Chapter 31
Thirty-One
Ali
They’d watched the sunset and finished the bottle of wine, and Faye had made fast friends with the locals that Ali had to admit were already like family to her now.
Ali had moved back into the Key Lime but couldn’t sleep.
The suggestion that she upend her life and stay here, to try to run this place, kept rolling around in her mind. It was ludicrous. Wasn’t it?
She longed to ask Ted his opinion. That was the irony of it. Usually, he would be her sounding board in this kind of situation.
When making any major life decision, she would talk with Ted. Change jobs. Have another baby. Refinance the house. Call hospice for Dad. Ted had been the person who helped her make those decisions.
Ted was her husband. They’d had their ups and downs. But she’d loved him. Did she still? He was a good dad. He instilled a love of reading in both kids. He supported Tye on the soccer field and Katie when she played softball. He’d cheered just as loud as Ali did at every game. He was there for the kids. And that alone made her grateful to him. They shared Tye and Katie, and it was a bond that would never go away. Or would it?
Ted was there for her, too, at the big moments. He’d encouraged her to move from the hotel job to the convention center and to ask for more responsibility. He knew she could handle it.
“You’re the smartest one in the building with the most organizational skills. They’re not using you to your potential,” he’d said. She’d glowed then when he’d complimented her.
But somewhere along the line, it had gone wrong. Was it her fault that he’d found someone else? Or were they just a cliché? He was a man in his midlife, so of course he was afraid he was getting old. And there were always young women around him.
Always young women around him.
She blinked. Always young women around him. This trip down marriage memory lane unlocked something in her memory. Something she’d either forgotten about or repressed!
Five years prior, they’d had a terrible situation. Ted’s student…Amber Covell, that was her name. She’d started stalking Ali. She’d show up at Ali’s work, she would call on the phone and hang up, and eventually, Ali had to block the girl’s phone number.
Ted had said that Amber was mentally unstable and just was fixated on their family. Ted had said she was jealous of Ali. Ali wondered now, what was the source of that jealousy?
It was like a missing piece of the puzzle of their lives just clicked into place.
Ali opened her phone settings and clicked on Call Blocking and Identification. She had only blocked one or two spam numbers in her life. She scrolled down.
There it was. A 419-area-code. Amber.
It was 10 p.m., not too late, but who cared. Ali had gone down a rabbit hole, and she wasn’t going to let it go. She couldn’t.
She dialed the number.
Three rings and then a voice: “Hello.”
“Amber, hello. This is Ali Harris. I don’t know if you remember me.”
“Hello. Yes. I remember you. Hard not to remember.”
Ali didn’t really know what she was talking about. This was silly. This girl was unbalanced, and Ali was stirring up old issues on a hunch.
“I’m calling because I need to know something. And it’s okay if you want to hang up, but I’m trying to figure some things out.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“Ted told me you were obsessed with him, stalking him, and that you just sort of had a crush that was one-sided.”
“Interesting story. But yeah, no.”
“You didn’t have a crush on him?”
“Mrs. Harris, Ali. Do you want me to answer with the truth? Because you won’t like it. I’ve moved passed this, and I don’t want to cause pain.”
“I called because I want the truth. You are doing me a favor.”
Amber paused. The tension had Ali feeling like a rubber band stretched to snapping.
And then Amber spoke softly, calmly. As though she was walking on eggshells. “I slept with your husband back then. I was twenty, mind you, so clearly very stupid.”
Ali felt like a deer in the headlights as she listened to Amber. “So, you two had a fling,” Ali said.
“Yes, and then I found out he was also sleeping with his grad assistant. I walked in on them during office hours.”
“Ted was cheating on me with his grad assistant and then cheating on the grad assistant with you?”
“Yeah, real great guy.”
Ali was horrified. This was more than just a midlife crisis. This was a pattern. One she’d ignored or didn’t see or didn’t want to see.
“I just never knew. I never suspected. I’m so sorry.”
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. He’s a real jerk. And I’m sorry, I was calling you back then to tell you. To blow up your life or save you. I don’t know. I’m still in therapy on some of this. He wasn’t the first older boyfriend or the last.”
“Ah.” Ali was at a loss for words. What do I say to this? How can I reconcile that this was Ted’s pattern, not a one-off?
“You’re not still with that guy, are you?” Amber asked.
“No, no, I’m not. We’re recently, uh, separated.”
“Good, stay separated. That’s my advice.”
“Yeah, yeah. And I’m sorry to bother you or dredge things up. I just needed some clarity.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Thank you. Take care of yourself.”
“You too, Mrs. Harris, you too.”
The call ended. Ali’s world had shifted again. What had been confused was now clear.
She didn’t need Ted’s career advice. She didn’t need Ted. What she needed was to do what she wanted, what her heart was telling her to do.
And she was darn sure she didn’t want Ted to have one dime from the Sea Turtle Resort, now or ever.