Well, another day, another post. Today I continue the saga of Amber and Brad that I began yesterday. I hoped to finish it in two installments, but my characters are not cooperating. So, tonight, installment two; hope it finishes in three. Still, we are getting a story that combines elements from the stories of many women, women who have been faced with…oh, yes, I could say it today, since I do reveal, but…I’ll let you read on.

THE NEW WOMAN, PART II

A strange woman answered the door when Amber arrived the next morning. Was this the woman on the phone? Had she been there all night? Mark was racing around again, still not able to find everything he needed for school. Lucia perched on the end of the sofa biting her nails. Amber noted her posture. She was nervous about something. Lucia only bit her nails when she was scared or angry.

“You must be…Pam, is it?” The woman held out her hand, and Amber shook it, mostly because she sensed the other woman didn’t want her to.

“Yes, Pam. I’m…here to work. Are you…their mother? Are you going to be here for the day?” Amber almost choked over the words, but managed to keep the fury out of her voice.

“Oh, goodness, no, I’m not their mother. If I were their mother…” The woman broke off. “I’m Marguerite. You can call me…Marguerite.” The thin smile didn’t reach her eyes or her voice. “I’ll be leaving in a minute, as soon as I can find me…Brad! Did you find it?”

Brad stumbled out of the bedroom holding an earring. “Yes, it was tangled in the bedclothes. You really should take them off before…” He noticed Amber and stopped. “Oh, Pam. You’re here.”

Amber nodded. There didn’t seem to be anything to say at the moment. She helped Mark pull on his snow boots, and zipped up Lucia’s coat, since the other adults in the room appeared not to notice the children needed assistance. Brad was watching Marguerite insert the earring into her naked ear, restoring the symmetry that made her a picture of elegance. Amber kept her eyes on the children, but her senses were alert to any move or sound the other two made.

“Could you give me a ride, Boopsie?” Marguerite arched her back and rubbed against Brad. “Since you don’t have a job today, I mean?”

Brad nodded. Amber noted the move, and the lack of work for the day. She would remember that for the journal she was keeping. The children were ready, and she stepped back to inspect them. “You’re great”, she said. “Ready to go.” She managed to keep the tears out of her voice, but it wasn’t easy.

“C’mon, Magpie.” Brad grabbed the other woman’s hand and steered her toward the door. “You’ll be late for your shoot.”

Amber realized this was the woman Brad had left her for, the model he had become enamored with, the one who made his wife seem quotidian, ordinary, down to earth. Amber had never pretended to be exotic, and watching Marguerite now, she was glad she had never adopted that style. The woman oozed insincerity, but Brad didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t take his eyes off her even as he asked Amber to run a couple of errands for him after the kids left.

When they were out the door, Lucia relaxed. She leaned against Amber as she pulled on her own snow boots and grabbed her homework. Amber heard her laugh for the first time that morning as Mark cracked a corny joke and tickled his sister. The children seemed to come alive as soon as their father and his Magpie left. They wanted her to give them a kiss before they caught the bus, and she gave each of them a peck on the cheek, careful not to linger too long over the morning routine. Her kids were sharp. She might not be able to hide for long.

Once the bus had pulled away, Amber headed for the post office. Apparently Brad no longer received deliveries at the house, even though there was still a mail box. Why someone as lazy as her ex-husband would set up a system where he had to actually do some work to pick up the mail, she had no idea. Oh, well, now he had her to pick up his mail for him. Just like old times.

Her hands shook as she pulled the envelopes out of the box. The familiar handwriting taunted her. Her own neat printing on the envelope containing the check that he was supposed to use to raise her children, the child support she paid every month, more than the law required because her lawyer was too immersed in a high profile case and didn’t take any real time with her. Brad had wanted her out of the house, but had done his best to figure out how to keep her salary when she left. After all, she had made more than twice what he did, mostly because he worked only sporadically.

Amber laid the envelopes on his desk, now clean and sparkling after she had scraped the layer of spilled coffee and chocolate off the surface yesterday. She moved through the house doing the familiar chores that had been her regular routine until a year ago. She lingered in Lucia’s bedroom, wanting to…what? She just wanted to absorb, she thought. Just wanted to be where her daughter spent her time. Mark’s bedroom had the unmistakable smell of her young son, and it was difficult for her to leave that room, as well. She missed her children…they were the only reason she had put up with Brad so long once she realized what sort of man he was.

