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Hot-headed. Quick-witted. Stunningly beautiful. “The kind of woman who always gets what she wants.”
He had always said these things with a wink. Always with a note of love and excitement.
Until all that had disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Susan laughed at herself. But it was true. She had loved hearing what she looked like through his eyes; at the beginning, a bright-eyed and glowing eighteen-year-old girl with aspirations to be a criminal lawyer and eventually take on the world. Richard had been the same. Arrogant, sure of himself, but that had suited her just fine. Together, she had known that nothing could take them down.
That is nothing except the spunky little thirty-one-year old secretary named Penelope.
“What a cliché,” Susan muttered to herself. She stood for the last time in her law office. Her eyes scanned the room for one last moment. At forty-four years old, she was one of two partners in the law offices of Harris and Harris. This had been her entire career. She and Richard had fought and struggled, given their time and energy and nearly everything else to this business.
Now, the business had chewed up her marriage and spit her out. Their divorce had finalized six months before. This had given Susan just enough time to finish off the rest of her cases, explain the situation to her children, and pack up her box of things.
Her husband planned to buy her out. What would it be then, she wondered. The law offices of... Just One Harris? Cheating Harris? The Leftover Harris? She laughed to herself. She wished she could point the finger at her twenty-something self and say, “Maybe work with someone else.”
Oh, but she had been a romantic back then. She couldn’t have known.
She clenched her hand into a fist and placed it steadily at the center of the desk. She had sat right there for some eighteen years—since she had passed the bar—and couldn’t imagine doing any work anywhere else.
Of course, now, she planned to take a good six months off. It would give her time to regroup and recharge—something she needed desperately. Also, to celebrate her daughter’s new engagement—and hang with her two little twin grandchildren.
There was other stuff to deal with, bigger issues at hand. But she liked to shove those things into the back of her mind and press forward. She had to be stubborn, quick-witted, and hot-headed for herself and only for herself, now, and never again for him.
Susan slipped the top on her box of things and walked toward the hall. When she reached it, she heard the shrill voice of Penelope and the corresponding laugh from her ex-husband. That laugh sounded a little bit different than it used to. It used to be genuine, open and fill her with light. Now, it wrapped itself around her neck and made it difficult for her to breathe.
She had told Richard she would be at the office to pick up her things that evening. She had told him so that he would keep his distance. They still remained on at the same house together—with her taking over the apartment they had built on for Richard’s mother before she had passed away. Despite their close living quarters, they hadn’t seen one another in several weeks. At least, not up close.
Penelope and Richard stumbled around the corner and stopped short as they stared at her like deer in headlights. Susan arched her brow angrily. Richard’s assured smile fell off his lips and onto the floor. Beside him, Penelope gave a weird giggle. She had recently quit her job as his secretary because he had given her the cash to go back to college.
At least, that was the gossip Susan had heard. She hadn’t bothered to ask Richard about it.
Richard smeared his hand across the back of his head. There was just the beginning of a bald spot under his still-jet-black hair. He looked thin and powerful, much better in the suit she didn’t recognize than he had in years. Probably, he and Penelope worked out together. That was the kind of thing younger couples did—and these days, Richard was nothing but a wannabe younger man. In the middle of a mid-life crisis, she thought to herself.
“I just came to get the rest of my things from my office,” Susan said. She didn’t give him any kind of smile. He didn’t deserve it.
“Right. You had said that. I forgot,” Richard replied. His voice was gravelly and dark, almost dangerous. She remembered when he had talked to criminals like that in their first few years as lawyers for Harris and Harris. His eyes had flickered dangerously.
Now, she was the danger. The final block in the road between him and his happiness.
But she was on her way out.
“Excuse me,” Susan said. She shot forward and cut between Penelope and Richard. Penelope hopped to the side, her ankle crumpling a tiny bit as she went. She had always worn six-inch heels, and today was no different.
Don’t let your husband hire a hot secretary, her friends had told her over and over again.
But I trust him. We’re professionals. We’re criminal lawyers, for goodness sake. Richard knows there are more meaningful things in life. He respects his family. He respects me.
When she reached the elevator, Richard called for her. “Susan, you’re going to get the last of your stuff out tonight, right?”
She whipped around, her nostrils flared. Her dark brunette hair wafted down her shoulders. “We have a few more things to discuss before I leave.”
Penelope looked anxious. To be honest, Susan enjoyed the strange expression she wore. She looked like a child stuck in the middle of an adult conversation.
“But I wouldn't want to keep you now for that discussion,” Susan said brightly. “I know you have much better things to do than to talk about the good old days with your ex-wife.”
The words were obviously cutting. They held the kind of emotion behind them that she’d always used while working as a lawyer beside him. Her friends had laughed about this many times when she had told them. “Imagine two lawyers getting divorced. You’re going to destroy each other with all the games you’ll play.”
