CHAPTER 10

gray: zero idea

The bad part about your almost ex-husband getting your eight-year-old a cell phone is that, well, he got your eight-year-old a cell phone. The good part is that an eight-year-old with a cell phone will Snapchat his mom pictures of himself and his friends all week so she can keep up with what he’s doing.

Evidently, the ex-husband will do something similar.

Why in the world is Marcy at my office? Greg texted me Monday morning a couple weeks later as I was rushing around getting ready for my dad’s visit.

I looked around. That was weird. Marcy hadn’t come by for her usual coffee this morning. I have zero idea, I replied.

Sure, he typed back.

I was going to argue with him, but I didn’t have the energy. I had done enough of that already.

On Saturday, I had been so excited when Greg brought Wagner back to me from Raleigh. As he came flying through the door that night, backpack on his back, I’d said, “Oh my gosh, I missed you so much!” We had been careful to make sure that he had two of everything, one at my house, one at his dad’s, so the poor kid didn’t feel like he was packing up and getting shifted around every week. Even still, he was always transporting stuff back and forth. He threw his arms around my neck, and I realized that I barely even had to stoop to kiss him on the cheek. I’d almost said, “Don’t you ever leave me again!” but I caught myself. It was habit, but I had to be more careful.

“Hey, Mom,” he’d said, “do you want to go play tennis with me next week?”

Andrew rushed into my mind, those luscious lips that I had kissed good-bye a million times not an hour ago. “I would love that, buddy!”

“Okay, great. Because Andrew bet me and Johnny ten bucks that we couldn’t beat him in doubles no matter how sorry his partner.”

Johnny and me. I decided to let it go. I gave him my best shocked and amused look. “So you chose me? Are you saying I’m not a good tennis player?”

“Not as good as me,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. I ruffled his shaggy hair, and he darted through the kitchen and up the stairs. Not as good as I am, I thought, mom mode fully reactivated.

“Well, hi,” Greg said, leaning over to kiss my cheek, catching me off guard.

“Come on in,” I said, closing the door behind him. “I miss the hell out of him, but boys need dads, right?”

He pulled out a bar stool and sat down, and I sat beside him. “Look, I know it’s hard, but I appreciate it. I really do. I can’t stand the thought of only getting him every other weekend. And I’ll make sure to repay you for that when we’re hammering out the…” He cleared his throat. “…details.”

That did sound nicer than “settlement.” I was about to make a snide remark, but then I realized that this was the best opportunity I was going to get to raise my voice about ClickMarket.

So I shot him my most ingratiating smile. “Funny you should mention that,” I said. “Because I think the perfect trade would be that you quit trying to take half my company.”

Greg started to stand up. “I thought we had agreed not to discuss this without our lawyers.”

“Yeah, Greg,” I said sarcastically. “We agreed. But they’re certainly not coming up with a solution anytime soon, so I thought perhaps we could try to have a civil conversation that didn’t cost me five hundred dollars per hour.”

I didn’t sound super civil as I said it, but this was my major pain point, and Greg knew it.

He sat down again. “Fine. Let’s talk. I helped you build that company. I’ve worked just as hard on it as you have.”

The laugh that escaped my lips was cruel. “Are you kidding me? I have spent all day, every day, seven days a week working on that company since I was twenty years old.” I paused and reiterated, “Twenty.” Then I added for good measure, “I brought you into my carefully cultivated world, and you repaid me by cashing paychecks and screwing your secretary in your corner office!”

Civil was over.

His face darkened, and his voice was cold and callous as he said, “Who do you think was holding our family together while you were working seven days a week? Who do you think was taking care of our child? Who was doing your share of the work at home?”

I wasn’t going to let him play the superdad card. He was far from it. “Maria! Whose salary I paid,” I practically spat as Wagner came tearing into the kitchen. I could feel the fury in my chest. What Greg had said was kind of fair, and I knew that I had some responsibility for my divorce. But this was about my company, not my shortcomings as a wife and mother.

