“What’s to understand?” Nora shrugged, her tears causing her words to become difficult to make out. “You destroyed our wedding vows and dirtied our home, and, apparently, my seventeen-year-old witnessed you having an affair behind his mother’s back. What kind of father does that make you? What kind of man does that make you?”
“It’s not like it sounds,” Randy insisted. He squeezed Grant’s shoulders as he let him go.
“How can it be any different than it sounds, Dad?” Joanna scoffed. “You cheated on your wife!”
“I know, and I know you must all hate me right now,” Randy conceded. “All I can say is that I’m as upset about this as all of you.”
“How did it happen?” Nora wept.
“It shouldn’t have; that’s all that matters,” Randy shook his head.
“Just get out!” Nora pointed. “I can’t look at you right now.”
Randy nodded understandingly as he turned and walked out the door.
“Wait,” Nora called.
Randy turned back, and Nora walked deliberately toward him. She raised her hand, and Randy made no attempt to stop her palm from smacking hard against his cheek.
The sound of the door closing behind Randy echoed in the hushed room. The sound of water running in the bathroom seemed strangely like a fitting backdrop to the melancholy moment. Nora sat down on the bed, and Rachel was the first to wrap her arms around her mother.
“I’m so sorry, Mama,” she cried.
“I knew it,” Nora nodded, her eyes tired and distant. “How could I be so stupid?”
“Who is she?” David asked after a moment.
“I don’t know,” Nora sobbed. “I found her number on a little piece of paper in his pants pocket a couple months ago, but he swore it was nothing. There was lipstick on his shirt collar when I was doing the laundry, but he had a reasonable enough excuse for that too.” She hung her head. “I don’t have any money. Your father has all the money. How are we going to get home?”
“I have money, Mama,” David said. “It’s late. Let’s just get some sleep, and we’ll figure things out in the morning.”
Nora reached out to Emily. “Shh,” she whispered, her motherly instincts kicking in despite her own pain. Emily always cried when she was sad or scared. In this case she was both.
Grant slammed the door behind him as he walked outside.
“Grant!” Nora panicked, unsure what he might do. “David, go after him…”
David stared back at his mother. “He probably just needs a little air.”
“Now!” Nora insisted.
David turned to go after Grant.
“No,” Melissa gulped as she reached for David’s arm. “It’s okay; I should get him. I think you are probably the last person he wants to see right now.”
“Baby, I’ll go,” David insisted. “You never know what Grant might do, and if, in a moment of insanity, he decides to take on the general, I need to be there to stop it.”
Melissa rolled her eyes. “Sometimes I think I know Grant better than all of you,” she said sadly. She rushed from the hotel room, ignoring her husband as he called her back.
David turned his attention back to his mother, unsure what to say or how to comfort her broken heart.
After only five minutes of searching, Melissa found Grant balancing on a black, wrought iron railing, his back leaning against a brick column, and one bare foot dangling on the opposite side of the rail as he stared down at the parking lot below.
“Grant,” Melissa said, doing her best not to startle him. “Please come down from there. You could fall.”
Grant turned his head. “They picked you to run after me?”
“I volunteered,” Melissa admitted. She reached her hand out to
Grant. “How about getting down?”
Grant ignored Melissa’s hand but came down anyway. “Your husband is an idiot,” he declared.
“I’m sorry he didn’t believe you,” Melissa said, avoiding any confrontation.
Grant shrugged. “I’m going for a walk; do you want to come?”
Impressed by the invitation, Melissa nodded. “I think a walk sounds like a good idea, but neither of us have any shoes on.” Just then, her cell phone rang in the pocket of her pajamas; she had it tucked away there incase her mother called about Leah in the middle of the night. She looked down at the caller ID and saw that it was her husband checking in. “Grant…” she stared to say, but, before she could finish her sentence, Grant was in her arms, his breathing rapid and his tears coming quickly. Melissa stroked the back of his hair, knowing those tears had been a long time in coming. Moments passed, the phone began ringing again, but, still, she held Grant, hearing more in his silence than she had ever heard him say before. Maybe it was because she had become accustomed to listening without words; maybe circumstance had made her unusually comfortable with nonverbal communication, but she could hear Grant loud and clear, and something told her that, in return, he could hear her love for him in the firmness of her embrace, her sympathy and concern in the stroke of her hand against his hair. She didn’t let go until Grant pulled away. He stared at her, wiping his tears from his eyes. Melissa offered a sincere smile in return. She formed a sign language G and placed it over her heart, and she watched as a hint of a smile broke through Grant’s tears.
CHAPTER TWO
Nora needed some time alone to clear her head and reevaluate a life suddenly full of unanswered questions, so she packed her bags, bought an airplane ticket and went home to Tennessee. There, she knew, her mother would be waiting to comfort her with her famous chocolate chip cookies, and the tranquility and familiarity of Hope Hull would settle her troubled mind. She took comfort in the knowledge that her childhood home would remain unchanged despite the fact that everything in her life felt different now. Before she left North Carolina, Nora ironed clothes for the kids to wear to school while she was gone; she went to the grocery store and bought things for their lunches; she left little reminders of their schedules on Post-it notes stuck all around the house and a list of contact numbers hanging on refrigerator. These were things they could have done or found for themselves, but Nora didn’t want them to have to. It was just the sort of mother she had always been. Before she left, she kissed Grant and Emily goodbye, wished Grant good luck at basketball tryouts and Emily good luck at her first student council meeting. She asked Joanna to drive her to the airport and left Randy a note saying that she’d be gone a week, and they would work things out when she got back.
Nora spent her first day in Hope Hull balled up in sweats on her mother’s sofa, eating cookies, drinking coffee and watching soaps where she discovered there were countless creative ways to deal with a husband who had cheated on you.
