The Pre-Nup Read online

  “Then why, may I ask, am I being forced to spend a Friday night trying on twee bridesmaid dresses?”

  “Don’t complain. You’re getting off easy,” Mara said. “No tulle, no petticoats, no beribboned hats. Lucky for you, I have excellent taste.”

  Ellie glanced down at the clingy, off-the-shoulder cocktail dress that barely covered her bosom. “But black satin? For a June wedding?”

  “She’s just doing it to annoy her mother.” Jen emerged from the dressing room. The sample size absolutely swam on her petite, muscular frame, and the salesclerk abandoned Ellie to pin in the waist, hips, and chest on Jen.

  Mara grinned. “Oh, how well you know me.”

  “Wow.” Ellie’s shoulders slumped. “You look gorgeous.”

  Jen wrinkled up her nose. “Such sincerity.”

  “No, I mean it.” Ellie plucked at the fabric draped across her breasts. “You look all thin and effervescent and I just…don’t.”

  Mara stashed her paperwork back in her briefcase and focused on her friends. “Ellie, hon, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” Ellie rubbed the back of her neck. “Everything.”

  “This is about Michael,” Jen predicted.

  “Of course it’s about Michael. I just keep asking myself why he did it. Why why why?”

  “I have a theory about that,” Mara said. “It has to do with the fact that he’s a complete tool.”

  “Repeat after me.” Jen hiked up her hemline and crossed over to Ellie. “This is not your fault. Nothing you did or didn’t do made him cheat. You’re an excellent wife. An excellent mom.”

  “Well, if I had nothing to do with anything, that leaves me completely powerless, doesn’t it?” Ellie dropped her arms in frustration. “We went to our first couples’ counseling session this week.”

  Mara leaned forward. “And? How was it?”

  “Well.” Ellie chose her words carefully. “It was interesting. The therapist asked why we were there, and Michael basically threw himself under the bus. He said he’d do anything to earn back my trust. You know, give me all his e-mail passwords, et cetera.”

  “Well, what do you think?” Jen asked. “Do you believe him?”

  “I don’t know,” Ellie mused. “I want to believe him, but I’m afraid to. He sleeps in the guest room; he acts totally attentive and remorseful. At least I’m not homicidal with rage anymore. I feel…frozen. Empty. But I guess we have to start somewhere if we’re going to rebuild.” She clapped her hands together and smoothed out the satin puckering around her hips. “I shouldn’t be talking like this in front of the blushing bride-to-be.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s me.” Mara rolled her eyes. “All lace and lily of the valley.”

  “You and Josh are both being ridiculous,” Jen admonished. “Why don’t you just sit down together and talk it out?”

  “Talk it out? Sure. Look what happened the last time we had problems and decided to ‘talk things out’: I ended up with some skeevy guy at a bar and a lifetime of guilt.”

  “Wait, what?” Ellie stopped fussing with her gown and whipped around to face Mara. “What are you talking about?”

  Mara’s eyes widened to cartoonish proportions. “Oops. Forget I said anything.”

  “About a skeevy guy at a bar and a lifetime of guilt? I don’t think so. Spill.”

  Mara turned on Jen. “Look what you made me do!”

  “You brought it up, not me,” Jen pointed out.

  “Since when do you two keep secrets from me?” Ellie couldn’t keep the hurt out of her voice.

  “We all have secrets,” Mara said. “You got into law school, I had a one-night stand.”

  Ellie was torn between feeling offended and ravenous for details. Curiosity quickly won out. “When?”

  Mara glanced helplessly at the bridal magazines and gown catalogs stacked on the coffee table next to her chair. “Do we really have to get into this right now?”

  “Yes!”

  The sales assistant backed out of the dressing room with a vague, polite smile. “I’ll put a rush on the order for the black satin. Let us know if you need anything else.”

  When the three friends had the dressing room to themselves, Mara huffed and harrumphed and finally confessed. “It was a while ago. Josh and I were starting to get serious and I freaked out and pulled away, so then he freaked out and started making impossible demands.”

