Free Pawleys Island-lowcountry 5 by Dorothea Benton Frank Page A

friendship with an aging gay man who owns a gallery is enough to sustain her? When she has no challenges other than improving her handicap?
    I’ll tell you what happens. She gets bitter. Dull. She smolders in her self-inflicted pit of insignificance. Smiles for the outside world and is miserable inside—that’s what she is. A phony. And then one day, along comes another dumb-ass like herself and she sees herself in the dumb-ass’s face. She’s not Narcissus admiring her own reflection in the water. No, the recognition she has fills her with self-loathing, and she is compelled to save the other from drowning.
    Rebecca was unaware of the nearly insurmountable despair that would follow her to the end of her days if she allowed herself to comply with her expulsion from her home and her children’s lives. It was the only thing about which I was certain. Life has a way of wrenching your heart. No one escapes trials. Rebecca didn’t understand the weight of accepting this wretched fate imposed on her and that it could ruin her soul beyond recognition.
    Indeed, these days I hardly recognized myself.
    Rebecca was a nice woman—I was pretty sure about that. Her husband was a philandering, lying, abusive, manipulative, asshole—I was pretty sure about that too. But her timidity and insecurities were going to leave her in extraordinary pain for the rest of her life because nobody, including her, had been brave enough, and certainly not noble enough, to see the truth.
    A man wants a divorce? Big deal. It happened every day of the week. I say, go have your divorce, but for the love of God please try and be a gentleman about it? Please? Don’t manipulate the children like a puppet master and turn them against their own mother. Don’t make them sign papers and scoot them off to camp without the mother even knowing what transpired.
    I called Rebecca the next morning at eight o’clock, which seemed to be the earliest you could call someone when you wanted to chat over mounting an offensive.
    “Hey! You up?”
    “Yeah, I was just getting ready to go walk on the beach.”
    “Want company?”
    Rebecca paused and then said, “Sure. Why not?”
    “I’ll be there in ten.”
    I drove to Litchfield thinking about my own heavy rocks in my sack. That was the worst feature of getting involved with Rebecca’s mess. Dealing with hers might force me to face mine. I wanted to avoid that in the worst possible way. Whenever I felt a little introspection coming on, I just whacked thousands of tennis balls and golf balls, trying to forget.
    My cell phone rang. It was Huey.
    “Morning! Where are you?”
    “Actually, I’m on the way to Rebecca’s to take a walk on the beach. Want to join us?”
    “Me? Exercise? Do you want me to ruin my reputation? No, but thank you. Listen. Do you have a moment?”
    “Just about one. I’m pulling into Litchfield right now.”
    “Well, Abigail. I’ve been up all night worrying about that child. You know we have to do something, don’t you?”
    “Who?”
    “Well, obviously it’s you.”
    “Huey, I was up most of the night as well. I don’t want to get involved in this, this awful business. I’m retired.”
    “It scares you, doesn’t it?”
    “Hell, no. Nothing could scare me after what I’ve seen in this world.”
    “Humph. You can say whatever you want, but I think her trouble falls under the headline of man’s inhumanity to man. ”
    “When a couple wants out of a marriage, they can do terrible things to each other.”
    “When you know someone’s being hoodwinked, you are just as guilty if you don’t say something about it.”
    “We’ll see. I don’t have enough information yet, Huey. And it’s not like she’s asked us for help. If anything, our little questions annoy the daylights out of her.”
    “I suppose. You coming in this morning?”
    I knew what that meant.
    “Want a Coke?”
    “And a sausage biscuit?”
    “I’ll see you around ten.”
    “You’re an angel, Abigail.