CHAPTER 4

gray: innate goddesshood

Two days later, as Diana was making me a smoothie that tasted like heaven in a glass, I was returning morning e-mails at the kitchen island. Normally I would have been doing that in my office upstairs. But I didn’t mind being around Diana, and I had to admit that, despite Bill Marcus’s endorsement, I was still a little wary of letting a virtual stranger roam around my house unsupervised.

As I took the first sip of her apple-pie smoothie, though, I realized nothing else mattered as long as she could feed me like this.

Diana’s head was lost in the fridge, and she started pulling things out and setting them on the counter.

“What are you doing?” I finally asked, after sending off an e-mail.

She pulled her head out, wiped her brow, and said, “I’m cleaning out your fridge.”

I didn’t want to tell her, but I couldn’t even guess when that had last been done. She turned back to the fridge and pulled out a hunk of what had perhaps once been cheese that was now black, brown, and green. So, yeah, she knew it had been a while since the fridge had been cleaned.

“What did this used to be?” she asked.

I made a face. “Camembert, maybe?”

She tossed it in the trash and said under her breath, “Looks more like cam-ouflage.”

We both laughed. Then she held up a bottle of ketchup with the lid crusted shut. “This expired in 2016. Were you doing a science project or can I toss it?”

This was the best thing about Diana. I never had to tell her what to do. She showed up at my house at seven, got everything straight, made me a smoothie, made the bed, did the laundry, wiped stuff down that I didn’t know had to be wiped down, went to the store, made food that should have been at the finest bistro in the world appear on my counter, and left it hot for me so I could eat or have guests or whatever. I made her eat too. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. What in the world would I do with all that food with just Trey and me to eat it if she didn’t?

I told Diana she didn’t have to stay all day. I told her she didn’t have to work so many hours. But I guessed she had a lot to catch up on around my house because she had stayed until five both days. We had agreed that one day a week she would come in around ten so she could go see her brother. That made me happy, and a little jealous. Family was so important. I knew that. I wished my sister did.

Diana sprayed the inside of the now empty fridge and said, “Do you know that crisper drawers are for produce, not wine?”

“Ohhhh,” I said as if that were brand-new information. “I thought they were for keeping summer wines crisp.”

She laughed. “Are you and Trey eating here or at your club today?”

I groaned. Diana turned and shut the fridge, leaning against it. “What’s that about? Bad sushi up there or something?” she asked sarcastically.

“It’s silly,” I said, taking a sip of smoothie.

She raised her eyebrows.

“It’s just that I feel like everyone is talking about me.” I paused. “No, I know for sure that everyone is talking about me.”

Diana nodded knowingly as she began to throw expired items into the trash can. “That’s a bad feeling. I know all about that.” She picked up a jar of jelly, read the label, and tossed. Then she said, “When I was little, kids used to talk about me and pick on me all the time. When we were in foster care, there were some years I didn’t have more than two or three changes of clothes, and at this one house no one would brush my hair, so it was a rat’s nest, and I always had holes in my off-brand shoes.” She paused and took a breath. “But worst of all, we got free lunch—and breakfast—which might as well have been a target on my back.…” She trailed off, and I felt like my heart had stopped beating. I couldn’t bear the thought of that happening to any child. “I got picked on real bad, but it made me strong too, you know?”

“Jesus, Diana. That is not the same thing.”

She shrugged and turned toward the sink, rinsing a bottle and setting it back on the counter. “Well, no. I guess it isn’t, because that was a long time ago and it was really more about material things, and this is more about your life—”

I interrupted her, feeling sick. I couldn’t believe what she had been through, what she had endured. I’d had no idea. “No, I mean, that is real, true trauma. I’m just being a brat, and I’m old enough that I shouldn’t care.”

Diana leaned over the counter toward me. “You know, hon, everybody’s got their own problems. I’ve got mine, you’ve got yours, the mailman’s got his.”

“Davy?” I gasped in mock horror. “Not Davy!”

We both laughed.

“For real,” I said. “I am so sorry you had to go through that.” I could feel tears coming to my eyes. I was so grateful that I could take care of Wagner. “Gosh,” I added, “I think it has been hard not having my mom this past year, and I’m a grown-up. I can’t imagine doing it as a child.”

I was giving her a subtle opening. I didn’t want to say, So, what happened to your mom? But I was so curious. Diana was spraying the counters now, wiping them with rags I had made from Wagner’s old, threadbare T-shirts during my brief, post-split Martha Stewart phase. I had a feeling Diana had a hard time standing still. She wasn’t taking the bait. But then she stopped dead in her tracks and looked me straight in the eye. “There comes a point when we all have to learn to survive on our own, Gray. Mine just came early.”

I bit my lip. There was so much truth in that. This was my moment, I guessed. I was learning to survive on my own. No husband. No mother. Not even Wagner here to bring joy to the hard days. Just me on my own two feet.

She turned and started spraying again. “We got smart, though, one of my foster brothers and me. I got picked on because of my hair not being brushed, and he got picked on for smelling bad. We were too young to get jobs, so we spent weeks collecting cans. We got on the free bus and took all those cans down to the recycling center in our backpacks and some old grocery bags we’d found around the house, and we got up enough money to buy a hairbrush for me and some deodorant for him.”

“Damn, Diana.” I felt sick to my stomach again. I hadn’t been getting a Porsche for my sixteenth birthday or anything, but I had had two parents who loved me, who made sure I always had what I needed even if it meant they had to sacrifice something for themselves.

