Kyle had picked up on the extension in the den to make a phone call during the height of the racket from the now departed fire truck. In all the clamor, neither woman had heard the click on the line.
Peggy and Denise were both shocked into momentary silence.
“KYLE!” Peggy shrieked into the phone. She was almost hysterical. A blazing fury had ignited instantaneously. “Get off the phone! You can’t listen in when I talk to mother, damn you! You don’t have any damned right to spy on me. I’m not going to take this shit from you, you bastard!
“I wasn’t spying on you, Peggy,” Kyle said calmly. I picked up the phone to call Fred to see if he wanted to golf tomorrow. It was when the fire truck was passing by and then I heard what you and your mother were planning. But I have to say, dear, some people need to be spied on because their husbands can’t trust them anymore.”
Peggy slammed the phone down and screamed unintelligibly for a long moment. Kyle could hear it all the way downstairs and Denise heard it faintly over the phone line.
“You son of a…” Denise said viciously. “Who the hell do you think you are? You can’t talk to us that way. You have no right to talk to me and my daughter like that…” Kyle interrupted her.
“I will speak to my wife any way I damned well please, Denise,” Kyle said with a hard edge in his voice. “It’s no business of yours how I talk to her and I’d appreciate it if you butted out of our problems. You don’t have any right to be putting yourself between me and my wife and it’s time for you to stop.”
“You listen to me, you pig…” Denise spat at her son-in-law. She was so mad she had to stop and take a deep breath to relax. Her hands were trembling with anger.
“No…you listen to me, Denise,” Kyle shot back. “If your daughter does what she’s been trying to do for the last eight or nine months, she will lose everything she loves. She will lose me, she’ll lost her children, her friends…she’ll lose the respect of her employers and coworkers…she will lose everything, Denise. I promise you that. She will lose it all and if I find out you helped her in any way, I will sue you for every dime you and Dan have…is that clear? I don’t know for what. I’m not that smart about suing people, but I bet Brad Carson will find something…do you hear me? BUTT…OUT, DENISE!”
His voice rose as he spoke. His anger had been mounting the longer he thought about what he’d heard his mother-in-law propose to his wife. He didn’t wait to hear an answer. He slammed the phone down hard before she could get a word out.
Twenty minutes later, while he was still walking around the block in an effort to cool off before he went back home to confront Peggy, his cell phone rang. He’d walked out the front door while Peggy was still trying to get herself together enough to come downstairs. He’d thought the first call would be from her but the screen said it was his father-in-law. His first impulse was to refuse the call; then he punched the accept button. There wouldn’t be any better time to talk to Dan. He might just as well get it over with.