The Last Cadillac by Nancy Nau Sullivan Page B

married him. But Dad was finally resigned. “You’re a strong one,” he said. “You’ll be fine, whatever you decide.” Dad was the only one who gave me a vote of confidence, and maybe Lucy. But I didn’t feel fine, not until that moment over spicy beef and broccoli and glazed chicken with fried rice.
    I slid out of the booth and walked toward the door. I hoped he would follow me out of the restaurant, because I didn’t want to walk three miles back to the dollhouse on a hot, August afternoon, but I would gladly do it to get away from him.
    He still had the same sad, pleading question on his face.
    â€œNo,” I said.
    Later that day, mopping the floor, which usually rattled some sense into my brain, it occurred to me—he still hadn’t said a word about the kids and our move to Florida. I’d filed the paperwork with the lawyer, who served Hubby the notice. Then I waited. Nothing. What a strange man. And I thought I knew him, but actually it showed me I didn’t know all that much about the person I’d married. Why on all of this good green earth did I ever think I knew the man I married?

7
PLAYING WITH MATCHES, BURNING IT DOWN
    I splashed the mop around and whacked into the walls. It felt good, but I couldn’t help remembering, and wondering, why he would even think to try and come back to me. He had the most convenient memory of any person I’d ever known.
    It might have been different for us—even with the misery that preceded the divorce. We’d had our arguments and broken furniture. But I always held that very small glimmer of hope that things would change for the better. Such is the goodness of hope; it doesn’t die easy.
    Then it did. Everything changed in one day’s time. I’d known him for so long, and all it took to end it—definitively—was the space between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m., on a dark, cold morning. I can say that for sure now—with the hindsight of the lucky, and my sanity relatively intact. That one time hit me like a rock hits water. After that morning, the events rippled out and enclosed us in larger and larger circles until we were all floating in the warp with no way out of what we fell into: the divorce, the family fights, the fleeing to Florida.
    It was very early that day when I heard the annoying rattle of the garage door going up. It woke me up instantly; but that was easy. All those mirthless nights, I slept on the edge of disaster, ready to jump to God-only-knows-where. The clock said 3:09 a.m., and I was alone in the bed again. The garage door was disturbing; but it was not just the clackety-clack that made me sit up in the dark. Something was different, even though this had been his routine for many weeks. He left in the night, and he was still gone in the morning when I woke up to get the kids off to school. He told me he had to work at odd hours because the office was moving to another building. He and his staff needed the time to relocate computers when business was shut down.
    â€œThat’s a great idea,” I said. It was a new business for him, after leaving the army behind. We both wanted it to work. He’d gone into a partnership, and his plan was to buy out the retiring owner. I wanted it to work out, not only for financial reasons, but for us, too, with all the moving around and his efforts to give up drinking behind us. Some days, I even thought it might be possible. I wanted to believe it because I had once loved him, and besides, he came with a military guarantee: Duty, Honor, Country. He would never lie or cheat.
    I sat in the dark, listening to his car fade away, at an hour before birds chirped, when the traffic began to hum at the burst of day, and then I remembered an address: 1776 Fairview.
    It grabbed me. It was easy to remember—our American Independence, and a familiar street. And it was written on the inside of a matchbook cover. I’d picked it up the day before