Free Monarch Beach by Anita Hughes Page B

to move and wake Max. I didn’t want to talk to Andre; I didn’t want to see him. I heard Andre go into our bedroom. I imagined him undressing and climbing into bed. I buried my face in Max’s pillow and surrendered to sleep.
    Black Tuesday was finally over.

Chapter Three
    When I pulled up at my mother’s house the next morning, I was reminded of how wealthy she was. Her attorney made house calls. Dean Birney, senior partner of Birney and Sutton, arrived before me, his black Mercedes with its tinted windows and gold rims parked in the driveway. I parked behind him and opened my door. The wheels of divorce were in motion.
    Rosemary threw open the front door before I made it up the steps. I had called my mother after I dropped Max off at school and told her the whole story.
    “Drive right over here. I’m calling Dean Birney,” she instructed. I could almost hear her fishing for a cigarette.
    “Shouldn’t we take this slowly?” I asked as I maneuvered onto the Golden Gate Bridge. I hoped she would tell me I was being hasty, all marriages had problems, even she and my father weathered low periods. But she hadn’t. Instead she started swearing under her breath, either at Andre or at the cigarette she was trying to light. I hung up and concentrated on my driving.
    Now I stood in the foyer and let Rosemary hug me. Rosemary had been hugging me all my life: when I failed a Spanish test in the first grade, when the kids in middle school made fun of me for having a neck like a giraffe, and when she found the crumpled college acceptance letters in my garbage can.
    Until yesterday I had a husband to hug me. But he turned out to be a lying, cheating scumbag. I straightened my black Max Azria side-slit skirt and joined my mother and Dean Birney in the morning room.
    “Amanda.” Dean stood up when I entered. “Grace has been briefing me on the situation.” Dean Birney was in his early sixties. He had a thick head of white hair, a long nose, and thin lips. In the thirty years he had been our attorney I had only seen him smile twice: at my father’s sixtieth birthday party, and at my parents’ silver anniversary. He was Harvard educated and fiercely loyal. Andre Blick was a dead man.
    My mother held my face, checking for pain. Her hair was the same white-blond shade it had been all my life, cut in the same sleek pageboy. She wore a two-piece navy Dior suit and an ivory silk blouse. I glanced at my watch: It was ten a.m. and my mother looked as if she was dressed for an evening at Masa’s, or for battle with an errant son-in-law.
    She sat next to Dean and motioned for me to sit on her other side. She reached for her packet of cigarettes and lit one before I could protest. The year Max was born she tried to give up smoking but failed. Now she insisted she only smoked one pack a day, and Rosemary backed her up, but for all I knew she bribed Rosemary to fib to me. I noticed she wore her Dior belt on its tightest notch and her skin was a translucent shade of gray. I promised myself I would say something when I could think straight.
    “You discovered your husband has been having affairs for at least eight years and you want to file for divorce,” Dean said matter-of-factly.
    I looked from Dean to my mother. I was thankful she had briefed him so I didn’t have to repeat the details, but the more people who knew, the more real Andre’s infidelities became. I glanced at the sideboard to see if Rosemary had put out any alcohol—a bottle of scotch would have done nicely—but there was only coffee, tea, and lemon. I’d have to survive on caffeine until lunchtime. I got up and poured myself a cup of black coffee, my third for the day.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “He admitted to having affairs?” Dean asked.
    “I caught him in the act. He wasn’t playing canasta.”
    “Does he want a divorce?”
    “No.” I shook my head.
    “But he doesn’t want to give up the other woman?”
    “He said he’d fire her. He said it meant nothing,