The Store My Husband Thought Was His

I said, “Well. Your replacement wife is younger than I pictured.”

Kayla’s face crumpled. She looked at Wade, waiting for him to fix it, the way she probably always waited for him to fix things, and Wade could not fix it, because there was nothing to fix. He stood up so fast the folding chair went over backward and clanged on the concrete, and he started in with the words, the fast words, the sales words. “Nora, it’s not, this isn’t, you don’t understand, let me, we can, this is a work thing, she’s a colleague, I swear to God, Nora, sit down, let’s just.”

I let him run out of road. It did not take long. Men like Wade have a lot of words but very little to say.

When he stopped, I reached into my coat, and I took out my phone.

I saw the flicker of hope in him, God help me. I think for one half of one second he thought I was going to show him something, a text, a photo, something we could argue about. He thought this was going to be a fight, and Wade was very good at fights, because a fight is just a sale with a loser.

But I was not going to fight him.

I made a phone call.

The Call

I called Diane Prewitt. My father’s lawyer. My lawyer. The woman whose name was on the trust.

She answered on the second ring, because it was a Tuesday morning and Diane is always at her desk on a Tuesday morning, and I stood there in front of my husband and his girlfriend at the Tri-County Farm Show and I said, in the calmest voice I own, “Diane. It’s Nora. I need you to start the paperwork. All of it. Today.”

There was a pause, and then Diane, who had watched my father watch Wade for nineteen years, said one word. She said, “Good.”

I said, “I want you to pull the trust file. I want to know exactly what he can and cannot touch. And Diane, I think he’s been telling people he’s a part owner. I need to know if he’s borrowed against anything or signed anything with my name on it.”

Another pause. Then Diane said, “Come see me tomorrow. Bring the bank statements. And Nora.” She paused again. “Your father set this up so you would never have to be afraid on a day like today. Don’t be afraid.”

I hung up. I put the phone back in my coat. And I looked at Wade one more time, and I said the only other thing I said to him that day.

I said, “You should have read what you were signing all those years. My dad tried to tell you.”

Then I turned around, and I walked out of the exhibition hall into the flat gray daylight of the fairgrounds, and I drove the two hours home, and at three o’clock that afternoon a redirected truck backed up to my dock with the hog feed I had promised four producers, and I unloaded it myself, and I did not cry until every one of them had what they needed.