My Ex-Husband's New Wife Asked Me to Take Him Back novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Closing Time
At closing, Gabe's new wife Adele buys picture hooks and asks Susie to take him back; Susie says no, and sees his van across the street.
At ten to six on Tuesday, I was counting the till when my ex-husband's wife walked into my father's store.
I knew who she was before the bell stopped ringing.
Port Averill has six thousand people and one hardware store.
Everyone had told me about her in the six days since I came home.
Bernie had told me twice.
Adele Lundeen was small and round, with dark blond curls and a green cardigan.
She wore a school lanyard with a plastic apple on it.
She looked like a woman who kept Band-Aids in her purse and used them.
I put down the roll of quarters.
"We close at six," I said.
"I know," Adele said. "I'll be quick."
She walked straight to aisle four.
Maybe she had.
Gabe had been rewiring this building for three weeks.
I had made sure to be in the back office every morning when he came in.
That morning I had run out of places to hide.
He had stood at the counter in his gray work shirt, with his hair gone silver-white at the temples, and asked where the new breaker panel should go.
I had said, "Ask my father."
He had said, "Your father's in a recliner on a lot of painkillers, Sue."
Nobody else called me Sue.
I had pointed at the basement door.
That was all that had happened.
Now his wife came back to the counter with a package of picture hooks.
"Just these," she said.
"Four ninety-nine."
She paid in exact change, a five and a penny.
Then she put both hands flat on my counter.
"My name is Adele," she said. "You don't have to say yours."
"I know who you are."
"Good. That makes this easier."
Her voice was steady, but her thumbs were pressed white against the wood.
"I'm going to say something strange," she said. "Please let me finish before you throw me out."
Bernie was in the paint aisle with a color wheel she wasn't using.
She had gone very quiet.
"Go ahead," I said.
Adele took a breath.
"Gabe and I have been separated since the first of September," she said. "I filed on the third. The hearing is November fifth."
I said nothing.
I felt my face go still.
"Most of the town doesn't know," she said. "He didn't want them to."
"I'm sorry," I said, and I meant it, which surprised me.
"Don't be. I'm the one who asked for it."
She looked right at me.
"I'd like you to take him back."
The overhead light buzzed.
Out on Main Street, the church bell began its six o'clock count.
I waited until it reached four.
"No," I said.
"I haven't asked yet."
"You just did."
"I asked you to take him back. I haven't told you why."
"I don't need a why."
"You're going to get one anyway."
She almost smiled, and that made it worse.
"He's a good man," she said. "He fixes my car and he remembers my mother's birthday. He has never once raised his voice in my house."
"Then why are you leaving?"
"Because every Saturday for two years he came home from this building lighter than he left it."
Her voice cracked on the last word, and she steadied it.
"And every other day of the week, he came home polite."
I couldn't breathe right.
"He told me about you the night he proposed," Adele said. "I said yes anyway. I thought time would do the rest."
"Adele."
"It didn't. I'm not angry. I want you to know that. I'm not angry at him or at you."
"Then what do you want from me?"
"I want him to have the chance I couldn't give him."
I laughed, and it came out hard.
"You want to hand him over."
"I want you to think about it."
"You want me to take your husband like a coat you're returning to the store."
Her face changed.
For a second she looked much younger, and much more tired.
"That isn't what I meant," she said.
"It's what it sounds like."
"Then I said it badly."
"You said it very clearly."
"Susie."
It was strange to hear her say my name.
She said it kindly.
"One thing," she said.
"There's a brass key on his key ring."
"It's flat and old, with a green thread of paint around the head."
I knew it.
It was the key to the back door of this store.
My mother had given it to him the morning of our wedding, in a card that said Welcome to the family.
"He's carried it for nine years," Adele said. "It's the only key on the ring he's never replaced."
She picked up her bag of picture hooks.
"Ask him why," she said.
Then she walked out, and the bell rang behind her.
I stood there holding nothing, with Bernie's shoes squeaking toward me down the aisle.
"Hon," Bernie said. "Don't look now."
I looked.
Across Main Street, under the one streetlight, a white van sat at the curb.
LUNDEEN ELECTRIC, said the door.
Gabe sat behind the wheel with both hands on top of it, looking at the store.
He didn't get out.
He didn't start the engine.
He just looked at me through two panes of glass, for a long time, and then he drove away.
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