Monarch Beach by Anita Hughes

pregnant and promised he was going to marry her. One day he came home from work and said he was offered a job with a big ad agency in London: creative director, worldwide. He told my mother he loved her but it wasn’t ‘the right time’ to get married. He couldn’t pass up the opportunity, and he didn’t want to be saddled with a wife and child in a new country—”
    “I never knew that,” I interrupted.
    “Everyone at school had fathers who drove into their offices in San Francisco on weekday mornings, and watched their soccer games on the weekend. I told the other kids my father was ‘traveling.’ For eighteen years,” she laughed.
    “Do you ever see him?” I remembered the Stephanie I knew in high school. She had a mane of golden hair, and a body like Jessica Rabbit. She used to strut around the student commons with a guy on one arm and another carrying her books behind her. She was the only girl in the freshman class invited to the senior prom, and on Valentine’s Day she received so many Love-o-Grams she couldn’t fit them in her backpack.
    “No.” Stephanie shook her head. “He married a Brit a few years later and has three pale children named Daisy and Nigel and Hamish. But he paid for my education, so I can’t complain. I guess when I was shopping for a husband my main criteria was one who was home by five p.m.”
    “Glenn is more than that,” I said.
    “He’s a lot more than that. But when we were first dating I thought he was skinny, and a bit of a geek. He used to read articles from the Harvard Business Review out loud, when all I wanted to do was sample chocolate croissants at Parisian bakeries and make out.”
    “What changed your mind?”
    Stephanie thought for a minute. “He told me I was smart, and all the other men I’d been with were just interested in my cup size. I started to listen when he talked, and I realized we wanted the same things: house, kids, and enough money to give kids a great childhood. When he took me to the top of the Eiffel Tower, he pointed down at the streets of Paris and said, ‘I want to put the world at your feet.’ I knew he’d never walk out on me. There are a lot of different kinds of love.”
    “And I picked Andre like a teenager choosing pinup posters for her room.” I tried to laugh.
    “You had the world at your feet. You had your own skating rink for Christ’s sake.”
    “I didn’t have my own skating rink.” I shook my head. A rumor had started sophomore year that we had a skating rink in our basement. An ambitious party planner had installed fake ice for one of my parent’s parties, but it had been removed the morning after the event.
    “You had a mansion and two parents who were like royalty. We used to call your family ‘the Kennedys.’ You couldn’t know there were cads out there. They weren’t allowed in your house.” Stephanie got up and opened the fridge.
    Max and Zoe came running into the kitchen.
    “Mom, Zoe doesn’t believe in surf butlers. She thinks I’m making it up,” Max protested.
    “She’ll just have to come see for herself,” I said, pouring the espresso down the sink.
    “You did get something special out of the deal.” Stephanie nodded toward Max as the kids zoomed out of the kitchen.
    “I did,” I agreed, trying to keep the tears from my eyes.
    Somehow we made it through the next three weeks. Max and I stayed in Stephanie’s guest room, sharing the king-sized bed. I told Max our house had a giant ant infestation. Thank goodness he was so thrilled to watch the sixty-inch TV in Stephanie’s family room and play their Wii, he didn’t ask questions. I took him by the restaurant every evening before it opened so he could see Andre. I waited in my car while they hung out and drank lemonade.
    I didn’t see Ursula, but I didn’t go inside the restaurant either. It wasn’t my business whether he fired her. I did notice the new hostess who came out to set up the tables on the sidewalk wore fishnet stockings