The house clean, the kids gone, she had no real work to do. She opened her laptop to try and finish the project Randy had assigned her last week, but her mind wasn’t on her work right now. There would be time for that later. She sat back and closed her eyes, remaining alert for the sound of her ex-husband coming up the drive. Since he always arrived like he had the other day, it shouldn’t be too difficult to hear him.

She retraced every second of that morning, and the phone call the day before. She fumed again, remembering how Brad had managed to get the children, and deny her even visitation, by detailing for the judge how she was dating a man who sometimes came over to her apartment. That would be bad for the children, he said. A mother needs to set a good example. He knew that Randy had stayed the night a couple of times; he had apparently spied on her. Her testimony that he had never been there when the children were there, but only when they were visiting their father, had done no good. The judge simply hadn’t believed her.

Amber had told her lawyer she was sure that Brad had a woman friend, and that he was seeing her when the children were around. She said she didn’t mind that, it was normal for divorced people to see new people, but she thought maybe that fact could even out their case, and give her a chance to keep her children. After all, if it was okay for him to see someone, why shouldn’t it be okay for her? Her lawyer said it wouldn’t matter, the courts held mothers to a higher standard. Amber didn’t believe him, but since that time, she had learned that many courts, and particularly the judge on their hearing, believed that mothers should be saints at all times, even when their children were not in the house.

When the advertisement appeared, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. She could get back inside the house, find out how things were, and maybe get enough information to at least show the courts he was no better a parent than her. What she had seen already had convinced her he wasn’t a good parent at all, not that she was surprised. He had no interest in the children before, and he seemed to have no interest in them now. They were his weapon in a battle he was fighting, a battle she hadn’t engaged until it was too late. Now she was going to fight, and fight dirty if she needed.

The car skidded down the street as Brad worked to make sure he got the maximum spin before it came to a rest. Somehow he managed to do that even when the roads were perfect. He thought it made him look like a man. She thought it made him look like a teenager; in fact, when they were teens, she thought it was cute. She had been rather naïve then, she realized.

Amber was at the sink when Brad entered, putting the finishing touches on a sandwich for his lunch. Ham and Swiss; even if she hadn’t known what he liked, it would have been easy to tell from the contents of the refrigerator. He had little else in there. She handed him the plate and he took it to the dining room without a word. He settled in at the table with his smart phone and busied himself with sending messages.

“Did I get any mail?” He looked at Amber for the first time that day. She nodded.

“It’s on your desk. I could bring it to you, if you want.”

She collected the mail and dropped it in front of him. She slipped the envelope with the child support on the bottom of the stack. Make him work at least a little bit for the money, she thought. I certainly worked for it.

His face brightened when he found the envelope. “Well, look at this. One thing I’ve got to say…the bitch is certainly prompt. Not a single late check since the day I threw her ass out the door.”

Amber remembered that day. He hadn’t technically thrown her ass out the door. He had thrown her shoes and her clothes out the door. They were on the lawn when she got home. She could sense the neighbors watching from behind their drapes. Several of them had testified at the custody hearing that she must have done something terrible indeed to make such a nice man so angry. She hadn’t. The only thing she had done was be his wife when he wanted another woman.

True, they hadn’t been getting along. They’d been fighting a lot, and she hadn’t hesitated to say a few choice things about his habits. She was tired of his laziness, his inability to hold a job for more than a few days, and his obliviousness to any world outside that piece of technology he held constantly, fingering it as though it held the secrets of the universe. A few days before, she had discovered the suspicious texts, the ones from a model that signed only as M…a woman he had been having an affair with for several months, as she found out.

She hadn’t started going out with Randy for three months after they split. She had resisted his approaches, because she wasn’t interested in getting hooked up with another man, particularly not another man who was still tied to his mother because he didn’t know how to look after himself. But Randy was fun to be around, and made her laugh, and she finally said yes to his invitation to go to dinner. She hadn’t slept with him, though, not until they had been dating for some time. In fact, at the time she lost custody of her children, she had not yet slept with him. He had been to her house, that was true, but he had not stayed the night. The latest he had ever stayed was one night when they played Scrabble until one a.m. because he wouldn’t leave until he had one a game. She didn’t feel right about sleeping with a man when she was still legally married to another. Brad had no such scruples.

