Page 7

Still, after all of that, she worked with her grandma a little bit in the flower beds and the garden, planting onions and peas and spinach and beets and a few other things that grew that early in the spring.

And then she started to work on scraping the gable end of the house.

She had spent a few evenings googling how to paint a house, and she was fairly certain she would be able to do it.

She was going to need scaffolding or else some kind of lift, but she hadn’t gotten to that point, and anyone who did it would need that as well, so it wasn’t like it was going to be some kind of unexpected expense.

Still, she’d never been very good with heights, and she wasn’t entirely sure how she was going to be able to handle being up farther than a few feet. She was determined to do it, though, and so she didn’t let herself dwell too much on the idea that it might be more than she could handle.

She didn’t want to admit that there was anything she couldn’t handle, even though in the recesses of her mind, she knew there were some things.

Like a husband who wasn’t faithful. Who seduced the therapist, and Claire might not even have known if it hadn’t been for the fact that she’d gone in unannounced without an appointment one day, wanting to talk to the therapist alone, since at every session, the therapist seemed to take Ted’s side.

After she’d found them on the couch together with their clothes strewn over the chair that the therapist usually sat in, Claire quit having trouble figuring out why everything was always her fault and Ted was the poster child for a husband and father, at least according to their therapist.

Maybe she was a little bitter.

It had been a week since they had moved when her phone rang at about one o’clock in the afternoon.

She and Grandma had just finished lunch, and she was working on a ladder, putting off the idea of getting scaffolding or renting a lift, and she’d found that she had been getting comfortable being up a little bit.

Still, she climbed down from the ladder before she pulled her phone out of her pocket and saw her husband’s number.

Ex-husband. The divorce had been final for more than eight months.

“Hello?” she said, after debating with herself for a couple more rings as to whether or not she should even answer.

“Claire Bell,” he said, and she bit back her irritation.

It had been a cute nickname back when they had been dating and first married. But after he had cheated the first time, it had started to grate on her nerves. Understandably, from what she could tell. Still, they weren’t married anymore, and he had no right to mess with her name.

“I’ve asked you over and over not to call me that.” She kept her voice cool, not ice cold, but cool enough to let him know that she wasn’t messing around. He liked to charm people, catch them off guard, and take them for everything they had. There was a reason he had become a lawyer.

“Come now. You don’t have to be mean.”

“What do you need?” she asked, her words clear and containing disinterest. She had no desire to talk to him any longer than she had to.

“I don’t know why you have to be so short. After all, we agreed that we were going to stay friends for the children’s sake. ”

“Yes. Friends. Distant friends. Friends who only talk once a year, so you’re calling me outside of our yearly conversation. It must be about the children.”

She didn’t want to be mean. She didn’t want to be sarcastic, and she hated that he brought out the worst in her.

“Actually, it is. You said that you were moving to Michigan, but I would still get to see them. When?”

They’d discussed it before she moved. He had wanted her to not be allowed to move out of the state of Massachusetts.

But she had not agreed to that as a condition of the divorce.

After all, he was the one who had cheated and left and hadn’t been able to reconcile despite the therapy they’d tried.

Enough said on the therapist. So she’d calmly said that the only place she had to go was Michigan, and somehow they’d figure out a way for him to see the children.

She supposed now was the time to figure that out.

Although, if it had been her, they would never figure it out.

She didn’t want to lose her kids at all, especially to someone who might be teaching them that it’s perfectly okay to run around with whatever woman you feel like.

And whatever other immoral qualities he wanted to display.

She reminded herself that she needed to be happy that her ex actually wanted to have something to do with her kids.

She had a lot of friends whose husbands didn’t want to have anything to do with them, especially when they had a new love in their life.

She was blessed, and it was better for the kids this way.

Even if she hated it. After all, kids would grow up a lot happier if they knew their dad loved them and wanted them.

“What would you like?” she asked, hedging a bit as she walked around the house and sat down on the front porch step.

She had no idea what to offer.