Chapter 1
“Hello Mr. Newlywed,” Jody said into her phone with a smile. “How’s married life treating you?”
“It’s not too bad,” Zac replied. “What are you up to?”
“Hold on a minute, Zac,” Jody said as she pulled the phone away from her ear. “Bye, Con,” she said as she bid farewell to her fellow castmate and kissed him on the cheek. “See you tomorrow.” She put the phone back to her ear. “Sorry about that.”
“Well you sound rather preoccupied,” Zac responded with a flirt in his voice.
“Not really. He’s a sophomore and a little too young for me.”
“I dunno, Jode. I heard some kissing.”
Jody rolled her eyes. “I kissed him on the cheek. No big deal.”
“Right,” Zac teased.
Jody exited the theater and headed toward her car. “Con and I have the same taste in men.”
Zac laughed and continued on with the conversation. “So when do you open?”
“Uh, I think it’s the 7th and we run for 2 weekends.”
“That’s just a few weeks away. You prepared?”
“Eh,” Jody replied as she opened the car door and sat down. “I’m getting there. But what about you? How was the honeymoon?”
“It was amazing.”
“Where’d you go?”
“We went to Fiji.”
Jody smiled as she backed out of the parking spot. “Sounds romantic.”
“It was unbelievable.”
“When did you get back?”
“A few days ago.”
There was a pause.
“I’m in the doghouse with Kate.”
“I knew it!” Jody exclaimed, her hunches correct. “What’d you do?”
“I don’t really want to get into it...”
“But you need tickets to the show for opening night to make up for it?”
“Exactly.”
“Consider it done.”
Zac was somewhat surprised. “Really?”
“Sure. It’d be nice to have some people in the audience.”
“Great. Jode, you’re a life-saver.”
“Hey, I try.”
“So how’s everything with you? You holding up alright?”
“Things are chaos as usual. I’m working out here and I’m on student government, yearbook, food committee, and there’s something else, but I can’t remember.”
“Your schedule sounds about as hectic as ours,” Zac commiserated.
“You guys busy?”
“Yeah.”
Jody cracked another smile as she pulled into her apartment parking lot. “Well don’t sound so happy. I’d rather be globetrotting and playing music than bust my ass and work my way through school.”
“Granted...”
“Where are you off to now?”
“We’ll be in LA for the next two weeks, then we’re in NY for three weeks, then I think we go overseas for a while.”
“Recording?”
“Yeah, that and touring.”
Jody bit back a pang of jealousy at Zac’s freedom. She just wished she could get a job in the theater that paid well enough so she could pay off her student loans.
“You there, Jode?”
She snapped back into the conversation. “Yeah, sorry. Guess I spaced out for a minute.”
“You sound tired,” Zac noted as he heard Jody’s car door open and close.
“Yeah. I’ve got a ton of stuff to do. There’s a directing scene that I have to analyze and cast tonight, plus I have to do a full character development and backstory for script writing.” Jody sighed. “And I have to get these lines down.”
“Oh college kids,” Zac teased. “Go do your homework.”
“Go be a pop-tart,” Jody teased back as she let herself into her apartment.
“Alright. ‘Night Jode and don’t forget about the tickets.”
“I won’t. Tell Kate and everybody I say hello.”
“OK. Bye.”
“Bye.”
Jody hung up her phone and sighed. Hearing from Zac automatically brought back thoughts of Taylor. She knew she shouldn’t still have feelings for him after all that happened, but she couldn’t help herself- she had really loved him.
Tossing her phone aside, Jody plunked herself at her desk and grabbed her scripts. She looked them over once and made a half hearted attempt to do her work. Usually she was rather focused, but talking to Zac had distracted her. After 30 minutes, Jody gave up. She took one last look at her script, tossed the book on her desk, and rubbed her eyes.
Studying just wasn’t going to happen.
* * *
Taylor, on the other hand, had just put his youngest child back into her crib. As much as he loved having a son, there was something about Penelope that put an extra bounce in his step. Taylor adored his daughter. He could barely remember life without either of his children.
