Текст книги "After Forever Ends "

Автор книги: Melodie Ramone

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Текущая страница: 35 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I found as I grew older day by day two things. The first was that I had to wait patiently for the young to settle down and the second was that there was nothing I could do about it if they didn’t. I wanted to see all the children in the traditional situation…good marriages, good jobs, a couple of kids of their own, nice houses and all the trimmings of the perfect life. Carolena had managed all of those things and Nigel seemed to be stable and satisfied. The others were a different story.

Natalie had met a man in Paris the year she arrived. He was an art curator and she immediately felt an attraction. It was a rough start, as they both were horribly shy, but eventually they found their way to each other. They spent eight long years locked in an affair before she came home to Wales with her bags shipping right behind her.

She phoned us from the airport and asked if she could stay with Oliver and me at the wood.

“Well, of course, Nattie!”

“Oh, thank you! Could you ring my parents and have them come out tonight?” She asked.

“Why don’t you ring them, Muffin?”

“Oh, I have to get my rental car and I want to get there right away. Do you mind asking for me?”

“No, I’ll do it. You get here as fast and as safely as you can, OK?”

“I will! I’ll see you soon, Auntie Sil! Love you! Cheers!”

“Love you, too, Natalie! Cheers!”

I had a feeling right then that something was up, but I was so excited that Nattie would be back in Wales that I didn’t ask any questions. I knew she’d tell me the whole story later anyway.

We had a nice supper and afterward we sat in the front room so we could talk comfortably.

“So what are you going to do now that you’re back?” Oliver asked.

“Find a job!” She smiled, “As soon as I can! Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll have my own place in a couple of weeks.”

“No rush,” We told her. “You know you’re always welcome.”

“Why don’t you stay with us until you find a job?” Lucy asked, “Welshpool is closer to civilization. You’ll save a mint in petrol.”

“Oh, I’ll find a job,” She replied, “I might have to move, but I’m hoping to stay close.”

“Well, it’s excellent to have you back, Nattie,” Alexander was usually the one to lay it on the table, “But I’m wondering what’s made you leave your life to come all the way back here.”

“I just wasn’t happy,” Her face went deep red. She looked at me like she needed to be rescued. “Things weren’t going to get better.”

I knew instinctively that Natalie was pregnant.

“Why would that be, Nattie Muffin?” Oliver’s eyes were sparkling.

“Well…Uncle Oliver and Auntie Sil…and Mum and Dad, I…” Her big blue eyes moved from one of us to the next, “I’ve made some major decisions concerning my life and my relationship. And, well,” She took a deep breath, “I’ve come home for a lot of reasons, but one mainly. Please no one shout. I’m going to have a baby. I’m sixteen weeks along.”

Alexander’s expression didn’t change. He just sat in his chair.

“Nattie!” Lucy exclaimed, “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I didn’t plan it, it just happened. I wanted to make sure of what I was going to do before I told you. Like I said, I had some major decisions to make about my life.” I suddenly noticed that she was showing under her oversized jumper. We must have all been blind not to see it.

“And him?” Alexander had that thing that some Daddies have when it comes to their little girls. When I say that ‘thing’, I mean a deep, animalistic instinct to protect them and rip the throat out of anyone who has threatened or harmed their daughters. If Alexander had been a wolf the hair on the back of his neck would have been standing on end and his teeth would have been bared, “Why isn’t he here with you?”

Natalie went pale.

“Did he send you packing?” Oliver was doing his best to keep his voice under control. He had the same instinct as his brother. Even after all the years had passed since Natalie had lived under our roof, the line between her being our niece and our daughter was still sometimes blurred.

“Not exactly,” Natalie replied meekly.

Lucy moved to her side and slipped an arm around her. It was a protective measure that I was inclined to do myself.

“What do you mean not exactly?” Alexander demanded. He really didn’t need her to answer him. I could tell by the look of him he had already figured what she would say. He had that same expression on his face that Edmond had got just before he began screaming his head off, “Why isn’t he here with you sharing the good news?”

“She doesn’t need you to be angry,” I snapped, “She needs you to be her dad.”

Alexander took a deep breath, stretched his arms over his head and stuck his hands in his hair. He was making an obvious effort to remain calm. “I’m not angry with her. Why would I be angry with her?” He looked at me with such force that if I had not already been sitting I would have straight away. He stared at me before he turned back to his daughter, “Nattie, please just tell me what sent you home. I need to understand so I can help you.” He still sounded like he was ready to open a can with his teeth.

