Page 22 of Happy Is On Hiatus
“Divorce is not the end of the world, Vi,” Aunt Ceil said. And she would know, since she’d divorced Jemel’s father about three seconds after he said he didn’t want to be a husband or father anymore. Two days later, Aunt Ceil had packed her bags and traveled from Hawaii back to Baltimore, where she and three-year-old Jemel moved in with Aunt Vi until she could get her own house right down the street.
“I’m not saying it is. All I’m saying is, going to a lawyer who goes to our church wasn’t such a good idea. What if she talks about the case? Details of the divorce, of all the years they’ve been married, will be all over the church.” Aunt Vi shook her head. “Such a mess. Hale’s gonna have a fit when I tell him.”
“I’ll tell him myself, Mama. And it’s my business that’ll be spread all over the streets—not just the church. But that’s just the way it has to be. I’m not staying married to a man who clearly doesn’t want to honor his vows to me anymore,” Rita said.
That was an understatement considering Nate had a whole baby on the way. Sharae sighed heavily. This was exactly what she didn’t want to happen. Now her problems were front and center when it was clear that she and Jemel needed to be throwing all their support at Rita and what she was going through right now.
“Look, it’s cool. I think I’m just gonna cremate him and get it over with,” she blurted out. When everyone in the room stared at her, she shrugged. “It’s no big deal. I’m his next of kin, so I’ll do what I’m required to do. Just because he couldn’t manage to do that doesn’t mean I have to follow in his footsteps.” That sounded so noble of her. Too bad she wasn’t sure it was nobility she was going for, rather than just the quickest possible resolution she could think of.
She could call a funeral home first thing Monday morning and tell them what she wanted. They could pick up the body from the morgue and cremate him the same day. Then it’d be over. Simple as that.
“Okay,” Aunt Ceil said. “Well, we’ll help. You need me to go to the funeral home with you?”
Sharae took a steadying breath. “No. I’ll call on Monday. Hopefully they can get it done the same day, and I can move on.”
“No memorial service?”
All eyes zoned in on Aunt Ceil at her last question.
“Well,” Aunt Ceil continued, unbothered by their quizzical glares, “it’s a formality, but it’s also closure. It doesn’t have to be anything big. We can have it right at the funeral home and—”
“No,” Sharae said adamantly. She slid her hand out of Jemel’s and stood. “I’m not bothering with any formalities. I’ll cremate him and sell whatever he owned. Then it’ll be done. It’ll be over. Finally.”
With that, Sharae walked out of the dining room. She passed Tariq and Ivan still sitting at the card table obviously waiting for her and Jemel to return, from the expectant gaze Tariq shot her. She ignored it and kept right on walking, until she was through the front door and on the porch. There she stopped and sucked in a gulp of humid presummer air.
“It’ll be over. Finally.” She repeated her words, determined to convince herself that they were true.
Chapter 10
ISN’T IT IRONIC?
“This ain’t over,” Rita said to Nate. It was the closest she’d come to a threat in the fifteen minutes she’d stood in his office late Monday afternoon. “What you not gon’ do is clean out our accounts and then sit here looking smug like this is all my fault.”
The man she once thought she loved sat back in his black leather office chair and shrugged. “You made a personal decision for your future, and I made a financial decision for mine. I don’t see the problem.”
“Oh, you definitely see the problem. You ain’t slick!” she yelled, and didn’t give a damn if every other salesperson and whatever customers might be on the sales floor at the time heard her. Although none of their employees had ever heard her raise her voice, Rita figured it was a good day for them to learn that she wasn’t the one to push. “And Sharon has assured me we’ll get every penny of it back in the final settlement.”
It had taken all the strength she possessed and a couple more glasses of wine for Rita to wait until a respectable time to call Sharon. She’d actually gotten up on Thursday morning and called the bank to make sure what she’d seen wasn’t a security glitch. Her lawyer hadn’t been totally surprised, although she admitted she’d thought Nate was a better man than to do something so cliché, but the entire reason why Ritaneeded Sharon in the first place was cliché. Nate had already shown them both who he really was.
“Calm down, Rita. I’m not trying to leave you high and dry,” he said. Like she was really going to believe a word he said right now.
“That’s exactly what you’ve done, Nate. There’s no money in the household account or the primary savings account.”
“But there’s money left in the second savings account, the one we use for vacations, and you still have the power to take a draw from the dealership. So you can stop all this drama.”
“Drama?” Was this fool serious? Stepping back from where she’d had her hands planted on his desk while she yelled at him, she folded her arms across her chest.
Today she wore a fitted navy-blue dress with a wide ivory belt and matching pumps. Pearl studs were at her ears, and she gripped her ivory-and-gold clutch tight between her fingers. “You dare to talk to me about drama? You’re the one with the stray women calling my house at all hours of the morning. And I’m certainly not the one going through a midlife crisis and creating babies when my youngest is in college. Don’t you dare talk to me about drama.”
He stood up so fast the chair slid back on its wheeled legs and smacked into the credenza where his printer and a few family photos were. “This was your idea, Rita,” he said tightly. He was trying not to yell and probably praying they didn’t draw the attention of their staff. Wasn’t that cute. “I told you I wanted to talk about this, to work through our issues.”
She was already shaking her head. “I don’t have any issues, Nate. Unless you count the sorry, disrespectful man I chose to spend my life with. I’ve never cheated on you!” That wasn’t what she’d planned to say to him when she came here today, but now that the words had fallen from her lips, she waited for Nate’s reaction.
For the moment he seemed speechless, but then he shook his head. “I never thought you would.”
“Same,” she said through clenched teeth and then huffed. “I married a man that I loved and trusted. It never occurred to me that he would do something as trite as have an affair. But you did, on multiple occasions.”
When he came around the desk and stopped about a foot away from her, Rita took a slow step back.
