His Third Wife

“Oh, no one,” Dawn said. “You know all of your treatment here at HHNFH is privately funded through donations. There’s no charge to you. Not ever.”

“Oh, I know. I’m donating today,” LisaRaye started as she pulled out her checkbook and a shiny silver pen. “I signed my divorce decree last night. I realized I never would’ve made it through that if it wasn’t for everything I learned in this place. Who do I make the check out to?” She looked from Dawn to me sitting beside her.

“Oh, it’s Hell Hath No Fury House, LLC,” I said.

“Great.” She knelt down and wrote before our eyes a check for twenty thousand dollars. She pressed the silver pen hard into the paper and drew a little heart over her name on the signature line. “That’s the last time I’ll be using this name. We can all thank Mr. LisaRaye for this twenty-K. Bastard.” She tore the check from the book and handed it to Dawn like it was a receipt from the supermarket.

“Enjoy your session,” Dawn said to her back as she walked toward the steps that led to her counselor’s office. The actual Fury House was really a house. A huge Queen Anne with a porch out front made for sitting. There were hardwood floors throughout. Pictures of beautiful things and beautiful words on the walls. Dawn’s favorite was a Maya Angelou poem over the mantel in the group meeting room.

“Twenty thousand?” Dawn read the check, amazed. “Did she really just do that to her poor ex-husband?”

“Don’t act surprised. I know you’ve seen bigger checks than

that floating around here,” I said. “And don’t be sorry for her ex. I’m sure he earned every dime of that punishment. She wasn’t wearing that name tag for nothing.”

Dawn and I laughed. I took the check from her and went to put it in a locked file cabinet for the director.

Standing there, looking for the donations folder, I was talking about how it always seemed like the men were the ones messing up the marriages. The women weren’t without fault, but somehow it seemed between the assistants, Facebook friends, old girlfriends, bad business deals, and poor financial decisions, the men carried the blame.

“I’m not trying to generalize and I might be a little biased, but I’ll be damned it it’s not true.” I’d stuffed the check into the folder and closed the drawer when I realized Dawn hadn’t said a word in a few seconds. I turned to the desk where she was sitting to ask what she thought and discovered why she was silent. Standing there with crossed arms was someone whose face we both knew.

“Can I help you?” Dawn asked awkwardly. While she’d never seen the face before her in person, like everyone else in Atlanta, she knew who it was.

“I need help.”

I honestly thought she was there to fight me. There to start something. Get in my face about Jamison and call me out of my name. Why else would Val be at HHNFH?

I stood my ground. Two feet planted firmly to the hardwood. Ready to fight.

But then I saw the worry in Val’s face.

I loosened one foot and wondered if maybe she was lost.

But then I saw the tears in Val’s eyes.

I loosened the other foot and wondered if she was trying to be found.

I walked up behind Dawn, whose silence let me know she was actually waiting for me to say something.

“I’ll handle this,” I said to Dawn.

She looked up at me. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

Dawn got up from her seat and patted me on the shoulder. “I’ll be right in the back,” she offered. “Call me if you need me.”

“I will.”

Val and I locked eyes in a conversation, and Dawn’s heels clicking against the wood became more faint.

“Someone told me about this place,” Val said, looking at a banner on the wall. “I didn’t know you worked here. I wouldn’t have—”

“I don’t work here,” I said, cutting off her frantic statement that seemed to make more tears spill out of her eyes. I handed her a box of tissue. “I’m a volunteer. Nothing between us—none of that matters here. How can we help you?”

Marcy has this saying she always uses when she has to do something really tough. She says, “It’s time to put my big-girl panties on.” Forever, I thought she was talking about the size of the panties and laughed just because the image she painted in my mind was so funny. But as I moved a chair to the table for Val and listened to her talk about how things were dissolving with her and Jamison, I knew the saying was about handling the big things and letting the little things slide. Who Val was married to wasn’t important. She and I may have had our differences in the past, but right there in HHNFH, she was another sister who needed help. She had nothing. Nowhere to go. No one to go to. She kept talking about how someone was going to come after her because she’d opened her mouth about something. She was scared.

I had to make myself a bigger person to see a way to comfort her. Remind myself that she’d had nothing to do with my marriage falling apart. By the time she’d shown up, the ink on my divorce decree had been good and dry. For whatever reason, Jamison had chosen to let her into his life. And for whatever reason, I had chosen to be in the position to help women like her when their part in someone else’s story was over. If my father and his military mind had been sitting there, he’d call it my “true test.” How I moved forward would determine my grade.