  “What kind of impossible demands?”

  “Oh, crazy stuff like he wanted to adopt a dog and buy a house together. And the more I told him I wasn’t ready for that, the harder he pushed. He would leave my Internet browser open to Petfinder.com, stuff like that.”

  “Diabolical,” Jen teased.

  “I know! He knew I couldn’t even keep a houseplant alive, let alone a four-legged mammal. As for cohabitation, I think you will have to agree that has not worked out well for me in the past.”

  Ellie did agree. However, she attributed Mara’s dismal romantic track record more to the character of the men involved than to specific living arrangements.

  “I told him all that right from our first date. Which, come to think of it, was all your fault.” She looked accusingly at Ellie.

  “My fault?”

  “Yeah. You strong-armed me into going to that food bank fundraiser where I met him and now look at my life: a shambles! I should have stayed off the charity circuit and stuck to the martini bars in Old Town. I’m way too dysfunctional to make it work with a do-gooder.” Mara grimaced. “Anyway, we’d only been seeing each other for like six months and one Sunday, he talked me into hitting an open house in Fountain Hills and he told the Realtor we were in the market for a three-bedroom and I said no we weren’t and we got into a huge blowout in some stranger’s kitchen. I left for a firm retreat the next day and…” She gritted her teeth. “Mistakes were made. You had just had Hannah and you were overwhelmed and sleep-deprived and—”

  Ellie lifted her chin. “Oh, I see how it is. I get a touch of postpartum depression, and my best friends go AWOL on me.”

  “I didn’t want to stress you out more!” Mara cried.

  “This was right at the height of Hannah’s colic,” Jen said. “Don’t you remember how frazzled you were?”

  “I’ve blocked it out,” Ellie said. “Nature’s way of tricking you into considering a second child.”

  “Well, I remember,” Mara declared. “You were hanging on by one bloody fingernail. And then, by the time you got your head above water, I just wanted to forget the whole thing ever happened.”

  Ellie searched for a glimmer of hope here, and she found it in the engagement ring on Mara’s left hand. “But you and Josh managed to work it out, right?”

  “Um, have you noticed that he and I aren’t speaking to each other?” Mara said. “We analyzed the whole thing to death for over two years, and what good did it do us? He still doesn’t trust me.” She turned to Jen. “I should have just taken your advice and never told him.”

  Ellie turned to Jen. “You told her not to tell Josh she slept with someone else?”

  “Well, yeah.” Jen started to squirm. “I mean, if he was never going to find out otherwise, and she was truly sorry and would never, ever do it again, what was the point of tormenting him by telling him?”

  “How about honesty?” Ellie bristled.

  “She would have to be honest with herself about what she did. Living with the guilt and remorse would be her punishment.” Jen fluffed up her short blond waves.

  “Guilt and remorse? Give me a break.” Ellie rolled her eyes. “That sounds like something Michael would say.”

  “Whoa.” Mara motioned for a time-out. “Let’s not turn this into a personal—”

  “Cheating is personal!” Ellie clenched her fists.

  “Okay, well, point taken,” Mara conceded. “But in retrospect, I do think Jen’s argument has merit. If I had never told Josh about what happened in San Diego—”

  “You’d still be a cheater,” Ellie finished.
“But you’d be a liar, too, on top of that. Let’s not sugarcoat the truth.” She knew she should shut up, but she couldn’t stop herself. “You’re the one who told me to file for divorce the day after I found out,” she reminded Mara. “You’re the one who said I should get the upper hand and screw him over.”

  “I was trying to protect you, El.”

  “You’re a hypocrite,” Ellie said. “And you know what? I don’t blame Josh for making you sign a cheating clause. He should be able to protect himself, too.” She yanked the black bridesmaid dress over her head in a rage. The zipper caught on the clasp of her necklace and ripped out a chunk of her silky brown hair. “Ow.”

  A deathly hush fell over the dressing room. Only the faint strains of piped-in classical music and the rustling of stiff taffeta broke the silence.

