MY DIVORCE CAME WITH A SEQUEL

Three years after our divorce, my exhusband, Julian Winfield, called to ask whether I still wanted the matching pajamas.

It took me a long time to remember that both our names were embroidered on them. "I don't want them." He was quiet for a few seconds, then said he would throw them out.

After I hung up, I deleted the last photo of him on my phone. Chapter 1 A few days later I heard Julian was getting married. I knew the bride, too. She was his first love.

The week before our wedding, his mother set him up on a dinner date with that first love. He went. We fought about it from the engagement all the way to the divorce.

I was still thinking about it when my phone rang. The voice on the other end was nothing but tired. "Open your door.

Your exhusband asked me to drop something off." He was Julian's friend, and these days the two of us were coworkers.

He shoved a bag into my hands and turned to go before I could even get out a sorrytobotheryou. I opened it. The pajamas. Navy blue. His set. Mine was pink.

I ran my fingers over the embroidery. This one had my name on it. I had stitched it myself. Terrific. Now I had to make another trip downstairs to throw it out.

Heaven took pity on me.

The second I opened the door, Iva, the woman who cleaned our building, came down the hall with her mop. "You don't want that?" she asked. "Nope." "Then give it to me." The next morning I watched Iva cleaning her way through the building floor by floor in men's fleece pajamas with my name on them. "Iva, maybe you could wear it inside out?" I said.

My name was stitched too big, too obvious, a good hand's width across. "Oh, it doesn't look good inside out." I had nothing to say to that and let it go.

I had just stepped out of the elevator when my mother called. Her first words were, "Is your mourning period over?" I froze. "What does that mean? Did Dad die?" "Winnie, I mean.

Weren't you going to spend three years as his widow?" I hadn't been divorced three months before my mother started lining up men for me.

All I could tell her was that I had no plans to remarry for three years. "Could you not call him Winnie?" The first time I brought Julian to her house, one "Winnie" nearly made the two of us choke to death. "Then what?

Julie?" I had no words. "Let's stick with Winnie." "If the mourning's over, get yourself home. There's a guest." No dodging it.

I thought again about what Julian's mother had said, that her son was getting married, that he had finally landed her dream daughterinlaw.

On her way out she told me to come by sometime. I thought about it, then told my mother, "Find me a better one. Better than Julian." "Keep dreaming." She hung up.

When I got there, sure enough, a heavy guy was sitting picking his nose, and when he was done he wiped it straight onto the pale pink tablecloth.

Supposedly he was also on his second marriage. Was this how far my value had fallen in my mother's eyes? Then again, I had never been worth anything in her eyes.

When Julian and I first got together, she kept worrying he was after my money. Then I told her Julian had far more money than I did. So she told me to take him in for a full workup.

Something had to be wrong with him. Otherwise why would he want me? As it turns out, her worry wasn't baseless. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Chapter 2 After we married we fought, we hit each other, he had a snowball fight with his first love out in the snow, and I fell in the snow and lost a baby… "You're on your second marriage too.

We're a perfect match." My mouth twitched. All I could do was give him a few noncommittal answers. "Didn't you say you don't want kids? Perfect. I've got two, a boy and a girl.

We get married and you're set in one step. Full set, all at once." I closed my eyes and worked at settling myself down.

I was about to speak when a familiar voice called from behind me. I turned. Julian stood there in a sharp suit, the picture of a man who had made it.

And the woman on his arm turned a gentle look on me too.

She was Rosalind Fairbanks, Julian's first love. "He's… he's not your boyfriend, is he?" Rosalind pointed at the man across from me, fighting down a laugh. "He is." The man across from me got there before I could open my mouth.

I felt bad that he had been dragged in and laughed at for nothing, but that answer of his stripped me of whatever dignity I had left. Julian only looked at me.

It was a long time before he patted his fiancée's hand. "Let's go." The two of them headed upstairs. I watched them from behind. They really did match.

Back in school, I'd heard, they were the couple everyone rooted for, prom king and queen.

The first time Julian's family and friends met me, they couldn't hide the shock in their eyes. Fair is fair. I am a very ordinary person.

Looks, body, degree, job, all of it at ordinaryperson level. I really wasn't good enough for him, so the split was inevitable. It only came slower than I expected.

We fought every single day of that marriage, and it still lasted five years. "You're not interested in me, are you?" the man asked carefully. "That was your exhusband, wasn't it?" "How do you know?" He pointed at my eyes. "You're crying." "What?" I grabbed a napkin and wiped fast. "It's drafty by the window." He didn't say anything.

