Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Epilogue
The Sidelined Wife
More Than a Wife Series
Jennifer Peel
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Jennifer Peel
All rights reserved.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Dedication
To all the women who have ever felt sidelined.
Take the field again.
A special thanks to Kathryn Biel. Your insight was invaluable
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Epilogue
Sneak Peek
About the Author
Chapter One
He held an open box filled with odds and ends—his alarm clock, the paper weights that used to sit on his desk. He shifted the box to one hand while he reached into his pocket for our . . . I mean for my house key. There was no ours anymore. Well, maybe one thing, but I was claiming Cody mostly mine.
He barely met my eyes when he pressed the key into my hand and lingered. I knew that hand better than my own—soft but firm, a comfort once. I pulled away, but his grasp tightened.
“I’m sorry, Samantha.”
My gray eyes bore into his tired brown eyes that now wore the mark of his age. Lines crinkled where there was once smooth skin. I used to see my future reflected in those brown pools; now all I saw was a fork in the road. This was where we parted.
I used more force this time and took the key and my hand back, along with my life. “Does it really matter?”
He shuffled the box in his hands, using both now to hold it. “I didn’t mean for us to turn out this way.”
“I think you mean you never meant to get caught.”
His ears turned crimson. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
I wanted to laugh in his face—I was done with tears—but I was too tired. “Goodbye, Neil.” I reached around him to open the door.
“That’s it, after nineteen years together?” His audacity was astounding.
“You should have asked yourself that when you decided to forget you were a married man.” Some emotion crept in, but I held steady. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he could still hurt me.
“Sam . . .”
I shook my head. “Don’t. Don’t give me another excuse that will never explain or make up for the inexcusable.” I’d heard them all already.
His head dropped and he muttered under his breath, “I’ll always love you.”
I mustered up some energy for that laugh when I opened the door and said not another word. I slammed the door behind him and took a deep breath. My eyes were begging for relief from the tears that stung them, but I refused to let them fall. He wasn’t worth the stain on my cheek.
I turned around and took a hard look at the house we had built together; it already looked different. There were blank spaces on the mantle where once stood pictures of a happy family. Only pictures of our connecting link smiled back at me. The walls too bore empty spaces where Neil’s artwork once hung. I saw an empty canvas waiting for me to make my own mark. I intended to.
The first things that were coming down were all the light-blocking curtains Neil preferred. This house—Cody’s and my house—was going to be filled with light and laughter. Cody. I sighed. I missed that kid’s laughter. With the divorce finally settled, I hoped it would come back. Now that he knew his home would continue to be with me, he wanted nothing to do with his father. Someday I would have to help change that, but not today.
I crept up the stairs to check on my progeny. He’d refused to come down when Neil arrived to collect the last of his belongings and drop off his key. I would have liked to have missed it too, but someone had to be the adult. I guess that was me.
At the top of the landing I surveyed the loft that used to act as Neil’s office, and the bedroom and bathroom doors that outlined it. There were still indents in the gray carpet where Neil’s desk and bookcases used to be. What was I going to do with all this space? Cody’s vote was for us to knock all the walls down except for his bedroom and bathroom and make a massive theater room. Maybe if he wasn’t leaving for college in three years.
Three years. My heart constricted. It did that every time I thought about my not so little boy leaving home. I’d bribed him to stay local—free laundry and food on the weekends for the duration. I mean, Northwestern was a good thirty minutes away, sometimes longer in Chicago traffic. And it was my alma mater, after all. He’d said he’d think about it. But he had his heart set on Notre Dame. Indiana wasn’t horribly far, but I knew it would feel like a
million miles for me.
I knocked on the surly teenager’s door.
“Yeah.” He obviously didn’t want to be disturbed.
Too bad. I walked right in. Maybe not such a good idea. Teenage boys had this pungent smell to them no matter how much they bathed or how often I sprayed air freshener in his room. It was especially ripe now that football practice had started.
His room was covered in sports posters. I saw specks of carpet under the mounds of clean and dirty clothes on the floor. His dresser, desk, and bed were also covered in a collage of dirty dishes, wrappers, and empty plastic water bottles.
Cody was lying on his bed in the semi dark, some evening light creeping in from the closed blinds. He had grown four inches just this year and his feet dangled off his full-size bed. When did he start looking like a man? He was tossing a football in the air and catching it with ease each time.
