Tell Me Lies by Jennifer Crusie Page B

going to leave, no matter how much Frog Point needed an accountant.

    Friday morning came too early. Maddie rolled over and regretted it. Her head throbbed and the thought of opening her eyes was unbearable, but she pried them open anyway. The sun did a number on her brain, so it took her a minute before she could squint at Brent’s side of the bed. It had been slept in, so he’d come and gone while she’d slept off the double dose of painkillers she’d taken before bed. She could hear the sound of Em’s radio down the hall, so he’d brought her home last night, probably fast asleep, just as he’d promised. But Brent was gone. The Great Avoider.
    Well, at least she could depend on him to never be around. There was a lot to be said for dependability. She’d read somewhere that abused wives and children could take almost anything as long as the abuse was consistent. It was unpatterned abuse that was impossible to withstand. Now, Brent was consistent. If she stayed with him, she knew he’d cheat on her, but she also knew he wouldn’t leave her. Lots of women lived with that.
    The future stretched out before her, tight with suppressed anger, rigid with unspoken pain, lonely forever, with no chance of ever feeling warm again. She closed her eyes and thought of C.L. with his arms around her the night before, telling her he hated it that she was unhappy. He was almost a stranger, and yet she’d gotten more comfort from him than she had from Brent in the last five years. And that was the rest of her life if she stayed.
    The hell with that , she thought, and got up to fight.

    Five
     

    Maddie stood in the sunshine in her kitchen and popped her morning pain pills. Her whole body hurt, and not just from the accident. She’d been tense for—she glanced at the clock and did some fast arithmetic—twenty-two hours now, since she’d found that damn underwear. Twenty-two hours of bracing herself for the inevitable. Well, the inevitable was here, and there was no point in standing around bracing herself anymore.
    She needed a divorce lawyer.
    But nobody from Frog Point. Nobody was going to call her dumb as dirt. The problem was getting a name in Lima. She knew people who were divorced, but not how they’d gotten that way. And besides, she didn’t want just any divorce lawyer, she wanted a shark, somebody who would make sure she got custody of Em, sure that she didn’t come out a fool. Who did she know that had done well with a divorce? Nobody. Nobody did well with a divorce. She thought of Em, and closed her eyes, and told herself, Think,
    Her mother had said that Sheila Bankhead had taken C.L. for everything he had. He hadn’t looked poverty-stricken when he’d shown up at her door, in fact he’d looked supremely successful, but they’d been divorced for years. Maybe he’d had time to recover.
    She pulled the Frog Point phone book from the drawer under the phone in the kitchen and flipped through the 5s, watching the pages tremble as she turned them. Knock it off, she told her shaking hands, and then she found Sheila’s number and dialed, taking deep breaths until Sheila answered.
    “Sheila? This is Maddie Faraday.” There was no answer, so Maddie tried again. “Sheila?”
    “I’m sorry.” Sheila’s voice came through the wire, cautious. “Maddie Faraday?”
    “We were in high school together.” Maddie felt like a fool. “I’m—”
    “I know who you are,” Sheila said. “I’m just. . . surprised.”
    Maddie pulled a chair away from the kitchen table and sat down because standing up was taking too much energy away from the phone call. “I know, we’re not close, and I wouldn’t bother you, but I need your advice.”
    “My advice?” Sheila’s voice went up a notch. “You need my advice?”
    Maddie gave up on tact since it only seemed to be confusing the issue. “I need the name of a good divorce lawyer, Sheila. Do you know a good one?”
    “ You’re getting divorced ?” Sheila practically