“I’m sorry I bothered you while you were in court,” Rowan had said.
“It’s okay.” She didn’t regret the lie she’d sent her sister’s way. Rowan would never know the difference, and Noreen wasn’t about to admit that she and her husband had just sat down to have their first real conversation in weeks, about . . . logistics.
As it turned out, listening to her sister’s concerns over a snow globe when her own world is unraveling wasn’t much better than listening to her husband talk about the unraveling itself.
“She just needed to talk to me about something,” she tells him now.
He’s shaking his head. “I can’t believe you told her.”
“Told her what?”
“About us. We said we weren’t going to tell anyone before we told the kids.”
“Believe me, I haven’t told anyone.”
“You must have told your sister. Why else would she be texting you now?”
“She’s my sister.”
He does have a point, though Noreen chooses to ignore it. She and Rowan go for weeks, sometimes months, without being in touch. “Believe it or not, she has a life that doesn’t hinge on the state of our marriage,” she tells Kevin. “So do I, for that matter.”
“What’s going on with her, then?”
“Why would I tell you?”
“Why wouldn’t you?” he lobs back as expertly as if he were in tennis whites on the court at the club instead of sitting here on the couch in four--hundred--dollar midlife crisis jeans.
“My sister is none of your business anymore. If you’re ending this marriage, then get used to the fact that she’s my family, not yours.”
He shrugs as if it’s no great loss, and goes on talking about Christmas—-or the lack thereof, really—-with the kids.
Something has shifted for Noreen, who for the past few months has been wishing he’d change his mind about leaving, for the sake of the kids, finances, convenience, appearances . . .
Until now, she could think of countless reasons to stay married. But in this moment, they’re outweighed by a single compelling reason to divorce.
I loathe him.
From the Mundy’s Landing Tribune Archives
Police Blotter
June 12, 1979
Senior Prank
At 7:27 a.m. yesterday, police responded to a call from Mundy’s Landing High School custodian Timothy Reynolds, who reported livestock loose on the premises. Upon their arrival, officers discovered several piglets running rampage through the halls and promptly evacuated the building. Animal Control Officer Lyle Timmons was summoned to the scene and apprehended three of the animals, marked with the numbers 1, 2 and 4. As arriving students and faculty congregated outside, officers carried out a lengthy and fruitless search for the missing piglet in what was presumed to be a quartet. Upon their failure to discover the animal, they determined that the incident was part of an elaborate hoax. Three local youths were being questioned pending charges of criminal mischief in the fourth degree in connection with the incident.
Chapter 13
Back home after dropping Mick at work, Rowan goes straight upstairs to retrieve the box containing the snow globe. When Mick startled her earlier, she’d dashed up the stairs and stashed it in the hall bathroom hamper beneath a pile of dirty clothes.
Again, she looks at the Polly Pocket dolls glued inside the jar.
Is it possible?
She carries the snow globe out into the hall, past her sons’ bedrooms. Mick’s door is closed, as always, to hide the mess and protect his teenage sanctuary. Braden’s door is open and the room is tidy—-but it would have been that way even when he was Mick’s age.
How can brothers born of the same gene pool into the same household be so drastically different?