“He didn’t want to get married.”

“You don’t have to be married to have a baby,” Alexander was pressing for an answer.

“He didn’t want the baby, either. He tried to…” She couldn’t say it.

“Tried to what, Muffin?” Oliver prodded.

“He told me to have an abortion,” She said it quickly like she had filth in her mouth. “He even made me an appointment. And when I refused to go to it, he left me.”

Alexander’s face twisted. “Son of a fucking bitch,” I swear his lips did not move when he said it. “I knew it!”

“She did the right thing,” Lucy rubbed Natalie’s shoulder, “Coming home straight away where she’s got people who love her. She did the right thing, Alex.”

“She did.” I agreed. I could see the rage swelling in Alexander. Someone had wronged his baby daughter and he had every intention of avenging that, “Calm down, Alexander!” I knew that look, that hateful twist of the lips that he and Oliver both got on their faces just before they did something really rash and awful. “You’re not going to do your daughter one bit of good acting on your impulses.”

But it was as if Natalie didn’t hear a word we’d said. She began to sob, “I’m sorry, Daddy! I never wanted to disappoint you! I’m so sorry!”

“Disappoint me?” Alexander sounded eerily like Edmond. It was strange how he could be so like his father sometimes. Oliver could never quite climb to that same level of rigidity. He always fell short and went soft when it came to the children, but Alexander could turn purple as eggplant and shout until people scattered in all directions. “You came home, Natalie. How could that disappoint me?” He could have taken a less hostile tone, but I think we all acknowledged his effort. “I’m not disappointed in you! I’m bloody disappointed in that piece of…”

“She doesn’t need to hear that either!” Lucy interrupted.

Alexander clenched his teeth and looked over at his brother.

Oliver said nothing. He sat in his chair stone faced and locked eyes with his twin brother. He flicked a glance at Nattie and returned his stare to Alex. He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms.

“Natalie, you are my daughter,” Alexander moved to his child. He knelt before her and took her face in his hands, “I love you more than my own life, Muffin. I really, truly am not angry with you. I am not at all disappointed in you. I love you and I love your baby. And whatever it takes, we will see you through this. Yeah?”

Natalie fell into her daddy’s arms, “I love you, too, Daddy. I just want you to be happy and excited for me! I want this baby! I really do! I’ve wanted a baby for a long time!”

“I am happy for you.” He didn’t sound incredibly sincere.

“Your dad’s in shock,” Oliver explained, trying to cover for his brother’s apparent lack of enthusiasm, “Give him a minute. Alex, come in the kitchen with me. Let the women talk about woman things.”

The two of them disappeared into the kitchen and exchanged words in harsh whispers while Lucy and I tended to Nattie. We got her calmed down enough to find that she was actually was pleased about her pregnancy, she was just a little shocked in the beginning and now was very afraid of the unknown. She needed us to do for her what we had always done for her. That was to try our best to understand, to protect her, and to love her without condition. Those were all things I had no doubt we’d be able to live up to. And the baby…well, that little muffin was just a bonus.

When the twins tried to walk out the front door by themselves, however, Lucy had the good sense to break up the dangerous duo.

“Oh no, you two! Don’t even think it!” She ran to the door and grabbed her husband by the sleeve, “If you think you’ll be slipping off, planning a trip to France you’ve got news coming to you!”

“Lucy’s telling the truth!” I called from my spot at Natalie’s side on the couch, “The two of you sharing ideas on how to make what’s wrong right is the exact opposite of what Nattie needs!”

“Let go of me!” Alex irritably yanked his arm away from his wife.

“Nattie needs her family now,” Lucy puffed up to Alexander. She didn’t stand even to his shoulder, but she gave the impression that if he didn’t listen she’d crush him with one hand, “She needs her father and her uncle here and not rotting in prison for killing the man she was foolish enough to love! We’ve all done that and you did it once, too, Alex! We’ve all loved a fool and been made a fool of for it! You had children on your own, too, if you remember, when your wife walked away from the three of you! How much better would it have been if Silvia had killed Melissa and been off in jail? And I know she wanted to, she told me so! No, Nattie’s got a lot to get through and I’ll not have the two of you adding more pain to her plate!”

Those two men could look amazingly innocent at times.