“Mom! Where’s Diana?” Wagner asked, thankfully oblivious to what was going on. “I want to show her my new Wii game that Dad got me.”

I cut my eyes at Greg, then said, “Diana’s gone out, bud, but you can show me.”

Greg leaned over to hug Wagner. “Love you, man.”

“Love you, dude.” Wagner gave his dad a fist bump.

Greg turned to me and whispered, “Maybe if you’d ever put me first, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Maybe if you had made yourself someone I wanted to put first, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

We were so good at this game, at cutting each other down to the smallest size.

“You amaze me, Gray,” he said ruefully. “You really do.” Once upon a time he had meant it earnestly. He had been in awe of my tenacity, of the way that I was able to achieve what he never could.

And I wondered how, if I had truly been so amazing, I had ended up in this house alone.

Even now, two days after the fight, my blood boiled every time I thought of it. And, honestly, I was a little embarrassed by how cruel I had been. But why in the world was my best friend at my office—and, yes, still Greg’s office too—in Raleigh? I texted her.

Greg’s office?????

When she didn’t answer, I texted Trey. Is M at ClickMarket?

Three dots appeared immediately. Investigating.

Diana was pulling something that smelled like what heaven must out of the oven and, before I could respond to Trey, I heard a soft rap at the back door. I shouldn’t admit this, but I didn’t know whether to feel excited or a little annoyed or something in between. I loved my dad so much. But ever since Mom had died, things were… awkward. She was the glue that held us together. It was sort of like when you were great friends with someone in a group but when you finally hung out solo, you had nothing to talk about. That was us. But we were trying. And sometimes trying was enough, right?

And he was an amazing dad. When I started my blog, my dad got on Facebook so that he could make a bunch of friends and share my posts every day. That’s the kind of dad he was. He supported us in everything we did. And, truth be told, he had taught me everything I had ever known about business and hard work.

I hugged him and said, “Hey, Dad. Thanks for coming.” After Mom had died, Dad couldn’t bear to be alone in their house in Raleigh. He had bought a small condo over on the beach, about three rows back from the ocean. We were ten minutes apart, but we only saw each other a few times a month.

He nodded. I noticed he had put on a collared shirt with his jeans and flip-flops. It didn’t matter to me what he wore, but I appreciated the effort. “How’s it going, kiddo?”

I shrugged. “It’s going.”

If I had said that to Mom, she would have known that was an entry point, pushed me for more. But Dad didn’t know that. If I said I was fine, I was fine.

“Greg and I just can’t seem to reach an agreement about the company,” I added as I waved him inside.

We sat down in the living room at the front of the house, which was rarely used, if ever.

“You know, baby girl, you’re just not on my level anymore. Your old dad doesn’t even know how to tell you what to do.”

This was what drove me insane. Yes, I had done well. I had worked my ass off for it, and I’d gotten a little lucky too. But he was always so dramatic about my success, as if I had purposely used it to drive us apart.

“Your mom and I, we were always just normal. We had what we needed. We had a few extras. We gave our girls a nice life—”

“You gave us a great life, Dad.”

That was true. We hadn’t had cable, so we’d read library books. We didn’t belong to a pool, so we’d spent our summers running around the yard with the neighborhood kids. And my dad had been the one to swallow his pain, to hold it together, to love my mother with all his heart even when she was mired so deeply in her devastation that she couldn’t get out of bed.

Even still, it annoyed me that we were here again. I was reassuring him when what I needed was for someone to tell me I’d be okay.

There was silence; then Dad said, “Well, that’s why some couples stay together, I guess. It’s not that they don’t have problems; it’s just easier than ending things.” Before I had time to object, he said, “Where’s that grandson of mine?”

I was thinking the exact same thing.

Dad sat at the head of the table for lunch with Wagner and me on either side.

“Diana,” I said a little too enthusiastically as she brought the food to the table, “don’t you want to join us? Please?” I had told her earlier I didn’t like it when she served our food, but she’d said in the South, family lunches were supper and they were proper food with someone serving it, not some slapped-together sandwich.

