How to Kill Your Husband by Keith Thomas Walker

Author:Keith Thomas Walker
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58571-604-3
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2012-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

IT’S A GO

George had plans to take the kids to the track the next morning, and Claire was happy to be excluded from the venture. She sat on the corner of Stacy’s bed with a hot curling iron crimped in her daughter’s hair. Stacy wore a denim skirt with leather sandals. Her white T-shirt had the word SPUNKY doodled across the chest in yellow lettering. Claire wore a green terry bathrobe with fuzzy slippers. She also wore the look of a woman not long for this world. Nikki eyed her mom curiously from Stacy’s computer desk.

“Are you going back to sleep?” she asked.

Claire looked over at her lackadaisically. “No. Why?”

“You look tired,” Nikki observed, “like you’re gonna pass out.”

Stacy looked up with a start. “Don’t burn my hair!” She held up a hand mirror and scrutinized her mother in the reflection.

“I’m not going to burn your hair,” Claire assured her.

“Did you and Daddy argue last night?” Nikki wanted to know.

“What makes you say that?” Claire asked without looking away from Stacy’s head.

“Y’all was mad at dinner,” Stacy said.

“Were mad,” Claire corrected. “And what did we do to give you that impression?”

“Y’all weren’t talking,” Nikki said. “You’re usually happy when Dad eats dinner with us, but you weren’t yesterday. Y’all just looked at each other crazy the whole time.”

“And then you left,” Stacy reminded her mother.

“In the middle of dinner,” Nikki noted. “Where’d you go?”

Claire gave her a look then. “I’m pretty sure, no…Yeah! I remember now: I was in labor for seven hours giving birth to you—not the other way around.”

Nikki rolled her eyes. “I know that.”

“Stop trying to act like you’re the mama, then,” Stacy said. “Right, Mama?”

Claire grinned weakly.

“So, where did you go, Mama?” Stacy asked.

Claire thumped the back of her ear. “Hypocrite.”

“Ouch! I’m not a hypocrite!”

“You don’t even know what hypocrite means,” Nikki ventured.

Stacy opened her mouth to say something and then shut it angrily.

“A hypocrite is someone who tells people not to do something, but then they turn around and do it themselves,” Claire explained. “Like when America built all of those nuclear bombs and then got mad at any other country that tried to build nukes. And I went to Melanie’s house last night, nosey.”

“Was Trevon there?” Stacy asked with a slick grin.

“He doesn’t like you,” Nikki informed.

“Shut up.”

“Was Aunt Melanie in trouble?” Nikki asked her mother. “Is that why you were mad?”

“Everything’s fine,” Claire assured her. “Why are you so concerned?”

Nikki shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t like to see you and Daddy like that.”

Claire stared into her daughter’s soft eyes, and she felt a little guilty for last night’s antics. Melanie had her focused so much on the hate that Claire forgot there were three innocent souls in the middle of all this. She knew that no matter what the outcome, the kids would still love and respect their father. The girls wanted to marry a man just like him, and George Jr. wanted to grow up and be his dad. Claire wondered how they would respond to her once she divorced their hero.

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