Chapter 5
“So,” Jack asked when he walked into the kitchen and found his daughter stirring a pot on the stove, “how was your day?”
Sydney grumbled under her breath. “You mean you don’t already know?”
“Well,” Jack said slowly, “I did hear something between a rather public confrontation between you and Michael…”
“You mean in the middle of his father’s used car dealership? Uh, yeah…meanwhile, when they hell did that happen?! Since when is Michael such an entrepreneur?!”
“I don’t know what you mean…”
“Bill told me that it was Michael’s idea to branch out into the used car business,” Sydney explained further.
“Oh, well I hadn’t heard that. It doesn’t surprise me, though. Since you’ve been gone Michael’s been rather focused on his work,” Jack told her.
“Well apparently that’s made him a royal pain in the ass,” she muttered. Her father gave her a disapproving look, mostly towards her language use. “Well it’s true! I don’t understand why he won’t just sign the divorce papers. You’d think he would want to get on with his life. I mean, he’s been dating…right?” she questioned.
“I really wouldn’t know,” her father said, raising up his hands in defense. “Perhaps Michael just wants some time to get used to the idea of divorcing you.”
“Dad, seriously?!” Sydney laughed in disbelief. “Its not like we were happy as can be and then suddenly out of the blue I asked for a divorce. We haven’t even been in the same state in eight years!”
“But that’s the thing,” her father challenged. “This is out of the blue. You two had gotten used to just coexisting married only in name. Now, suddenly, you’re ending it. You’ve probably been thinking about this for quite some time, but as far as Michael knew, you were just going to stay married forever and never come back and ask for a divorce.”
With this new information, Sydney sunk slowly into a nearby chair. Her father did have a point, a very good one, too. She had been thinking about the divorce for about a year. It took her a few months to go to a lawyer and then a few months after that to sign the papers herself and then nearly six months before she worked up the courage to face Michael in person. It was unfair of her to just show up out of the blue and expect Michael to sign the papers immediately. She knew him better than most people and she knew that he was not a spur-of-the-moment guy. Well, he had been, but only one instance in his life: when they eloped. He needed time to think and weigh the consequences, so it was only fair the she give him time to do that with regard to their divorce.
“Your right, Dad, your right. I’ll let Michael cool down for a day and then I’ll go over to his house and speak with him calmly,” she emphasized.
“Good girl,” Jack smiled at her. “So what did you make for dinner?”
“Don’t get too excited, Dad,” she laughed softly. “It’s just soup. I’m afraid I lost all my cooking skills when I gained all my financial ones.”
“Nonsense, they’re just rusty. I’m sure if your life depended on it you could whip up a mean dinner,” he smiled.
“I suppose I could,” she smiled back; she had missed being home, even if it was just a tiny part of her doing that missing.
~*~
For all of Tuesday, Sydney did not bother Michael, at all. In fact, she didn’t bother much of anyone. She stayed in the house and just relaxed for the first time in a long time. She watched some TV, but since her father only received a handful of channels (he was not much of a TV fan) and she was not interested in soap operas that was very short lived. She moved on to some pleasure reading of old novels she found in her room, ones she had not read since high school.
For dinner Tuesday evening, she and her father went to the Hemlock Diner, which was her first ‘public’ appearance. She knew that Michael never ate at that diner unless forced to by her, so it was a safe location. Safe in the ‘at least we won’t have another awkward encounter where we’ll yell at each other’ respect anyway. She, however, was not safe from throngs of people asking her the same questions over and over and over again. She politely answered all of their queries, though she was so busy talking to everyone in sight she could hardly eat any of the dinner she ordered. Luckily, Amelia packed it up for her to take home in a nice plastic container with extra mashed potatoes just the way she liked them.
On Wednesday, Sydney tried once again to contact Michael. Not wanting yet another public humiliation, she called the used car dealership before stopping by unannounced. By speaking with Michael’s father, she found that he had the afternoon off. Apparently, he would be waiting for some sort of repair man, Bill wasn’t sure what.
With this information, Sydney grabbed her car keys and headed towards her former place of residence. She would have called ahead but that would have given Michael time to flee the premises. Not to mention the fact that she did not have a phone number since when they lived there one was not available. She merely hoped that when she arrived, Michael did not have his shotgun ready to take some shots at her rented car.
