The Dear Wife (More Than a Wife Series Book 3)

  The Dear Wife

  More Than a Wife Series

  Jennifer Peel

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2020 by Jennifer Peel

  All rights reserved.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold 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.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  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

  Epilogue

  Dear Reader,

  About the Author

  Dedication

  To Amy, Ashley, and Jennifer,

  Thank you for trusting me with your stories, insights, and courageous acts, and for cheering me on every step of the way.

  A special thanks to Kathryn Biel. Your insight was invaluable. Thank you for sharing your faith with me and helping me accurately and respectfully portray it.

  Chapter One

  I might as well have been naked. I pulled the flimsy paper vest around me tighter while smiling uncomfortably at all the other women in the waiting room. Each of our expressions said the same thing: How did this become our lives?

  The older woman next to me, with the deep laugh lines etched in her crinkled face and the aqua eyes that still shined with childlike wonder, patted my knee with her arthritic hand. “You look so young. This must be your first time getting your tatas smashed. Don’t worry, it isn’t as bad as it sounds.” She laughed a deep, throaty laugh. “Think of it like slamming them in the refrigerator door.”

  I smiled at her, grateful. She had no idea how much I needed the compliment and entertainment. I rested my free hand on top of hers while clutching the poor excuse for a covering we were all made to wear before we got manhandled. “You are too kind. Unfortunately, I’m a pro at this mammogram thing.” I’d had one every year since I was thirty-nine. I couldn’t believe that was five years ago. Too much had happened since then.

  She leaned away from me with narrowed eyes. “I don’t believe it. You can’t be a day over thirty.”

  I think she needed an eye exam. My skin wasn’t as bright or smooth as it was in my thirties. And don’t even get me going on the rogue chin hairs that appeared every day. My tweezers were working overtime. My only saving grace was my blonde hair. “My oldest is off to college next month.” I said it without bursting into tears like I normally did. I was afraid if any tears dripped down on the glorified paper towel, it wouldn’t matter if I was holding it closed or not. It would disintegrate.

  “I remember those days.” She squeezed my hand as best she could. “Bittersweet times.”

  She was half-right. Life seemed more bitter for me at the moment. I nodded, though, pretending it was mostly sweet. It’s what I did.

  “June Tillman,” one of the techs called out into the waiting room.

  Sweet June patted my hand one more time. “That’s me. Good luck.”

  “You too.”

  She stood, not taking care to hold her paper vest together. We all got an eyeful. I suppressed my laugh and took a peek down my own vest, happy I wore only a C cup and that my breasts still had a good amount of perk.

  As each woman was called back to the torture chambers, I mentally flashed them the three-fingered salute from The Hunger Games and repeated in my head, May the odds be ever in your favor. There should be a class for women in their mid-thirties that prepared them for all this fun in their forties. Something similar to sex ed in fifth grade, with diagrams, charts, and cringey conversations. It would have been nice if someone like June would have told me much earlier that I could practice for mammograms by slamming my boobs in the fridge a few times. I imagine it would feel similar. And why didn’t anyone mention perimenopause? Like my gynecologist, for instance, could have given me a heads-up on that beast. The out-of-control and unpredictable periods, not to mention cramps that made you want to cry, were completely unnecessary in my opinion.

  Since I was a runner, my periods had always been lighter than most women’s, but when I turned forty-two it was game over. My purse was bursting with tampons and pads just in case, and I never left the house now without my “special” underwear. The kind that cost a pretty penny but absorbed blood like a leech. They were a godsend. I should really have Sam, my sister-in-law, better known as the Sidelined Wife, do a post or segment about them during her weekly stint on Weekend Musings on Channel 10. While she was at it, she could cleverly rant about the betrayal of your uterus when you turn forty, like only she could. Wasn’t it enough that we had to have periods for what seemed like eternity and grow babies? Not that I didn’t love the growing babies part, but it was no easy task.

  I should talk to Delanie, too, my other famous sister-in-law, who was currently sitting at the top of the New York Times Best Sellers list as Autumn Moone, and get her to write a love story about a perimenopausal woman. Though there wasn’t anything sexy or romantic about perimenopause. It could be part thriller or mystery because perimenopausal women were unpredictable. With the out-of-control hormones, you could never tell what we were capable of minute to minute. In one moment, we might want to bake you a pie, in the next we could be thinking of ten different ways to poison it and you. But Delanie was so talented she could probably find a way to make it sizzle and maybe even disguise it as a self-help book for women my age.

  Come to think of it, my sisters-in-law had done so well using pseudonyms, maybe I should get one too. Lately, I’d wanted to be anyone but myself.

  “Avery Decker,” the female tech with the man hands barked.

  Great.