“We weren’t up to anything,” Oliver lied. “We were just going to the pub for a pint.”

“Give us some credit!” Alexander chimed in. “A good stiff drink would calm us down!”

“Lying to cover each other’s backs,” I shook my head, “Some old habits never die!”

“You must know we’re on to you by now,” Lucy told them and Natalie laughed out loud.

Our little Nattie’s original thought was that she wanted to live with Oliver and I in the wood. In the end, she did the best thing and moved in with her parents. They saw her through her pregnancy and six months later she had herself a wee baby girl she called Maria.

When Maria was eight months old, Natalie opened her own seamstress shop in Welshpool. A young real estate agent named Mickey De Long wandered in with a tear in his trousers. As she mended them, the two struck up a conversation. He asked her out for coffee and she declined. That afternoon after his office, which was just around the corner, had closed, Mickey appeared in her doorway holding two coffees and two pasties. Natalie said his smile was so silly and so sincere she had to invite him to sit.

Mickey wasn’t rich and he wasn’t immensely handsome, but he was clever and funny and he treated Nattie like a precious gem. Best of all, he fell in love with little Maria as quickly as he had Nattie. They became a couple and saw each other regularly for two years. He asked her to marry him on least ten occasions that I was aware of.

“I want us to be a family!” He told my niece over and over, “Please, consider me, Natalie! I love you both with all my heart!”

Nattie, however, had been hurt deeply by Maria’s father, and was not interested in having her heart shattered and her life turned upside down ever again. This was terribly frustrating for Mickey, who, having never been destroyed himself, could not understand why she wouldn’t move forward with the relationship.

“Oh, Daddy,” She sobbed as the three of us sat by the pond one autumn afternoon after she and Mickey had had a spat about her indecision, “I don’t know what to do!”

“He loves you,” Alexander told her softly, “What else do you want?”

“Nothing! He’s my best friend!” She told him. “I love him, too!”

“Well, that makes it even better,” I rubbed her back.

“I’m so afraid, though! I’m so afraid everything will change!”

Alexander looked at her slowly, “So what if everything changes?” His dark eyes searched her face, “Are things so fantastic now? You living alone with Maria in a one bedroom flat over a seamstress shop?” He smiled softly as he put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her against his side, “Natalie, my love, listen to me. I’d have gone and found you a prince. I’d have plucked him straight out of a faerie story. I would have! And I have this feeling that if I had, he might have been a lot like Mickey.” He paused, “Oh, shut up, Silvia! Stop your laughing and stop looking at me like that! I’m about as romantic as that chair you’re sitting on, but I have eyes! That man loves our Nattie and he loves her daughter. You can’t ask for much more. And you, Nattie, you keep pulling him in and pushing him away. It’s cruel. He won’t wait forever.”

Funny, I thought, he’d done the same thing to Lucy until he’d figured it out, but I didn’t say a word since he’d told me not to. I didn’t want to ruin a rare and perfect moment when Alexander had said the right thing.

“I don’t mean to be cruel, but I’m scared, Daddy.”

“Well, that’s normal. I’d worry if you weren’t. But if you don’t get past it and take the chance, I’ll worry even more. You deserve to be happy. I see he makes you happy when you let him. It’s all I want for you and Maria to be happy.”

She looked at me with wide blue eyes. “What do you see, Sil?”

“I see that your heart has wings,” I told her, “Set it free and see where it takes you.”

Mickey proposed once again to Natalie on Valentine’s Day that same year. Without hesitation, she accepted and they were married the following year. Natalie wore my mother’s wedding dress as Caro and Lucy had before her. Four years later they had a baby girl together they called Kaleigh. Mickey and Natalie still live happily today, together in a little stone cottage on the outskirts of Cardiff.

Our Gryffin did finally marry his Lakshmi in the summer of the year he turned twenty-seven. He called once he’d gotten back to Edinburgh, so excited you’d have thought that he’d just met and fallen in love with her.

“We were in Glasgow for the weekend, so we thought we’d get on with it! It was great! I told her we should have done it a long time ago!”

“I thought you two were planning a big wedding!” Oliver grinned.

“We were, but…fuck it!”

“He pulled an Ollie!” Alexander exclaimed, laughing out loud, “You can’t get mad at him when you did it yourselves!”

“Who’s mad?” I asked seriously,

“It’s about time, that’s all I have to say about that!” Oliver added.

