The Life You've Imagined (30 page)

“Will you still love me if I get fat again?”

“Well, now I know what I’d be missing.”

“So why won’t you marry me?” I cringe after I say it. I wasn’t going to pressure him.

“I’m sorry I did that to you,” he says, his voice soft. He rests back on my pillow, turning his eyes to the ceiling. “It wasn’t fair to let my work stress mess up your dream wedding. I suppose it’s too late, at this point.”

“Probably.” My voice cracks, despite my earlier resolve that it shouldn’t matter if we get married on our original wedding date in a big ceremony. It does, dammit. It just does.

“Well, does it have to be too late, though? Maybe some things won’t be so elaborate or whatever, but it’s not like we cancelled the country club. Did you?”

“I couldn’t bring myself to make that call. Or even tell anyone.”

“Ha, me neither. I could just imagine my dad’s reaction. I’ve been putting it off.”

We turn to each other, both of us with that same half smile. “So, maybe we can still do it?” I say.

He embraces me on the bed, kissing my cheek and saying, “Hell, yeah.”

So this is the new us, all honest and open and, literally, naked. It feels so good, I’ll even tell him about my fertility charts and the temperatures.

Later.

Chapter 44

Anna

M
om quizzes me about Sally as I try to adjust the stock on the shelves to make everything look less ravaged. We haven’t been reordering, except the most popular items, so things are looking even more sloppy and haphazard than usual. I’ve deposited Sally upstairs on Mom’s bed, and when I left her, she was snoring away.

“She was just sitting on a park bench, kicking her feet like a little kid waiting for a ride, and she chattered the whole way home.”

“About what?”

“Nothing. Old stories about people she used to work with, stories about you as a teenager, working at the bowling alley. Drive-in movies.”

“Did she say anything about what she’d been doing all that time?”

I stand up and stretch. Mom is leaning on the counter, and that’s when I notice something inside her shirt, pressing against the cotton. She’s still wearing that ring.

“Anna, did she talk about it?”

“No. Every time I tried to gently inquire, she either shut right down or changed the subject, told me a joke. She wasn’t wearing shoes, which you noticed when she came in, and it sounds like she got a ride, at least one ride, from a man. But I don’t know anything else. Her shirt did seem like it was a little dirtier on the back than I remembered it, like she’d been lying down in the dirt at some point.”

“Should we . . . have her checked out?”

I shrug, thinking of her sleeping upstairs, looking so frail now. “I don’t know if I’d take her to the hospital, but maybe just have Dr. Simon give her a once-over.”

Mom glances at the door to make sure there are no customers coming in. She drops her voice lower. “I hope she didn’t . . . You don’t suppose, if she forgot what year it was and thought some guy was her boyfriend . . .”

“I hope not, but I don’t really know. Like I said, she wouldn’t talk about it.”

I don’t say it out loud to my mother, but along with the chance that Aunt Sally had sex with a stranger because she was out of her head, she could have been raped. Actually, one is the same as the other, because the guy in question would probably have known she was acting strange, not in her right head. I suppose we could drag her to the sexual assault crisis center, have a rape kit administered, and try to get to the bottom of it.

Or, we could leave her alone.

“It’s not your fault,” I tell her.

Mom averts her eyes. “In any case, we’d better watch her close.”

My cell phone bleeps. I read Beck’s message.

Moving into a house in Poplar Bluff. Buyers pulled out of sale. Dad needed a tenant. Big enough for two.

He includes the address in the message.

I snap the phone shut and resume straightening the cans.

“Who was that?” Mom asks, leafing through a magazine.

“Shelby.”

I’ve got duplexes and apartments circled in the newspaper, mostly two-bedroom. Mom is assuming all three of us will be staying together, at least for now, and it’s the only option that makes sense. I have savings, but not so much that I can pay rent on two apartments without a second thought, especially given how grim the job market’s been looking lately.

The thought of sharing four beige walls in a rental unit with my mother and batty maiden aunt is almost enough to send me crawling back to Chicago and begging Miller Paulson for my job back. Almost.

And now here’s Beck with his “big enough for two.”

Too fast, and yet, wasn’t it years in the making? His text from last night said his wife had found an attorney.

So it seems she’s prepared to divorce.

They are, however, keeping everything as quiet as possible until after Paul’s wedding, in which Maddie is going to be a flower girl and Beck is a groomsman. That will be their last public appearance as husband and wife, he’d said.

My invitation to the wedding had arrived just yesterday, along with one for Mom. Mom threw hers in the garbage. I’ve got my RSVP marked with “regrets” and ready to go out with the day’s mail.

“I think I’m just going to close the place down,” Mom says abruptly, slapping her magazine closed. “Who cares now?”

“Right now?”

“Not this minute. Maybe next week—Friday should be our last day. Then I’ll take a drive up north.”

“A drive?”

“Sure, why not? I never get weekends off. I’ll just drive up north and get some air.”

“Want me to come with you?”

“Would you be offended if I said I just need some alone time?”

“Not at all.” I understand all too well.

I glance at the calendar behind the counter. That’s the Friday before the Becker wedding. “Well, it’s as good a time as any. I’ll make a ‘going out of business’ sign.”

“Don’t bother. I don’t want any fuss.”

Indeed. That’s all we’ve had lately. A whole lot of fuss.

Cami comes down the stairs, her face looking much better already. She’s pulled her hair back.

“Hey, you fixed your glasses,” I say, noticing they’re back on her face as normal.

“I glued them. I can’t fold them up anymore, but at least they stay on. And no tape on them, yeah?”

