The Trophy Wife by Sunday Tomassetti

Author:Sunday Tomassetti [Tomassetti, Sunday]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

19

Cate

“I’m going to get you!” Sean’s teasing threat is followed by a cacophony of kid-sized giggles.

I’ve taken up residence in a lounge chair next to his parents’ pool Saturday. Several yards ahead, Sean swim-chases his nieces and nephews around in the water, pretending to be a shark. They scream and laugh and doggy paddle away as fast as their little arms and legs allow until he catches one of them, and then they start all over again.

His brother-in-law mans the grill next to the patio, shooting the breeze with Sean’s dad. Inside, his mother and sisters are probably putting candles on his niece’s seventh birthday cake and gossiping about my withdrawn state today.

Normally I try to put my small-talk-hating ways aside when it comes to his family. They’re good people (save for the one narcissistic sister that everybody tolerates and her braggadocios attorney husband) and they’re his earth, moon, and stars. Visiting them can sometimes feel like a social chore for me, and oftentimes I leave with cheeks sore from smiling so much, mentally exhausted from all the conversating.

But today I haven’t the energy to so much as attempt to fake it.

“You doing okay over there?” Sean asks, bobbing up and down as one of his nephews climbs over his back.

I nod, force my lips to curl at the sides until they show some semblance of a convincing smile, but he must not buy it, and soon he’s swimming to the ladder. Within seconds, he climbs out, wraps himself in a sunbaked beach towel covered in faded flamingos, and takes a seat at the foot of my lounger.

“You have to let it go,” he says.

“I’m trying.”

This past Wednesday Odessa dropped off a box of items she wanted to sell, one of which was a Winthrop timepiece worth tens of thousands of dollars. Later that afternoon, Elinor happened to be going through it all and thought it was odd that she’d have so casually tossed it in with a few “lesser” items, not so much as a velvet pouch to keep it from getting scratched. Deciding to check its authenticity, she pulled up the Winthrop database and typed in the serial number on the back. When it showed as registered to a local woman by the name of Aviva DuVernay, she decided to give her a call.

I wasn’t overly concerned at first, wanting desperately to give her the benefit of the doubt. Crossing my fingers in hopes that Aviva DuVernay was an aunt or grandmother or sister, a family member who gifted her the watch. But the woman on the phone confirmed she was indeed the owner of the watch—and subsequently the other items Odessa had carried in with her that morning. None of them were to be sold, she said. She promised to be there within an hour to retrieve her items, but my shift was over and Amada arrived early of all things, so I wasn’t able to stick around. But I did linger in my car, waiting and watching for the other Mrs.

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