“Just having my hair brushed didn’t fix anything. It didn’t keep the kids from picking on me. But it gave me the confidence to face the bullies.” She turned and smiled at me.

I guessed that was what I needed too. I needed to find what would give me the confidence to face the bullies. “My mom always used to say people picked on people they were jealous of, but it isn’t true, is it?”

Diana shrugged.

“I mean, when they were making snide remarks about my being a bad wife and mom when I was building my company, I could write it off as jealousy, but now…”

“I was lucky,” Diana said, “because I found my best girlfriends right around that bad time in foster care. We took care of each other. We still do.”

“Your ride or die,” I said, smiling.

Trey came bounding into the kitchen in a pair of Lululemon gym shorts and a T-shirt. “I heard you call?” he said. “Oh, yum, a Diana smoothie.”

“I didn’t call you.”

“You said ‘ride or die,’ ” he said. “That’s me!” I patted his arm. He was my ride or die. I didn’t know what I would do without him. Trey looked over my shoulder. “Why are you reading those e-mails? Those e-mails are in my inbox.”

“Well, I was up and you weren’t.”

He looked at me like I was crazy. “It’s seven-thirty. It’s okay not to return e-mails at seven-thirty.” He slammed my laptop, poured some smoothie for himself, and said to Diana, “I don’t know what to do with this one. I think she would work herself completely to death if it weren’t for me.”

“Hey! I was about to log how many hours I slept in my chart,” I protested.

“What are we talking about?” Trey asked, as if I’d said nothing. He thought my spreadsheets were a little overzealous.

Diana and I shared a glance. “Nothing, really,” I said, though that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

“Have you filled her in on what a loser Greg is?” Trey asked.

I groaned. “No Greg talk. I don’t want to think about him or even hear his name today.” The only side benefit to Wagner’s being gone for three weeks was that I didn’t have to deal with Greg.

“It takes a certain kind of man to be married to a successful woman,” Diana said. I didn’t take it as an insult, but Trey evidently did. He rushed to my defense.

“Are you kidding me?” Trey countered. “It’s 2020. Who cares who’s most successful? It’s about being partners.”

“Honey, you’re a whole different generation,” Diana said.

“I don’t even know if that was it, though. I mean, yeah, I was more successful, and I know it bugged him, but he benefited from my success more than anyone.”

“It’s an ego thing,” Trey chimed in.

“Yes!” Diana agreed. “Maybe that’s why Harry stole my savings and gambled it all away. He inherited his momma’s house, but I was paying the bills. If I had more money than he did, I had more power. I could leave. I didn’t have to depend on him.”

I nodded, realizing how vastly different our lives were and how, even still, the themes were kind of the same. “Yes!” I said. “That’s so true.”

Trey shook his head. “So what you two need is to find men who aren’t threatened by your innate goddesshood.” He paused, putting his finger to his lips. “Like maybe someone a little younger… maybe someone who isn’t scared of a strong woman.”

I cut my eyes at him. “What do you know?”

He shrugged innocently.

Marcy burst in practically singing, “Girls’ night tonight! Oh, hey, Diana.”

I gasped. “Oh my gosh! I totally forgot I have girls’ night tonight.” I looked at Diana pleadingly. “Um, do you think you could throw together a few appetizers?”

Diana nodded. “Sure. Of course. What do you want?”

These were the kinds of decisions I could no longer handle. I made decisions all day, every day. I told people what to do and how to do it. Today I just wanted someone else to deal with it. I shrugged. “Just make what you would make if you were having girls’ night.”

Diana nodded. “Perfect. Easy enough.”

With that, I grabbed my laptop—and my Trey—and headed up to the office to get some work done, leaving Diana and Marcy to work out the particulars.

---

When you get divorced, you have to choose one of a few well-established personas. Well, maybe some people don’t choose per se. Maybe they just are. There’s the bitter divorcée who blames her ex-husband for every single thing that’s wrong on the entire planet. The one who wallows in her self-pity forever, refusing to reclaim her life. There’s the divorcée who immediately jumps into another serious relationship like nothing ever happened. And there’s the one who goes through a wild phase, dating every inappropriate man (or woman) she can get her hands on. I had to choose which kind I was going to be before the kind I didn’t want to be chose me. So I settled on the free-spirited divorcée and practiced saying in my mirror, “It was a beautiful period of my life and now it’s over.”

That was my external persona. Outwardly, I was fine. Fine, fine, fine. I was grateful for our years together, for Wagner, for what Greg and I had shared, and now I was happy we could both move forward. Inside, I was anything but happy. I was sad to have lost someone I had shared so much of my life with. I was scared that I would never find anyone else and would be alone forever. I was embarrassed that I had to walk around, the woman scorned, with every Southerner and her mother doing the thing I hated the very most: pitying me. And, most of all, I was furious. Furious at Greg for not being able to keep it in his pants. Furious at Brooke for being such an opportunistic hussy. Furious at myself for being the kind of woman who calls another woman an opportunistic hussy and, worst of all, for falling for a man who I knew deep down, even from the beginning, could never give me the kind of partnership I wanted in this life.

And now, speaking of lifelong relationships, I was wishing that I hadn’t checked my e-mail one last time before my friends arrived. But I had. And the note at the top of my inbox was a charming one from my sister. Trey must have been busy, because he was pretty adamant about immediately transferring any e-mail from Quinn into its own secret folder in hopes that I would never see it. It wasn’t his worst idea, but the inevitable moment of reckoning had arrived. The subject line: My Previous E-mails.