“Sweetheart, you’re beautiful.”

Amber jerked her head in his direction, but Brad was talking to the check. He even kissed it. Man, he had gotten even weirder than he used to be. She shook her head and tried to ignore him. It was best if he didn’t know she noticed.

“Do you need me to stay, since you’re home?” Amber didn’t like being here while Brad was here; she wanted to escape. It felt strange.

“Yeah. I need you to get the kids off the bus and watch them this afternoon. I got a lot of things to do, and I can’t have them interfering with my work right now.”

Brad didn’t realize that Amber…Pam…knew that he had no work. He worked only when called by the agency that supplied accountants to clean up books for audits. He was always the last one called, because he was unreliable. Oh, he was a good enough accountant, but he was flighty. He only worked regularly during tax time. Another month, and he’d probably have a job every day for a while. Today he was probably planning to sleep off his long night. He had once complained to a friend, not aware that his wife could hear him, that Marguerite was so demanding he didn’t know if he could keep up with her. That was when Amber learned he was having an affair.

“Bitch.” Brad was mumbling, but Amber heard. She knew he was mumbling about her, probably noticing the note she had written in the memo section on the check: ‘Support for lazy no good man who can’t make a living’. “Who does she think she is, the cunt?”

Amber resisted the urge to slap him. He knew she hated that word; he was only using it because she wasn’t there, or at least he thought she wasn’t. She knew he used it about women because he let it slip sometimes when they were together. He got better at keeping it to himself the time she refused to have sex with him for a week after hearing him refer to his sister that way. He crawled back to her, begging her to forgive him, after a few days of blustering about how he wasn’t going to give in to any woman. He still loved her then…or at least lusted after her. That was before Marguerite.

The rest of the day crawled by. She couldn’t do her work with him there; he wouldn’t expect his housekeeper to have another job, and if he saw the logo on her computer, he would know she worked at the same place as his ex-wife. That might lead to questions she would rather not answer. So she pretended to clean, even though the house was clean enough now to satisfy the most finicky of tastes. She had been a whirlwind yesterday, unable to settle until the last speck of grime had been cleared. So she moved from room to room, bored and restless, until he finished his sandwich and a half a package of Oreos and headed toward his bedroom. Then she settled on the couch and tried to plan the rest of her week.

Getting the children off the bus and watching them for the afternoon was her favorite part of the day. She played games with the kids, the games she played with them when they lived together. She caught Lucia looking at her with that acute, penetrating gaze now and then, but Mark seemed oblivious to any resemblance between this new woman and their mother. He just enjoyed having the attention for the first time since their mother left. He leaned into her and rested his head against her arm; she put her arm around him and stroked his head.

It was hard when the time came to leave. Yesterday, when it coincided with Brad getting home, it was easy. But today he was still in his room when she left, assuring the children she would be back tomorrow. She couldn’t stay any longer and wait for him to get up, because she had to get back to her work. And she had a date with Randy that night. She had not told Randy why she needed her schedule changed; he would not approve. He might alert Brad, because he hated deception. She had to maintain her normal routine, at least for now, so no one would get suspicious.

Marguerite arrived just as she was leaving. She answered the door and the other woman swept into the room as if she were a queen. Amber told her Brad was in his room working, and the other woman settled on the sofa to wait for him. She held her arms out to Lucia as if to invite the girl into her embrace, but Lucia shook her head.

“I want to go with Pamela”, she whispered.

“You can’t go with Pamela. You have to stay with your father.” Marguerite had a look on her face that suggested she would like the little girl to go with Pamela, too. “Pam has to get home to her own…do you have kids, Pam?”

“No, I…I’m single.”

“Yeah, like that means you can’t have kids.” Marguerite gave a snarky laugh.

“I do have to go, though. I have…quite a few errands I have to run.” Amber snatched up her bag and got out the door without looking at the children. She knew if she did, the look in Lucia’s eyes would have held her there, and probably led her to do something that would reveal herself before her plan had been completed.

TO BE CONTINUED