Never Too Late for Love by Warren Adler

had been bested, but her strength was gone and she moved,
speechless, out of the office.
    Walking home, she contemplated the impending humiliation.
The two Mrs. Shankowitzes. Number one and number two. They would snicker behind
her back. "There goes number one." She would be an object of
ridicule, talked about, ridiculed, a yenta's delight. "Shush, girls,
number one is coming."
    People would laugh about it at the table. Briefly, she
entertained the idea that her first assumption was wrong. But logic and old
memories intruded. They had been the only Nathaniel Z. Shankowitz in the Brooklyn directory. It was too much of a coincidence. Besides, she knew that Nat had been
living in Queens and, once, just once, she had looked up his name in the Queens directory.
    There, too, it was the only Nathaniel Z. Shankowitz. She
cursed her pride now, the insistence that she be listed by her married name
with the man's name intact. It seemed such a harmless little idea, but she felt
some protection from it and in Sunset Village, especially Sunset Village. It had buttressed her pride. Her and her stupid pride. Where had it gotten her?
    By the time she had returned to her apartment, she was in
tears. The mail had come and she picked it up from the floor beneath the slot.
She was too harassed to look over the envelopes and, instead, put them aside
and sat on the couch, where she stared into space for the better part of the
morning, contemplating her disastrous fate.
    She had no alternative but to move now, she knew. To pick
up and find some other place to live. But as the day wore on, self-pity turned
to anger, humiliation to indignation. How dare she? She will not do it a second
time. Without proof, she had firmly decided that the second Mrs. Shankowitz was
"the other woman." Who else? It was she who should move, Sarah
decided, as her hatred took shape again and crowded out all self-pity.
    It was with that sense of new-found strength that she
finally got to the mail, sometime in the late afternoon, after she had done her
household chores and checked in with her various friends. Actually, she had called
them in rotation more to feel out their knowledge than for any other specific
reason. Assured that the cat was still in the bag, she busied herself with the
affairs of her household, which included looking at the mail.
    It was check day, the third day of the month. In Sunset Village, that was more like a religious holiday with the mailman being followed
around as if he were the Pied Piper. Her interest in it had been momentarily
deflected but, remembering, had prompted her to seek out the spot where she had
put the mail. The check was there, its bluish official-looking funny typescript
peering at her from the little plastic window. But the envelope below it was
exactly the same. Same name. But the address was quite different. The mailman
had simply made a mistake.
    She held up the second envelope to the light. Was the
amount the same as hers? Or more? Surely more. That scheming woman surely had
found a way to squeeze more out of the government. Sitting down, she put the
envelope on the cocktail table in front of the couch and looked at it. What if
she opened it? It had the same name. She knew there was a penalty for opening
the wrong check. Hadn't she warned others about it from time to time. She was
not a fool, she thought, rejecting the idea.
    But as she sat there watching the envelope, other thoughts
began to fill her mind. Suppose she simply let it sit there. Just that. Put it
under the candy dish and leave it there. Who would be the wiser? She reveled in
this sudden sense of power over the second Mrs. Shankowitz. For a change, she,
Sarah, would not be the victim. The woman deserved it. Look what she had done
to break up her marriage.
    A missing social security check was one of the major
disasters, next to sickness and death, that could affect their world. It was,
of course, replaceable. But that took time, and the aggravation it caused