She gave me a face like she’d sooner die and said, “Oh, can’t. So much organizing to do in Wagner’s room.” That was actually impossible. Wagner’s room resembled a well-curated museum.

“So, kiddo,” Dad was saying to Wagner, “Mom tells me that you’re quite the tennis pro.”

Tennis pro. Andrew. Butterflies. Smiling too big. Get yourself together, Gray.

Wagner nodded enthusiastically, taking a sip of his milk. “I’ve played practically every day since the trip!”

“That’s great, man,” Dad said. “I can’t wait to come watch you sometime.”

We were settling in now, the awkwardness dissipating with each bite of food. What I really needed was a nice cold bottle of Sancerre. But Dad didn’t drink at all, and I couldn’t bear the brunt of his disapproval yet again today.

Wagner thought for a minute, chewing his last bite of corn. Diana’s steamer-pot shrimp boil was his favorite thing to eat these days. “Well, I don’t have a tennis court here, but I can show you my soccer moves!”

Dad and I raised our eyebrows at each other and smiled.

“Do you think you ought to wait until your food settles a minute?” I asked, always the cool mom.

“Nah,” he said, running out the door, leaving it open and calling, “Okay. Now, don’t take your eyes off me for a second!”

Dad smiled at me. “He seems like he’s doing pretty good.”

I nodded. “Yeah. He’s adjusted really well. It’s kind of shocking.” I laughed. “I think he has adjusted better than I have.”

“I wish your mother could see him,” Dad said, and at that my eyes welled up with tears.

“Me too.”

“You still think you did the right thing?” he asked.

“About what?”

“About hiding the divorce from your mother?”

I took a sip of water, giving myself a moment to digest his question. I had almost called off that Virgin Islands trip with Greg because we had just found out Mom had cancer. But she insisted. “Darling,” she had said, “there’s nothing you can do by sitting at doctors’ appointments. It’s only a few days.”

I’d often regretted listening to her. Of course, we didn’t know then how bad it was; we didn’t know that she would be dead a few months later. It had only been a few days. But a four-day vacay seems like an eternity when you only had a few dozen days left. I remembered walking in her door the night I flew in from the islands and her immediately asking, “What’s the matter?”

What was the matter was that my husband had told me he was leaving me and we had had to fight about it for three days after that, that he was still living in my house and working in my office. I had debated telling her, but I wanted her to die happy—whenever that might be—knowing that both of her girls were okay. So I didn’t tell her that her older daughter was getting divorced and her younger one was marrying a religious fanatic who was better suited to an insane asylum than a pulpit. I still thought it was right to let her die in peace.

I smiled at Dad. “Yeah. I really do. Sometimes I wish I’d had her advice on the whole thing while she was still here, but it really was for the better. I didn’t want her to worry.”

Dad took a bite of his shrimp and smiled. “Can you imagine how hot she was when she got up there and realized what was going on?”

We both laughed. Mom didn’t like to be kept out of the loop. I shrugged. “Yeah. She’ll probably have an earful waiting for me.”

Dad raised his eyebrow. “Or Greg. Let’s hope he gets there first.”

I smiled, and Wagner called from outside, “Pop, are you watching? Do you see me?”

Dad gave him his best thumbs-up. “So, what else? Are you doing okay besides the company and the fighting and all that?”

I shrugged. “Worse things have happened.” I pointed out into the yard. “He’s okay, I’m okay.”

He nodded. “Are you dating anyone? After all that Forbes magazine business, you have to be careful. There are plenty of men out there looking to take advantage of a pretty, rich woman.”

I smiled tightly. The “Forbes magazine business” was a nod in a “Companies to Watch” listicle. I had been thrilled that my name and my company had so much as graced the website, but it had panicked my dad. I guessed worrying about me was his right as a father. Even still, it took everything I had not to ask him how stupid he thought I was. But I didn’t. Instead, I asked, “Are you dating anyone?”

He smiled sadly. “No. Never. Your mother was the love of my life.” He shrugged.

