The letter was filled with venom and accusation—not of Susan but of her husband, Don, although there was an edge in the letter's seven-hundred-and-fifty words—yes, Susan had counted them—that Susan and allowed her husband to go astray. Ironically, though, this Trudy, one of Don's office secretaries, wasn't pissed about any sort of competition with Susan, the mother of Don's children. She was angry about being displaced by some woman named Clarice who worked at Don's golf club.
Susan wondered if there still was value in the bill she'd intercepted two months earlier—the bill for a credit card she hadn't known Don had. It was the bill that clued her in that Don hadn't stopped his womanizing as he had promised to. The bill was for flowers, restaurant meals, and hotel rooms she hadn't received the benefit of. Sleuthing, she had discovered the affair with Trudy and kept the bill to share with her divorce attorney when she got around to getting one.
Would that be any use now when Don evidently had moved on to Clarice from Trudy?
Susan was contemplating that when the phone rang.
"I want to see you. Could we meet in the Hilton bar?" the husky voice of her sorority sister, Madge, curled around Susan's ear. They had been more than just sorority sisters in college, and Madge had been persistent, but Susan had drawn a line at those preferences with the inking on the marriage certificate.
But now Madge had caught Susan in a definite moment of weakness. Just why in the hell had she'd sacrificed herself in this marriage when Don didn't respect it?
"When?" Susan asked.
"Now, if you can. I'm already at the bar, drinking myself silly. The sooner you can get here, the more coherent I still will be."