When I looked up, Julian was leaning against the secondfloor railing with his phone at his ear.

No way to know whether he had seen me fall apart like that. "I'll — I'll get going, then." He paid and got up and left. Once he was in his car, I got ready to leave too.

On my way out, a server came after me with a bunch of roses. "It's Valentine's Day." "Thank you." On the way home my mother's calls kept coming in like artillery.

When I opened my phone there were twentysome voice messages, each one close to a full minute.

I tapped the last one by accident and her shriek came tearing out. "Take a good look at yourself. Who do you think you are? Toby's such a good kid and he isn't good enough for you?

What is it you want? You deserved that divorce, you ungrateful little thing…" I shut the phone off fast.

Every head in the train car turned toward me at once, and when I looked up they all turned back to their phones at once, watching me on the sly. I kept my head down.

Heat ran from my ears all the way down my neck. "Here. You're sweating." A girl handed me a tissue. "Thanks." At my stop I stumbled off the train at a run.

I had barely gotten in the door when my mother called again. "I went too far before. Don't be upset. Everything I do is for your own good.

That son of a bitch father of yours walked off with that whore, and I raised you alone all these years.

The things I've been through…" Chapter 3 I left the call running and went about my business.

She cried herself out, she got through all the old bitterness, and only then did I say a few comforting things. She got the crying under control. "Alice found you another one.

Go tomorrow, don't forget. I'll send you the address in a bit." "I don't want to—" "I'm your mother.

Would I hurt you?" She cut me right off. "If you don't go, then don't ever call me your mother again." Then she hung up. The address came through a minute later.

A nicer restaurant than today's. The next day I went straight from work to meet him.

A tall, cleancut man was standing outside the restaurant. "Dorothea Sanderson?" I stopped short. He looked a little familiar. "You — you're Victor?" He smiled and nodded.

My middle school classmate. Back then he was skinny and small, and in gym class a teacher slapped him hard enough to nearly send him halfway across the field.

And now he was this tall, this solid? "Did they raise you on growth hormones?" I asked, stunned. He just smiled. Once we sat down we got into all kinds of middle school things.

He had taken plenty of abuse from the other kids back then, and talking about it now didn't seem to bother him at all. He kept that easy smile the whole time.

By the end of it I knew he ran a small company of his own, that he was divorced too, and that he had no kids. "Your mom made you come, right? Mine too.

How about we cover for each other for a while so we don't get lectured every day? What do you say?" I thought about it. It made a lot of sense.

What I didn't expect was how thorough his act would be. The next day he had a huge bunch of roses delivered to my office. Grady leaned in. "New boyfriend?

The fat guy?" "Who told you that?" He shrugged. "My sweet, beautiful sisterinlaw, obviously. She also asked me to talk some sense into you.

Said don't marry a man like that out of spite and wreck your whole life." Rosalind was "sisterinlaw" to him.

Five years I was married to Julian, and he never once called me that. "A man like what?

Whatever he is, he still beats the kind who runs his mouth behind people's backs and thinks he's the noble one." His face stiffened, then he snorted out a laugh. "Defending him already.

I do have one request, though." I ignored him. He kept talking anyway. "Don't bring him to the office. I don't eat pork." "What the hell is wrong with you?" He shrugged again.

I wanted to break the vase over his head.

At the end of the day he was at me again. "Are you really dating that pork roast?" "None of your damn business." "Dump him," he said, those goodlooking eyes of his full of laughter. "And since you're so pathetic, I'll be generous and accept your declaration of love." I picked up the roses and walked out with a perfectly calm face.

He came after me. "I'm serious. I like you a lot." I stopped and looked at him. Then he added, "…your cooking." "Fucking idiot." "Such language.

And that mouth is out there shaping young minds?" I was lining up another insult when Victor came over fast and took my bag, smiling warmly. "Done for the day?

You must be worn out." I didn't look at Grady again. I got in the car with Victor. He dropped me off at my building and left.

I was about to go up when I saw a familiar figure standing there. "Who was that just now?" Julian stepped out of the dark with the cold coming off him. "New boyfriend?" Chapter 4 Before I could answer, Iva came by in those old pajamas. "That your boyfriend?" "Uh…" Julian's eyes were locked on the embroidery at Iva's collar.

He