I smiled, my heart warming again. I knew my father should be loved again too, but it was so very hard to think about someone replacing your parent in your other parent’s life. I could only imagine how Wagner felt about it deep down. As he shouted, “Hey, Mom, watch this!” I said, “You know, Dad, you have to be careful. You might not be looking for love, but sometimes it sneaks up on you.”

---

I was proud of how lunch with my dad had gone. It had started off rocky, but it ended well. I wanted that closeness with him. I wanted to be a united front. Mom was gone. Quinn was as good as gone. We needed each other now.

As I was putting the last of the dinner dishes in the dishwasher that night, Marcy walked through the unlocked back door.

“It’s about damn time,” I said. I was about to put my wineglass in the dishwasher, but I thought better of it, filling it up again and pouring a glass for Marcy too.

“What?” she asked innocently.

I crossed my arms and leaned against the counter as she leaned over the island. “Don’t play coy with me. Why were you at Greg’s office?” I held her glass of wine to my chest and said, “You don’t get this until you tell me the truth.”

She laughed. “Okay, okay. You guys have been fighting about this long enough. I decided to take matters into my own hands.”

I handed her the glass. “And?”

“And so I did.”

I sighed. “Marcy, I know you love these long dramatic monologues, but could you cut to the chase?”

She smiled. “The bottom line is that after an hour or so of fancy therapizing, I finally got Greg to admit that, as you so wisely suspected, he doesn’t even want your company. What he wants is to be out of your shadow and to do his own thing, but he’s afraid of falling on his face and making a fool of himself.”

“What do you mean, ‘do his own thing’?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, Gray. Who cares? Start a strip club. Buy and sell used cars on the Internet. It makes no difference as long as he’s out of your company.”

That’s when my mind started racing. I’ll be honest: I couldn’t imagine Greg running his own show. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t hire the right people and start a competing company. And I didn’t know Brooke that well, but who knew what she was capable of? I remembered her sparkling résumé and how much she had impressed me during our interview. There was a good reason I’d hired her. I said all that, and Marcy responded, “He said, and I quote, ‘I would never do this mind-numbing bullshit an hour longer than I had to.’ ”

I laughed. That was a relief. “So what does he want?”

She handed me a piece of paper. I opened it, saw the seven digits on it, and about spit out my wine. “That is insane. No. Absolutely not.”

Marcy shrugged. “Look, I’m a therapist. We both know I’m not good with money. But I’m assuming this isn’t close to as valuable as half your company, right?”

That was technically true. And I could get rid of him. I could be rid of Greg and not have to see him except at handoffs and not have to be annoyed every single moment that he had not only ruined our marriage but had taken half of what was rightfully mine. Mine, mine, mine. Yes, divorce drives grown adults back into toddlerhood.

“I love that you are suddenly negotiating my divorce. You have to teach me your tricks sometime, how you get into people’s souls like that and figure out what they really want.”

She scoffed. “I would never. I manipulate the hell out of you on the regular.”

“I will give him half of this,” I said. “Half of this should be enough for him to completely start over.”

Marcy nodded. “I don’t know that he’ll take it. But I’ll try.”

I held up my glass. “Should we finish these on the porch?”

As Marcy followed me outside, she said, “Look. I’m getting you out of your marriage. In return, it would be fantastic if you could help me get into mine.”

“Want me to see if Andrew has, like, a twenty-one-year-old friend for you?” We both laughed as we folded ourselves into the oversize cushioned chairs on the back porch.

“Keep the house,” Marcy said. “I don’t know what we’ll do without this back porch.”

I nodded. And I realized that I didn’t know what I would do without a best friend like her.

diana: shine again

One of the first things people do after a breakup is get rid of their pictures. Makes sense. But I had saved two. The one in the locket, and one of Frank and me standing outside his car. It wasn’t a special day or a special occasion or anything like that. It was just me and him and his friend Ronnie. Ronnie had snapped a Polaroid of us. And we looked so happy. I pulled it out every now and then and thought, This is all I want, to be this happy again.