  I stood, careful not to give the remaining victims in the waiting room a show. With trepidation I walked toward the gruff-looking woman, trying not to stare at her dry, large hands that would soon be intimately acquainted with my breasts.

  The room with the imaging equipment was too large and way too cold. Maybe they did that on purpose to perk your breasts up. And why didn’t they just have you take off the ridiculous piece of paper towel once you were back there? All this taking each arm out one at a time was a moot point. You were fully exposed either way.

  Iris, the tech, got right to business after I took my ri
ght arm out of the paper vest. She got in there with both hands and wrangled my breast onto the flat compression plate. Wasn’t that a lovely word to be associated with your breasts—compression? To make it more uncomfortable, Iris and I made direct eye contact. I grinned and said, “I think I should have insisted you take me to dinner first.”

  At first her bushy, gray brows furrowed, but after she took a second to mull around my nervous joke, she gave me a toothy grin and chuckled. “Why don’t you stretch the truth a bit and tell your husband it was a horrible ordeal and he should take you to dinner.”

  I cleared my throat and turned my head. I highly doubted James remembered I had this appointment today even though I’d told him a few times. These kinds of things made me nervous, and I was looking for him to tell me everything would be okay. Or tease me like he used to do and offer to give me his own examination. Neither the comfort nor the offer came. I couldn’t even remember the last time James had taken me out to dinner. Not sure I would say yes, even if he asked.

  ~*~

  “Your boobs check out?” Sam popped a cherry tomato in her mouth. We were having a sisters’ lunch at her and Reed’s home, curled up on their family room sectional with me in the middle. We used to have them at the office where we ran the family business, Decker and Sons Landscaping. But Sam had been told to take it easy because her blood pressure was slightly up in her last trimester, and since she was over forty, the doctors were being cautious. Besides, the office environment had changed over the last year. The family business was no longer only family. When Delanie’s secret, that she was our very favorite author, got exposed last year by my mother-in-law and her so-called friends, the entire Chicagoland area decided to hire us for all their landscaping needs. That meant we needed to hire not only more crew members but more office help.

  There were so many new customers I could no longer fill the role of receptionist and keep up on all the landscape design work. We hired Brinley, a sweet girl only a year out of high school, to be the new receptionist. I liked her not only because she did a great job but because my oldest, Matt, had a crush on her and it meant he came by the office more often. Unfortunately, I wasn’t all that fond of the new bookkeeper. She had replaced my mother-in-law Sarah, who had replaced Sam.

  Claire the new bookkeeper was a brunette in her late twenties who I wouldn’t necessarily say was a knockout, but she had a certain appeal to her that the men in our company liked. When any of the crew came in, she knew how to tease and flirt with little compliments here and there about everything from the way they looked to their work ethic. In the beginning, it was fine. But lately I’d noticed the subtle way she smiled at my husband or, when she brought coffee in for everyone a couple of days ago, how she went out of her way to mention to James that she made sure his was just the way he liked it, black with one sugar. Maybe I was making things up in my head. I couldn’t tell anymore. I wanted to say something out loud. I should.

  James’s problem was making me feel crazy, especially since he didn’t think he had one. I felt like my life wasn’t my own anymore. How I wished Sam still handled all the bookkeeping and Peter, Delanie’s husband and the kindest man I knew, still worked for us. I missed the ease and comfort of those days. Now I hated going into the office. Not only was I desperately missing Sam and Peter, I missed my husband. So much. No longer were there stolen kisses in the office, or more if we found ourselves alone. All the playfulness that used to be a part of our everyday lives was gone.

  I had thought about quitting more than once. I had thought about a lot of things but was too afraid to do them. Like stopping the constant checking on James. For that reason alone, I hadn’t quit. Because what would happen if I stopped checking? Would it all fall apart?

  I also stayed because I didn’t want to disrupt everyone’s lives or disappoint them. There were others to consider, like my father-in-law, Joseph, who owned Decker and Sons Landscaping. I loved him like my own father. Maybe I should talk to him. I had a feeling he knew something wasn’t right. He kept hesitating to retire and leave the company to James. In my heart I knew it had more to do with the fact that Joseph didn’t want to spend his days and nights at home with Sarah and his mother-in-law Mimsy. Even if he and Sarah were getting along better than ever, Mimsy was still Mimsy. At least she had, for the most part, quit throwing her fake holy water at people. But she had an opinion on everything from sex to how to change your baby’s diaper. But that wasn’t enough for Joseph to delay retirement. He knew something. We had both been dancing around it. Maybe it was time to get off the dance floor. I was so tired of standing on my feet . . . alone.

  “Did your appointment go okay?” Delanie asked, worried, as it had taken me so long to answer. It was so easy lately to get lost in my thoughts.

