The Romance Reader's Guide to Life

That night Annie slept in the small bedroom that had been hers when she and Lilly last lived with me. My sister and I slept in my bed. When we were little girls we kicked and elbowed to demand more room in the narrow space we shared, and woke up most mornings spooned. On this night we started right out spooned, but it took a long time to shut down the whirring pictures in my head, damp down the feelings that I didn’t want to be feeling, and sleep.

Luhrmann came after her the next day. We woke up to the sound of the downstairs door being banged on, a splintering sound of the aging bolt being snapped off the door, then feet pounding up the stairs. I dialed the cops. Luhrmann reached us and began pounding on the door to the apartment. I told Lilly to stay put, but she didn’t. She marched right up to the damn thing and opened it.

“You stole my car,” Luhrmann said—almost a whisper, eyes like a reptile with something in its prehensile sights. “I’m here to get it back.”

“You don’t own a car. That’s my car! And you didn’t have any trouble finding another one to borrow real quick so you could come over and threaten me.”

“That car’s in my name. Which makes it my car.” Of course, everything was in his name except Lilly’s half of Be Your Best Cosmetics, carefully shielded from a moment like this. He was her husband.

“Might be in your name, but it was bought with cash I made,” Lilly said evenly. “So—my car.”

Even as inexperienced in the world of love as I was, I knew this was not the right thing to say at this moment. I had come up behind her, carrying a copper pan. When Luhrmann stepped over the threshold and put his hands on her, I swung—a satisfying, thumping whock—and he was down, looking up at us from where he’d hit the floor, dazed but scrambling like a squashed spider, struggling to get to his feet and make something bad happen. I stepped over the threshold and swung the pan over my head, clearly focused on his face. “Don’t do it,” I said softly.

“You think you can get away with that?” The blow had left him vague and thick—slower but still dangerous.

“Yes.” I kept my tone matter-of-fact because I wanted my ability to hurt him and get away with it to sound very much like a fact.

“Bitch,” he said, the word coming out like a small metal thing with sharp parts.

“You bet,” I answered. “Get out of here, Luhrmann.”

Before the exchange went any further, flashing lights in the street below us from a police cruiser blinked up the stairway. “Up here!” I yelled. “Top of those stairs!”

Two patrolmen slogged up the stairs to where Ricky Luhrmann lay, now moaning and making himself as pathetic as possible. I heard Annie open her bedroom door and turned to see her behind me, hesitant and afraid but purposeful, standing her ground. “Go back to your room for just a little bit, sweetie,” I said. “It’ll be all right.” She froze, uncertain.

“Go ahead, Annie,” her mother called out to her. “Neave’s right.” The little girl turned and retreated. The police reached the door.

“Did you see her attack me?” Luhrmann cried. “You must at least have heard that fucking pan hit my head, even from the bottom of the stairwell!” He kept talking. The cops stood there long enough to hear him swear he’d never give Lilly a divorce and she had a few things to learn if she thought she was in charge of anything besides lipstick, and she wasn’t in charge of him that was a goddamn fucking sure thing. “And if your sister thinks she can stick her nose in where it doesn’t belong then she’d better think again. I knew you’d come running straight to her.” The tendons in his neck stood out in a lizardy fan. Lilly silently held out her wrists to show the police the purple places spreading from what he’d done to hold her down the night before. There were marks elsewhere besides, she told them, if they cared to see them. Then they saw her spit right in Ricky Luhrmann’s face. Later she swore she did it on purpose because she knew it would make Luhrmann do something outsized stupid with the cops standing right there, and it did. He stood up, lunged at her and got her by the throat. The cops pulled them apart.

“It’s a domestic matter, ma’am. If they weren’t married, maybe you could call it assault. But it’s between a husband and wife.” Then the bigger guy turned to Luhrmann. “Mister, I think you oughtta shove off until you cool down a bit.” The cop planted himself directly between Luhrmann and Lilly and rested one hand on his billy club. “Lady, just make peace with the man,” the cop said when Luhrmann had stamped down the stairs, out onto the street, and back to his borrowed car. “Better or worse, the guy’s your husband.”

“Not for long,” was Lilly’s reply. Lilly Terhune had watched me see Ricky Luhrmann getting her by the throat. There was no pretending it had been anything but what it had been, and I was not a person who could be persuaded that I hadn’t seen something. And there was Annie, who had been protected from scenes like this in the past but who only a few minutes earlier had stood in a hallway and watched me threaten her mother’s husband with a sauce pan.

Lilly didn’t care if Luhrmann wouldn’t cooperate. She didn’t care to wait around for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

“Annie saw that,” she murmured when Luhrmann had gone.

“Yes, she did,” I agreed.

“She’s not going to see it again. If you’ve got no objection, Neave, Annie and I are moving in with you for a little while. I’ll wait till after the sales conference. But right after that I’m booking a flight to a dude ranch in Nevada and planting myself there for the six weeks it’ll take to get the divorce legal.”

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