“You wanted to go over and give them your blessings.”
I flushed. “Must have been the tequila.”
“And that’s another thing. I’ve never seen you so completely hammered.”
“Dwight and I are just fine,” I said again, unhappily aware that he still hadn’t called. I offered my sunscreen and asked, “But what’s with Rosemary and Dave?”
The diversion worked. She took the bottle with tightened lips. “I could throttle my stupid sister!”
“Why? What’s happening?”
“I think he’s trying to shaft her and she’s just going to stand there and let it happen.”
“Huh?”
“You didn’t know that he had an affair with one of the paralegals in his old law office?”
“No. When?”
“January.”
“January this year?”
“That’s when she found out about it. God knows how long it’d been going on.” She dabbed lotion on her nose and smoothed more on her arms. “Wasn’t the first time he’d cheated on her either, but she wouldn’t listen to me or anyone else. She was sure that his flirting was just a automatic habit and nothing to take seriously.”
“She was wrong,” I said.
“He’s hit on you, too?”
“At your birthday party last year.” Although Dave had made light of it when he saw how outraged I was on Rosemary’s behalf, I knew, as any woman knows, that he would have had his hand up my skirt with the least bit of encouragement.
“This last time, he was just a little too careless and Rosie heard about it at school.”
I knew that Rosemary had named her older daughter after herself but I hadn’t seen the child in two or three years. “She’s what now? Thirteen? Fourteen?”
“Sixteen, and the girl who told her is the niece of one of Dave’s former law partners. Rosie came straight home and threw up all afternoon. Seeing Rosie like that really shook her up. She made Rosie promise not to say anything to Dave till she could confront him herself, then she made a few phone calls and learned that it was true.”
She capped the sunscreen bottle and handed it back to me. “When he wouldn’t move out, she applied for a divorce from bed and board. You didn’t hear about it? It was all over the courthouse in Durham.”
I reminded her that Durham’s almost fifty miles from Dobbs and unless the details are particularly salacious, rumors about a colleague’s personal life don’t always travel outside that judge’s district.
All the same, a “divorce from bed and board” constitutes a public and legal separation under North Carolina law. Rosemary would have had to prove that Dave had committed adultery, but that shouldn’t have been hard. If they stayed separated for a year, the divorce would be almost automatic.
“So what are they both doing here this weekend?” I asked.
“She asked if she could come down with me. Said we could have a girly weekend. Said Dave had told her he was going to skip the summer conference.”
“But he’s here and she still stayed?”
“I told you I want to wring her neck. You heard her last night. She lied to me. She knew he was going to be here, but he sweet-talked her into coming anyhow. He’s spent the last two months courting her like they were teenagers. Flowers, funny cards, presents. He’s convinced their daughters that it was a one-time aberration and they’re ready to forgive him. You remember how Rosemary took on Mom’s care when she broke her hip after Christmas?”
I nodded.
“He told the girls that the affair was partly Rosemary’s fault for neglecting him then.”
“And they bought it?”
“They’re not alone,” Chelsea Ann said angrily. “Rosemary’s buying it, too. I’m pretty sure she slept with him last week. And it’s not as if she doesn’t have a law degree.”
As judges, we both knew what Dave Emerson knew and what Rosemary must surely know, too. If marital relations are resumed after a divorce from bed and board has been granted, that nullifies the divorce action.
“Maybe he really does love her,” I said, remembering how my cousin Reid really had loved his wife even though that didn’t stop him from cheating on her time after time.
“You think?” she asked cynically. “Or do you think that it’s because a fault-based action usually means that the cheating spouse gets the short end of the stick when it comes to alimony and property rights? If he can get her back to bed with him down here and enough of our colleagues realize that they’re sharing a room and cohabiting…”
“Condonation,” I said, a term which means that the aggrieved party condones, i.e., forgives the adultery by resuming marital relations. That effectively erases the charges of adultery and levels the field if they later decide to divorce after all.
“You got it.” Chelsea Ann’s tone was bitter. “And speak of the devil.”
I followed her line of sight and saw Dave Emerson walk out onto the balcony of his room a few floors up. He was bare-legged, as if just out of the shower, and wore one of the hotel’s terry cloth robes so loosely tied that his hairy chest was exposed. Carrying a mug in one hand and newspapers in the other, he sat down on one of the chairs, set his mug on the small table, and began to read. He did not seem to see us and Chelsea Ann certainly did
