” Elaine slid an arm around me. “Maybe it’s too soon. You two have been separated for only weeks.”

“I know. But . . . it’s what he wants.”

“Yes, but is it what
you
want. You love this house. Sure, it’s nothing special.” She frowned at our old blue linoleum counter with the chipped corners. “But, you know, it’s your home.”

I dumped the old grounds into the trash and put in a new liner. “Griff hates Jersey. The only reason he ended up here was because he followed a girlfriend. Then he met me and I got pregnant and we were stuck.” I poured in the water and flipped it on. “Stuck. Twenty years, stuck.”

“And what are you going to do?”

Get a condo like Beth Williams and stock shelves at Wegmans
, I thought.

“You have money saved, right?” she pressed.

“I
did
. I had $13,000,” I said, opening my bare cabinets, searching for cookies or anything to put out with the coffee.

“What do you mean you
had
$13,000? Don’t tell me you spent it?”

“All of it.” Aha! An unopened box of Girl Scout Thin Mints. How did I miss those? “Every last penny just like that.” I snapped my fingers.

Elaine slapped her cheek. “After all those months of coupon clipping and no cable and foraging through
Dumpsters
, you’re telling me you blew through it.”

I handed her the plate of Thin Mints and took a bite. “It was easy. I forgot how easy it was to spend money. And how much fun.”

She took a cookie but didn’t eat it. “What did you buy?”

“A second chance.”

There was a knock at the door and Elaine and I looked at each other. “Griff,” I said, going to get it. “He knocks now.”

Sure enough, it was Griff, in a white shirt and jeans, too together and relaxed for my own liking. Did he have to look so fit and happy? “Hi, Kat.”

“Hi, Griff.” I waved him in. “It is your house, too, you know. For a while.”

Elaine tensed. “Hi, Griff.”

“You’re looking good, Elaine.” He bent over and brushed her cheek with a gentlemanly kiss. Not even I had gotten so much as that. “Are we ready?”

She patted her briefcase. “Have all the paperwork right here.”

The moment I’d been dreading had arrived as we sat down around the kitchen table and Elaine distributed documents for us to sign. “You know, this is gonna sound dumb, but these are simply your agreements with me. Should you at any time choose to change your mind for whatever reason, you can. I will come over and rip that ‘For Sale’ sign out of the lawn myself, faster than you can—”

Griff reached over and took her hand. “It’s okay, Elaine. I think Kat and I are agreed. Aren’t we, Kat?”

Because Elaine was there and he wanted to be polite, he turned and smiled, the first smile he’d given me since the night he left. I wanted to freeze the moment, frame it to put with the other family photos in the hallway so I’d have it forever when he was long gone. “Yup. We’re agreed.”

Elaine sighed and took out her pens. I’d never met a Realtor so unhappy to sign on new clients. I pretended to listen to her go through the agreement, about the 7 percent and if we’d found a buyer and not her and blah, blah, blah. At one point during her little spiel, I looked over at Griff and he seemed dazed, too.

Finally, it was over and we were able to sign. First Griff, then me, then Elaine. And then it was over.

Elaine stood and shook our hands, as if we’d achieved something miraculous. “Oookay,” she said, snapping up her briefcase. “I guess I’ll be going then.”

Griff shoved his hands in his pockets. “There’s a little matter I’ve got to discuss with Kat.”

I said, “I’ll walk you to the door, Elaine.”

“Nope!” She backed up. “I know where the door is.” She practically did the four-minute mile to get away from us.

When she was gone, Griff motioned for me to sit. “So,” he said, clasping his hands,“how do you feel about selling the old homestead?”

I loved the way he called it “the old homestead,” like it was some rambling ranch out west and not a crappy aluminum-sided colonial in Jersey. “I think it sucks. However”—I nodded—“I think it’s necessary.”

“Why? Because we need the money?” Thankfully, he didn’t add,
because we’re getting a divorce.

“Partially.”

“Because we don’t.” He grinned. “The movie rights to my book on Hunter Christiansen have been sold, Kat. Six figures.”

I blinked. What normal theatergoer would see a biography on the crusty former chairman of the Federal Reserve? And what studio would pay six figures for it? “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. Hollywood’s hot for Hunter. And I gotta say, it’s nice to have money for once.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“But you might know about this.” He reached in his back pocket and unfolded a glossy photo of a house I knew well. It was in Rocky River’s old historic section, at least two hundred years old, with stone walls and four fireplaces.

“That’s the old Mansfield place,” I said, practically drooling. “I love that house.”

“Do you?” His eyes twinkled. “Good. Because I bought it.”

I didn’t dare breathe.

He added, “For you.”

“What?” My throat felt tight. “You bought it for me to live in? Alone?” It was an awful thought, me rambling around in that big old house.

“No, not alone. With
me
.” He slid his hand over. “If that’s okay.”

All I could do was stare at that hand. It didn’t seem real. Not his hand. Not this moment in our kitchen with this fantastic house in front of us.

Not him asking if he could stay with me
. I didn’t dare hope or presume. The possibility was too fantastic. The likelihood that I’d misunderstood too devastating.

“Griff . . .”

“I’m so sorry I overreacted like that, Kat. It was just that there’s something about Liam that . . .”

I threw an arm around him and kissed him. Hard. “I don’t work for Liam anymore.”

“I know. He told me.” Griff played with my hair. “He called last week and came over to my office. We kind of cleared the air.”

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall that day.

“So I’m assuming yes on the house . . . because I put in an offer.”

“That’s too bad.” I went to the drawer in the kitchen where we kept the take-out menus until we quit doing take-out since it was too expensive. “Because I put in an offer, too.”

I handed him the printout from the Internet. Griff leaned over and studied it like it was a rare piece of parchment.

“What
is
this?”

“It’s sixteen acres in Vermont. Woods. Mountains. End of a dirt road. No running water. No electricity. I bought it for you because this is what
you
want.”

“With what money?”

I shrugged. “Kind of amazing what you can scrape together when you put your mind to it. At least enough for a deposit.” No point in telling him now that it was the money I’d saved on contingency, for a divorce.

“The Penny Pinchers. You blow me away. I ...” He took another glance at the paper, this time picking it up and laughing. “So now we have to choose between the house you love and the seclusion I crave. It reminds me of that O. Henry short story.”