Gryffin laughed, “Yeah, well, everybody else is doing it!”

What he meant by that was that Annie had just gotten engaged to one of the creative directors at her advertising firm and Bess had just gotten married. The bizarre thing about that was that Bess had married a fellow identical twin, whose name was Chad Montgomery. He was not overly good to my niece and was a bit too charming for my taste, but Bess was stuck on him. He was a computer professional from Manchester, but Bess had met him by chance at a twin convention in the United States they had both attended on invitation from a mutual friend who had never introduced them previously.

“Talk about increasing the odds for multiples,” I muttered to Oliver as she walked down the aisle with Alexander, dressed as the others in my mum’s wedding gown, “Double the chance for twins?”

“We’ll have to wait and see,” Gryffin answered softly from the other side of me, “Bet a quid?” Lucy shot us a look of death and we stopped talking for a moment. “Oy, Mum, Dad, Gryff, look there…” Warren pointed to one of the groomsmen, whose zipper was wide open and his shirt was hanging out the opening. “Look at that poor sot! Hope they didn’t capture that disaster in any of the wedding photos!”

The four of us sat and tried not to attract attention to the fact that we could not stop giggling. Within a moment I could hear Carolena and Adam laughing behind us and I knew our daughter had spotted it as well.

It turned out that neither of Bess’ children looked anything alike, nor were they twins, but both of them had the Cotton red hair. Those two were called Joseph and Mark. She finally came to her senses after fifteen years of marriage and divorced that dodgy Chad Montgomery, exchanging him a few years later for a nice lad from Devonshire called Blake O’Malley, whom she met at a tennis match in London. Blake was a few years older than her, widowed, and had three children of his own, but he shined on Bessie in a way that made Lucy and I smile. In the end, Bess got a man who loved her truly.

Annie married her husband, Steffen Doran, a year after Annie married her first. I quite liked Steffen. In fact, I absolutely adored him. He was an American, actually, from Chicago, and he came to London for school, but never quite left. He was incredibly clever, so much so you had to pay close attention to what he’d say or he’d have you contradicting yourself in a debate. He had a dry sense of humour and a laid back personality, plus he would eat anything you put before him without complaint like he was starving. He was handsome, too, blonde haired and had sleepy, clear blue eyes. It was obvious that he was mad about our Annie and her about him. “Nia," He called her, taken from her name Antonia, because when he’d first met her she’d been wearing a nametag and the first part of her name was covered. Annie lit up whenever he came around. Sometimes you can take one look at a couple and see how much love was between them. That was the way it was with those two. They oozed affection.

Annie wore Mum’s dress at her wedding like the others, but nearly threw herself off the balcony when she realised she’d torn the hem with the heel of her shoe. “Oh, damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Look what I’ve done!”

“No worries!” Natalie, ever the seamstress, pulled needle and thread from her purse, “I’ll fix it! Don’t cry or you’ll muss your eyes and look like a raccoon!”

Catastrophe averted, Annie looked lovely and she married Steffen with a smile on her face. They live in Abergavenny now in a big house up on a hill that sits behind an iron gate. They own about five border collies and a Chihuahua and a huge, fat yellow cat. Aside from their numerous pets, they produced and raised had a daughter called and Isabella son called Daniel. Not twins. Isabella is married and lives in Lancanshire now and last I knew, Daniel was in Cornwall, forever single, as he enjoys the company of men far more than women. And who cares? He‘s happy and he‘s healthy and there‘s not one of us in the family who doesn‘t think he‘s brilliant.

It was on my birthday five years after that that Gryffin and Lakshmi gave us our next grandson. He arrived two weeks early and “Not at all too bloody soon!” Lakshmi said. His mother being one hundred percent Indian and Gryffin having the Egyptian blood, the baby was tiny, dark, and utterly beautiful. They called him Andrew after Lakshmi’s brother, an Army medic, who’d died when his helicopter was shot down in the red zone.

“It took them bloody long enough! They do everything so slowly!” Oliver exclaimed after we got the call. “Wow!”

“Personally,” I told him proudly, “I’m thrilled! That grandson of mine was born in Edinburgh! There’s another Scot in this family! They should have a pile more! Bring on the Scots!”

“Yes, yes,” Oliver used his best Edmond-like voice, “We’ll be certain we teach him to speak properly, of course.”

