And One Last Thing... by Molly Harper Page A

as I struggled to keep a straight face. “You just stay here and think about what you’ve done!”
    I watched her stomp out to her town car and screech out of my parents’ driveway. I sighed. “I’m going to miss her most of all.”
    ******
    A half hour later, the doorbell rang again. I jerked the front door open, yelling, “Wynnie, I told you I’m not going on any damned cruise!”
    “Well, that’s good to know,” Mama deadpanned, her arms full of luggage, her elbow firmly planted against the doorbell. “Because given the circumstances, I don’t think you deserve a cruise.”
    “Mama.” I laughed. My mother set her bags on the floor and held out her arms. I folded into them and for the first time since sending the e-mail, cried in earnest.
    “Baby,” she murmured against my hair. “I’m so sorry.”
    I sniffled, my tears forming a seal between my cheek and her neck.
    “I’m going to strangle that little -” Mama grunted, patting my back. “I knew I should have said something earlier, but I thought you knew about Mike and Beebee.”
    “You knew? You knew?” I cried, pulling away from her.
    “Why didn’t you say anything?”
    “I didn’t know anything,” Mama said, throwing up her hands. “I heard rumors. I suspected something was going on, but I thought after that birthday party, so would you. I thought you were just trying to put on a brave face. To keep your head up while you sussed out how to hit him where it hurts.”
    Mama led me into the kitchen and poured me a cup of coffee. She forced me to sit at the breakfast bar, searched in the cabinet for Bisquick. “So when you finally figured out you were married to a clichéd little man, you didn’t think to call me?” she asked, her tone mildly exasperated. “Instead, I get phone calls in Hilton Head telling me to come home as my youngest child has clearly lost her mind.”
    And suddenly I was four years old again, with her pinking shears in one hand and the remains of my curls in the other.
    “I may have sent out a little divorce notice,” I said, measuring “little” with my fingers.
    “In the form of a brag letter?” Mama asked, beating Toll House chips into pancake batter a little harder than was necessary. “Lacey, I’m all for healthy expressions of your feelings, journaling, creative ceramics -… If you’d wanted to, we could have made a Mike - piñata and beaten the living hell out of it. But we probably wouldn’t have sent pictures of the piñata party out to every person we know.”
    “I know, I know. It was a crazy thing to do. But I just - it was the only way I knew how to hit back. To hurt him as much as he hurt me.”
    “Well, Rissy called me in Florida and read it to me. I’d say you did a good job of it. I know I’m wired to think anything you write is fabulous, but after I got over the initial shock, I laughed my butt off.”
    “Wynnie says that all men stray and I should suck it up and stick around for the fabulous prizes,” I said, sipping my coffee.
    Mama slapped a ladleful of batter on a heated griddle. “Honey, I’ve kept my mouth shut for years, but now that divorce is on the horizon, I feel perfectly comfortable in telling you that Wynnie Terwilliger is an idiot.”
    “But I thought you two always got along! You did all those walkathons together and the bridge club and the holidays.”
    “Well, what was I supposed to say, ‘No, I don’t want to spend the holidays with your husband’s family’? That would have seemed unfriendly.”
    “You should have told me this years ago, a fat lot of good that will do us now. I did the right thing, didn’t I?” I asked. Mama winced. “The newsletter aside, I did the right thing. I couldn’t stay with Mike.”
    Mama flipped a pancake without even looking. “I can’t judge. How could I tell you what to do in this situation until I’d lived through it?”
    “So you never had to worry about this with Daddy?’ I asked, not quite sure if I wanted to hear