The former Branson property they bought to be their very own was located on the outskirts of town. The two acres of land consisted of mostly woods along with a small stream. To access the house, one needed to drive down a narrow lane cleared through the trees; the house itself was not visible from the main road due to the dense brush. Because of this, Sydney was not able to catch a glimpse of it until she was right on top of it; then, she gasped.
To say that Michael had fixed up the house would have been an understatement. Fixing up implied that it went from a hole-filled shack, to a place where one could live comfortably without fear of being rained on through the roof. Michael had made the house gorgeous with soft yellow paint and dark blue shutters that Sydney loved. He even had a small garden growing along the front porch, though Sydney suspected that was probably Amelia’s doing.
After string at the house for a solid five minutes, Sydney got out of the car, making sure to grab the file folder with the divorce papers on the way. She walked up the white painted porch and knocked twice on the front door. It opened rather quickly (most likely because Michael was hoping it was the repair man being shockingly on time), but when Michael saw who was standing on his doorstep he tried to shut it again.
“Michael stop,” Sydney commanded, jamming her foot in the doorway so the door could not shut. “We need to talk.”
“You’re not welcome here,” he growled.
“Really? Last time I checked I paid for half of this place,” she challenged. His look softened ever so slightly. “It looks beautiful by the way.”
“Don’t try and butter me up,” he snapped.
“I was just telling the truth,” she said honestly. He muttered something she couldn’t hear before stepping aside and letting her in the house.
“What do you want, Sydney?” he asked in a rather defeated way. She held out the folder as her answer. “I told you I’d sign ‘em when I was good and ready!”
“When, exactly, will that be?” she questioned. “I can’t just stick around here, you know; I have a job to get back to.”
“Well far be it from me to keep you here. Lord knows I couldn’t do it the first time,” he snapped. “Why don’t you just go now? I don’t want you here and I’m waiting for someone!”
“The repair man; I know,” she said softly, still stung slightly from his comment about being unable to keep her there. Amazingly, he was not one hundred percent of the reason she did not return to Hemlock Grove. At least in part, she was doing it for herself; her career.
“No, not the repair man,” he said. She gave him a questioning look. “Well, yes, the repairman but someone else, too…a-a woman!” he insisted, pointing at her.
“A woman?” she raised an eyebrow at him. He nodded firmly. “A woman is coming here at one thirty on a Wednesday afternoon? What is she, a hooker?” He gave her a rather glaring look. “I see…so what is this woman going to do when she gets here? Is she a maid?”
“No, she’s not a maid. I’m capable of cleaning my own house,” he said, gesturing around. Sydney looked around the room and saw that while it was not harboring any mold or small rodents, she would not exactly have called it ‘clean’.
“Really?” she challenged.
“Yes…I’ve just been busy lately…”
“With this woman?” she asked, mocking him slightly.
“Yes! Yes I’ve been busy with her and she is coming over this afternoon so…so we can have sex,” he said sounding progressively more idiotic by the moment.
Sydney could not help but laugh at this. “You are pathetic.”
“Not as pathetic as you,” he retorted childishly.
“I’m sure,” she rolled her eyes. “Look, if you just sign the papers I’ll go. You never have to see me again.”
“Oh you’d like that wouldn’t you,” he said, his eyes narrowing towards her as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Heaven forbid you’d have to come back to your old hick town after living in the big city with your posh, swanky friends. I bet when they ask you were you grew up you don’t tell them the truth, or you tell them the whole town burned down just so they don’t know where you came from.”
Sydney glared at him. “Excuse me, you don’t know a damn thing about my life in New York.”
“Oh I think I do. I think you go to work everyday and you work for those slimy CEOs embezzling money from everyone and you schmooze fancy clients so they’ll give you lots of money and you take them out for dinner and drinks…and then you go home to your empty apartment and count your money because that’s all that matters to you in your empty, empty life. You have no friends. You don’t want any, either. You just want your money. After all, that’s why you left here, isn’t it? Couldn’t stand being middle class any longer…”
Tears brimming in her eyes, Sydney forced herself to stand firm. “Why don’t you just go to hell Michael!” she shouted.
“Why don’t you just get the hell out of my house!”
“Fine!” she shouted, throwing the envelope containing their divorce papers at him.
“Fine!” he retorted, but his response was muffled by the slamming of the front door as Sydney left as quickly as possible.