“So, are you feeling okay?” Mom asks, giving Cami that slit-eyed once-over she always used on me after a bad test at school or a tumble on the playground.

“Right as rain.” She puts her hands on her hips. “Need a break, Maeve? I’m bored.”

“You’re on.”

“We have to look at some apartments, anyway,” I tell Cami after I line up the SpaghettiOs. “And I have a complaint to file in circuit court, and then we’ll go get your stuff from your dad’s.”

It felt funny, last night. I couldn’t sleep after failing to find Sally, so instead, I got back to lawyering. This time I wasn’t sitting at my huge desk in my office with my high heels kicked off under the desk; I was cross-legged on my narrow childhood bed with my laptop, Cami asleep on the floor. It didn’t take me long to write; climbing back in the saddle was easy. I saved it to a thumb drive so I could go print it out.

It was fun, even, gearing up to kick some ass. Not that I didn’t kick ass at Miller Paulson; I kicked plenty, and though I believed every word I wrote, everything I said at the time, looking at my work there with some distance, all the battles were usually between huge entities or wealthy people scrapping over money.

This ass-kicking is personal and deserved. I’m not a mercenary now, hired to carry out the battle plan; oh, no.

Cami reclined in the office chair. “How long could this take?”

“It will take some time. It depends how hard he fights, whether he hires his own lawyer. He might settle, which would be faster but might get you less than what you’re owed.”

“Hmmm. Less, huh?”

“Sometimes speed is preferable. Depends what your goal is. What you really want.”

“Mmm.” Cami tips her head back in the chair and spins herself in half circles, idly stroking her fading bruise with the tips of her fingers.

Chapter 45

Cami

A
nna slows her car in front of my house—scratch that, Dad’s house—and if we see his truck or any sign of movement in the windows from Sherry, we are outta here. Seems safe, though, so we exchange a look and pull up front.

I go quickly across the grass, pulling out my keys as I do. I’d like to just mosey, as an act of defiance. I’m not afraid of him. He already knocked me cold and slapped me around.
Do your worst!
I would like to say, and spit on him, just for that extra hit of drama, because why not? But I’ve got Anna here, and I wouldn’t like her to get beat up on my account.

The key doesn’t even go in.

“Piece of shit changed the locks on me.”

We look for open windows, but they’re all shut.

“C’mon, let’s head out back.”

Our feet crunch on the gravel and as we walk down the drive. That’s when my dad’s neighbor slams her window shut. Anna jumps. “Hey, cool it, there, 007,” I say, elbowing her.

On the back porch, I find a window open halfway. “Stand back,” I tell Anna, and grab an old beer bottle. I smash the end off, then use the jagged edge to rip the screen out.

I turn to Anna and wink. She looks like she might throw up. “You’ll defend me against a breaking and entering charge, yeah?”

“You bet.” She doesn’t smile, though.

I wriggle in through the half-open window and open the back door for Anna. I gesture for her to follow me into my room, where I stop so quick she bumps into me from behind.

My dresser drawers are standing open; my folding closet door is off the track and hanging akimbo from the hinges. Everything’s empty. Even the sheets are ripped off the bed, which has been moved away from the wall.

There are shoeprints all over my sunny yellow paint.

I lead Anna down the hall and there, in the living room, is my stuff in a pile, like it’s ready for a bonfire. On the top of the mess is the framed photograph of Mom, Trent, and me, the one that fell off my wall the first day back. Its glass is cracked with a spider-web pattern, as if punched.

I slide the photo out of its frame and fold it inside an old math book.

“Let’s go,” I tell Anna.

“Don’t you want me to find some boxes or something? For all this?”

I shrug. “It’s just stuff. None of it means a damn thing.”

A pounding on the door make us both jump this time. It’s not my dad because this person is too short; anyway, he must have his own key.

I open the door to find Sherry, looking around her frantically, like she’s being chased by a lion.

“You guys have gotta get outta here. Now.”

“What’s going on?”

“Your dad got a call at the shop. I was on my way out when I overheard. The neighbor called to say you were breaking in, and he started cursing and talking about a citizen’s arrest. He’s really lit, too.”

I don’t have to be told twice. But halfway across the weedy yard, I stop and turn back to Sherry, still on the porch. “Hey, um, thanks for that. He’ll be pissed if he catches you here, yeah?”

“Probably,” she says, pronouncing it “prolly.”

“So, go already.”

“Yeah, I guess I’d better.”

She looks lost. She might not have any class and she’s definitely no intellectual giant, but she just risked her ass for me and I can’t just let her stand there. “Hey!” I snap my fingers at her. I can see Anna has already started the car. “You gotta go.”

“Well, I kinda got tossed outta my place, so . . .”

“Uh-uh. I’ll tell you right now that a cardboard box is better than this. You know that yourself; tell me you don’t.”

“Cami!”

We lingered too long. His truck skids around the corner, and I flinch because he’s headed right for Anna’s car.

“Dad!” I scream as his truck slides, fishtailing, until it’s nose to nose with Anna’s bumper.

He stumbles out the door, looking from me to Sherry. “You!” he bellows, jabbing a finger at her. “You helped her bust into my house. My own house!”

“I didn’t, Tim, I swear!” She holds her hands up like he’s going to shoot her.

I sure hope he doesn’t have a gun.

He whirls on me, but I don’t shrink away. For one thing, he’s still several feet from me, and it’s broad daylight. In the corner of my eye, I can see Anna muttering into her cell phone.

“And you! You’re always leaving me!”

“What the . . . ? You threw me out! After beating the crap out of me!” I point to my eye.

“How could you leave me all alone like this?” he bellows like a wounded bear.