Blossom Street Bundle

“Just tell me!”

He gripped her shoulders, his fingers digging painfully into her flesh. “You’re a good woman, Bethanne, but …” He faltered. “But I don’t love you anymore.”

At first she could only assume this was a hoax and she giggled. “What do you mean, you don’t love me anymore? Grant, we’ve been married for twenty years. Of course you love me.”

He closed his eyes as if he couldn’t bear to look at her. “No, I don’t. I’m sorry, so sorry, but I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried. I can’t carry on with this … this charade any longer.”

Bethanne was dumbstruck, staring at Grant. This was the man she’d loved and slept with all these years and suddenly, in the blink of an eye, he’d become a stranger.

“What happened?” she asked uncertainly.

“Please,” he begged, “don’t make me say it.”

“Say what?” At that moment she was more perplexed than angry. Rather than take his words personally, Bethanne immediately went into her problem-solving mode. Whatever was wrong could be fixed, the same way you’d have a broken faucet or a faulty outlet repaired. You just called a plumber or an electrician. Whatever was wrong simply needed the appropriate attention and then everything would go back to working as it always had.

“There’s a reason I don’t love you anymore,” her husband said from between clenched teeth. He tossed aside the comforter and got out of bed. His obvious irritation took her aback.

“Grant, what’s gotten into you?”

He climbed into his pants, hiked them up and closed the zipper. “Are you really this dense, or do I need to spell it out?”

In a matter of seconds he’d gone from tears to tyrant. “Spell out what?” she asked, innocently turning up her hands to receive whatever he had to tell her. She was more shocked by his rudeness than by what he was saying.

He paused, one arm in the sleeve of his shirt. He spoke without looking at her and without emotion. “There’s someone else.”

It hit Bethanne then; she finally understood. “You’re having an … affair?” She went numb and her mouth was instantly dry. Her tongue seemed to swell to twice its normal size, making speech impossible. In no way could this be true. She refused to believe it—Grant would never betray her like this. She’d know if he was cheating. Men had affairs in movies and in books. It was the sort of thing that happened to other women, other marriages, not hers. She’d clung to a surreal sense of denial for those first few minutes as he continued to dress for work.

“When? How?” she managed to stutter.

“We met at the office,” Grant said. “She’s another agent, recently joined the company.” He sighed heavily. “I tried to make it work with you and me, but it’s no good. I didn’t mean for this to happen.” There was a pleading quality in his voice, quickly replaced by anger. “Damn it, Bethanne, don’t make things any more difficult than they already are.” As if he’d planned this for days, he opened the closet door and extracted a suitcase, which he set on the bed.

“You’re … leaving?”

He answered by opening his dresser drawers and lifting out his clothes. Bethanne winced as she watched him drop a stack of neatly folded undershirts on the bottom of the suitcase. Grant was extremely particular about his T-shirts, which had to be folded just so. He was meticulous about every aspect of his personal appearance and that perfectionism extended beyond his hair and clothes.

“Where … where will you go?” Her head was crowded with questions, and it seemed the most inessential ones rose to the surface first.

“I’m moving in with Tiffany,” he announced.

“Tiffany?” she repeated, and why she should find humor in the midst of the most horrible moment of her life, she would never know. All at once she was laughing. “You’re leaving me for a woman named Tiffany?”

He glared at her as if she were truly demented and just then perhaps she was. “Go,” she said, almost flippantly, dismissing him with a wave of her hand. “I just want you to go.”

As if to prove her point, she’d marched all the way down to the basement and collected a second, even bigger suitcase, which she hauled to their bedroom. As she climbed down and then back up the stairs, she racked her mind, trying to remember if she’d ever met this Tiffany. To the best of her recollection she hadn’t. Grant’s office was filled with women, but she’d never suspected he was capable of such treachery. Although she was panting by the time she’d dragged the large suitcase up two flights of stairs, she didn’t pause for breath, her anger carrying her.

She flopped the empty suitcase carelessly on the bed, and a cloud of dust spread over the white comforter, which she ignored. Then she threw open the closet door, grabbed his suits around the middle and yanked them out, still on their hangers. Unceremoniously, she shoved them into the suitcase.

“Bethanne!” he shouted. “Stop it.”

