“I want to—” I paused, trying to think why I had insisted we sit five houses down from Stephanie Brooks’s house at nine p.m. I didn’t finish the thought because I wasn’t exactly sure. All weekend I had fantasized about catching Scott with his pants around his ankles. Visions of me storming into Steph Brooks’s bedroom, melodramatically slapping Scott, and telling him he’d hear from my lawyer had danced like sugarplums in my head. Then he’d trip over said pants around his ankles, chasing after me, begging for forgiveness.
But now that seemed ridiculous.
But still, I wanted to see the evidence for myself.
How did I relay that to Ruby?
“If you see him with her, it will make it real?” Ruby asked, her voice as soft as the night gathered around us.
I blinked away sudden tears. Thank goodness she understood that I needed to see his infidelity with my own eyes. Even if I sort of knew the truth.
Scott was probably cheating on me.
And despite my constant proclamations about how strong our marriage was, the fat truth was that Scott and I weren’t in love. Oh, we loved each other in the way you love a person who makes a life with you, who shoulders the hard stuff with you, who shares the shampoo, the dishes, and the kid with you. But I was no longer “in love” with Scott.
And he wasn’t “in love” with me.
I mean, obviously.
“You’re right. Something inside me needs to see him with her. I don’t know why,” I said finally.
“What if you don’t see him tonight?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t figured out what to do yet,” I said. Truthfully, I hadn’t absorbed what all this would mean for me. For our daughter. For the safe life we’d made. Felt like too much to take in.
“Cricket, if he’s cheating on you, you have to have a plan. You have to—”
“But it’s not that simple. I have Julia Kate to think about it. We’re a fam—”
“You can’t let him get away with this. I mean, you’re not going to overlook him screwing around, are you?” Ruby didn’t look so much like the quiet creature who slunk around the antique sideboards. She looked bold, bristling with outrage, and interesting. I liked this Ruby. And note to self: be careful giving Ruby wine; she gets feisty.
“No, but . . .” I didn’t want to say what I had been thinking because Ruby couldn’t understand. She wasn’t married, didn’t have a daughter, a mortgage, a life like mine. “My life is complicated.”
More bristling from Ruby. “Everyone’s life is complicated. You can’t run from this.”
“I’m not. It’s not like I’m going to pretend this away. I just don’t know what I’m actually going to do yet.”
Okay, so I had thought about D-I-V-O-R-C-E and even sung it in Tammy Wynette’s voice in my head. I had even imagined moving out of the brick house on the golf course and finding something cute and less like the big house I’d never wanted in the first place. Julia Kate and I could be happy in a cute three-bedroom in South Highlands. Eventually my daughter would be okay with no club swimming pool and no cruising the streets in a golf cart. Maybe. But even so, the idea of breaking apart our safe little world hurt too much to think about. And it would get messy. Julia Kate would be devastated. People would look at me with pity. And since Scott and I held investments in both our names and he owned half the building Printemps was in, our split wouldn’t be simple. At all.
“It’s already done, you know,” Ruby said.
“What?”
“Change. It’s happened. You can’t stick your head in the sand.”
I wasn’t. Not really. “I’m not.”
“Instead of doing this, you should hire a professional.” Ruby sounded so certain. How did she know these sorts of things? She was so young. And nothing like the woman who stayed out of my way at the store, glancing at me as if she expected me to snap at any minute.
No, this woman had teeth. And confidence.
“Why would I pay someone to catch him when I can do that myself?” I asked.
“You need proof that’s admissible in court. Pictures.”
“I don’t want to go to court. I want to confront him myself. I want him to know I know.”
“No, you don’t.” Ruby delivered this with an adamant pointer finger.
“Who are you? Where have you been hiding the real Ruby all this time?”
She gave me a smile. “Yeah, so I guess I’m cautious around people I don’t know, especially women like you.”
“Women like me?”
She made a flat line with her mouth. “Women who have money and security. Women who wear expensive clothes and talk about things like cotillion and debutantes.”
“I’m not like that.”
The corners of her mouth lifted. “I know. I mean, you talk about that stuff, but I know you’re not shallow. And earlier when I saw you crying—”
“You saw me?” I hadn’t meant to cry, but Scott had sent me flowers. He never sent me flowers, and because I had read that stupid “Thirty Signs He’s Cheating On You” article, I knew that sending me flowers wasn’t a sweet gesture. It was guilt and another nail in the coffin of our marriage.
“Yeah, and seeing you cry over that asshole pissed me off. That’s why I came with you. Because you need help.” She twisted her dark hair around her finger and narrowed her eyes. “But the first thing you have to be is smart about how you handle this.”
Irritation blindsided me. “How am I not being smart? I’ve sat on this for days. Do you know how hard it is to lie beside a man you know is screwing another woman and not say anything?” My words escalated as I spoke.
Ruby’s eyes flashed sympathy. “I get it, Cricket.”
“No, you don’t,” I said, sadness edging in on my anger. But I didn’t want to be sad. I liked the edginess the deep anger brought me, along with a burning determination that made me want to do something proactive, something that said I wasn’t going to sit back and accept being cheated on. My mother’s inherited coolness dissipated as emotion washed over me. “I’m not sticking my head in the sand or taking any shit from Scott.”
Ruby’s eyes widened when I opened the car door. “Wait, where are you going?”
I slammed the car door. “I’m going”—I leaned over and grabbed the bag that held the professional digital camera Scott had bought for our trip to Alaska last summer—“to get proof, admissible or not.”
“Cricket, wait,” Ruby said, but it was too late. I strode down the sidewalk, slipping quickly along the oleander bushes lining the next drive, hoping no looky-loo out to walk his fluffball would see me. A dog barked in the backyard next to Stephanie’s house. I muttered “Crap” under my breath and jumped in a bush. A sharp branch raked my cheek.
“Shit,” I breathed, slapping a hand to the scrape.
What was I doing? I wasn’t even sure Scott was at Stephanie’s. He had left the house an hour before, saying he needed to have drinks with a client and talk about some potential deal. He could be actually doing that, and not the horizontal mambo with the tennis coach.