So, all I had been able to think about these past few days was Frank saying that he couldn’t be happy without me—and my not being able to be happy without him. He was right. I couldn’t be happy without him. Ever. None of the other many, many men in my life could take his place. Harry was the only one I’d managed to even somewhat settle down with for more than a couple of months.

But the scared little girl part of me had been avoiding Frank since I had seen him. Ignoring his texts, refusing to return his calls. His words—I knew I’d never be happy without you—ran through my mind over and over. But, well, I was in shock. And the ball was still in his court after all this time. If he wanted me, he knew where to find me.

When I pulled into the Beach Pub parking lot Thursday night, I recognized that car right off the bat, before I even saw Frank. That old, rusted-out T-bird was painted a perfect, glossy Carolina blue. Its fenders gleamed. I couldn’t help but smile. He had done it. He had taken that beat-up car and made it shine again.

Frank was leaning against the side of the car, arms crossed, his hair lying just so across his forehead, looking so much like he did twenty years ago that I forgot for a minute we were forty and forty-four. And I think that’s the danger—and the fun—of old loves, of past lives. When you haven’t seen someone in twenty-two years, you have no frame of reference for each other as adults. You are, for a while anyway, thrust back to that period of time where you left off. I was still eighteen. Frank was still twenty-two. And in the moment of reconnection, you forget all the pain; you forget all the hurt. You remember the happy. You remember the good. I was trying to protect myself from that.

When I parked right beside him and got out of the car, I said, “You traded me for a chain of auto parts stores, Frank. How am I ever supposed to get over that?”

“Diana,” he said soothingly, reaching his arms out to me. “I didn’t trade you for a chain of auto parts stores. You know it was a lot more complicated than that.”

I sniffed. “It didn’t feel complicated. It felt like your mom called me a trailer trash orphan and threatened to take away the stores, and you caved like a barn loft holding too much hay.”

He shook his head, and even though he didn’t move, I could see that he was getting impatient. I studied his face. He had the same deep, dark tan and some lines on his forehead, a tiny bit of gray around his temples. He was even more handsome, if that was possible. The door of the bar swung open, and Robin came out hesitantly. The girls knew the battle I’d been fighting. I was sure Robin had been sent out to check on me.

“How you doing, Frank?”

He ventured a smile. “Oh, I been better, Robin. How about you?”

“I’m doing pretty good. You hanging around here for a while? Should we pull up a chair for you or grab our guns?”

“That depends on this one, I suppose.” He gestured toward me.

Robin raised her eyebrows for about a half second. “You okay, D?”

I nodded and she gave me a once-over to make sure I was telling the truth before she left.

“Look,” Frank said, “let’s go somewhere quiet where we can talk about this.”

Suddenly it all came flooding back. The pain of leaving him, the nights I’d cried myself to sleep, the years I’d prayed he’d come back to me. Thinking every evening as I came home that maybe I’d see his car in my driveway, that maybe he’d finally come to his senses and tracked me down. But he never did. Twenty-two years, and he never came. And now he was here, begging for redemption. All I knew was I needed to get the hell away, just like I did all those years ago.

I opened my car door, slid in, and started the ignition in one smooth move. Well, as smooth as it can be when your battery only half charges and it sounds like a choking dog for a few seconds before it finally takes. Frank didn’t try to stop me or ask where I was going. He just disappeared into his T-bird.

Tears welled up in my eyes as I took off across the bridge, trying to steady myself, trying to breathe. I banged my hand on the steering wheel. “I’m such an idiot,” I yelled. He had come back for me—what I’d waited for my whole life—and I had missed my chance. But that was me. No matter how old I got or how hard I tried or how much living I had in me, I was always going to run away from anybody trying to love me—anybody good, anyway. The possibility of losing it down the road was too much to bear.

About the time I pulled into Gray’s driveway, I laid my head down on the steering wheel and started to cry. Nothing else to do. When I picked my head up, I screamed so loud I was surprised the neighbors didn’t come out. Frank was standing there, face in my window.

“You got away from me once, Diana. It won’t happen again without a fight.”

I flung my door open. “Frank, I don’t know why you don’t get that I don’t want you around anymore. Just get out of here.” I took off toward the door of the guesthouse, him following right behind.

