To the Beach and Back

Chapter Four

This cannot be happening.

What is Allyse doing here?

Why is the woman who's been sleeping with my ex-husband ... the woman who is everything I'm not and nothing I ever will be now parking beside my Jeep?

Did Nick bring her along to help?

No, he wouldn't do that to me.

He just wouldn't.

Sounds of laughter and splashing come from a nearby pool as I search the street for Nick's Toyota Corolla he bought as a second vehicle last year for better gas mileage. Maybe he got stuck at a red light. Maybe he'll be arriving any minute. But only a couple of cars come my way, a silver convertible and some kind of two-door. No Corolla. No Nick.

Just her.

The air around me turns dank, smothering me as seagulls cry above the bay. I sink back on the bench, my mind racing back to that rainy night last September when Nick knocked on my door.

"Marcie, there's something I need to tell you," He had said.

I immediately knew what it was.

By that time, we had already been divorced for over a year. Everything had been handled. Our finances. How I'd keep the house, taking over the mortgage payments, he'd keep the truck, and we'd split the beach house. T's were crossed, I's were dotted, papers were signed, so there was only one thing left for him to do: replace me with someone new.

He told me her name was Allyse, which sounds like Alice.

She's a University of Maryland graduate and former law student who left her career path to become a jewelry designer.

Nick left out one thing, though.

"How old is she?"

It shouldn't have mattered.

The fact that Nick was seeing another woman should have been devastating enough.

"How old is she, Nick?"

Please, Lord, let her be my age.

If she were my age or at least close to it, I could salvage the smallest amount of consolation, my dignity damaged, but not destroyed. I wouldn't feel like my mother did after my father left her for a younger woman ... as a worn-out dishrag tossed aside for shiny new cloth, utterly humiliated from being replaced with an upgraded younger model.

Her familiar warning rang through my head, something she told me after I gave birth to Wesley:

Don't drop your guard, Marcie. Because the second you let yourself go and become an old wife, Nick will leave you for a younger woman. Just like your father left me. Just like all men do.

She was right. I dropped my guard. Nick left.

And I was replaced.

"Does it really matter, Marcie?" he had asked.

"How old, Nick," I whispered.

"She's thirty."

Thirty. Over twenty years younger than me.

And now, Allyse Thompson is opening the truck door, swinging her lean, tanned legs out, a picture of beach perfection in frayed jean shorts and a white tee-shirt casually tied at her waist. Her long, blond hair is braided to the side and silver charm bracelets dance on her wrists as she pushes Aviator sunglasses to the top of her head.

How dare he.

How dare Nick not have the common decency to offer me ANY KIND of warning that she'd be here? Sadie must feel my anger. She stiffens beside me, hackles raised and a low growl rising in her throat.