Mending Fences by Sherryl Woods Page B

but one of these days she’d accomplish that, too.
     
    It was the final football game of the season and the last of Evan’s high school career. Everyone at school was speculating that he’d have offers from the University of Miami, Florida and Florida State, but the coach had predicted he’d also be sought after by some top-notch out-of-state schools.
    “Are you going to the game tonight?” Paula asked Emily that afternoon.
    “Of course. I’d probably go anyway, but the fact that it’s Evan’s last game means that the Carters are making a big deal out of it. They’re having a party for the team afterward at their house. Marcie’s in her element. She’s been planning it for weeks. She went over the menu with Evan so many times, he finally told her to just order pizza, because she was making him nuts.”
    Paula winced. “How’d she take that?”
    “Oh, she brushed it off, and just made the next five versions of the menu on her own with a little input from Josh. He came home scratching his head one day and asked me what the hell pâté is. When I told him, he made a gagging sound and told me to call Marcie and tell her absolutely not, no way was she to serve anything that disgusting, to stick to chips and dip. I think she’s concluded that both our sons have no class whatsoever.”
    Paula laughed. “It ought to be an interesting party.”
    “I’m just glad that Marcie found a good excuse to throw one. She was really down there for a while, thinking that no one needed her anymore.”
    “Doesn’t she get how much everyone counts on her, me included?” Paula said. “I will never forget how good she was to me when I was going through all those chemo and radiation treatments. And it wasn’t even that we were best friends, the way the two of you are. She just saw something she could do and she did it.”
    “Well, if you ask me, one reason Marcie doesn’t value her own worth nearly enough is because of Ken,” Emily said, breaking the vow of silence she’d always taken on the subject of Marcie’s husband. Maybe it was because she’d overheard him snapping at her over nothing lastnight while she and Marcie had been on the phone. Her patience with his behavior had worn thin through the years and suddenly she couldn’t keep her low opinion to herself a second longer.
    “How so?” Paula asked.
    “He’s always dismissed what she does as if it were of no consequence,” Emily explained. “But I know he’d be the first to blow a gasket if she stopped doing it.”
    Paula gave her an odd look. “You don’t like him much, do you?”
    Emily hesitated, then shook her head. “No, mainly because of how he treats Marcie. She’s this wonderful, totally devoted wife and he demeans her every chance he gets. It’s taken everything in me over the years to bite my tongue and not call him on it.”
    “Obviously he must have some good qualities for a woman like Marcie to stay with him all this time,” Paula suggested.
    “I suppose,” Emily said, not even trying to hide her doubts.
    One of the best things about her divorce was that for the past two years she’d hardly spent any time around Ken. Without Derek in the picture, Ken saw no need to waste his time trying to impress some high school teacher and they’d all but stopped doing things together as families. Tonight she was going to have to put aside her distaste and tolerate him, but with any luck she could escape from the Carters’ after an hour or so. The party was really for the kids, anyway, and her presence there—as Josh’s mom and a teacher from their school—would be a damper. She figured it was the perfect excuse to sneak away the second she’d had her fill of Ken’s bluster and ego.
     
    Emily had done her best to steer clear of Ken all evening. To his son’s embarrassment, he was busy boasting about Evan’s game-winning touchdown in an increasingly boisterous way. Evan had repeatedly begged him to stop, but Ken had had a few drinks and was