“File the papers?” he asked, trying to enunciate clearly.
“For the divorce,” Roger filled in, belching as he helped himself to his fifth beer. The man should be a fat ugly loser the way he was sucking down those beers, not an athletic successful doctor.
After the couple of seconds it took him to compute Roger’s words, Will put his beer bottle down on the table so hard beer sloshed out the top. “Who said anything about divorce?”
“You’re separated,” Scott said cynically, a man well-versed in the realities of broken relationships.
“That’s just the prelude to when she hits you up for all you’ve got.”
“Becca wouldn’t do that. We’re just taking some time to be sure the decision we made twenty years ago was the one we wanted to make.”
“Uh-huh,” all three men said together with knowing grins.
“She didn’t want me to leave.” Will heard his voice getting louder. “It was the only way for us to get a clear look.”
Though he wasn’t sure he was seeing any more clearly away from Becca than when he was sleeping right beside her. He still carried her with him everywhere he went.
“That’s what they all say,” Duane told him. “Take it from a guy who hears about it all day long.”
“Becca’s different.” Was she carrying him with her, too? He suspected she was. Did that say anything about them? He took another swallow of beer as he thought about that.
“Just take my card,” Duane said, pulling a business card out of his wallet. “Call me when she hits you with it. Because trust me, man, she will.”
“My wife cried a pool of tears after she kicked me out,” Roger said. “A month later she came after me for half of everything.”
“I held her at a quarter,” Duane reminded him.
“And thanks to you, I’m in for ten,” Roger said, throwing a couple of chips on the table.
“I’ll double you,” Will told him, recklessly throwing out chips. He needed another beer, too. To chase the one he was going to down in one gulp just as soon as he won this hand.
He’d better get used to bachelorhood. It might be all he had.
The next day, when Will stumbled out of bed some time after noon, Duane’s business card was still sitting right where he’d left it in the middle of the kitchen table.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“GIVE ME SOME EXERCISES to do,” Becca asked Randi the last Monday morning in August. After seeing Martha dash around at the Little League tournament on Saturday—and the energy her friend exerted when Shelter Valley knocked in the winning run— Becca knew she had to prepare herself for the years ahead. Starting immediately.
“What kind of exercises?” Randi asked, coming fully into the family room to join Becca on the floor.
“Stay-young-and-energetic ones.”
Randi laughed. “I noticed the eye cream on your bathroom counter when I went in for fresh towels,” she said. “How long you been using that stuff?”
“One day,” Becca admitted sheepishly. “You notice any difference?” She batted her eyes.
“Oh, Bec,” Randi said, laughing, “your eyes are beautiful just the way they are.”
But Becca was determined. “Still, it doesn’t hurt to get in shape. I may not be able to do anything about the aging that comes with forty-two years of living, but I can certainly control what kind of shape my body’s in.”
Grinning, Randi looked at Becca’s huge belly. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that if I were you.”
But before the morning was over, Randi had taken Becca through an entire series of safe yet effective exercises to help her, not only during the birth but the weight-loss period afterward, as well.
“You do these every morning, keep them up after the baby comes, and you’ll live to be a hundred,” Randi promised her.
Finally, a promise Becca wanted to hear. If she lived to be a hundred, her baby would be almost old before she died.