I hadn’t read her previous e-mails because I knew what they said and, well, I didn’t want to hear it. But now I couldn’t help myself. I fell on the sword.

Dear Gray,

I know you don’t want to hear what I have to say, but I promise you it comes from a place of love. God doesn’t like divorce, and I am only thinking of you when I urge you to reconcile with Greg, to save your marriage. Think of Wagner. Think of your family. And, most of all, think of your immortal soul.

Love,

Quinn

I know everyone handles grief in a different way, and I guessed this was how Quinn was handling our mother’s death. But to go from being the ultimate party girl—and the ultimate devoted sister—to being solely focused on Elijah Taylor and his church was so extreme.

People almost always know when they are about to cry. There are warning signs: the tears welling up, a lump in the throat. Reading Quinn’s e-mail didn’t give me any of that. In fact, I only noticed the tears after they’d already started. Which made me realize that, despite my cool exterior, I fell into the divorcée category of total and complete mess.

I heard Diana’s voice saying, “Gray,” and she was beside me before I could pretend I wasn’t crying. The natural reaction to another person’s tears is to ask them what’s wrong. Diana didn’t ask. She sat down in the chair on the other side of my desk, looking right at me, and said, “Honey, I know it feels like your life is falling apart. Hell, your life is falling apart. But my life falls apart all the time, and what I’ve realized is that when your life falls apart, the universe is just teaching you how to trust.”

This time I felt an ironic laugh coming. “Oh yeah,” I said sarcastically. “My divorce is doing wonders for my ability to trust.” (Bitter divorcée had arrived for another visit.)

She rolled her eyes at me. “Not other people, honey. You. When the shit hits the fan, you’re the woman left standing; you’re the one left holding the bag. And you learn how strong you are. You figure out real quick that nobody’s going to fix your life but you. Nobody else is in charge of your happiness.”

That sounded plain lonely to me, and I braced myself for more tears.

Diana looked at me sideways. Again, no hug, no sympathy. But she was kind enough not to compare our situations. She easily could’ve pulled the You think you have problems? card, but that would’ve gotten us nowhere.

“Are you going to sit in your room and cry? Or are you going to get your ass up and take on the world?”

I’ll be honest. I wanted to sit in my room and cry. But then Diana got up to leave and said, “The only person who gets to pick how you feel is you.”

Was that true? Was I choosing this? And if I was, could I stop?

When I heard Diana’s footsteps again, I thought she had decided she was going to have to come extract me from my chair of pity. But then she appeared with a plate. It contained a Ritz cracker with a blob of something that I thought I remembered from my childhood as being Easy Cheese, pigs in a blanket, saltines with what appeared to be melted marshmallows on top, and those jalapeño poppers from the freezer that Wagner and his friends liked that I only let them eat when I needed cool mom points.

When I looked up, her face mirrored my confusion. “For your girls’ night,” she said. “Thought a taste test could get you out of here a little quicker.”

I couldn’t help it. I started laughing. I mean, uncontrollably, tears running down my cheeks in the best possible way, laughing at the idea of prissy, perfect party-planner-to-the-rich Mary Ellen walking into my house and, instead of being greeted by prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, grabbing a whing-ding, which is what my mom called saltines with cheese and a marshmallow on top.

Girls’ nights at Mary Ellen’s were always the most extravagant and over-the-top—and the most shared on social media. Every seemingly random get-together was a self-promotion opportunity. 9:08 a.m: “Arranging the flowers for #girlsnight with @grayhoward!” 10:42 a.m.: “Cupcakes for #girlsnight arrived from @spouterinnbakery. Aren’t they gorgeous?” 12:01 p.m.: “Putting the final touches on the bar for #girlsnight. Don’t you love paper straws? #partyon.” 12:14 p.m.: Block further notifications from @maryellenentertains.

I had two choices. I could run to Friendly Market and throw together a fancy cheese plate and try to salvage my friends’ opinions of my party skills. Or I could stick with Diana’s version of appetizers and not hurt her feelings. And her apps were kind of campy. There was a theme.

“Are you having some sort of fit?” Diana asked.

I think that was when I realized how much I’d made the past several months about everyone else. Walking into the club that first day had felt like getting a bad report card—and having it read over the PA system for the entire school to hear. I was Gray Howard. I was successful. I was self-made. My ultimate idea of success as a child had been being able to go to the Dollar Tree and pick out something I didn’t expressly need. But I had made it big. I was happy. I was proud. And I was acutely aware that there were more than a few people out there who couldn’t wait to revel in what was, to date, my largest failure.

When you are in a marriage—or a divorce—sometimes it’s impossible to see outside of it. When you’re in your house sitting across the kitchen table from the man who used to be your world trying to reconcile how he became a stranger in such short order, all you can think about is your intensely private anger and your very personal pain. You forget that you are going to be subject to the merciless scrutiny of the outside world, that the comments and questions and snide remarks being hurled at you from all directions can be almost as bad as your husband’s unfaithfulness. I knew I shouldn’t let other people’s opinions affect me. I shouldn’t care.

But I was a human being. So of course I did.

But I was tired of caring about other people’s opinions. I popped one of Diana’s pigs in a blanket in my mouth. It was delicious. And I figured, why not? My friends should love me even if I served them Cheez Whiz crackers.

