Good Intentions by Joy Fielding Read Free Book Online

the woman’s own husband had told Lynn that she was the prettier of the two—and was, at age thirty-seven, only two years younger than herself. Why then had Gary left her?
    They had shared fourteen (fifteen, if you counted their courtship) relatively strife-free years, years that had produced two children and two successful careers. For fourteen years, Lynn and Gary had shared similar tastes and interests, and had made a point of being mutually supportive of the other’s work and needs. Their marriage had been markedly free of serious problems. Both were healthy and well-paid professionals, although his income easily outdistanced her own. Still, they never argued about money. Nor had they ever argued about politics,religion, in-laws, or sex. In fact, they almost never argued about anything. As far as the outside world was concerned—as far as Lynn herself was concerned—theirs had been as close to perfection as most modern-day marriages come. Lynn and Gary, Gary and Lynn. They fit together as easily as their names. Lynn had thought that there was nothing about her marriage that she would change. Gary had obviously disagreed. Why hadn’t he told her his feelings before their differences became what the law defined as irreconcilable? Why had he waited until the words that came out of his mouth were “I’ve fallen in love with someone else. I’m leaving you”?
    In the beginning, she thought he would come back. In a few days, she thought, then, in a few weeks. Her lawyer advised no sudden moves, which was fine with Lynn, who rarely moved suddenly. A typical mid-life crisis, she decided, straight out of the textbooks. If she were advising a client, she would say to forgive and forget when the affair ran its course, as affairs of this kind usually did. But after the first week became a month, and then two, then three, and now six, with no signs of abating, in fact signs quite to the contrary, Lynn was forced to conclude that her husband might, in fact, be serious in his newly stated intention to actually get a divorce so that he might marry this other woman.
    He was proposing a fair settlement. She could have their tidy bungalow on Crestwood Drive, he offered through their respective lawyers, and all the furnishings, with the exception of a Queen Anne chair which had always been in his family and which, in truth, she had never particularly liked. He wanted half the art they had collected over their years together and all of his vastcollection of vintage rock-and-roll records. He offered no alimony but generous child support, and he agreed to continue paying the mortgage for another five years. Renee Bower had told Lynn that she thought she could persuade him to extend this period for another few years, and she quibbled with a few of the minor points, but it was generally agreed that Lynn and Gary Schuster were on the path toward a fair, amicable dissolution of their marriage. She was to be congratulated. She was behaving in the manner of a mature, responsible adult. “Consider yourself lucky,” Renee had told her when the first offer of settlement reached her desk. “He’s obviously marrying money.”
    Somehow that knowledge provided scant comfort. Gary had never been a man to let the almighty dollar govern either his life or his libido. He was a busy lawyer with a thriving, well-respected firm, and had recently been made a partner. He made a good living. He liked what he did. He had never aspired to the heights of the Social Register. Lynn understood that the fact that this woman had money was only incidental to whatever other qualities had attracted Gary to her in the first place. Whenever Lynn tried to picture what those qualities might be, her eyes filled with tears and her breath became uncomfortably short, and so she had willed herself to stop thinking, concentrating instead on her job and her children. And then Marc Cameron had phoned and come over and upset her with his unexpected words and his interesting face