Page 55 of Caught in a Storm
“Right. Here to see Mr. Sommers.”
“They’re expecting you. Head on back.”
Industrial carpet beneath her feet, Robyn walks down a long hallway until she finds Aaron and a man with gray hair sitting at a conference table. “Hey, Robyn,” the man says, standing. “Ed Sommers. Good to see you.”
“Hey, Robyn,” says Aaron. His voice catches her off guard—the serious tone of it—and for the first time the gravity of what’s happening hits her. After offering Robyn and Aaron tea, water, or sodas, Mr. Sommers starts. “Now, my role here,” he says, “is to be a guide. I’m here to help you two find the clearest path to what’s next. You’ve opted not to use divorce attorneys. From my perspective, with as friendly and amicable as you two seem to be about all this, well, that’s a good decision.”
Aaron offers Robyn a sad little smile. They’ve talked about this at home and at restaurants and on walks for more than a year. They’ve grown apart. The distance between them is too great. They’ll always be friends. They still love each other, in a way. Once Caleb starts college in the fall, they’ll divide up their lives. Uncouple. Begin their separate journeys.
My marriage is ending, Robyn thinks.
For the purposes of easy math, she’s always assumed she’ll live to be a hundred. The 10 percent of her life that she’s spent with Aaron will soon be over, facilitated by a jowly man named Ed Sommers. All it takes is a three-block walk in heels on a sunny day, and she wonders, Is it supposed to be this easy?
Chapter 33
Margot is on her way back from the coffee shop, thoroughly decked out now in new clothes. She’s carrying her notebook and an iced coffee, and the sun is out. It feels weird to not be wearing her boots, like she could take off at a dead sprint if she needed to.
About twenty minutes after stepping into Target with Billy yesterday and finding some hair products suitable for females, Margot realized something: Billy drove her there in a car. That car was, in fact, in the parking lot right outside the store. Margot hasn’t had consistent access to a car since the Jaguar Lawson kept in a garage seven blocks from their apartment when they were married. Consequently, for years now, whether it be groceries, clothes, electronics, or whatever, Margot has only been able to buy as much as she could carry. Standing in the hair-care aisle at Target, it hit her that she could buy whatever the hell she wanted.
“Are there other stores?” she asked. “Not just Target?”
Billy laughed, like she was kidding. A teenager had just taken Margot’s picture with her iPhone and run away, embarrassed. “Oh, you’re serious,” he said. “Uh, yeah, we’ve got stores in Baltimore. We’ve got a mall and everything.”
She bought socks and underwear, a couple of gray and black T-shirts that were slightly different from her other gray and black T-shirts, a new pair of jeans, some legit Target pajamas, a pink shower loofah, and the pair of squishy Vans that she’s wearing now, like sleek little pillows for her feet.
Billy was delighted by the loofa. “Margot Hammer uses a pink loofah,” he said when they checked out. “You don’t read about stuff like that in Rolling Stone.”
She decides to hit Eddie’s for baby carrots and—well, as long as I’m here, right?—to flip through the newest Us Weekly. In the Stars—They’re Just Like Us! section up front, Margot sees herself with Billy at Camden Yards. Fancy Clancy is there, too, but poor Caleb has been cropped out. “They drink brews at ball games!” reads the caption. Margot’s ears are definitely sticking out the sides of her Orioles cap. Ten or so pages forward, Willa Knight is beside a pool in an article about how celebrities are prepping their beach bodies for summer, as if twenty-six-year-old genetic lottery winners have to do anything aside from exist.
Her phone vibrates in her back pocket as she steps out of Eddie’s. It’s a New York number. Margot answers, because maybe it’s Jimmy, her doorman, telling her that her building is engulfed in flames. There’s no one there, though, just dead air.
When she’s about a block from the apartment, she can hear guitar riffs reverberating off the pavement. Billy’s inside with Alice, his oldest student, and she’s surprised none of the neighbors have called the police.
Her phone rings again. Same number. Margot stops walking. “Hello?”
Still nothing. Margot nearly disconnects, but then there’s a sharp intake of breath in her ear. It’s just a sound—not even a word—but it’s a sound Margot knows instantly, because she’s heard it a thousand times, in microphones, playback speakers…her own memories. “Nikki?” she says. “Nikki, is that you?”
Another breath, then the line goes dead.
Margot says, “Shit,” to a tree, then taps the number on her screen, calling it back.
“Hello?”
“Nikki?”
“Margot? Sorry. I sort of freaked out when you actually answ—”
Margot hangs up. Ten seconds later, her phone rings again. She answers, aware that she in no imaginable way should. “What?”
“Margot?”
She’s rehearsed things that she might someday shout at Nikki. She wishes now that she’d written those things down, because her mind is a barren, horizonless nothing. “What do you want?”
“Um, did you literally just call me back so you could hang up on me, you psycho?”
“Yeah,” says Margot, “and I’m about to do it again.”
* * *
