Piece of cake, she thinks, removing her coffee from the microwave, dumping it into a plastic go--mug, and heading for the door.
The kids haven’t been informed of the looming separation. With Sean overseas until just before Christmas, the news has had to wait; it’s the kind that should be shared in person with all the kids at once. They’ll undoubtedly be caught off guard by it.
Noreen certainly was.
Her three daughters, who have been living obliviously under this roof as the marriage unraveled, will be upset when they find out, but it’s her son who will take it the hardest. Sean is by far the most sensitive of her brood, and he’s been homesick this semester. Just last night he texted that he can’t wait to come home for Christmas and reminded her that he doesn’t have to be back on campus at Notre Dame until mid--January.
I was thinking you and I and Dad can do some skiing while the girls are in school, he wrote.
Sounds fun, she replied, which was better than a vague We’ll see, much less letting it slip that he’s going to spend part of that break helping his father settle into a new apartment.
Kevin wants to officially move in on January first. “That’ll give the kids some time to absorb the separation.”
“Ten days. Great.”
Even she hasn’t absorbed it yet, and she’s had three months.
“You must have seen this coming,” Kevin kept insisting.
She denied it. But looking back, she can’t remember if she was lying to him, or to both of them. When, exactly, did she fall out of love? When did he? Does it matter?
Aside from her clients, plenty of -couples she knows manage to keep their families intact when the romance fades. They just live separate lives, and no one outside the marriage is the wiser.
Why do we have to be different? Why do we have to endure a divorce?
No one knows better than Noreen what that can do to children, not to mention finances.
Now the world will know she failed spectacularly at something she’d considered one of her greatest successes. For twenty--three years, she was proud, perhaps smugly so, that she’d married so well.
And now . . .
I have no control over my future. None. He’s decided what’s going to happen to me, whether I like it or not.
In the front hall, she takes her coat from the closet and picks up her leather satchel filled with legal briefs for the meeting.
Her gaze falls on the wedding portrait in a Baccarat crystal frame on the table by the staircase. Just looking at it, she feels a fresh scream beginning to swell inside of her.
She reaches a trembling hand toward the photo, displaced by Luz and her dust cloth.
The burgeoning scream, were she to allow it to escape her throat, would undoubtedly shatter the frame along with every window in the house.
As always, she suppresses the rage.
She gently nudges the frame back a bit, away from the table’s edge, once more at a perfect forty--five--degree angle.
There. That’s better. Much better.
She gives a satisfied nod and walks out the door.
Having wasted the early morning hours prowling the streets for a suitable stand--in, Casey gave up when the commuters began to swarm.
Back at home, a nap would have been welcome, but sleep refused to come. A long hot shower—-not a bath, never a bath!—-helped a little. So did some tea and toast, yet Casey remains fidgety as the day wears on.
Out on the street beyond the window, a light drizzle washes into the gutters the last traces of snow that had fallen overnight. There was barely enough to stick, but it was sufficient to keep all but the hardiest New Yorkers from venturing out early unless they had to. Casey’s interest lies not in those hardy types, but in the sweetly feminine and vulnerable—-precisely the kind of woman who would choose to spend a stormy morning safely snuggled at home.
At least the futile early morning wanderlust resulted in one fruitful find: a copy of the New York Daily News, with its front page photo of a West Side crime scene and the headline: MYSTERY WOMAN SLAIN.