Sins of the Mother by Victoria Christopher Murray Page B

flowers and wondered what to do with this bunch. Already there was a bouquet from Brian sitting on her credenza. And her home was also filled with the fragrance of her ex-husband’s gifts.
    Still, as she carried the bouquet to her car, her plan was . . . to stay with the plan. But then she got behind thesteering wheel, and her BMW headed west instead of east; before she could figure it out, she was in front of the condominium where she’d spent four years of immense ecstasy and one year of total agony.
    Now she was so mad at herself.
    So why am I grinning?
    She shook her head, but that didn’t stop her mind from pressing Play again. And hearing Brian’s last words:
I always win.
    Glancing at her image in the rearview mirror, she used her hand to wipe her smile away. “What am I doing?” She tried to talk herself down as she squeezed her car out of the circular driveway.
    It was almost eight o’clock, and the traffic moved easily down Wilshire. She turned the radio’s volume up, blasting Mary J through the car. But not even her girl singing about her life helped.
    She needed to talk.
    Turning down the radio, she pressed the Call button on her dashboard.
    “What’s up?” Kyla, her best friend, answered on the second ring.
    “I just left Brian’s,” Alexis blurted out.
    “Brian? As in your
husband,
Brian?”
    Kyla was at least eight miles away, hanging out in her Ladera Heights home, but Alexis could see her friend now—suddenly sitting straight up and on the edge of her couch.
    “My
ex
-husband Brian,” she reminded her.
    Kyla’s screech reverberated through the car.
    “Would you stop it?” Alexis said.
    “I’m sorry; it’s just that I’m happy.” She could hear Kyla clapping. “My two best friends are getting back together.”
    “I didn’t say anything like that. We’re already divorced.”
    “So what? Simon and Sylvia Webb were divorced for ayear before they got back together. And do you know the Alstons at church? He sings in the choir. They’ve gotten remarried . . . twice! And then there’s—”
    “Dang!” Alexis said, stopping her friend. “Did you keep a list?”
    “No, it’s just that when people get back together, everyone talks about it. ’Cause it’s just so exciting to do it the right way . . .”
    Alexis rolled her eyes, knowing exactly what Kyla was going to say next.
    Kyla finished, “Since God hates divorce.”
    Alexis sighed, almost sorry now that she had called Kyla. Not that her friend wasn’t always there—Kyla was her two a.m. friend, the one you called at any time. The one who would come running anywhere. But Kyla was also her Christian friend, the one who would quote God’s word to you right when you didn’t want to hear it.
    Not that she could hate on Kyla for that; back in the day, she’d given Kyla a million scriptures when she and her husband, Jefferson, had been going through their own marital challenges after he’d slept with Kyla’s other best friend, Jasmine Larson.
    “God hates divorce,” Kyla repeated, as if Alexis needed to hear those words again.
    “Would you stop saying that!”
    “Why? Just because you don’t want to hear it doesn’t make it any less true. You know I never agreed with your leaving Brian. I supported you because I knew what happened was hard for you . . .”
    Hard? Was Kyla kidding? Hard didn’t even begin to describe what she’d been through. And she knew that Kyla, her mild-mannered Christian friend, would have never been able to handle the news of her husband being a sex addict, either.
    “Plus,” Kyla said, breaking through Alexis’s thoughts, “Lord knows Brian still loves you or else he wouldn’t have worked so hard to get that little sex-addiction thing under control.”
    “Little sex-addiction thing?”
    “You know what I mean. But my real point is,
you
still love him.”
    Her back stiffened, her grip tightened. “I don’t love him,” she said, with indignation all through her