Diana was still looking at me expectantly. Then a light bulb went on. “Oh,” she said. “When you said to make what I would make for girls’ night, that’s not exactly what you were expecting.”

I smiled at her. “No, no.” I paused. “Well, I mean, sure, it’s not exactly what I was thinking, but that’s okay. I’m laughing because when I was pregnant with Wagner I couldn’t eat anything—I mean, not anything—without getting sick. So my mom melted cheese on saltine crackers and put marshmallows on them and browned them in the oven. It sounded gross, but then they were all I could eat. These made me think of her.”

I felt tears springing to my eyes again and decided either I had some serious PMS or I had officially, once and for all, lost my mind. Diana smiled. “That must be nice,” she said. “To have all those memories with your mom.”

Yup. Memories. I had a lot of those. “And then she left me when I needed her the very most.” I laughed cruelly.

Diana cocked her head to the side. “Sister, you are mad.”

I was taken aback. “I’m not mad. The woman died, for heaven’s sake. She didn’t leave me on purpose.”

She looked skeptical. “Well… Look, anger is a natural reaction to death. I was mad at my mom for a long time.”

“So she died?” I asked.

Diana waved her hand, which I assumed was a yes. “But, Gray, you can’t move past being angry if you can’t admit that you are.”

“I’m not mad!” I protested. “That’s ridiculous.” Who did this woman think she was? I didn’t have to keep her around. “My mother was my best friend. Don’t ever say that to me again.”

Diana put her hands up in defense and walked out of the room.

My mind was reeling. What right did she have to put something that awful on me? But, well… was she right? Was I mad? I mean, my poor mother had died of cancer. Who would be mad at that? But when I felt that familiar burning near my throat, I realized that maybe that’s what I was. I was saying, “Oh my gosh, am I mad?” just as Trey breezed in.

“Why are we not dressed?” he demanded.

I suddenly felt very, very tired. I leaned my head all the way back until it touched the chair and I was looking at the ceiling. I didn’t want to tell Trey about my potentially insane reaction to my mom’s death, so instead I said, “Quinn.”

“What?!” Trey screeched. “I’m away from your e-mail for ten minutes. Maybe nine. How did that little bitch sneak in there?”

Trey calling Quinn a bitch made a flash of fury run through me. She was a bitch. A huge one. But only I got to say that, blood being thicker than water and all that.

Before I could respond, Trey looked at the plate on my desk and said, “Well, good Lord, early heart disease isn’t the answer to your problems.”

“Hey!” Diana interjected, popping her head back in, startling me. “Those are the appetizers.”

“The what?”

He gave me that look I knew all too well, the one that said, Do I intervene here or let it go? I gave him a look back that said to let it go.

“Okay,” he said. “Get dressed, do your girls’ night thing. I’m taking Diana out to dinner to formally educate her on the Gray Howard brand.”

I stifled a laugh. Having someone to do your dirty work was the ultimate charm of a charmed life.

An hour later, my four best friends were drinking wine and lounging in a circle of low-slung beach chairs on the little stretch of sand that separated my grassy front yard from the expansive sound beyond. The sunset was my favorite deep pink, but no one was watching it. All eyes were on me. I supposed that in the midst of a divorce and Ritz crackers, this shouldn’t have been a surprise. They hadn’t seen me since the summer before, so now was their chance to gauge how far off the deep end I had fallen.

“Do you absolutely hate Brooke?” Mary Ellen was asking, well into her first bottle of champagne. “I mean, I hated Sarah so much after Eddie left me for her.” Mary Ellen was a petite, pretty Florida transplant who literally wore only Lilly Pulitzer. She said the clothes fit her body and the prints fit her personality, so who could blame her?

“Of course I hate her,” I said. “And I hate being that woman. I want to be the ‘it was our marriage and he is the one to blame’ woman, but I can’t do it. I hate them almost equally. In fact, I might hate her even more, which is kind of unjustified.”

My I’m fine. It’s fine. Life moves on persona didn’t apply to my best friends. I think that goes without saying.

Megan nearly spit out her wine. “She stole your husband, Gray. What do you mean, unjustified?”

“You can’t ‘steal’ someone’s husband, really. Can you?” countered Addie. Everyone glared at her. She was the one in the group. You know, the one who likes to play devil’s advocate. You love her, but sometimes you just want to say: SHUT. UP.

Marcy picked up a jalapeño popper and, holding it up meaningfully, said, “Love bug, you need some serious sessions. I’m going to refer you to a colleague.”

“I don’t need sessions,” I said, laughing. “Diana and I had a bit of miscommunication about the appetizer situation.” I looked pointedly at Marcy, who looked like an absolute goddess in a flowy maxi dress cut almost to her belly button. She had the exact right willowy figure to pull it off. “I thought you were helping to steer her in the right direction.”

“Ohhhhh,” she said. “I see how you could have thought that. But, no. We were talking about her crazy ex-boyfriends.”

Megan sighed, “Oh, thank God.” An extraordinarily tall brunette, she had shocked us all by debuting her new hairstyle, the wavy curls that used to fall all the way down her back now chopped off close to her head. I honestly had not recognized her, but the look suited her. She added, “Don’t get me wrong. Pigs in a blanket are delicious and it’s great to get to eat them in public. It’s just not really typical of you.” She hiccupped, already on her third glass of wine. “I haven’t had carbs in, like, a decade.”

