“And you want to know something else?” He yanked open the door, got in, closed it, and stuck his head out the window. “I only went out in that fucking snowstorm because my mother thought you would be good for my career.”
“I knew it!” Pandy screamed. “You are a fucking mama’s boy. Henry warned me—”
“Henry? Henry?” he spat, tilting his head back and laughing maniacally. “As if Henry knows anything about being a man.”
“He knows a lot more than you do, Diaper Boy.”
“You frigid cunt. Hasta la vista, baby. Nice knowing you.” Jonny started the car and stepped on the gas, flipping her the bird out the open window.
“Fuck you!” Pandy screamed. “Fuuuuck youuuu!” She ran down the drive after him, continuing to yell until his car disappeared around the corner.
Jesus H. Christ, she thought, marching back up the driveway barefoot. What a way to end a marriage. With a “fuck you.”
How incredibly…unoriginal.
She went into the house, slammed the door behind her, and marched into the library.
She didn’t care. There was only one thing that mattered now.
She knew exactly what her next book was going to be about, and it wasn’t Monica.
* * *
And so, as she danced to the music of her own imagination, dreaming of great triumphs, the divorce cyclone out in the real world began to whirl. First it picked up people—lawyers, private investigators, process servers—a whole Dickensian underworld of characters, each with his or her hand out.
Then it picked up the press: ANOTHER CELEBRITY MARRIAGE ON THE ROCKS!
And then it picked up paper: endless requests for bank statements, contracts, emails, and texts. And on and on, and back and forth about what was or was not relevant, and who’d said what to whom. She had managed to live through it only by escaping from it as often as possible. Specifically, into the eighteenth century and the mind of Lady Wallis Wallis when she arrived in New York City, circa 1775.
At the time, Pandy didn’t know if what she was writing was literary or historical. It might have been YA. All she knew was that trying to tell Lady Wallis’s story was what had given her courage.
What she’d never imagined was that it could fail.
Now, Pandy looked out the window of the town car Henry had arranged to drive her from the Pool Club and saw that she was nearly back in Wallis. Where she’d been only once since that long, awful day when she had told Jonny she wanted a divorce.
Through the endless dealings with Jonny’s lawyers and demands for money, Pandy had assumed that Lady Wallis would make it all okay in the end.
Except she hadn’t.
The driver hit the brakes. “Which way?”
“That way,” Pandy said, pointing to the narrow rutted track that was Wallis Road.
And right there, at the last outpost of cell phone service, her phone began fluttering those happy notes from Monica’s theme song.
Pandy picked it up.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HENRY?”
Her voice came out thickly, like she was speaking through clotted cream. She had to take a sip of water before she could continue. “Please tell me what I think happened two hours ago back at the Pool Club didn’t happen?”
“I wish I could, my dear,” Henry said with firm sympathy.
“You mean, it did happen?”
“Yes.”