Truthfully, though, Susan didn’t want anything to do with all these strange and sinister games. It had been a moment of weakness. That’s all.
Outside, she inhaled the late-May, summery air and gripped the edge of her Prius to steady herself. Just a few parking spots away sat Richard’s newly-purchased Lamborghini. He didn’t care at all about the destruction of the environment or anyone else but himself, for that matter.
The streets of Newark, New Jersey, were congested. Susan dropped her head against her car seat and listened as the radio crackled from weather to a ‘90s song she had loved then back to an interview with a Green party candidate. She glanced at her fingers on the steering wheel, which were bare, void of any rings. Taking them off had been a huge weight off her chest—freedom from the man who couldn’t love her anymore. Wasn’t that enough?
They had bought the massive house in Newark when their business had boomed and they had invested in a few key companies. It had six bedrooms, a small indoor pool, a bar area downstairs where they’d always played board games as a family, and a gorgeous garden in the back. Susan had liked to keep the garden up herself at first but had soon passed that off to a gardener when she’d had too many cases to go over. There was never enough time in the day. She parked her Prius in the back, with its own private entrance to the apartment that was attached to the main house. As she headed toward the door, she stopped to gaze at the gorgeous rose bush that had, strangely enough, decided to bloom a tiny bit early. They’d had plenty of warm days already, and its bright red petals had sprung forth. For whatever reason, the sight of this filled her with a sense of earnestness.
She felt it deep within her heart that it was time for her to go.
The apartment still held the same furniture it had from when Richard’s mother had lived there. It had been a tiny passion project for Susan and her daughter, Amanda, when she had been twelve or thirteen. Susan loved remembering those days; both of them stretched out over magazines, analyzing paint colors and wallpaper designs. Amanda now wanted to be a lawyer like her parents, which thrilled Susan, although she had always sensed that Amanda had an inner artist in her, as well.
She had added photos of her children to the apartment—photos she had taken from the main house since she guessed her husband didn’t pause and reflect so often. There she was, beautiful twenty-two-year-old Amanda. Everyone remarked that she looked just like Susan—but in reality, Susan thought Amanda looked a lot more like her mother, Anna. Amanda’s fiancé, Chris Mirren, couldn’t have been a better fit for her, and already, Susan had countless ideas about how to decorate and cater to the wedding. Through tears, after Amanda had told her about her engagement, Amanda had said, “I’m sorry. I hope this isn’t too hard for you, since you and Dad...”
“That’s so silly!” Susan had cried. “Your father and I did all we could to stay together.” Not true. “It’s your time to have the happiness we used to have.” Had they really ever? Susan couldn’t remember now.
Then, there was her eldest son, Jake. She had placed his picture next to his wife, Kristen, and their fraternal twins, Cody and Samantha, age two, on her desk, next to her closed laptop. Jake was twenty-five years old. Susan had gotten pregnant with him at age nineteen. At forty-four, she now recognized what a baby she had been all those years ago.
She had done what she’d thought was right: she had dropped out of college, had Jake, and then given birth to Amanda three years later. She and Richard had married when she had been only twenty-four, toting two gorgeous and bubbly children along with them. After that, Richard had allowed her to return to school, and she had graduated with honors. The two of them were going to take on the world together. And they did for a little while.
Every single step of the way, she had assumed she had done the right thing.
Even still, it felt like her hands were empty. She no longer had her career. She planned to stay with her son, his wife, and her grandchildren for a few weeks until she could fully decide what to do next.
All those years since she had left Martha’s Vineyard. She had been a fresh-faced, eighteen-year-old, with nothing to lose, with a huge, gut-wrenching desire to get off that island and see the rest of the world.
Now, she had everything to lose—and she felt that she really had.
Susan placed a frozen burrito in the microwave. In earlier times, she would always have dinner ready (or brought home take-out) for the children at seven sharp. Now, she did what she had to do to keep herself alive.
Her phone buzzed from the counter, jarring her from her thoughts. When she had practiced as a lawyer, that thing had been non-stop buzzing—so much so that it had given her an anxiety disorder for a few years. What was it the doctor had said recently about that? All that cortisol in your system over the years couldn’t have helped. Great. She had stressed herself to bad health.
The phone call was from her Aunt Kerry. Susan hadn’t heard from Aunt Kerry outside of random Christmas cards in many, many years. She balked at it like it was a message from another time. After seven rings, realizing that she wasn’t going to hang up, Susan grabbed it and stabbed the talk button.
“Hello?” She answered, almost sounding breathless, like a woman who’d just been left by her husband for his secretary.
“Susan? Is that you?”
The voice wasn’t welcoming. It sounded rattled and rushed.
“Yes, Aunt Kerry. Are you okay? Is something wrong?”
“Yes, darling. I’m fine. But your father isn’t. He’s in the hospital, honey, and you need to get here right away—as soon as you can. Do you understand me?”