  I flashed both my concerned sisters-in-law what I hoped was a convincing smile. “Breasts are free and clear.” I had learned after my first experience just to ask your doctor to order the ultrasound with it. That way the radiologist gave you results right away. It meant a lot of manhandling, but the peace of mind was worth it. Another tip that could be added to a Sidelined Wife post.

  Delanie and Sam both inadvertently looked down at their own chests. Both were burgeoning. Sam’s from pregnancy and Delanie’s from nursing sweet Jonah, who I held so peacefully in my arms. The little ray of sunshine all of two months old gave me hope there were better things to come. He was the cutest thing, with hair as red as his mom’s and an angelic face like his dad’s.

  When Sam and Delanie looked up from their chests, they each zeroed in on me. I knew they wanted answers to the questions they were afraid to ask, more like the questions I never let them ask. James didn’t want anyone to know. He had it handled. It was no big deal, he kept trying to convince me. More than anything I wanted to believe him, but the more I tried, the more lost I became.

  “Did Xaria and her parents make it back to Savannah?” I asked Delanie before either of them asked me if I was okay and I had to exhaust myself and lie to them again. Xaria was Delanie’s daughter she’d given up for adoption ten years ago. She and her adoptive parents had just left after a weeklong visit. Xaria was as beautiful as Delanie and just as smart. I could tell that Delanie wished the visit could be longer. Her brown eyes screamed how much she missed her. I kept thinking that my Hannah and Xaria would have been good friends even though Xaria was three years younger than my beautiful girl who was cruelly taken from me too soon.

  Delanie reached out and took Jonah’s hand. He curled his finger around his mother’s. “They did. I Skyped with her last night.” Her longing came through loud and clear. She was ever grateful to Anna and Henry for raising Xaria so well and knew Xaria belonged to them, but goodbyes were hard. Always. I think it was part of the reason I stayed quiet. I was afraid of losing anyone else I loved, even if I was only holding on to a sliver of who they used to be. What we used to be.

  “When do you get to see her next?” Sam asked Delanie while resting her head against the sectional. Pregnancy wore her out. We teased her that that’s what happened when you married a younger man. She was due in September, right in the middle of high school football season, which was tricky since her husband was the head football coach and her son, Cody, the star quarterback. Reed was offering up every prayer he knew to any and every saint that their baby girl would come any night but Friday night.

  “Peter and I will go out there in October for her fall break,” Delanie responded.

  “October,” Sam sighed, “can’t get here soon enough. This baby will finally be out. What was I thinking having a baby at my age? People are going to think I’m her grandma and Reed’s my son.”

  Delanie and I laughed at our gorgeous sister-in-law, who rocked her forties with her wild, dark curls and stormy gray eyes. Her confidence and kindness made her even more attractive.

  “With the way he’s constantly sticking his hand up your shirt and resting it on your belly, I think you’ll be safe from that assumption.” Delanie wickedly grinn
ed.

  Sam rubbed her swollen abdomen fondly.

  I was so happy she’d found love again. Truly I was, even if it highlighted all that I felt like I was losing. It wasn’t that long ago that James couldn’t keep his hands off me. I shifted Jonah in my arms. A smile played on his full lips. There was nothing happier in the world than a smiling baby. “Have you and Reed decided on a name yet?” I asked.

  Sam lifted her head. “I think so.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself. “Ma of course thinks I should go the Bible route this time. She still feels like I cheated giving Cody only a proper Christian middle name. She said I needed to follow my brothers’ examples. So thank you, ladies, for not defying your husbands,” she teased.

  Delanie and I gave each other a pointed glance. Decker men did love Bible names. Peter had even made charts for Delanie trying to persuade her to use one. Delanie, unlike the rest of us, wasn’t too sure about God, but she was working on it. I, on the other hand, was sure he existed, but I wondered where he had been as of late. I was so tired of my prayers being ignored; I had stopped saying them all together. This way I couldn’t blame him. I so badly wanted to though.

  “You don’t want to use a Bible name, I take it?” Delanie asked.

  Sam innocently grinned before biting her lip. “I love the name Mia. Doesn’t Mia Cassidy sound perfect?” she gushed.

  “I love it,” I agreed.

  Sam sat up and somehow Delanie knew she needed to take Jonah out of my arms. Sam took my hand before I could even miss Jonah’s warm little body. Sam’s gray eyes glistened while she squeezed my hand tight. “Reed and I wondered if you and James would mind if we used the name Hannah for our little girl’s middle name?”

  I burst into tears. There was no stopping it. I was long overdue for a good cry. Like huge crocodile tears kind of crying that rushed like a river down my face.

  Sam looked horrified before embracing me. “I didn’t mean to upset you. You know how much I loved her.”

  “You didn’t upset me,” I got out through my sobs. “I can’t think of a better name for my niece.”