Chapter 8 - The Town Turns
On Wednesday evening, I went to Harris Teeter to buy groceries.
Evelyn told me to stay home, offered to go for me, but I refused. I had spent thirty-five years walking the streets of this town with my chin up, and I was not going to hide in my sister’s cottage like a woman with something to be ashamed of.
The supermarket was busy. The air smelled of rotisserie chicken and floral bouquets.
I was in the produce aisle, inspecting a carton of strawberries, when I heard the sharp click of heels behind me.
"Carol."
I turned around. It was Brenda Morrison, Dave Morrison’s wife, flanked by two other women from the Oak Creek Garden Club.
For a fraction of a second, I braced myself for the uncomfortable, patronizing sympathy that people in small towns reserve for discarded wives.
Instead, Brenda walked straight up to me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders in a fierce hug.
"You magnificent woman," Brenda whispered into my ear.
I blinked, stepping back, completely disoriented. "Brenda?"
"The whole town knows," Brenda said, her eyes flashing with righteous indignation. "Dave came home from the party and told me what you did on the patio. Carol, I have never been prouder to know another human being in my life."
"You... you aren't..."
"Disgusted with Mike?" the second woman, Karen, chimed in. "Carol, Linda Warner has been circling husbands in this community like a buzzard ever since Tom got sick. She tried it with my Robert four years ago at the club’s Labor Day regatta—touching his arm, asking him to look at her plumbing. Robert had the good sense to tell me immediately, but Mike? Mike was always so full of himself he probably thought she fell in love with his charisma."
"The country club revoked Linda’s social membership this morning," Brenda informed me, a vicious little smirk on her face. "The board had an emergency meeting. Unbecoming conduct. And Dave told the planning commission that if they award the new municipal bridge contract to Mike’s firm, three of the lead city council members will resign."
I stood between the displays of organic apples and romaine lettuce, listening to these women.
For days, I had felt like the entire world was pointing at me, whispering about the pathetic wife who hadn't noticed her husband cheating under her own nose. I had forgotten that a community isn't just an audience for scandal; it’s an immune system. And Mercer County was actively expelling Mike and Linda like an infection.
"Are you going to be okay, Carol?" Brenda asked softly, placing a warm hand on my forearm.
I looked down at the bright red strawberries in my cart.
For the first time in five days, the suffocating band around my chest felt a fraction of an inch looser. The air going into my lungs felt clean.
"I am going to be better than okay, Brenda," I said. "I am going to be free."
As I pushed my cart toward the checkout lanes, I caught a glimpse of someone ducking behind the bakery display.
It was Linda.
She was wearing oversized dark sunglasses, an old baseball cap pulled low over her unwashed hair, and yoga pants. She didn't have a cart. She had a single frozen dinner and a bottle of cheap white wine clutched against her ribs.
When she saw me look at her, she froze.
Five days ago, she had stood in my house wearing a pink rose corsage, looking at me with smug defiance over the phone, telling me it was her turn to take what was mine.
Now, she looked like a stray dog caught rummaging through a trash can.
I didn't yell at her. I didn't cause a scene. I didn't march over and slap the sunglasses off her face.
I simply stopped my cart, looked directly into the dark lenses hiding her eyes, and shook my head with quiet, devastating pity.
Linda couldn't hold my gaze. Her chin trembled. She turned on her heel, abandoned the frozen meal on top of an ambient bread display, and literally ran out of the automatic sliding doors into the parking lot.
I watched her go, then turned to the cashier with a calm smile.
May you like
"Paper bags, please," I said. "Not plastic."
***