Things were also different with Taylor and Natalie. The arrival of Penelope made it obvious that the Hanson family was in need of more space. They were no longer in their first apartment. Instead, they were now living in another brownstone, but this time Taylor made the decision to outright purchase the building. Their new abode was 4 stories instead of 2 and allowed each child to have their own bedrooms. Plus, there were a few extra rooms for guests. The entry level to the house was a near carbon copy of their last place- a living room and a nice sized kitched and dining room. The bedrooms were downstairs, nearly in the same place. Penelope now inhabited a room the size of Ezra’s old room and Ezra moved next door to more spacious quarters that could easily accommodate more than one mattress or bunk bed.
The family now had two extra floors of house to play with. The third story was an office/study. The computer was on that floor along with a desk and other business things. The other side of the room had an area rug and bookshelves that were stacked with everything from Shakespeare to Michael Chrichton to Salman Rushdie. There was a comfortable looking easy chair in the middle of it all, adding an air of sophistication with the hardwood floor.
The top floor, though, that was Taylor’s haven. Taylor spent more money than he should have on sound-proofing the entire space. Once the studio was completed, it was as if the flood gates of Taylor’s creativity opened and he began to write. It didn’t matter what he wrote- plays, stories, songs, music- just as long as he had a pen in hand. Taylor would hole himself up in either the studio or the library for hours. Sometimes he wrote about Natalie, sometimes life on the road, or his children.
But there were some moments- just occasionally- when Taylor was alone in the library with his notebook that he wrote about Jody. Sometimes he wrote songs about her, but more often he wrote her letters. He had been thinking of her a lot lately. Even though they had been split up for nearly a year and a half, Taylor still wondered if he had made the right decision. Sometimes his letters reflected his doubts and other times he wrote her about his everyday life.
Taylor noticed that he wrote Jody when he felt insecure. In fact, he wrote her in the days before Penelope was born and in the first few weeks after. He wrote Jody and told her that Penelope completely unnerved him. He doubted his abilities as a father for Ezra. There were times when writing to Jody made Taylor feel better than talking to Natalie. It was the delicate balance that Taylor had failed to achieve a year and a half before.
His latest letter was an admission that he missed Jody. He told her about going back to her store in hopes of finding her, only to be told that she was gone and noone knew where she went. Taylor missed having a creative partner in Jody. He used to have that in Natalie, but with two young children running around, any conversation generally revolved around the kids. Factor in Taylor’s hectic tour and recording schedules and it was a miracle that their marriage survived at all. These were the things he told her.
He never sent the letters, of course. Jody was still an obvious sore topic with Natalie, so mentioning her name was just about forbidden.
Ezra picked up on this too and chose his time wisely to talk to his father. He would, on occasion, climb into Taylor’s lap and tell him that he missed Jody. The first time Ezra did this, he cried. The child cried that he wanted to go visit Jody in her new house and have juice with her and play in the park. He had begged Taylor to call Jody and that nearly broke Taylor’s heart. Ezra had cried himself to sleep that night and Taylor had carried him down the two flights of steps to his bedroom.
“Why was Ezra upstairs?” Natalie had questioned a haggard looking Taylor.
Taylor shrugged and sat down at the kitchen table. “Just wandered up, I guess.”
Natalie observed her husband for a moment. “Everything OK?”
He looked right past her. His tone was empty. “Sure.” Taylor sighed. “I’m going to bed.”
Natalie watched him descend the stairs and disappear around the corner.
Taylor wasn’t normally one to be secretive unless it involved defending someone he cared about. The last time Taylor was secretive about something, it involved Jody.
The last thought sent fear down Natalie’s spine.
Could this involve Jody? Impossible. Natalie had been extra careful about slowly eliminating Jody’s presence from the house but this made her doubt herself. Maybe Jody was creeping back into Taylor’s mind. Natalie frowned and knew that she had a long road ahead of her.
Index
Chapter 2
The Divorce
Email: BunchOfFrogs@aol.com