And then there was Warren. Now, there was a lad who had an interesting sort of life. Shortly after he finished performing in Austria, he moved back to Wales and into his grandparent’s old house where he puttered about for about a year giving music instruction from his front room. Soon enough, however, he found himself reunited with his lost love, Gwenllian Hughes. Now Gwen was a musician, too. She’d been classically trained on piano and guitar by her mother, but was blessed more so with an amazing Soprano voice that could send shivers through even the hardest heart. Gwennie had just gotten herself signed to a record contract and, being in London after ten years in Berlin, sought her old friend Warren out to collaborate on some material. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that it took little less than a few days before there was more than song writing going on. Theirs was a reunion fraught with composition, sex, passion, vast amounts of alcohol, and emotions and entanglements that neither of them were quite prepared to deal with.

Warren not only helped to compose many of the songs of Gwen’s debut record, but he played guitar on all of the studio tracks as well. When she asked him to join her on her first European tour to support that album, my son was gone in a flash. It was surreal to flip by stations on the television and occasionally see a video of Gwennie on some music channel. It was incredible how fast she became popular, but really was no surprise to anyone who knew her and Ollie and I had known her for most of her life. From the time she was a small child, Gwen had possessed a certain regal quality about her. It’s hard to explain. She had beautiful dark brown eyes and long, thick jet black hair. Her face was small and round, dotted with freckles. She had the cutest two dimples on either cheek and a constant expression of being excited to be where she was. Gwenllian was a pretty girl, but not breathtaking by any means and yet when she walked into a room people turned and stared. Medium height, small framed, a bit heavy breasted, she had a nice body, but was not particularly sexy, yet men yearned for her. Gwen snapped her fingers and people jumped. She was used to being obeyed.

Warren worshipped her. He had from the time he was a just a baby and it certainly seemed that she revered him in return. They grew up together and it only seemed natural that they would become involved as teenagers, and then be lovers as adults, even if the stress and grind of the tour and lifestyle was taking a toll on Warren. I could hear it in his voice, the strain and the stress of doing something he was no longer enjoying.

“I can’t wait until this blasted tour is over so I can go home,” He confessed one night through static on his mobile phone, “I’m so tired, Mum. It’s go, go, go all the time, one city to the next, one bus to the next or on to a plane and back off again into another hotel room and off to a show. It’s a blur, all of it. I’m so flipping tired. There’s people all over all the time, everybody wants something from you. I just want to go home. All I want is just to sit in Granddad’s old chair in my front room with a mug of tea and my headphones and be alone.”

“Well,” I said, “It must still be exciting!”

He sighed, “Excitement runs thin after a while. I mean, it’s fun up on stage. That’s all there’s really to look forward to, though. The rest of it is just…work. Gwen loves it. She was born to be in the spotlight. She‘s always off doing this or that. I don‘t get to see her much, honestly.”

“How’s she doing then?” Ollie asked, leaning toward the speaker so Warren could hear.

“Oh, she’s fine. She’s great. She’s at some rock star do with her pretentious rock star friends. I skipped it. I’ve had enough of that, thank you. I crave silence these days.”

We thought that there might be some tension brewing and it seems we were right. About a month later, the proverbial shit hit the fan.

The story as I understand it went like this. Warren accompanied Gwen to an awards ceremony where she won the award for Best New UK Pop Artist. After her formal acceptance, they went to an after party at a nightclub where they both got a bit pissed and became overtly friendly on the dance floor. Several photographers caught them at it and the photos quickly hit the internet. Not that Warren cared, in particular. It was all publicity, he told me, for him as well as Gwen, as he was a songwriter and the more people that knew he wrote songs for Best New UK Pop Artist the more likely he was to be able to feed himself. “It’s fine,” He assured us, “We weren’t having sex or anything! They’re not that graphic!”

Actually, they were fairly graphic. Oliver and I found the whole thing to be quite amusing. Our son was having his fifteen minutes of fame…or of shame, if he had been so inclined. We were so happy and proud of him, even in the face of his scandal. And then one day Oliver stopped by Warren’s house to make sure it was secure and he found our son in the garden stuffing his rubbish bins full of paper. Ren refused to tell Oliver or me what had happened, only that he’d had enough of the tour, enough of false friends, and enough of Gwenllian Hughes.

“She’s a liar. She‘s not the Gwennie we all knew. She‘s a phoney,” He was all he said to me, “She made a fool out of herself and a fool out of me. I‘m done with her.”