  Mara snatched up her handbag and coat and stormed out of the salon. Ellie retreated into her dressing room. She hung her head and waited for Jen to break the silence.

  Finally, her shame overcame her anger. “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  Jen cleared her throat. “I think we’ve all said enough.”

  Ellie dug her fingernails into the fleshy pad of her palm. “I shouldn’t have…” She sighed. “That wasn’t fair.”

  “Nooo,” Jen agreed. “No, it was not.”

  “Should I go after her?”

  “I’d leave her alone right now. She’s tough, but she’s not that tough, and you know she hates to show weakness.”

  “No wonder she didn’t tell me.” Ellie sighed again. “I’m turning into a shrill, self-righteous bitch.”

  The thin partition between the two dressing rooms shuddered slightly as Jen changed out of her gown. “You’re not a bitch. You’re just hurting right now. And angry. But get angry at the person who really deserves it: Michael. Don’t take it out on Mara.”

  Ellie didn’t say anything.

  “Hello?” Jen prompted.

  “You’re right,” Ellie said. “But I can’t say to Michael what I just said to Mara.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.” She thought about that framed family photo resting on the mantel. “Sometimes we have to make compromises.”

  “Meaning what?” Jen sounded confused.

  “I don’t know.” Ellie pressed her lips together. “I’m sure we’ll get it all worked out in therapy.”

  “You need to start taking better care of yourself.” Jen’s shadowy form appeared on the other side of the slatted white door to Ellie’s dressing room. “A salad and a morning walk here and there isn’t going to cut it. Tell you what: Call me tomorrow afternoon when Hannah goes down for her nap, and I’ll come over and go through some yoga poses with you. Work up a detailed exercise and nutrition plan.”

  “Once a personal trainer, always a personal trainer.” Ellie pulled on her green cashmere hoodie and jeans and emerged from her fitting room.

  “I’ll swing by around three-thirty. You know you can’t wait.” Jen closed her eyes and pretended to meditate. “Ommm…”

  Ellie laughed and surrendered to the inevitable. “Bring on the walnuts and the downward-facing dog. Are you sure you’ll have time, though? I know you have to work, and with the new P.R. push—”

  Jen stopped smiling. “I can take some time off.”

  “So you keep telling us.”

  “No, I mean it.” Jen’s voice rose. “I know everyone likes to tease me, but it’s not funny anymore. I’m not just some soulless workaholic. I have needs, I have feelings—”

  Ellie squinted at her. “What’s going on with you?”

  Jen hesitated, then whispered, “Can you keep a secret?

  “Oh, please, no more secrets.” Ellie recoiled in horror.

  “Well then, can you do me a favor?”

  “That I can do. Anything. You name it.”

  “I need the number for your marriage therapist,” Jen said. “Or I’m going to have a few pre-nup problems of my own.”

  Mara Chapter 8

  Don’t freak out,” said a familiar voice when Mara opened the front door to her town house.

  She jumped and dropped her keys with a clatter. “Holy crap, Josh, don’t do that!”

  “Sorry. I was trying not to startle you.”

  “Too late.” She clutched her chest. “You didn’t happen to bring a defibrillator, did you?”

  He was standing in front of the glass doors that overlooked the golf course, which was dark and empty at this hour. “We need to talk.”

  “I’m all talked out.” She deposited her handbag on the chair next to the door and tossed her keys into the little silver bowl on the hall table. “And I’ve had more than enough drama for one night. How’d you get in here, anyway?”

  “You gave me a set of keys,” Josh reminded her. “When you moved in.”

  “Well, how’d you get past the guard at the front gate?”

  “I waved and said hi. They recognize me.”

  “I told the home-owners’ association president that security in this community was a joke.” Mara strode toward the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. “I’ll take my keys back now, thank you very much.”

  Josh shifted his weight and ignored her demand. “Look. I didn’t mean to spring the new version of the pre-nup on you at the jewelers’. If you hadn’t found it in my pocket—”

  She rounded on her heel and started pacing a tight, straight line between the kitchen sink and the refrigerator. “Don’t give me that. Why would you carry it around in your pocket if you didn’t want me to find it?”

