CHAPTER V
Earlier that day
Philip
"Are you busy, Mr. Dawson? There's a lady here to see you."
"Did she give you her name?" Philip Dawson looked up from the papers on his desk. "If she is from Dispela Antiques, I can squeeze her in before my next – "
"Sir," his faithful secretary's voice dropped. "It's your wife."
"My what?!" roared Philip.
"Sorry, sir. So sorry. I meant to say, your ex-wife."
Before he had a chance to come to his senses and react, she appeared in the doorway.
"Hi, Phil."
...
He opened a drawer and rummaged in it until his fingers closed around a pack of Marlboros.
He had not smoked in over a year. Norah had made it her life's work to wean him off it. But he still kept one pack tucked away in a remote corner of his desk drawer. Strictly for emergencies.
If this didn't qualify as one, he didn't know what would.
He pulled out a cigarette and continued to fumble around in the drawer. Where the hell were the matches?
"Will this help?"
He looked up to see her holding out to him a silver lighter.
He lit up and automatically proffered the pack to her.
"Thanks, I have my own." She was holding between her fingers a slim, dainty ladies' cigarette.
That was new. She had never touched cigarettes before. But before didn't count for anything. He had had five long years to come to terms with that.
"What are you doing here, Janet?" He inhaled a lungful of pungent, bittersweet smoke. "If you think I'm going to... after what you did... just like that..."
For years, he had hoped that someday he would have a chance to confront this woman and say right to her shameless face all she deserved to hear. That diatribe lay coiled within his mind like a snake waiting to strike. Yet, now that the moment had come, he found himself stuttering as if trying to speak a language he barely knew.
"I am not asking you to take me back. Or even to forgive me. I just need to tell you I am sorry."
"You are sorry? You are sorry? You – " A chilling thought struck him. "Wait a minute. Are you sick? You are not dying, are you?"
"We are all dying, Phil. It's just a matter of timing. But no, I don't have a terminal disease, at least to my knowledge."
"Then what is it? Are you in a twelve-step program?"
She shook her head with a faint smile. "Never got around to becoming addicted to anything. Not even this." She held up her cigarette.
"Isn't it just dandy?" He finally found some of the words, and then they all came sputtering out. "You say you are sorry, and you think that makes it all right? Do you have any idea what you did to me? You don't care! You never did! Don't you think you at the very least owe me an explanation? What did I do wrong? I tried to be a good husband! I gave you everything you wanted!"
"Everything you thought I wanted," she echoed in a barely audible voice.
His tirade was just gaining momentum. "I would've done anything for you! You didn't need to work! You didn't need to lift a finger! But you wanted to be independent and have an income of your own, so I let you have a job. I thought I was doing the right thing, fool that I was! I thought you'd appreciate it and be grateful, and eventually remember how a proper married woman should behave and quit playing those games and give me a kid!" He stopped to gasp for breath. "But no, that wasn't good enough for you! You'd much rather chat up every Tom, Dick and Harry in that shop of yours, until one of them stole you away from me! Don't think I didn't know. It had to be another man. Why else would you have taken off just like that? Who was it? At least tell me who it was!"
He had an uncomfortable feeling she did not hear him. But there was no stopping the agonized stream of pain-suffused words. "At the time, I was sure you'd gone back to your old boyfriend. Until he wrote to me basically begging for your whereabouts. Which I didn't know any more than he did. You've done quite a number on both of us, haven't you, Janet? Got any more broken hearts or lives to your credit?"
"It wasn't right for either of us," she spoke into the pause he made to take a drag on his cigarette. "I shouldn't have married you in the first place. You are an innocent, Phil. I should've known you would end up getting hurt."
He felt he was losing the thread. The tobacco smoke he hadn't inhaled in months was making him dizzy and vaguely confused. What was she talking about? He was an innocent?
"Norah is a very good woman. And she is just right for you. Don't do anything to screw this up, or you'll never forgive yourself."
"How do you – where did – " he stammered. "How do you know Norah?"
"Listen to me, Philip!" Her eyes flashed dark fire, the way he remembered only too well, no matter how hard he had tried all those years to put it out of his mind. "Don't drag your feet with the wedding. I am not coming back, if that's what's stopping you. If you keep stringing her along, you might lose her, too."
"Have you been talking to my girlfriend?" Try as he would to make sense of it, there was a surreal feel to the whole scene. "What else did she say about me?"
"Remember what I said, Phil." She glanced at her watch, stubbed out her cigarette and rose. "You are a busy man, and my time is running out. Be well."