Single in Suburbia Read Online Free Page B

spidery cursive she’d affected in college.
    The first one read, Me and Jean-Claude in front of Eiffel Tower. And sure enough there they were, too tiny in the foreground, the passerby Jean-Claude had gotten to snap the picture clearly more concerned with including all of the landmark than the expressions on their faces. But she could actually remember the feel of the smile that had split her face that day. Could still remember the way her jaw ached from smiling and laughing as he gave in to her mad insistence to see every site, every museum, every worthwhile café that Paris had to offer.
    “Tu es enchanteur et électrifiant.” You are enchanting and electrifying, he’d said as he’d stared down into her eyes on the steps of the Louvre. “Tu es mon beau papillon.” You are my beautiful butterfly.
    Mon beau papillon . He’d called her his beautiful butterfly so many times that she’d finally come to believe it.
    For almost the entire year she’d studied in Paris, she’d flitted and flown like the butterfly he’d named her, embracing the freedom like a prisoner suddenly and unexpectedly set free from her cell.
    In every picture her face declared her adoration of Jean-Claude and her fascination with all things French. For a moment, she heard his voice whispering intimately. Mon beau papillon .
    Her gaze flew around the beautifully decorated family room and she saw it for what it was; a carefully designed cocoon into which she’d retreated and where she’d traded in her wings for a perpetually furrowed brow.
    Stung, she slammed the photo album shut and shoved it under a pillow. Searching for a distraction, she strode into the kitchen and began opening cupboards, but she was too agitated to eat and too scattered to cook. Beneath the sink she spotted a bucket and a jug of vinegar and before she knew what she was doing, she’d filled the bucket with warm water, added a healthy dollop of vinegar and located the mop. Moments later she was mopping the wood floors, finding unexpected comfort in the repetitive rhythm of a chore she’d always paid others to do. She finished the kitchen floor quickly and then moved into the dining room, where she swabbed carefully around the Oriental rug on which the mahogany table sat.
    As she worked, another, more private snapshot surfaced in her mind. She and Jean-Claude in the bare student apartment he’d maintained on the Left Bank, discovering what making love actually meant.
    “Tu es incroyable.” You are incredible, he’d breathed as his mouth moved over her naked breast. “I can’t get enough of you.”
    She was dumping the dirty water down the laundry room drain when the phone rang. “Oui?” she said, unable to pull her mind from Jean-Claude, his lips, or the wonderful sense of abandon he’d stirred in her.
    “Amanda?” Her mother’s voice brought her back to the good old U S of A more quickly than a speeding bullet.
    “Oui,” Amanda said. “Um, I mean, yes.” She set the still damp mop outside the kitchen door to dry and crossed to the bay window that overlooked the backyard.
    “Are you all right?”
    Amanda cleared her throat. “Yes, yes, of course. I’m fine.”
    “And Rob and the kids?”
    Amanda winced. Her parents had been married for forty-five apparently blissful years, a record she had hoped to meet and possibly even exceed.
    Which went a long way toward explaining why she’d never mentioned Rob’s desertion. Telling her parents would have made the demise of her marriage all too real; it would have been a one-way ticket out of the Land of Denial.
    But she now had an attorney whom she’d instructed to “start squeezing.” Rob’s financial records would be subpoenaed any day now. It was time to tell not only her parents but her children. Oh, God, how was she going to do that?
    Amanda opened her mouth determined to come clean. She’d simply tell her mother the truth and then somehow she’d find a way to tell Meghan and Wyatt. This would actually be