The living room was in shambles. Clothes were strewn everywhere. Cushions were missing from the sofa. Cords were yanked loose from the television, DVD player, Playstation, stereo, and everything else that required electricity to run. Zack’s abundant and cherished hockey trophies were knocked off their display shelves. A few were broken, and one… one was rather creatively rammed head-first into the wall. A definite forfeit of his security deposit.
Making her way to the bedroom, she found Ronnie sitting on the edge of a chair in one corner, elbows on her knees as she patted a panting Bruiser with one hand and gnawed on the thumbnail of the other.
Grace sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, photo albums and newspaper clippings spread all around her. Obviously she’d settled down somewhat. Or rather, she’d shifted from ranting and raving to quiet and dogged personal devastation.
Because in her right hand, she held a pair of scissors with bright red handles, and was using them to thoroughly and methodically cut the photos and newspaper clippings surrounding her into tiny, unidentifiable slivers.
Her face was streaked with tears and lines of what was probably supposed to be waterproof mascara. Her hair was a blond rat’s nest, frizzy in some places, pulled straight in others. She looked like she’d been, quite literally, through the wringer.
“I tried to stop her,” Ronnie said as soon as she spotted Jenna in the doorway. “I told her she’ll be sorry later, but she won’t listen to me.”
“I won’t be sorry,” Grace insisted, not bothering to lift her gaze from her current project. “I could never be sorry. Zack is the one who’s going to be sorry.”
With that, she jumped up, grabbed an armful of the scrapbooks and paper fragments from the bedspread, and headed for the French doors overlooking a small balcony. Through the doors she went, night breeze ruffling the curtains behind her as she marched to the iron railing and pitched the records of all Zack’s sporting achievements into the street.
Some of it floated gently downward like feathers. The rest fell and landed with a resounding thunk. Jenna winced, hoping there was no one walking along the sidewalk below who might become the unwitting recipient of a memento-induced concussion or the mother of all paper cuts.
“Grace, sweetie,” she said softly as the other woman came back into the room. “Let Ronnie and me take you home. You’ll be more comfortable there, and we can stay up the rest of the night talking.”
“I don’t want to talk. I want to hurt him.”
Grace rushed across the plushly carpeted floor, throwing open the closet doors and yanking garments one by one off of their hangers. Casual shirts and slacks, suits, hockey jerseys, a tuxedo… she piled up as much as she could carry and stormed back across the room, tossing everything over the railing to join the rest of Zack’s belongings on the street.
This was getting out of control. If they didn’t stop her soon the cops really would be called, and Grace would likely be hauled away for destruction of property, littering, and breaking and entering, among other things.
On Grace’s next trip inside, Jenna blurted out a question she knew would get her friend’s attention. “Are you sure he cheated on you?”
As intended, the query drew Grace to a halt in the center of the room. Blond curls floated around her face as she turned on Jenna, eyes narrowed and blazing fire.
“Are you taking his side?” she demanded. “Do you think I’m making this up?”
If Jenna didn’t know better, she’d swear she was about to be on the wrong end of a rotisserie spear.
“Of course not,” she replied evenly, hoping to bring Grace’s level of rage down just a notch. “But I wasn’t there, so I don’t really know what happened. Can you fill me in?”
Behind Grace, Ronnie slowly straightened in her seat, bobbing her head up and down. Yes, yes, she mouthed, keep going.
“He’s a lying, cheating bastard,” Grace spat. But she didn’t move closer to the closet or back toward the balcony. “I went there to surprise him. Ronnie and I went there to surprise both of them.”
Anger tinged her words, but there was sadness there, too, and her eyes glistened with tears. “She was in his bed, half naked, and he was in the shower. What does that tell you?”
“That he’s a lying, cheating bastard,” Jenna agreed. And then a second later, she wiped her brow with the back of her hand and said, “Boy, it’s warm in here. Are you warm? I could use a drink, how about you?”
Grace blinked a few times, as though trying to follow the rapid switch in topics. No doubt she was so focused on her own misery that nothing else made much sense to her.
Jenna had been there a time or two herself. Not dealing with infidelity, but a betrayal all the same. When Gage had started pulling away and it had become clear divorce was in her future, she’d gone a little crazy, too.
For months, she’d walked around in a daze. She functioned, she communicated, she went to work and came home, went to her Wednesday-night knitting group and for drinks afterwards with her friends.
But the whole time, she’d felt removed from everyone and everything around her. Her entire focus, her every thought had been on Gage… how much she’d loved him, how much he’d disappointed her, the life they were supposed to have had together, and the life they now never would. Everything else was just white noise.
So she knew how Grace felt, knew what she was going through and the kinds of thoughts that were racing around in her brain.
She also knew that if she could just keep Grace distracted, she and Ronnie might be able to calm her down enough that she wouldn’t do anything stupid or make matters worse.
“I’m sure Zack has something in the fridge. Help yourself,” Grace told her distractedly.
Jenna gave a snort, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and cocking a hip. “No, thank you. I don’t want anything from that jerk-off. And you shouldn’t, either. You don’t even want to be here, do you? I mean, why give him the satisfaction of knowing he’s hurt you? When he gets home and sees this place, he’ll realize how upset you were and probably get a kick out of it, asshole that he is.”
It took a second for Grace to absorb what Jenna was saying, but then her eyes narrowed, widened, and narrowed again.
“You’re right. Why am I even here?”
Behind her, Ronnie bounced to her feet, and Bruiser bounded up beside her.
“I’m better than this. I’m better than he is. He never deserved me.”
“No, he didn’t,” Jenna concurred, because she knew it was what Grace needed to hear. And heck, it was probably true.
“Let’s go somewhere else-your place or Ronnie’s. You can even come out to Aunt Charlotte’s and stay with me for a while, if you want.”
Grace shook her head. “I want to go home. I want to drink wine, and eat Oreos, and sleep until I’m old and gray.”
Both Jenna and Ronnie nodded, flanking their friend, each looping an arm through one of hers to lead her out of the bedroom.
“Sounds good to me,” Jenna said. “We’ll stop for massive quantities of wine and cookies on the way.”
They had Grace halfway across the living room when she stopped, muttered, “Wait,” and turned back toward the bedroom. Jenna and Ronnie raced after her, afraid of what she might be up to, but then gave mirrored sighs of relief when all she did was grab an old taped and battered hockey stick from the rear of Zack’s closet.
Grace returned a second later, stick in hand. “This is mine now,” she told them.
Jenna and Ronnie exchanged a glance, silently agreeing not to question or argue. They had Grace calmed down and moving in the right direction; that’s all that mattered. If she wanted to steal a single piece of hockey equipment in order to stick it-pun intended-to Zack, they weren’t going to fight her on it.