  “How was I supposed to know you’d pat me down like a customs officer looking for contraband?”

  “You wanted me to find it,” Mara accused, her boot heels clicking on the Saltillo tiles. “You wanted to hurt me.”

  Josh studied her face. “And did I? Hurt you?”

  “Aha!” Mara jabbed her index finger toward him. “So you admit it.”

  “We’re not in court, Mara. And we’re supposed to be on the same team. You shouldn’t be trying to win.”

  “Bullshit,” she retorted. “One party always wins when it comes to legal contracts.”

  Josh made himself comfortable on her cushy leather club chair and stretched his long, thin legs out in front of him. “I know you’re still angry. But I’m pretty mad myself.”

  “Well, I guess that leaves us at an impasse,” she replied with a flippancy she didn’t really feel. “And what on earth do you have to be mad about? You’re the one who started this! All I asked for was a bare-bones, cut-and-dried, totally fair pre-nup.”

  “There’s no such thing as a totally fair pre-nup.” He switched on the lamp next to his chair. “You just said so yourself. One party always wins, which by definition means the other party loses.”

  “Well…” She sputtered for a few seconds, then yanked open the fridge and scanned the shelves as if the answer to this dilemma could be found in the crisper. “Perhaps I overstated the case.”

  “No, I think you summed it up perfectly.” Josh waited until she turned toward him, then looked her in the eyes. “I love you. I want to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you. But you have to trust me.”

  Mara slouched over the breakfast bar and braced her hands on the counter. “I do trust you. Or, at least, I did.”

  “Then act like it,” he said softly. “Give me a sign of good faith.”

  “Says the man who insisted on a snarkily worded clause about how much joint property I have to forfeit if I start dallying with the pool boy.”

  “No, I’m the man who didn’t want a pre-nup in the first place,” Josh corrected her.

  “Which I still don’t get. Honestly, what’s the big deal?” She pounded the counter in frustration. “It’s just a minor legal formality.”

  “In case we get divorced.”

  Mara recommenced pacing. “Having a pre-nup does not mean we’re going to get divorced.”

  “It means you’ve thought abo
ut it, though. Extensively.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve just seen too many cases where people didn’t bother to communicate about what they wanted and what they deserved until it was too late. And then things get messy, Josh. And vicious. And litigious.”

  “And this is what you’re focusing on while we’re planning our wedding,” Josh said dryly. “Our messy, vicious, litigious divorce.”

  “You know what I think?” she challenged. “This pre-nup isn’t what you’re really upset about.”

  “Uh, yeah, it is.”

  “No, this is about what happened in San Diego. Still. You say you’ve forgiven me, but you haven’t. You say you trust me, but you don’t.”

  “You don’t trust me,” he countered.

  “How can I?” She leaned back against the cold refrigerator door. “When you want to litigate my loyalty?”

  “You’re right.” He gave a quick nod. “We’ve reached an impasse.”

  Mara was terrified that she knew what he was going to say next, but she didn’t interject. He was going to leave her and she wasn’t going to stop him, because what rational argument could she make in her own defense?

  He took a deep, purposeful breath and she steeled herself for the worst. But then he said, “Let’s scrap the pre-nup, get married like normal people, and just take our chances. What do you say?”

  The nape of her neck beaded with sweat until a veritable tributary river system of perspiration soaked her back.

  He sat up straighter, looking energized. “We don’t need a legal contract to keep us together.”

  “No,” she said slowly. “We don’t.”

  “What? What is that look about?”

  “It’s just…” She laced her fingers together. “Why bother with a marriage license at all, then?”

  His whole body went rigid. “Do you really think a marriage license is the same as a pre-nup? Or is this your way of telling me you don’t want to get married anymore?”

  “I do want to get married. But I need a safety net.”

  “Marriage doesn’t come with a safety net. Sorry. I stand by my offer: I’ll scrap the cheating clause if you scrap the rest of the pre-nup.”