“I’ve been straight keto for six months now, but that Cheez Whiz and those Ritz crackers…” Addie said. Addie was the least appearance-oriented of us all, and certainly the most athletic. She was toned at any size, but she had complained for years about the weight she had gained when baby number three came two days before her fortieth birthday. She always looked great, and I was about to say so when Marcy asked: “When did we get too good for Cheez Whiz? I mean, really. Are we so fancy now that we can’t enjoy a good microwaved appetizer every now and then?”

“Why do we punish ourselves like this?” Mary Ellen groaned.

I shrugged. “I know nothing is supposed to taste as good as thin feels, but”—I held up a whing-ding—“this tastes damn good.”

My friends laughed, and Megan said, “Well, Gray, I guess even in the midst of the divorce carbs are magic. That’s something, right? So maybe it could always be worse?”

I nodded.

“Yeah,” Mary Ellen chimed in, raising her glass. “He could have left you for a dude.”

I gestured to her and made a face. “Yeah. Is that worse?” I asked. “When your husband leaves you for a man? Or is it worse when he leaves you for a woman?” Mary Ellen was probably the only person in the world who could answer both of those questions from firsthand experience.

Marcy burst out laughing, while saying, “I’m so sorry. This shouldn’t be funny at all.”

Megan joined her laughter, and then, finally, Mary Ellen started laughing too.

Megan said, “How many people can honestly answer that?”

Mary Ellen rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I mean, I know.” Then she raised her glass again. “Here’s hoping third time’s the charm.”

“Hear! Hear!” I said. We all laughed again, and I turned to Marcy. “So, my love, have you told the girls?”

They all leaned in a little, excited for whatever piece of gossip was getting ready to come their way.

“Let’s not make too big a thing of it,” Marcy said. “Who knows if it will even happen?”

“It won’t happen if you don’t put it out there,” Megan responded. She looked less ethereal with her cropped hair, but she still sounded it.

“Fine,” Marcy sighed. “I am officially husband hunting.”

Addie dropped her whing-ding. “Seriously? But you’re our cool single friend.”

“She’s not wrong,” I said. “I was kind of counting on you to be like my dating guru.”

“You all need to hush,” Mary Ellen chimed in. “If this is what will make Marcy happy, then we will be happy for her.”

“But only if it means a wedding planning commission for you,” Addie said with a totally straight face. More laughter as Mary Ellen threw a pig in a blanket at Addie. She missed, and we all squealed as an expectant seagull that had been waiting patiently on the end of the dock swooped down and carried it away.

When the laughter stopped, Megan turned to me and said, “So, seriously, a year in, does it feel different? I mean, can you move past it a little?” She paused, then whispered, “Do you miss your old life?”

I didn’t really want to talk about it, but if you don’t have friends to talk about this stuff with, to really bare your soul to, who do you have? “Well, y’all know I never wanted that monstrosity of a house anyway. Brooke and her twenty-eight-year-old cleavage can keep that.”

It was true. When my husband had finally started making money, it was like he couldn’t contain himself. He wanted the biggest house on the street, to take private jets on every vacation—while, of course, posting the photos, because how could you know something was good unless you could make your friends jealous? He wanted more and more and more, so I guess I should have seen it coming. Our pretty, normal-size home wasn’t enough. Two nice cars weren’t enough when you could have four. A big boat wasn’t enough when you could have a bigger one. And your loving wife wasn’t enough when you could have a younger one.

I hoped for Wagner’s sake, and, in truth, for Brooke’s, that a total life change would be enough for Greg to fill that giant hole that I couldn’t. My thoughts flashed to Brooke again, and I started to feel sad for her. She would get swept up in it all as girls do when they’re young. But in the end, she would forgo her own identity for that of a man who already had a past and a son—not to mention a poor track record with commitment.

Had I moved on? And then I said, “You know, I don’t miss him. I don’t even really miss the consistency of our life anymore. But until everything is settled, until our divorce is final, I think I will feel trapped by him.” I still couldn’t reconcile how someone you had loved so much could change so completely toward you so quickly. It took my breath away.

They all looked sympathetic. This wasn’t our first divorce in this group.

Addie said, “I just can’t believe he had the nerve to tell you he was leaving and then stay all those months like nothing had happened and then abandon you the day after your mom’s funeral.” She looked at me pointedly. “Gray, you win for worst divorce.”

Mary Ellen nodded in agreement.

“Yay,” I said with the least enthusiasm I could muster. They all laughed.

Those had been the worst six months of my life, but, in all honesty, having Greg stay, even under those horrible circumstances, was easier. I was with my mom as much as humanly possible, and I never had to worry about where Wagner would go or how to balance that. Looking back, it seems impossible, but in the moment, it felt necessary. I didn’t have time to analyze what was going on or what would come in the next phase. I could only think of how to get to the next day.

I took another sip of wine as Marcy, I think realizing I didn’t want to talk about this anymore as best friends do, said, “Speaking of winning… forget about the divorce. Tell them about the hottie.”

I raised my eyebrows and glared at her.

Mary Ellen said, “The hottie?”

“Well…”

“Come on,” Megan said. “I need details. Juicy, juicy details.”

I smiled demurely, ignoring the flip-flop in my stomach when I thought of Andrew. It was ridiculous. He was a child, for heaven’s sake. “Juicy is a wonderful, wonderful way to describe him.”

