The Gate House   ::   Demille Nelson

As I reached for the cognac, I noticed a stack of old greeting cards held together by a rubber band, and I slida card out at random. It was a standard Hallmark anniversary card, and under the pre-printed words of love, joy, and devotion, Susan had written, “John, you don’t know how many times I wake up in the morning and just stare at you lying beside me. And I will do this for the rest of my life.”

I gathered the stack of cards and threw them in the fireplace.

I got up, went into the kitchen, and poured another coffee, then went out the back door and stood on the patio. I could see the lights of the guest cottage, where I used to live with my wife and children. I stood there a long time, then went back inside and sat again at the dining room table. I didn’t think this would be easy, but I certainly didn’t think it would be so hard.



CHAPTER TWO



I stared at the fire for some time, sipping coffee and cognac, my mind drifting between past and present.

So, I thought, I’m here in the gatehouse of the Stanhope estate, partly because Ethel Allard had an affair with Augustus Stanhope during World War II, and partly because my wife had an affair with a Mafia don. As Mr. Bellarosa himself would say, if he were alive, “Go figure.”

And now, according to Edward – and confirmed by my daughter, Carolyn – Susan, a.k.a. Mom, had shown up on the doorstep of the yuppie couple and made them an unsolicited and probably spectacular offer for their home, convincing them, I’m sure, that they’d be happier elsewhere and that she, Susan Stanhope Sutter, needed to return to her ancestral roots.

Knowing Susan, I’m certain this couple felt as though they were being evicted for using the wrong decorator. Or maybe they knew that Mrs. Sutter had killed a Mafia don, and they thought this was an offer they shouldn’t refuse. In any case, it was a done deal, and my former wife was now back in our former house, within the walls of the former Stanhope estate, and a five-minute walk up the drive from my temporary lodgings. It was as though someone had turned back the clock a decade and captured that brief moment in time when Susan and I were still living within walking distance of each other, and all it might have taken for us to be together was a phone call, a knock on the door, or a note. But that time had passed, and we’d both written new chapters in our histories.

Susan, for instance, had remarried. The lucky man was, according to Edward, “an old guy,” and with age comes patience, which one would need to be married to Susan Sutter.

Edward had also described the gentleman as “a friend of Grandpa’s, and really boring.