more than a year before and I just hadn’t noticed. When I called the county clerk’s office to try to order a copy of the title paperwork, I found that Mike had also managed to cut off my American Express, my Visa, and my MasterCard. I was still on the phone with MasterCard when Mama came into the kitchen wearing a bathrobe, staring in horror at the morning edition of the Singletree Gazette.
She turned the front page toward me so I could read the headline, “Scorned Local Woman Sued for Scathing E-Mail.”
“Oh… no,” I groaned, dropping the phone on its cradle.
Reporter Danny Plum, whose byline hovered over my own personal nightmare, was an industrious little bastard. He’d found the bridal portrait we’d included with our wedding announcement years before in the newspaper archives. It was front and center, just under a smaller subhead reading “Widely Forwarded Anti-Adultery Missive Sparks Divorce, Community Debate.”
Mama’s face was as white as the newsprint. “Baby, I didn’t mean it. I didn’t know he was writing it down. I’m so sorry.”
I took the paper from her shaking hands. “Unable to return to her marital home, Mrs. Terwilliger is reportedly staying with her parents, rarely leaving the house except to consult her attorney, Samantha Shackleton.” I read aloud. “When contacted by the Gazette, Mrs. Terwilliger’s mother, Deb Vernon, insisted that many wronged wives would follow in her daughter’s footsteps, ‘if they thought of it.’
“Everybody thinks Lacey’s gone crazy, but that’s not true.
She knew what she was doing,’ Mrs. Vernon said in a phone interview. ‘She was just pushed too far. And yes, she overreacted a little bit. It happens to the best of us, but I don’t want to comment. Of course, if Mike didn’t want to be publicly embarrassed, he shouldn’t have run around town chasing some hussy like his pants were on fire … but I don’t want to comment. I just wish people would mind their own business. Really, I have nothing to say.”
My mother cringed as I made a sound somewhere between a groan and call of a dying crane.
“I declined comment! Declined!” she cried. “And he’s twisting what I did say all around! I’m going to strangle that little weasel reporter!”
I picked up the ringing phone without thinking about who could be calling. Samantha’s voice, frustrated and weary, came through the receiver. “I know I didn’t specifically tell you not to have your mama defend you to the press, but I thought I made it clear that you needed to keep a low profile.”
“Mama says she declined comment,” I told her, giving Mama an exasperated look.
“Did she say ‘off the record’?” Samantha asked. “Those are the magic words. Unless she said, ‘off the record,’ anything she said, even in passing conversation while she was declining comment, can be quoted. You should know this stuff. I thought you had a background in journalism.”
“Yeah, the ethical kind, where reporters don’t screw people over when they say they’re not interested in being quoted. She didn’t mean it, Sam. Mama couldn’t stop him from writing a story, but she wasn’t trying to make it any worse. Of course, it would have been helpful if she had told me she talked to a reporter in the first place.”
“I didn’t want to upset you,” Mama whispered. “I was trying to screen your calls!”
“Why would they want to write about a divorce case in the first place?” I asked. “Don’t I have the right to privacy?”
“When Mike filed suit, this became a matter of public record. This is not good, Lacey,” Samantha said. “Mike is made to look like the injured party. And he managed to decline comment, through his lawyer, so he seems to have some sense… and tact. Your mama, as well intentioned as she may be, made it look like you don’t have any remorse and that you feel justified in what you did. You’re the harpy first wife. It’s not exactly a sympathetic role. This probably won’t improve our position in court.”
“Well, I’m not really remorseful and I do feel justified in what I did,” I said.
“That’s fine; you just shouldn’t tell anybody that!” Samantha exclaimed. “Look, this could just die down. But considering that the newsletter is supposed to be ‘widely e-mailed’ I doubt it. In case it doesn’t, and by some horrible whim of fate you manage to get the attention of other media outlets, you don’t even speak to decline comment, you just walk away. In fact, you don’t talk to anyone you don’t know, got it?”
“Lacey!” Mama called. “I think you need to come see this.”
I carried the cordless phone into the living room, where Mama stood in the window, watching a news crew setting up on our front lawn.
“What?” Samantha asked.
“Umm, a camera crew from Channel Five.” I told her.
“And Channel Seven!” Mama called.
“And Channel Seven,” I told Samantha.
Samantha groaned as Mama snapped curtains closed. And if I wasn’t mistaken, I could hear her banging her head against her desk. “Do you have somewhere you could go lay low for a while?”
“I’m thinking maybe Timbuktu,” I muttered, padding back into the kitchen.
“Funny,” she snorted. “I want you to leave town for a while and I don’t want you to talk to anybody. Keep your cell phone on. Tell your parents if they get any media calls to refer all questions to me.”
After a few more curt instructions from my lawyer, I hung up and banged my own head against the kitchen counter.
“This is just not good,” I moaned. “I’m going to end up a punch line on Jay Leno, like that Runaway Bride girl with the crazy eyes.”
Mama sighed. “You should have thought of that before airing your laundry.” When I gave her a stern look, she shrank back a little. “Too soon?”
“Samantha says I need to find a place to lay low for a while.”
“Maybe you should head up to the cabin,” she said. “Hide out there for a while. Even if someone told the reporters where you were, I doubt they’d be able to find you.”
I lifted my head, taking a Post-it note with “milk, eggs, bread” written on it with me. I swatted it off of my forehead. Why hadn’t I thought of the cabin?
Mike and I hadn’t been to the cabin or Lake Lockwood in months. Gammy Muldoon left the cabin to me just before we got married, with the understanding that Emmett could use it whenever he wanted to. But Emmett was religious about protecting his skin from damaging UV rays, so he never wanted to use it. Mike and I went up for weekends sometimes, but we’d fallen out of the habit unless it was Memorial or Labor Day.
Despite the fact that his boat-in-progress was housed there, Mike didn’t particularly enjoy our time at the cabin. It wasn’t as nice as our friends’ places and he didn’t feel like we could entertain properly there. He hated the rattling old window-unit air conditioner, the shabby, splintering porch swing, and the sprung chintz couch in the living room. One of the biggest fights we’d ever had was over Mike’s listing the house with a Realtor to gauge the market viability of the property without telling me. He argued that we never used that “run-down old shack” and it would be much smarter to sell it and put the money toward a place in Lighthouse Cove. I called the Realtor, canceled the listing, and went out and bought new outdoor furniture, a hammock, a new couch, and a laundry list of other things to fix the house up. I maxed out my Visa for that month, but at least Mike couldn’t complain about the damn couch anymore.
The good news was that along with its lack of a prestigious address or central air, Mike deeply resented the tax liability the lake house represented. So, when we got married, it stayed in my name.
Mike’s being a tightwad had finally paid off.
The cabin was only about an hour from Singletree, but it might as well have been an ocean away. It wasn’t much to look at, one story of aging gray cedar set two miles back from the nearest access road. The water of Lake Lockwood was always freezing and smelled faintly of fish, but some of my best childhood memories were rooted in that cabin.
My maternal grandma, Gammy Muldoon, made no apologies for designating me her favorite grandchild. She wasn’t cruel or hurtful about it. She gave thoughtful Christmas and birthday presents to Emmett. She took him out for special outings and called him her “little monkey.” But I was Gammy’s special girl… because I stood still long enough to listen to her stories.
