The Other Wife. Shirley Jump

get the words out. I tried, even formed them with my lips, but they refused to be voiced. It wasn’t bigamy I was afraid to say, it was dead. “He’s gone right now. But I’m his wife. Can I help you?”

      “You’re Annie? Hey, cool to meet you. Dave talks about you all the time, you know.”

      Annie? Who the hell was Annie? A nickname for Susan? Or worse…

      Another wife?

      “Who did you say you were again?” I asked the voice.

      “Oh, shit, I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Vinny. I’m Harvey’s trainer.”

      “Harvey’s…trainer?”

      “Well, hell, you didn’t think he learned to dance and play the piano all by himself, did you?”

      “He can play the piano?” I looked at the dog, sitting a few feet away, his tail swishing against the floor like a carpet clock.

      “Not Mozart, but he can bang out a pretty good ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.’ That’s what got him on Good Morning America.”

      I’d entered an alternate universe. Dave, a musically inclined dog and appearances on national television. Not to mention Susan and Annie. And whoever else I didn’t know about.

      “So, is Dave going to be at Dog-Gone-Good?” Vinny asked. “I was hoping he’d get here a couple days early so we can give Harvey a refresher on his dance routine. I tried calling Dave yesterday but he didn’t pick up.”

      “He’s…” I closed my eyes, took in a breath. “He died on Wednesday.”

      Silence on the other end, then an under-the-breath curse. “For real?”

      “Yes.”

      “Aw, Annie, I’m sorry. He was a great guy. We’re really going to miss him.”

      I pressed a hand to my stomach, as if putting a palm against my gut would give me strength I couldn’t seem to find today. At least it would help me keep the soggy lasagna the church ladies made from making a return appearance. “And, my name isn’t Annie,” I said. “It’s Penny.”

      A confused moment of silence. “But…but I thought you said you were his wife.”

      “I thought I was, too. Apparently I was sharing the job.”

      “Oh. Oh. Holy crap. Well, uh, I’m, ah, sorry.” I could practically hear him fidgeting on the other side. “Listen, I gotta go. You, ah, take care. And if you want to send Harvey down to me, I’ll make sure he does Dave proud at Dog-Gone-Good.”

      Before I could say anything else, Vinny was gone, leaving me with a phone that only seemed to quadruple the horror of my widowhood every time I went near it.

      The pain of it all—of Dave’s death, his betrayal, of the loss of my life as I knew it—ripped through me in a sob so big it tore through my throat.

      “Oh, God,” I cried, sobbing and yelling at the same time. I banged my fist against the carpet, then pulled back my stinging palm and pressed it against my chest, trying to hold my breaking heart in place.

      Something wet and cold was on my hand, then on my face. I opened my eyes to find Harvey the Wonder Dog licking me, his tail wagging in ginger little movements, his ears perked like antennae, seeking, I supposed, signs of normalcy.

      Harvey. Dave’s legacy. What had Georgia called him?

      The answer to all my questions.

      Not much of an answer, considering he probably only weighed fourteen pounds soaking wet. But he was all I had, so I was starting there.

      “Harvey,” I said, swiping at my eyes, “want to go on a road trip?”

      CHAPTER 5

      To say Susan was surprised to see me on her Rhode Island doorstep the next morning would have been an understatement. She lived a little over an hour away from our house in Newton, in a small ranch with a magnolia in the front yard, which was starting to bloom in the bright early April sunshine.

      When she saw me, Susan teetered on her high-heeled boots, enough that I thought she was going to faint. Then Harvey sprang out of my arms and into her house, and Susan recovered her wits.

      “How did you find me?” she asked.

      “Reverse lookup of your phone number in Dave’s cell. The Internet is a dangerous thing.”

      She nodded, as if that all made sense, then opened her door wider. “Want to come in?”

      “Actually,” I said, drawing in a breath, “I want you to come out. And go to Tennessee with me.”

      She blinked. Behind her, Harvey was running in circles around the perimeter of her braided rug, apparently seeing its endless oval as a challenge. “A road trip? To Tennessee?”

      “Did you know about Annie?” I asked.

      She thought a second, running the name through a mental phone book. “No.”

      “Well, it seems she might be Dave’s wife, too. Meaning Mrs. Reynolds number three.”

      “He had another? Besides you and me?” Susan gripped the doorjamb. Now I really did think she was going to faint. I knew those feelings, having had them myself quite recently.

      “Listen, why don’t we sit down, have a drink and talk about it? I’ve already had time to digest this.” I paused. “More or less. But I could still use a stiff one. Or two. Or ten.”

      Susan nodded, stepped back and turned to go down the hall, leaving me to follow. I shut the door, left Harvey to his circles and walked into Susan’s bright yellow kitchen. It was a nice room, small but tidy, decorated in sunflowers and navy accents. The kind of kitchen I imagined a neighbor having. The kind of kitchen where I could see myself sitting down for a cup of coffee on a Thursday morning and gossiping about the guy across the street who mowed his lawn in his Speedo.

      It wasn’t, in other words, what I had expected from Dave’s 36D wife.

      “I have rum. And…tequila,” she said, searching a cabinet above the Kenmore stove.

      “Do you have Coke?”

      She shook her head. “Diet Pepsi.”

      “It’ll do.” Heck, I would have had the rum straight, but I figured Susan didn’t know me well enough to see me get drunk, something I’d done more in the past few days than in my entire life. After all that had happened, I was beginning to see the upside of staying perpetually toasted.

      She poured two rum and Diet Pepsis over ice, then returned to the table, sliding one in front of me. Apparently Susan also wasn’t paying attention to the clock when it came to having a respite from the shock and awe campaign executed by Dave’s funeral.

      I drank deeply, then pushed the glass away and folded my hands over each other. Susan was one of the keys to what had happened with Dave, to why he had married another. I needed her, even though I didn’t want to.

      “The way I see it,” I began, “both of us have been screwed, pardon the pun, by Dave.”

      She nodded. Slowly.

      “And I want to know why. I was married to him for fifteen years.”

      Susan raised a palm, wiggled her fingers. “Five here.”

      I swallowed that fact, allowing it to hit my stomach and churn in the empty pit with the rum. Five years. That meant he’d married her the year I was in the hospital having my appendix removed. I tried to think of when Dave had been gone then, but my brain had become a fuzzy mess of dates and lies.

      For a second, I thought of telling Susan the whole thing was a huge mistake. Thanks for the rum, but I gotta go.

      Then I realized leaving wasn’t going to do anything