“A rebound fling is exactly what you need,” Marcy said.

“Marcy, I’m having one drink with him. I think rebound is a bit of an overstatement.”

“Who is it?” Addie asked.

“No one,” I said. “Just don’t worry about it.” Their fallen faces made me realize I had taken the fun down a notch, so I added, “Let’s just say he’s like one of those Abercrombie models—the ones we used to have taped up in our bedrooms when we were teenagers—come to life.” None of us had known each other back then, but we had discussed the Abercrombie phenomenon at length.

“I just want you to win your divorce,” Megan said.

I rolled my eyes. “You can’t win your divorce.”

“Oh, Greg is totally winning it right now.” Freaking Addie. “He’s prancing around town with the hot new fiancée.”

“No, no, no,” Mary Ellen said, “I totally disagree. I think Greg looks like an idiot and you look like you have some class.”

“Trust me,” Marcy said, “when word about Gray’s first date post-breakup gets out, she will officially be winning.”

Everyone laughed. I was eager to turn the conversation away from me, but Mary Ellen said, “By the way, Brad is furious about what Greg is trying to do to you with ClickMarket.”

Brad was Mary Ellen’s second ex-husband. Who’d left her. For Chad. “That’s nice,” I said.

“He and Chad want to help with the case in any way they can.”

Now, that was nice. Brad and Chad had started one of the most high-powered corporate law firms in the state. “I would love their advice,” I said. “I honestly don’t think he even wants the company. We all know he hates to work. So now I just have to figure out what he does want.”

Marcy stood up. “Just leave that part to me,” she said. “Figuring out what people want and how to fix it is what being a therapist is all about.”

“And I won’t have to pay you!” I said enthusiastically.

“Well…” she said.

I threw my pillow at her and we all laughed. Then I said, seriously, “I love you, Marce, but this is one time when you can’t really help me.”

But then I realized I was wrong. They had all helped me. Only a few hours ago, I’d felt like my life was spiraling, dark, and empty. All it took was a few drinks, a few whing-dings, and a few good friends to make me realize that, husband or no, ClickMarket or no, Diana was right: I still had everything I really needed.

diana: quick study

The dinner with Trey had been a godsend. Even if I ate something simple and precooked from the grocery store, it’d still cost me five bucks. He took me to a real fancy restaurant and ordered all these appetizers and I ordered a salad and sandwich that I thought would keep okay, and I filled up on appetizers and saved most of my own food to store in the cooler in the back of the Impala. Food would be hard to come by over the weekend when I wasn’t working, and the leftovers wouldn’t be great, but they would keep on ice until Saturday at least.

After a few days, it gets pretty hard to hide stuff—like that you’re living in your car. Lucky for me, I’d made friends with Billy down at the marina, and he let me shower there for free and didn’t say anything. I didn’t like to flatter myself, but I thought he might’ve had a crush on me. But maybe it was more that Billy knew what it was like to be down-and-out.

Trey did not. Trey wanted to talk to me about Gray’s “brand” and how we were all a part of that. My brand was trailer trash, and I wasn’t changing for nobody. I planned on telling Trey that right off, but then he ordered shrimp cocktail and calamari, and the butter was so good on the bread, and, well, I’ve got standards and I’ve got pride, but I’ve also got a good, heaping helping of common sense. Common sense says that you do whatever you can to keep the job where you get to eat most meals for free and make double what you’d get anywhere else. Although common sense also told me that I’d crossed a line with my new boss earlier. But I call them like I see them. And that girl was mad. The longer it took her to recognize that, the worse it would be for her.

I pushed that aside. “Trey, the men I know don’t sip champagne and ask if the calamari can be breaded in rice flour,” I teased.

Trey laughed. “The members of Gray’s team that I know don’t wear oversize T-shirts every single day,” he retorted.

Well, yeah, I did. I’ve got a lot of self-confidence, but I will admit I felt a little out of place traipsing into the fancy restaurant wearing my huge Aardvark Pest Control T-shirt. It was from Harry’s latest job that lasted about six weeks, controlling the roach population down here. People called them water bugs to sound fancy, like how people called these tiny hotel rooms condos. It might make you feel better, but it didn’t change what they were.

“I wear these T-shirts for a good reason,” I said.

Trey looked at me skeptically.

“They are a reminder. See, this one here is from Harry, who gambled away all my money. The one I wore yesterday, Bubba’s Lawn and Limb, that was from Calvin, who I walked in on sleeping with our neighbor’s twenty-year-old daughter. That NC State one was from Jimbo, who was real cute, but, damn, that man couldn’t hold his liquor.”

Trey was dying laughing. “So it’s like self-defense. You won’t make the same mistakes if you’re wearing their shirts?”

“Hasn’t worked out too well yet, though,” I said. “But you…” I pointed at Trey. “I think I see your game, and I think you’re pretty smart.”

He raised his eyebrows at me and took a sip of his champagne. “Go on.”

“I think you grew up good so you know about food and art and wine and stuff. And I think you’re a Yankee so you wear your pants too tight and you slick your hair back. Those things are real. But I think you wanted to be Gray Howard’s protégé, so you play up a few things like the fashion tips and the pop culture references so that you are her most favorite person to have around.” I took another sip of champagne, knowing I was going to sleep good tonight, even in my car.

