When I finally decided to accompany my husband to his ex-wife’s house, I never expected to find her in a silk robe with perfect hair and glossy lips. But that wasn’t nearly as shocking as the look on her face when she saw me standing beside him.
The day I met Henry was the day I stopped believing in coincidences. We bumped into each other at a bookstore, both reaching for the same dog-eared copy of “The Great Gatsby.”
Five years of marriage later, and I still get butterflies when he walks through our front door after work.
Well, most days anyway.
“Mel, have you seen my toolbox?” Henry called out from the garage.
I stirred the pasta sauce simmering on the stove and checked my watch. 6:30 p.m. on a Tuesday. Dinner was almost ready.
“Under the workbench, where it always is,” I called back.
The metallic clang of tools told me he’d found it.
A moment later, he appeared in the kitchen doorway, toolbox in hand and car keys dangling from his fingers.
“Going somewhere?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
“Liz called. Her garbage disposal is making a weird noise, and she’s worried it might be something serious.”
I set down my wooden spoon harder than necessary. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
“I know, I’m sorry.” He gave me an apologetic smile. “I’ll heat mine up when I get back. Shouldn’t take more than an hour.”
The front door closed before I could respond.
I turned off the burner and leaned against the counter, suddenly not hungry anymore.
My husband doesn’t jump when I ask him to hang a shelf or fix the dripping faucet in our bathroom. But when his ex-wife called about a broken towel bar? He was out the door in five minutes flat.
At first, I tried to be cool.
They share a past, I told myself. And he’s “just helping.“
But then came the third, fourth, and fifth request in as many weeks. Leaky sink. Broken garage remote. Sprinkler not working.
Each time he’d sigh dramatically and say, “She has no one else, and I don’t want the house getting ruined.”
You’d think he was talking about a national landmark instead of the three-bedroom colonial they’d bought together before their divorce. The house he insisted on co-owning with her “until the market improves.”
“It’s just business, Melanie,” he’d explained when we first started dating. “We both invested in the property, and neither of us wants to sell at a loss.”