“It’s time to head over to Grandma and Grandpa’s for Sunday dinner.” I took shallow breaths to avoid a full whiff of his room.
He kept tossing the football.
“I know life sucks right now, but Grandma’s potato salad will almost make up for it.”
His lip twitched, if only barely.
“You have to come with me to protect me from Mimsy. Your handsomeness is my only hope.”
Mimsy, previously known as Miriam before she had grandchildren, was my mom’s mom, and divorce was a cardinal sin to her. Even knowing that my husband—I mean ex-husband, I needed to remember that—was having a baby with another woman. That was a fun piece of trivia to bring up at parties. Neil left me for a twenty-five-year-old waitress and, not only that, he believed her when she said she was on the pill. The man that only wanted one child, whose mind I could never change on the subject, would be a new father in several weeks.
Joke’s on him, though. He was going to have fun getting up at all hours of the night now that he was in his mid-forties. And the crime rate was up, which meant he was busier than ever as a medical examiner. His little side project had announced she certainly had no intention of getting up. She needed her beauty rest, apparently.
Despite all this, Mimsy still felt the need to shout out whenever I was around that everyone should pray to Saint Anthony or Saint Jude for lost things or lost causes, as she now liked to call it. And then I always got a kiss on the cheek because that made it all better. Hopefully she wouldn’t be sprinkling holy water on my head tonight to ward off evil spirits. It’s happened, and I don’t even want to know how she got the holy water.
But that wasn’t as bad as when she called the priest over to bless my home and check for evil spirits. She didn’t tell the poor man why he was coming before he made the house call with her and Ma. He thought he was coming over to talk about a generous donation for the new high school the church was building. He was disappointed on all fronts. No donation and no evil spirits. So maybe he was happy about the last part, Mimsy not so much. She was determined that Neil and I should work it out. She told me to look at Roxie, the extra-curricular activity, like a handmaiden for my husband. And that it would be okay for me to punish Neil for the rest of our marriage for what he did, as long as there was a marriage.
Maybe we shouldn’t go to dinner.
That would only make it worse. The whole loud-mouthed Decker clan would come here if we didn’t. And, like I said, I would be using Cody as a shield. Mimsy adored him and shoved cash at him whenever she saw him. I would have his college paid for in the next couple of years if she kept it up.
Cody decided to keep a hold of the football and look at me. “I call dibs on driving over.”
“Deal.” I cringed. I hated when he drove and he knew it. Another reason to hate Neil. I agreed to birth Cody if he taught him how to drive. I thought it was a fair trade. Who got stuck with both, though? Like I needed more torture in my life.
He sat up and ran his fingers through his thick, brown hair with golden highlights he inherited from me. Okay, so maybe my highlights were grayish in nature now, but no one could actually prove that, except my hair stylist. I begged her not to tell me the extent of it and just do what she had to do to make it look like I was still twenty-nine and holding steady. I was about ready to celebrate the eleventh anniversary of my twenty-ninth birthday. You do the math.
Cody’s eyes, which looked like Neil’s, were killing me. Loss and pain reflected in them. But despite all that, he was such a good-looking kid, if I do say so myself. Thankfully, he got my nose.
“I love you.”
He mumbled something.
“What’s that?” I cupped my hand around my ear. “I didn’t quite hear you.”
He stared at those big, bare feet of his. “I love you, too.”
That’s all that mattered right there.
Chapter Two
After no major incidents and only one major freak out when Cody didn’t slow down as fast as I thought he should have at a red light, we made it safely to my parents’ home. The same home my parents had owned since I was ten years old. The two-story, yellow house with red shutters and door had had some makeovers through the years. I wasn’t crazy about the bright colors now, but my mother had read that some famous actress painted her house the same colors, so my dad was stuck living in Ronald McDonald’s house. He wasn’t fond of us teasing him about it.
My brothers and their families were already there. Two Decker and Sons Landscaping trucks sat in the driveway advertising the family business most of us worked for. I was still irked about being left out of the business name. So maybe Decker and Sons and a Daughter Landscaping didn’t roll off the tongue, but I made sure everyone got their paychecks and all the bills were paid on time. So what if I wasn’t out in the elements all day long, whether it was in the pouring rain, blazing sun, or raging blizzard? I still played a vital role. And so did Avery, my sister-in-law. The name should really be Decker and Daughters and Sons Landscaping.
