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"I'm going out to dinner with a friend tonight, so Grandma is going to watch you."
Grace was quiet for a moment. She sat there tracing over the pattern on my comforter with her finger and then turned her big brown eyes on me. "Are you going out with the lady from the bookstore?"
Instantly, I turned away from her. Was Valerie putting this information into Grace’s head? I knew she was perceptive as hell and wondered if perhaps she’d overheard Valerie ask me if I’d been with a woman the day I was late to pick up Grace. I composed myself, and then nodded. "Yes, Grace, it is Iris. She seems like a nice lady, don't you think?"
Grace said nothing for a few moments, then nodded. “She’s okay.”
I gave myself a once-over in the mirror, dark dress pants and a white dress shirt in an Italian restaurant. I went over to my closet and pulled out a black dress shirt and quickly changed.
“That’s better. You look handsome,” Grace said, sliding off the bed.
I looked down at her and smiled. “Want to walk me to the door?” I questioned.
Grace grabbed my hand and pulled me out of my bedroom and down the stairs to the front door. Minutes later, she stood with my mother, both of them waving as I backed out of the driveway and turned in the direction toward the restaurant.
Zach
I watched her walk across the parking lot and the second she saw me, she smiled. She looked beautiful in the dress she wore, her hair falling over her left shoulder.
I leaned in for a quick hug and then placed my hand on her lower back and guided her into the restaurant. They seated us over in the corner, away from almost everyone, which just added a little more intimacy to this date.
I swallowed hard as I closed the menu, finally having decided what I was going to order. She did the same, then picked up her wineglass and took a sip.
"Okay, so before we get started. I have a question; one I hope isn’t too private to ask."
"Shoot."
She fidgeted in her seat and then leaned across and whispered, "Are you sure? It is sort of personal."
I swallowed. "No problem. I'm a pretty open book."
She looked around, and once again leaned over the table toward me. "What was your relationship like with your ex-wife?"
The second the words were past her lips, I choked on my wine. I hadn't been expecting a question like that right off the bat.
"I'm sorry, I just thought I'd ask. I'm probably prying way too much. It’s my sister and mother’s fault. They were filling my head with many things before I left tonight. I'm sorry about that." She looked around the restaurant, no doubt trying to figure out how on earth she was going to recover from asking me this type of personal question.
I took a sip of water, clearing my throat, and reached across the table, taking her hand in mine. "Iris, don't worry. You haven't upset me. I just wasn’t expecting you to ask me that. However, I really don't want to start off on the wrong foot. That is why I said I was an open book.”
"Oh no, Zach, really, I shouldn't be prying like that," she said, her cheeks growing a little more red.
"You aren’t. So, now my ex, well, things were great until they weren't. As is usually the case. It started mainly with petty arguments. Things couple always fight over: who was going to vacuum, who was going to unload the dishwasher and do laundry over the weekend. At first, we'd been able to laugh them off, and then things turned nasty.
“We got irritated with one another easily. She'd call names, I'd call them back. These petty, silly disagreements slowly morphed into larger, more serious arguments. Soon we found we were spending our Sundays fighting over finances and attacking one another instead.
“I worked a considerably stressful job—I was a CFO of a large financial corporation—the hours were long, the pay was amazing, but she loved to spend. I never said no. In fact, I encouraged it.
“One night she came home, I'd had a stressful day at work, and she carried with her two large bags from Louis Vuitton. In the blink of an eye, she'd spent nearly ten grand on things she clearly didn't need. Her closet was full of all kinds of bags from there that I’d gotten her over the course of the previous year. When I voiced my concern, she just laughed it off, but then broke down into tears, saying I didn't want to see her happy."
I picked up my wineglass and took a drink. "Shortly after that, she asked if I minded if she took a vacation with some friends of hers. Grace was about four, and with the hours I'd been working, the personal side of our relationship was beginning to suffer. I figured maybe it would do us good to have some time apart. So, I agreed and hired daycare for Grace for a week."
"What happened?" Iris questioned, eyes wide.
"Well, when she returned, so did the arguments. At the end of the summer, things were rocky at home. One afternoon, I came home and found Valerie crying in the living room. She claimed Grace was becoming too much for her to handle. She told me her doctors diagnosed her with a bout of depression, so to take the pressure off I put Grace into daycare at my office three days a week. Soon after when I'd come home with Grace at five, Valerie would be nowhere to be found.
“Over the coming weeks, this became a common occurrence. One evening I’d come home with Grace. We were in the middle of a huge audit at work, and I’d been told I had to return a couple of hours later. However, Valerie didn’t come home that night, and I couldn’t get ahold of our sitter, so I had to work from home. After Grace was in bed, I’d come down into the kitchen a few hours later to refill my coffee, and that was when I spotted Valerie. She was outside in our backyard in the hot tub with another man.”
“What? Oh, Zach, I'm so sorry. What did you do?"