“No,” she bellowed at the top of her lungs. Then, more quietly, she asked, “How long has this thing with you and Tiffany been going on?” When he didn’t reply, she demanded, “How old is she, anyway?” Once she’d started on this line of questioning, she couldn’t stop. “Is she married, too, or am I the only one being tossed aside?”

Grant refused to meet her gaze.

“A while?”

Again Grant refused to look at her as she packed his suitcases. She’d begun just throwing in his clothes but had quickly reverted to habit—folding, straightening, arranging.

“A month? Two months? How good is she in bed?”

“Bethanne, don’t.”

“How long?” She wouldn’t stop until he told her the truth.

Grant released a laborious sigh as if her relentlessness had broken him down. “Two years.”

“Two years!” she cried, consumed with rage. “Get out of this house.”

He nodded.

“Get out, and don’t come back.” In that moment she meant it. But not long afterward, she’d desperately wanted him home again. It embarrassed her now to remember how frantic she’d been to win back her husband’s affection. She’d been willing to do anything—see a counselor, beg, bribe, reason with him. At one point, just before the settlement hearing, she would’ve given up ten years of her life for Grant to return to his family.

But when Grant moved out of the house and in with Tiffany, he had no intention of returning. She’d nearly been destroyed by that. Eventually she’d had to accept it: Grant was never coming home. He didn’t love her anymore and nothing she said or did would change his mind.

Her marriage was dead, and burying it had virtually obliterated her self-esteem. If not for her children, Bethanne didn’t know what she would’ve done. Andrew and Annie needed her more than ever, and only for them did she continue.

When she’d finally made an appointment with an attorney, the man had been straightforward and helpful; what seemed like a fair financial arrangement had been settled upon. Grant refinanced the house for the third time and paid off their cars and their credit card bills with whatever equity he could extract, so they were both essentially debt-free. He was instructed to pay alimony for two years, plus child support until the children were out of high school. They would share college expenses. He hadn’t been late with a check yet, but then the state made sure of that. Bethanne would have to find a job soon, but for a dozen different reasons, she delayed.

It was now six months after the divorce had been finalized, and the fog was only starting to clear. She told herself she had to live one day at a time as she learned to deal with what her family and friends called her “new reality.” The problem was, she preferred her old reality….

Bethanne sipped her tea, which had begun to cool. She was startled from her thoughts when the door off the kitchen banged open and sixteen-year-old Annie came in, red-faced and sweating. Tendrils of wet hair pressed against the sides of her face. She wore a halter top and spandex shorts, and had apparently been out for a lengthy run. Because Annie had always felt close to her father, she’d taken the divorce particularly hard. Soon after Grant moved out, Annie had started running and would often go five and even ten miles a day. Unfortunately, that hadn’t been the only change in her daughter’s behavior. The new friends she’d acquired were a bigger concern.

Bethanne worried endlessly about Annie and the company she kept. The girl’s anger was focused on Tiffany, and Bethanne suspected that Annie’s new friends encouraged her more outrageous acts. While Bethanne was no fan of the other woman, whom she’d discovered to be fifteen years younger than her ex, she was afraid Annie might do something stupid in her zeal to retaliate against Tiffany, something that would involve the police.

Andrew had talked to Bethanne several times about various things he’d learned Annie had done. These included signing Tiffany up for magazine subscriptions, leaving her name and number with sales staff and scheduling appointments, all in Tiffany’s name. However, Annie remained scornfully silent whenever Bethanne tried to bring up the subject.

“You didn’t leave me a note,” Bethanne chastised mildly as Annie walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a cold bottle of water.

“Sorry,” the girl mumbled unapologetically. She twisted off the lid, leaned back her head and gulped down half the contents. “I figured you’d know. I run every day.”

Bethanne did know, but that was beside the point.

“How’d it go at the employment agency?” her daughter asked.

Bethanne sighed, wishing Annie hadn’t mentioned it. “Not good.” She’d known this job search would be difficult, but she’d had no idea how truly painful the process would be. “When I told the interviewer about my baking skills, he didn’t seem overly impressed.”

“You should work in a bakery.”

Bethanne had already considered that, but being around food for eight hours a day didn’t appeal to her.