“That’d be a whole lot easier to believe if you weren’t just crying about me in the car.”

I opened the door, prepared to say something cutting, but he interrupted me: “You leave your house unlocked so any nutso off the street can walk right in?”

I looked at him pointedly, like, Yup. And the nutso did walk right in.

“I can’t do this again, Frank. I can’t. I can’t love you and trust you and fall for you and you disappoint me all over again.” I tossed my purse on the tiny kitchen counter and sat down in one of the pair of club chairs.

“Diana,” Frank said, crossing his arms and standing tall and strong right in front of me. “You’re right, okay? I didn’t want to lose those stores. But I would’ve figured out a way. I wasn’t the one who left you. You left me. And I want to know why.”

I crossed my arms, mimicking his action from a moment before. “I just knew that it was going to be too hard. I could see it that night, clear as day. I didn’t want to spend my life with you taking your momma’s side over mine. I didn’t want to spend my life with us arguing over having to see them.…” I trailed off.

He was still staring down at me hard. “So you’re telling me that that’s it? That’s why we never spoke again?”

I shrugged.

“You expect me to believe that, feisty as you are, you walked away because you were scared to stand up to my momma? I don’t buy it.”

I suddenly felt hard inside, like maybe he deserved to feel what I had been feeling all this time, like maybe I didn’t care about protecting him or his precious tender heart anymore. “I was pregnant, okay?”

That stopped him cold. His eyes got wide and his arms just fell down. “You mean to tell me I got a kid wandering around out there that I don’t even know about?”

I looked at him like he was an idiot and shook my head the tiniest bit.

His eyes met mine, and I could feel the same pain flash through both of us at the same time. Like he was about to faint or something, Frank fell to his knees, his face in his hands.

“Look,” I said, standing up, feeling like I couldn’t breathe. “I’ve spent the last twenty-two years getting over this, so let’s not make too big a thing—”

He wrapped his arms around my waist and rested his head on my stomach. “Oh, Diana,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. So sorry. If I had known… things could have been so different.”

He put his lips all along the expanse of that flat, tight emptiness. I could feel the heat running through me, muscle memory taking over, my body remembering how it was to have his lips on it, how his hands felt. It wasn’t here. It wasn’t now. It was then, and we were young and we were in love and we were the only two people in the world.

“Di, you are all I want in this life,” he said. “You’re the reason I never married. You’re the reason I never told another woman except my momma that I loved her. You’re the reason I have cried myself to sleep more nights than not. And when Daddy died, I knew that, no matter what happened, I had to try. I had to come back for you.”

Maybe it was because I had missed him so much. Maybe it was because I was so vulnerable, at the lowest point in my life, and Frank was the only person who had ever really, truly taken care of me. Maybe it’s because I just wanted to feel loved and cherished even for just a little bit.

But I kissed Frank. He held me in his arms like he’d never let me go. He lifted the white shirt with the lace trim that Gray had given me over my head and threw it on the floor beside him, and I thought briefly that if I’d had on one of my T-shirts I would have remembered. This never would have happened. And I thought about protesting, but, oh, those big navy eyes looking down at me, those powerful hands that took my face in them, the way he kissed me slow and deep and sweet, with a touch of whiskey on those lips.

“Frank,” I whispered, wanting the heat of this moment to last forever. Wanting to rewind time, to tell Frank about the baby, to stand up to his momma, to be married with a family of our own. A tear seeped out of my closed eye, partially for the memories we’d lost and partly for all the ones we could still have.

“You’re so beautiful, Diana,” he whispered. “You’re still so beautiful.”

I unbuttoned his shirt slowly as he continued to kiss me. He said, “I’ll never walk away from you again. I’ll chase you to the ends of the earth.”

My mind was swimming, lost in a collision of past and present, my body and mind struggling to remember what was then and what was now. In the swirling sea of all of it, in the heat and the passion and the relief, in the confusion surrounding his return, I could only make sense of one thing: this was the only man I had ever loved.