And I am doing exactly what I have been doing for two months straight, sitting with baby Lillian sleeping like a log curled up in my arms. I’ve socially distanced carefully so we can spend as much time as possible together. Which of course has meant the only people I’ve seen are here.
“Hey!” Shawnee shouts as she arrives from the side yard. “Sorry I’m late. The bride wanted extra photos taken on the water.” She removes her mask and washes her hands and rushes over to give Anthony a kiss.
He looks at her with that sparkly eyed stare Liz and James always have.
She pats James on the arm before sitting across from me and taking in the baby. “She is so big.” Shawnee doesn’t risk holding her after being with people all day. She’ll have to wait two weeks now to get close to the baby.
“There she is.” Liz comes rushing out of the house and grins at Shawnee. “Margarita?”
“Maybe one.” Shawnee winks.
“Refill?” Liz asks me.
“One is my limit.” I shake my head. “I’d love a sparkling water though, please.”
“Coming right up.” She winks and hurries back inside. This is her happy place. She is the hostess with the mostess. She loves having people over and is an extrovert. This quarantine has been hard on her. Adding the usual postpartum sadness that most moms experience hasn’t been helpful.
“How’s Sam?” Shawnee teases.
“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. “I saw him in the hallway in July.” I squint and think. “Yes, end of July.”
“You seriously haven’t tried to hang again?”
“I think that wine on the deck was sort of it,” I admit the truth.
“Well, that’s a bummer. I was hoping you might rekindle what you had in college.” She waggles her dark eyebrows.
“What are you talking about?” Liz asks as she joins us with drinks.
“Lil and Sam,” Shawnee says and takes her drink.
“You haven’t spoken to him again?” Liz doesn’t push it as hard. She knows my terrible secret.
“No,” I say.
“Well, with you going back to the office tomorrow I’m sure you’ll open up your social circles a bit.” Liz grins.
“I’m good.” I laugh but there is no humor in the statement. The truth is sad and silly. I love my life. I love being alone with Romeo and working on myself. Not that I want to admit it to them, but I’ve been taking online courses all summer for recovering from being with a narcissist.
“You sure?” Liz wrinkles her nose. “You don’t miss companionship?”
“I have companionship. He rarely complains. He doesn’t text other women. He has no expectations of me apart from snuggles, food, water, and the kitty litter being cleaned out. He’s perfect.”
“I feel that,” Shawnee agrees with me. “I was single for four years before—this.” She waves in Anthony’s general direction, but he is engrossed in his conversation with James by the barbecue. “And I genuinely liked it. My own time. My own schedule. I came and went and traveled as I liked. I took jobs around the world. And slept where and when I wanted.” She lowers her voice and leans in, “If I needed sex, I got it and was genuinely uninterested in a relationship. It was nice being single.”
“Yeah, Simone from work is the same,” I point out. “She is digging her quiet life. She went and got a dog from the SPCA, Ricky. He’s a black lab. And they’re living their best life. She was seeing someone from Bridgewater, some random girl. But Covid.”
“Well, not to be a downer on the singletons but eventually you might miss having someone around.” Liz shrugs. “What about a dating site?”
“Hard pass.” I shudder at the thought. “I did my online dating when it first started. What a mess that was.”
“That’s right. I forgot about that.” Shawnee giggles. “Well, maybe when you decide to let love in again, Sam will still be single.” Shawnee winks at me and sips her drink.
Fortunately, I’m saved from the conversation as dinner is ready.
We eat and laugh and enjoy each other’s company, something we do outside now. And regardless of what they think, my being the only single person doesn’t bother me.
Not even when James pulls me aside to talk. He has a serious look in his eyes when he says, “Have you talked to Rod?”
“God no, why?”
“I didn’t want to say this in front of anyone.”
“All right,” I try not to sound nervous but my stomach immediately tenses.
“Rod contacted me yesterday. He wants to sell the house.”
“Oh.” I don’t know what else to say to that. It comes out of nowhere.
“If you don’t want to sell, there’s the option of buying him out. You have a lot of equity in the house—”
“No,” I answer quickly and force a smile. “That house would be way too big for me, and I don’t want to commute.” Neither of those are the reason I don’t want to buy him out. As far as I’m concerned, it’s haunted.
“Yeah, way too much house. I have the papers. They’re in my office. You wanna sign them now?”
“Totally.” I force a smile so I sound friendly. “That works great.”
“Okay.” He smiles too and walks inside. I follow him, my heart racing and my hands balls of sweat. “Is that the last asset you have together?” he asks, glancing back at me.
“No. We have some RRSPs and other investments. In the separation agreement it states neither of us will touch them until the divorce. Some of the investments had bottomed out a little, and he wanted to wait for the rates to come back up.”
“Okay.” He opens the door to his office and offers me the chair at his desk. “Have a seat.”
I sit, noticing how uneasy my fingers are when I grip the pen he has resting on the small stack of papers on the desk.
“Sign where all the sticky tabs are.” He nods once and leaves.
It was never my choice for a house, but it was my home for seven years. We were so excited when we got it.
The memory of moving in flashes through my mind. Rod carried me over the threshold, as if we hadn’t already been married for three years. We drank champagne from the bottle and ate pizza on the floor because nothing had been delivered yet. He acted like this was the best thing to ever happen to him. We were proper adults.
But the cold hard facts are that he was sleeping with Elaine even then.
Everything about my life was a lie.
It’s painful until I get to the last page where I find a pink Post-it note, which James has written on, stuck to the inside of the page,
Remember this is just a house. Home is inside your heart!
That man is a saint.
I brush away a tear and sign my name on the line next to where Rod will sign tomorrow.
And our house will list and sell and someone else will get their fresh start.
All I can do is hope that their new house matches the home in their heart better than it did ours.
There’s an odd release of something when I sit back and stare at the pages. I’ll have to let it simmer for a few days before truly thinking about it.