I’d figured out that if I could manage to stay away from the cops and keep my expenses to the very bare minimum—phone, a little gas, and a little food—for ten days, I could make enough to put down a deposit on a crappy apartment. The key was moving around a lot. One night I’d stay at the end of Gray’s street, one night the parking lot over by the beach bars, which are always full all night on account of all the drunk people. It was pretty safe there because if you didn’t stay too many nights in a row, nobody’d bother you—and if they did, you just pretended like you got drunk and passed out in your backseat. No harm, no foul. There was also this deserted place down by the old bridge, but I’ll be real: it creeped me the hell out.

The weekend would be harder on not spending money but easier on finding good places to park and sleep. Four days down, six to go. I’d done way worse things than this. Way worse. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.

Trey winked at me but didn’t acknowledge what I had said. “Gray has taken to you, Diana. There’s no doubt about that.” He paused. “Although I think you made her pretty mad tonight.”

I cringed. I hadn’t meant to, but I knew I had. I bit my lip, my heart pounding now. “Do you think she’s going to fire me?”

He shrugged. “Nah. She loves people who stand up to her. She respects them.” He gave me a pointed look. “But she loves them until she doesn’t. You get me?”

“Noted.”

Then, not looking the slightest bit uncomfortable, he said, “We just need to teach you about what she likes. What she’s about. She can’t Instagram girls’ night photos of box wine. You know what I mean?”

I didn’t, but I nodded anyway, ready for this to be over. “Well, you’re the expert,” I said.

“Which makes me indispensable,” he added.

People underestimated this kid.

While we were finishing up, Robin texted to ask if I wanted to go out. I texted her back real quick: Dinner with the boss. Can’t come.

The last thing I needed was to spend twenty dollars on drinks. That’d set me back a whole extra day. But Robin wasn’t letting me off that easy.

Get your ass out here after.

My plan was to ignore her. But then, right as I was driving around trying to find a place to stay, my phone rang, and it was Janet saying, “Girl, why didn’t you tell us you dumped Harry?”

“How’d you even know about that?”

“I saw him down at the store. Saddest damn thing you ever seen in your life. He’s all weepy and pathetic.” She paused. Maybe she was waiting for me to feel sad or something, but I wasn’t. “All I know is that it’s high time you got to finding yourself a man who can look after you.”

One who could look after me… I’d been with a man who could look after me once. At least, I thought he could. I had been young then. Eighteen. And right pretty too. At least, that’s what people always told me.

Frank was older, just graduating from college when I was graduating from high school. And that summer he’d come back home… well, that summer’d been the most magical of my life. Frank’s momma, she’d said I was a quick study. I didn’t know what quick study meant back then.

Frank was a little bit fancy compared to the other boys I’d dated. He had this ’57 Thunderbird that he was fixing up and his daddy owned some auto parts stores. Frank was going places. I thought I was going with him. I reckon that I talked like Frank and dressed like Frank and acted like Frank because I didn’t know who I was, same as why I act like Harry now. I guess when you grow up an orphan, you don’t know who to be. You want everybody to like you, just hoping and praying that one of those foster families is going to stick, so you start acting as nice as you can, trying to be like whoever you’re living with, hoping that maybe they’ll forget you’re even there, just let you stay so you don’t have to go anywhere new where maybe the dad looks at you kind of funny when the mom isn’t around or one of the bigger kids beats up on you and says you fell.

I used to swear up and down and sideways and around that when I was big enough I was going to have a family of my own. I was going to have a bunch of kids and a nice husband, and we were all going to love each other, and then I’d know what a family was all about. I’d have one of my own and they wouldn’t ever leave me.

I thought it’d be with Frank. Hell, I knew it would. But Frank, he’d turned out to be like all the rest, worse even.

“Hello, earth to Di. You’ve missed two of our Thursday nights out in the last two months. You know how pissy Robin gets about that. You coming or not?”

Robin did get pissy. And that wasn’t good for anybody.

“Oh, um,” I stammered. “Yeah. Let me change my clothes, and I’ll meet you out there.”

“Where are you staying now that you and Harry split? Just give me the address of your new place, and I’ll pick you up.”

My new place. I hadn’t told a single one of them about living in my car—or my new job, for that matter. Tonight would be as good a time as any. Maybe just the job. I couldn’t stand always being the one down on her luck.

“That’s all right. I might be a little late.”

We were a ragtag group, these ladies and me. Janet had been married to Ray, her high school sweetheart, since the day after graduation. They seemed real happy together still. Two kids, hard workers, the kind of family that you dream about having one day. They had a nice little brick house in a subdivision outside of town. They’d earned it together and that made it perfect.

Then there was Robin, a big biker chick, always in leather. She’d been married to Cal, then Chuck, and now she was married to Cal again. They’d fight and make up, fight and make up, but at the end of the day, they couldn’t live without each other. I wouldn’t want to be around a bunch of fighting all the time, but not being able to live without someone? That seemed pretty nice to me.

Frank crossed my mind when I thought about my girls and their men, but I pushed him away just as fast. Hell, I hadn’t seen him in more than twenty years, kind of a long time to be pining away for some man who left you high and dry one day and probably hadn’t given you another thought. I wondered where he was now, what kind of horse he’d hitched his wagon to.

Probably somebody like my friend Cheyenne. She was tall and thin and blond. She’d never smoked like the rest of us, so she didn’t have those little lines starting to form around her lips. She had Kevin around her little finger, that was for sure. Married fifteen years, three kids, and he still looked at her like she was the Crown Jewels.

