Page 13 of Rainshadow Road

Zoë had been asked out by various guys, but so far she had refused them all. She was still getting over her disaster of a marriage. To Zoë’s chagrin, she had been the only one surprised by the revelation that her husband, Chris, was gay.

“Everyone knew,” Justine had told her bluntly. “I told you before you married him, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“Chris didn’t seem gay to me.”

“What about his obsession with Sarah Jessica Parker?”

“Straight men like Sarah Jessica Parker,” Zoë said defensively.

“Yes, but how many of them use Dawn by Sarah Jessica Parker as an aftershave?”

“It smelled like citrus,” Zoë said.

“And remember when he took you to Aspen on that ski trip?”

“Straight men ski in Aspen.”

“During gay ski week?” Jessica persisted, which Zoë had admitted had probably been a giveaway.

“And remember how Chris always said ‘everyone has a little gay in them’?”

“I thought he was being sophisticated.”

“He was being gay, Zoë. Do you think any straight guy would say something like that?”

Unfortunately Zoë’s father was against divorce for any reason. He had insisted that everything would have worked out if they had gone into counseling, and he’d even suggested that Zoë should have done more to keep Chris interested. And Chris’s family had also blamed Zoë, saying that Chris had never been gay until he’d gotten married. For her part, Zoë didn’t blame her ex-husband for being gay, only for having made her an unwitting casualty of his sexual self-discovery.

“It’s so humiliating,” Zoë had confessed to Lucy, “having your husband leave you for another man. It makes you feel like you’ve let down your entire gender. Like I was the one who finally sent him over to the other team.”

Lucy reflected that a feeling of shame was often a result of being cheated on. Even though it wasn’t fair, you couldn’t help but take it as a sign that you were lacking something.

“What is it?” Justine asked with a frown as she opened the back door to let Lucy in. As usual, Justine was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, her hair pulled up in a swingy ponytail. “You look terrible. Here, come to the kitchen.”

“I’m all wet,” Lucy said. “I’ll mess up the floors.”

“Take off your shoes and come in.”

“I’m sorry. I should have called first.” Lucy slipped out of her mud-caked sneakers.

“No problem, we’re not busy.”

Lucy followed her into the big, warm kitchen. The walls were covered in wallpaper printed with cheerful clusters of cherries. The air was filled with good smells: flour, hot butter, melting chocolate. Zoë was taking a muffin pan from the oven, her hair drawn to the top of her head in a knot of golden curls. She looked like an old-fashioned pinup girl, her figure curvy and small-waisted, her cheeks pink from the heat of the oven.

Zoë smiled. “Lucy. Want to be a taste tester? I just tried a new recipe for chocolate ricotta muffins.”

Lucy shook her head dumbly. Somehow the cozy warmth of the kitchen was making her feel even worse. She raised a hand to her throat to soothe away a sharp twinge of misery.

Justine stared at her in concern. “What is it, Luce?”

“Something really bad,” Lucy managed to say. “Something awful.”

“You and Kevin had a fight?”

“No.” Lucy drew in a shivering breath. “He dumped me.”

She was immediately guided to a chair by the table. Zoë gave her a wad of paper napkins to blot her wet hair and blow her nose, while Justine poured a shot of whiskey. As Lucy took a sip of smooth liquid fire, Justine poured another shot in a new glass.

“For heaven’s sake, Justine, she hasn’t even finished the first one,” Zoë said.

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