Chapter 6
It was the third week of April. The days were becoming noticeably longer and the temperature warmer. I still hadn’t seen Jeff, but I had moved on, sort of.
I had begun to really obsess about my writing, unable to be away from my keyboard for longer than it took to walk around the park once. I rarely went to the store and so had very little to eat. I had also decided to improve my diet, so no more chips and soda, only healthy fare. This, coupled with all the walking, had resulted in the loss of several pounds. I felt better than I had in years, despite my love life, or lack thereof.
My latest book was due out in June. It was, in part, a gift to my friend Jenna, whom I’d met in college. I didn’t have many friends, mainly because I was a loner by nature, but I considered Jenna a very good friend. I did not see her much, but we chatted on the phone regularly. Jenna was smart and funny and kind and a great listener—everything you’d want in a friend. She was a lot like my mother. She was also very pretty, with long blonde hair, green eyes, perfect skin, a tiny nose, and a lithe body. She’d married a man eleven years older several years ago, and they had two young children. She also had two stepchildren from his first marriage. Her husband, Bill, was a very nice man. Unfortunately, he’d been married to a shrew, a mean, nasty, calculating, frigid, homely shrew. The stories Jenna told about her husband’s ex bordered on the absurd. The things she’d lied about to make Jenna look bad had been beyond cruel.
The previous September Jenna had called me, sobbing into the phone, asking if we could meet. I’d agreed to meet her for coffee, and when she’d finally shown up twenty minutes late—which was not like her—she’d been a mess. Her usually perfect hair had been like a rat’s nest and her pretty face streaked with tributaries of tears mixed with mascara heading downward to the corners of her mouth. I’d been unable to hide my shock, and that had made her cry anew. “I know. I know!” she’d sobbed. “I fucking hate that bitch!”
“What happened?” I’d asked with what I considered a soothing voice.
Jenna had drawn in a few long Zen breaths. She believed in all that shit: meditation, yoga, crystals. She seemed to think it calmed her. I hadn’t seen that. What I saw was a very sensitive (and even a tad thin-skinned) woman who took everything to heart, good or bad. She read into things that sometimes weren’t worth reading into and saw conspiracy where none existed. She was somewhat paranoid—but understandably so after what she’d had to deal with.
The ex-wife had led many in their coterie to believe that Jenna had slept around a lot, that Jenna had been heavily into drugs at one time, that Jenna had broken up their marriage. She’d told people that she’d “heard” that Jenna’s mother had been a prostitute and that her father had spent time in prison. None of it was even remotely close to the truth. Jenna was uncommonly modest. She hesitated to take even an aspirin. And as for Bill, he’d been divorced nearly two years before Jenna had ever met him. I also knew that her parents had been killed in a car accident when she was in high school; her grandmother had stepped in to raise her and her younger brother. Her father had been in construction, and her mother had been a homemaker.
“So, what happened?” I’d asked evenly. “What’d she do?”
“She—” She’d gasped for air. “She’s been telling people...” She’d stopped to catch her breath, her eyes welling up with tears as she bit her lip to stop its quivering. “She’s been saying that the boys aren’t Bill’s—that I had an affair with some football player! I don’t even like football. And I would never do that—ever!” she’d said hysterically. I’d stood up, pulled out her chair, and motioned for her to sit down, which she did.
“Who told you this?” I’d asked.
“Bill. He came home early to talk to me. He said he knew it wasn’t true, but he felt I should know about it.” She’d begun to sound a little calmer.
“Who told him?”
“His friend Jack, who heard it from someone at the club. I don’t know who, but I know she started it!” Jenna had said indignantly. I knew she meant Deirdre, Bill’s ex-wife.
“That’s really shitty,” I’d said, trying to settle her down. “But everyone knows she lies about you all the time. Besides, the boys look just like him! It’s ridiculous!” I’d told her.
“I know! Right? But what if people really believe it? I don’t want the boys to hear this!”
“They’re six and four,” I’d said reasonably.
“I mean later, when they’re older,” she’d said impatiently.
“It’ll blow over well before that, Jenna.”
“No. I feel like I need to address this. I always ignore her and her lies, but it’s different this time. Involving the boys like that. I can’t just look the other way again. Not this time.” She had spoken this in a monotone, staring into space as if in a trance.
“Well, I don’t know what you can do about it. Maybe you can point out how much they look like their father?” I’d suggested, trying to be helpful. She’d just shaken her head, her mind elsewhere. I’d felt so bad for my friend; I’d wanted to help but didn’t know how.
She’d stood up suddenly and thanked me for listening. She’d fumbled through her purse briefly, but I’d waved her off, hugged her good-bye, and advised her to try not to make too much of it.
“Everyone knows she lies,” I told her, shaking my head.
Jenna just nodded and then turned and walked away.
I walked to my car, wondering how I could help her. Then it hit me. I could write about it! I wouldn’t even have to embellish. That woman had been so awful in real life; I merely needed details from Jenna. I’d had success with my previous revenge novel, after all.
I called Jenna straight away, asking her to email me a list of all the things Deirdre had ever done to her and encouraging her to call or text me whenever she thought of something further—the nastier the better.
“Why? What for?” she’d asked.
“I just want to know, that’s all,” I’d said, trying to be nonchalant.
Almost immediately she’d sent me a vast laundry list of offenses, using bullet points to delineate each one. It had read like a rap sheet, probably not an accident.
I’d begun writing immediately, dropping what I had been working on. My anger had driven the story from the beginning, and it seemed to almost write itself. It would still be a romance novel, as that’s what my readers wanted, and I didn’t have writer’s block when I stuck with romance. I had written quickly and with relish, stopping only when necessary. It was during this time that I had initially noticed Jeff in the building now and then when I’d ventured out for coffee or fresh air. I had completely ceased to groom myself, so wrapped up in my work was I. Upon reflection, I blushed with embarrassment at having let people see me looking so … homeless, especially Jeff.
In any case, I had finished Jenna’s gift book in record time and sent it off to my publisher immediately. There had been some changes and rewrites but nothing major; it was the fastest I’d ever gotten a book ready for publication. I looked forward to the reaction I’d get from my readers, but mostly I was anxious to see how Jenna liked it. I felt sure she would love it. I decided to give her the actual book when it came out in June, rather than giving her the final manuscript to read. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was so she couldn’t try to have me tamp it down while I still could.
Since then I started