It seemed very odd that he would end not only his romantic relationship, but his entire friendship with Gen so abruptly. It made me quite sad because I knew they loved each other since they were children. Warren pretended he didn’t care, but I could see that he was destroyed. He was very quiet about it and never said another word, but a mother can tell when her child is hurting. Still, his father and I didn’t pressure him for details. He was, after all, an adult. As much as both of us were inclined to want to comfort and protect him, we both knew that all he’d do was tell us to mind our business. So we did.

We actually found out a few months later what had really happened when Gwen showed up, knocking on our door in the wood. “Hi,” She said sheepishly, doing her best to smile, but it was obvious she was nervous, “I was visiting my uncle in town and I thought I’d come by to see you. Is it all right?”

Even though we knew she’d done something terrible to hurt our son, or at least he thought she had, we invited her in for tea. Oliver and I had always considered Gwen a semi-adopted daughter. The truth was that I was thrilled to have her pop by. “I have pumpkin scones," I told her happily, knowing they were her favourite, “Would you like milk or tea? “

“Milk," she smiled as she sat at the table, “Thanks, Sil."

After an hour or so of chit chat about how we‘d been and what Caro and Gryff were up to, Oliver finally point blank asked her what had happened with her and Warren. “I thought the two of you were getting on so well,” He said, “I was disappointed to hear that you’d split up.”

She immediately looked as if she’d cry, “Yes…well, I’m afraid that was my entire fault.”

It seems that Gwennie had a portion of her past she hadn’t shared with Warren. In that past there existed a young man named Nick Han that she had met in Berlin. She’d been a struggling musician with a demo tape and a headshot, that was desperately pursuing anyone she could find to give her music a listen. Mister Han had noticed her in a nightclub and approached her. It was a come on, she said, but he was attractive and seemed nice. After a while of flirting, she discovered he was actually a record producer and that he was more than willing to listen to her demo. They exchanged phone numbers. He took her on a few dates and seemed just as interested in her music as he was in pursuing her affections. It was not long before he introduced her to executives at a recording label. They weren’t overly interested at first. It took two years for Nick to convince them to come to one of her shows in Hamburg. Within six weeks she had a contract. Caught up in the excitement of it all and swept away by Nick from fancy party to fancy party, meeting famous people and jetting around the globe, she had married him when she was only twenty years old.

“It was such a mistake!” Gwennie confessed, “It wasn’t long before I knew it was all wrong. He was just so exciting and he knew all these famous, important people and I felt like a rock star with him. But after it all settled and we were in our flat, I just kept thinking about Renny and how much I missed him. It had been years since I’d seen him, but I had to find him. I tried to get on with my life for five years, but when I got picked up by a UK label and knew I was leaving Berlin, I told Nick how I felt. I told him all about Ren. He said if I needed to go find him to do it. He was so confident that I’d come back to him, but I knew I wasn’t going to.” She paused, “I was so scared to contact Ren. You have no idea. I sat in London for six weeks before I did it. He was so happy to hear from me. When we did finally get together, it was like nothing had changed between us. Nick’s a nice bloke, but I never loved him. I’m in love with Ren. I’ve always been.” She sighed, “And when Nick realised that he went psychotic on me. He said I used him. The really terrible thing is that he’s right. I did. I didn’t mean to, but I did.”

“We all make mistakes,” Oliver said gently, “Didn’t you tell Warren about Nick?”

She shook her head and her face in her hands. “No! It was so stupid! I wanted us to be perfect, so I never mentioned it! I filed for divorce thinking that Nick would just give it to me, but he refused. He contested it and the whole process got really messy. I didn‘t want Warren to know, so I kept it from him. I told Nick that I didn‘t want anything from him, no property, no money, I just wanted out, but he said he didn‘t care. I hurt him so badly. He wanted to drag the whole thing out just to hurt me back!”

“Are you still married to him?” I asked. I handed her a tissue.

She nodded miserably, "He’s still tying it up. I thought that I could get it over with, you know? Without hurting Ren, but Nick saw the pictures of me and Warren on a website and he got all bent out of shape! He just showed up in Greece at the hotel and marched up to Renny and showed him the marriage license and talked a bunch of shite! He didn’t bother to show him that we were in the middle of divorce proceedings!” Gwennie sniffed, “I swear it’s true! Here! I brought the papers with me.”