I sighed as I walked into the Beach Pub, already crowded and smelling of chicken wings and cigarettes. You couldn’t technically smoke in bars anymore, but technically doesn’t always pan out. Just like normal, Robin was in her leather jacket, Janet was in some sort of tight T-shirt she was too big to be wearing, and Cheyenne was in a crop top she was too old to be wearing—even though she looked damn good in it.

There was a big margarita waiting at my usual spot at the Beach Pub. The night was off to a good start. I could sip it real slow and not spend a penny.

“Your breakup special,” Robin said with a wink.

Cheyenne stood up and hugged me. “I’m so sorry, baby. Why didn’t you tell us? Why won’t you ever let us help you?”

Why wouldn’t I ever let them help me?

I waved her off. “Oh, Cheyenne, you know good as anyone I can take care of myself. Always have.”

“But maybe we want to take care of you sometimes, Di. Like you take care of all of us all the time.”

I did take care of them. Lord knows I did, but it wasn’t with heavy stuff like this. I was always helping Cheyenne memorize lines for whatever local play she’d decided to try out for. She was pretty, but the woman could not memorize a line to save her life. And Janet and Ray were always working, so I picked their kids up from after-school care or took them to basketball or something. And Robin had got this wild hair to sell jam at the farmers market and sometimes I’d help her on Saturdays when I wasn’t working.

But that’s what foster care had taught me. To take care of other people but never, ever depend on them to take care of you. Because they wouldn’t. In the end, no one would take care of you but you.

“Girl, where are you staying?” Janet chimed in.

This was the big moment. I had to tell them. Any one of my friends would take me in for a few days without a second thought. Of course they would. I almost said it, that I was staying in my car. But then Robin said, “Di, I respect the hell out of you. You never let this shit get you down. Not breakups, not job stuff. Nothing. You just keep rolling and you always land on your feet.”

She was right. I always landed on my feet. A cat with nine lives. Maybe more. I might have nothing—not one thing in all this world—but I had these girls, and, what’s more, I had their respect. And that meant more to me than hot water and a clean towel in the bathroom or getting dressed in front of a mirror. It meant more to me than sleeping in a real bed with sheets and covers and a pillow.

I didn’t answer Janet. I just said, “I called and checked on Phillip today, and the nurse put him on the line. He talked a little to me.” I could feel myself beaming. If Phillip was okay, I was okay.

“You’re gonna get him out one day, girl,” Cheyenne said. Once a cheerleader, always a cheerleader.

“Oh yeah,” Janet said. “If anybody can do it, Di, it’s you.”

“Speaking of…” Cheyenne pulled a napkin out of her bag and handed it to me. There was a drawing on it.

“What’s this?” I took a sip of margarita.

“Kevin drew this up for you. He’s been saving all his scrap wood and metal and roofing for your beach shack. But then he got to thinking.… You know that hideous houseboat that washed up on the island across from the Cape Carolina docks that nobody’s done anything about?”

“Yeah,” I said, not quite following her.

“Well, he talked to the city, and they said if we could rehab it and you would pay the slip rent, you could keep it.”

I was still confused.

“Your restaurant, Di,” Robin said, filling in the blanks for me.

I picked up the napkin, staring at it with my mouth open. “So what you’re saying is that he’d take this side out, and this would be the window where people ordered?”

She nodded.

“Like right there on the dock?”

She smiled and nodded again. “And he said it’d be real easy to rig up everything you need for a commercial kitchen in there because there’s already a regular kitchen, so the water and electric and everything are hooked up. It’ll just need a few tweaks.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. Not because I was so far away from ever achieving that dream, but because my girl and her man loved me enough to take my dream and make it their own. “It’s not the best time right now,” I started.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Cheyenne said. “You know he’d do the work for free and get everything as cheap as he could. The city said it will be at least six months before they get it sent over to the salvage yard.”

Six months might as well have been an eternity. But if I could work for Gray for three months before she went back home, maybe even stretch it out to four, and save every single penny, maybe, just maybe I could make it work.

I thought about that boat on the napkin again that night as I crawled into the backseat of the Impala in the parking lot of a bar across town that was full of Thursday night cars, most of which wouldn’t be going nowhere until morning. I lay on my pillow, balling up a shirt and putting it over the seat belt buckle so it didn’t dig into my side. In the morning, I’d drive over to the marina, take out my little duffel bag, take a shower, put on some clean clothes, and brush my teeth. I only had two pairs of underwear left, so I was planning on sneaking them into a load with Gray’s stuff. Or if that didn’t work, I’d do a load at the laundromat.

I won’t lie. The fact that the car door didn’t lock made it real hard for me to get settled. But I told myself that fear was a luxury for rich people. Fear is for people who can afford to change their circumstances.

I closed my eyes and felt my heart rate slowing down. I pretended that I was back in that apartment in the projects, all snuggled in the bed when Momma was there and she was acting right and Elizabeth and Charles and Phillip and me were all curled in with her like kittens. Even when he couldn’t be around anybody else, Phillip could always snuggle up with Momma. I let myself be in that moment where I was that little girl and I was something like happy. I didn’t know any better. I had my momma and I had my brothers and my sister, and that was all I needed.

As I felt myself start to doze off, it wasn’t Momma’s voice I heard in my head, as I sometimes did. Instead, it was Janet’s.

If anybody can do it, Di, it’s you.