“Let’s keep the roughhousing with your cousins down to a mild roar tonight,” I threw out to Cody before we exited the car.
He ignored me and hopped out of the car, intent on finding Matt and James Jr., aka Jimmy, my brother James’s sons. Matt was a junior this year, Jimmy a freshman, and Cody fell between them. Three good boys, but when they got together, something was sure to get broken. We had a running tally—everything from electronics to furniture. Those three reminded me of what it was like growing up with James, my older brother, and Peter, the youngest. Nothing was safe. Thankfully, as the only girl, I never had to share a room with the loveable imbeciles.
Cody was in the house before I even made it up the concrete walk that led to the covered porch with my triple chocolate mousse pie. Hanging ferns dotted the porch and pink impatiens lined the walkway. They didn’t exactly match the house, but Ma always did things her way.
A wave of noise hit me once I reached the door. Not only were the cousins already at it, but my dad and brothers were heavily involved in a Cubs game, and from the loud cheering, something amazing just happened. The Cubs were only a warm-up to the Bears pre-season game that would come on later. The Decker men, all six of them to my mother’s dismay, would wolf down their dinner so they could catch all the action. We may not go to church every Sunday, but the Deckers never missed a Bears game. I should have known Neil and I weren’t meant to be when he told me he didn’t like football. I wasn’t a fanatic like my dad and brothers, but football was part of being a Decker. I thought maybe the sport would grow on Neil, but it never did, not even when our son started playing. Neil hardly made time to watch him play. Thank goodness for the goofballs I called my brothers and the best dad around that filled in. Though it wasn’t a role that fill-ins really worked for. Cody always remembered the games his dad missed no matter who else came.
Those thoughts had me looking down at my pie, wishing for a fork and a corner all to myself where I could drown my sorrows in layers of chocolate mousse and ganache. The sounds of family should have made me feel better, but all I felt was more alone. N
eil hadn’t been to Sunday dinner in months, but this week it was official. I was single, and my siblings were happily married. My parents were married and mostly happy, maybe a tad combative from time to time, but at the end of the day we knew they loved each other, and come heaven or hell, they were staying together.
I breathed in and out while staring at all the photos that lined the hall back to the kitchen and family room area where everyone was gathered. Simpler and happier times stared back at me. Ma really needed to take down my wedding picture. I stared at my twenty-two-year-old self in a simple silk gown holding a ginormous cascading bouquet of white flowers. I had an all-white wedding. What a dumb idea. Neil looked ridiculous in a white suit. I was smiling up at him as if he held all the answers and the key to my happiness. A handsome, intelligent doctor smiled back at me. And he could be charming when he wanted to be. That quality faded over the years. His hair had too. He no longer had the thick, sandy mane. I smiled when I thought of his rather large receding hairline. Served him right.
My thoughts were interrupted by my mother. “Samantha Marie, are you here?”
She always used my middle name because all good Catholic girls, like my mother, Sarah, needed good Christian names. Samantha was not one of them, and technically neither was Marie, unless you were French, then it meant Mary. But my father loved the name Samantha, and Samantha Mary didn’t sound as good, so that’s how my name came to be. My mother was distraught about Cody’s name, because unlike my brother, I didn’t head straight for the Bible to pick it out. I appeased Ma by giving Cody the middle name of Joseph, which was my father’s name and a solid Christian name. Now Cody would forever be Cody Joseph to my mother.
I took a deep breath. “I’m here, Ma.” I headed straight into the fire.
Avery, James’s wife—and one of my dearest friends, coworker, etc.—was in the kitchen with Ma putting the final touches on a variety of grilled meat with enough sides to fill a restaurant buffet. In between that they were smacking away the hands of the hungry teenage boys who were trying their best to get a taste before the food made it to the table. In the nearby family room, Dad and James were standing up watching the game; they must be the ones manning the grill, or semi-manning. Peter sat on the loveseat with Delanie, his wife, who couldn’t have cared less about the game. But she cared about Peter; it was apparent from her gaze. They had an interesting love story, but I couldn’t think about it at the moment. My heart couldn’t stand the reminder. Tiny, feisty Mimsy sat on the recliner with her Cubs cap on her silver head of hair, cheering as loud as the men.