Wanting Mrs. Clarke by Carol Wyatt

Author:Carol Wyatt [Wyatt, Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

16

Not for the first time Hollis was thankful that her and her husband led relatively separate lives. She didn’t need to come up with some kind of cover story for when she’d met with her lawyer twice in the last three weeks. She just left the house the very same way she would if she was meeting a client or a vendor or one of her design team.

She’d come right from her afternoon meeting with her lawyer and stepped into the cozy Italian restaurant, the aroma of garlic and rosemary filling her senses. She spotted her best friend, Jennifer, already seated at a corner booth and made her way over.

Jennifer smiled when she saw her and slid out of the booth, wrapping her arms around her in a long hug. Her strawberry blond hair fell just above her shoulders. “Is it done?”

“Yeah,” Hollis said as she pulled away, still not quite believing it herself. “Thank you for recommending that firm,” she said as they sat down across from one another. “Everything is somehow so efficient, yet they make you feel like this is the only case they’re working on? I don’t know how they do it, but they certainly made the whole process easier.”

“Well, my divorce was easy in the sense that we both wanted it, and there was nothing to fight about. We both met new people and couldn’t wait to end what had become more of a friendship than a marriage. What’s Dave been like?”

“I haven’t told him yet,” Hollis said as a waiter approached their table, and they ordered a bottle of wine to share. “That’s tonight’s job,” she said when they were alone again.

“Oh shit. Well, you know you can call me, whenever. I mean it. I’m sure he’ll be surprised. Hell, I was surprised when you called. I had no idea you were so unhappy.”

Hollis’s heart skipped a beat. This was the moment where she had to say it. It wasn’t right keeping her best friend in the dark like this, and even for herself, she felt like she needed to say it out loud. “I wrote down ‘irreconcilable differences.’ But it’s more than me not being happy.”

Their waiter returned with their bottle of wine at the worst possible moment, and Hollis motioned for Jennifer to do the taste test. Hollis reached for the glass of water, gulping it, her hand shaking slightly as she put the glass down.

Jennifer nodded her approval after she’d had a sip, and the waiter poured out two glasses before taking their meal order. Hollis hadn’t even looked at the menu, but she got her favorite dish here, lobster ravioli.

“So, what was it?” Jennifer asked a few moments later.

Hollis’s throat was tight, and she didn’t know why this was such a big deal. She’d known Jennifer for close to twenty-years, but the words still struggled to come out. “I’ve known for a while now that um...” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “That I wasn’t happy, and that I never could be.

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