Praise for Shirley Jump

“Filled with humor and heart, this is a wonderful book.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Other Wife

“Filled with humor, poignancy, and detours. Readers like this reviewer will jump to find other works by this fine author.”

—Booklist on The Other Wife

“Sweet is the word for this anthology…. Jump’s office romance gives the collection a kick, with fiery writing.”

—Publishers Weekly on “Twelve Days” in Sugar and Spice

“What a beautiful story! Melanie and Cade are truly two of the best couples I’ve read about in a long time.”

—CataRomance.com on Back to Mr & Mrs

Dear Reader,

Enjoy this reading journey, both Around the Bend and down the road with Harvey the Wonder Dog in The Other Wife. Although both books contain road trips, they share something much deeper—they are both, at their core, journeys of discovery for the main characters. I think you learn a lot about yourself when you spend a lot of time with another person (or a dog like Harvey, whose tale inspired me to get my own little dog, Sophie).

When I sat down to write Around the Bend, I wanted to write a book about the complexity of mother/daughter relationships. It ended up becoming a book that was both difficult and fun to write, partly because I had lost my own mother, and ended up experiencing a lot of Hilary’s emotions in her journey of finding common ground with Rosemary.

My mother and I never took a road trip together, but we were the type to spend lots of time talking. She could, and very often did, talk my ear off. When I was a teenager, that drove me crazy, because I had boys to date and friends to see. But when I was an adult and a mother myself, I needed those conversations to help find myself as a woman, and to connect with my mother in a different way. As she neared the end of her life, we had a lot of those conversations in hospital rooms, so of all my books, this one draws the most from my real life. I did tell her dumb-blonde jokes and did read silly magazine stories.

And we laughed. Oh, how we laughed. I think we drove every one of her roommates crazy. I can honestly say, though, that we had some great times, just laughing and talking in those stuffy, smelly hospital rooms.

But I wrote Around the Bend to be a fun book, because I had such fun with my mother. Of everything I remember about her, it’s the laughter that stands out most in my memory, and it’s the way I am sure she would want me to think of her. So this one’s for my mom, but with a laugh, right to the very end.

Shirley

Around the Bend

SHIRLEY JUMP

Contents

AROUND THE BEND

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

Chapter ten

Chapter eleven

Chapter twelve

Chapter thirteen

Chapter fourteen

Chapter fifteen

Chapter sixteen

Chapter seventeen

Chapter eighteen

Chapter nineteen

Chapter twenty

Chapter twenty-one

Chapter twenty-two

THE OTHER WIFE

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

Chapter ten

Chapter eleven

Chapter twelve

Chapter thirteen

Chapter fourteen

Chapter fifteen

Chapter sixteen

Chapter seventeen

Chapter eighteen

Chapter nineteen

Chapter twenty

Chapter twenty-one

Chapter twenty-two

Chapter twenty-three

Chapter twenty-four

Chapter twenty-five

Around the Bend

To Mom

I love you and miss you every day

one

I stood on the cracked, weed-framed sidewalk outside the white clapboard house on the busy street in Dorchester where I’d grown up, car keys in hand, and made three promises:

1. I would not kill my mother

2. I would not kill myself

3. And no matter what, I would not talk about that incident in 1998.

My mother came down the porch stairs, toting a massive indestructible-as-hell and black-as-coal Samsonite suitcase in her right hand. “You’re seven minutes early,” she said, as if arriving early were a crime.

She looked bright and fresh, even though her pixie-faced Anne Klein watch had yet to tick its way to seven o’clock. I, on the other hand, felt like a cat had dragged me out of bed and regurgitated my body onto the concrete.

My mother had dressed for the occasion—as she always dressed for every occasion—in a cream suit with a white blouse, nude hose and dark blue sensible pumps with two-inch heels. She had the pearl studs my father had given her for their tenth anniversary in her ears, her dark brown hair in a stiff pageboy and her crimson-red lipstick bowed in place.

I’d pulled on jeans with ragged cuffs, flip-flops and a faded T-shirt I’d bought in Mexico when Nick and I had gone there on a weekend trip two years ago. My face was bare, my blond hair in a ponytail. My jewelry consisted of a Velcro-strapped water-resistant Timex I’d bought off a street vendor in the Back Bay.

“Good morning to you, too, Ma.” I slapped on a smile that cracked my lips. “And I’m early because I couldn’t wait to get a start on the trip.”

When I was three I told my first lie to my mother, or at least the first one I could remember. That initial snowf lake—something about an elephant causing the mess of Barbies in the living room—had added one snowf lake, then another and another until the snowball of lies became a glacier that seemed to sit between us, cold and frozen, as hard to move as Mount Everest.

I told another lie today, because it was easier than saying Nick had given me the final shove out the door, telling me if I didn’t get over there now, I’d never go. What had seemed like a good idea last week had quickly turned into something I dreaded as much as a colonoscopy.

My mother and I, Hilary Delaney, were going to make a road trip. When I was eight, the prospect might have sounded good—exciting even—but only because I would have been too young to know better. But now, at thirty-six, the thought of spending a week stuck in a car with my mother, listening to her rehash all the mistakes I’d made in my life, wasn’t at all attractive.

I’d become a masochist, I thought as I hefted my mother’s suitcase into the tiny trunk of my Ford Mustang. Cherry-red, and impractical as all hell, but mine. I shoved the suitcase this way, and that, trying to squeeze it past my canvas duffel bag and into the tiny trunk.

“Be careful, Hilary. You don’t want to dent the suitcase or it’ll never close properly.”

I blew my bangs off my forehead. “I’m more concerned about denting the car. It took me three years to save enough to buy this.”

My mother swept a glance over the Mustang’s candy finish, which told me in a half a second what she thought of that purchase. “You should have bought something more practical. A sedan at least. You know red two-doors are the most—”

“Stolen cars in America. Yeah, I do. And I still wanted it. Maybe I was having a midlife crisis. Or a really long stretch of PMS.” I wrestled the Samsonite some more.

“You can hardly fit a thing in that trunk. If you had a Chrysler, like Deloris Christenson, you could—”

“Maybe if someone had brought a smaller suitcase, this wouldn’t be such a problem.”

And then, the Samsonite decided to settle the argument for us. It slid in with a final heave and plopped into the trunk. My mother gave me one of her “I was right” smiles of satisfaction and I gave her one of mine right back.

A draw.

Nicholas Warner, my on-again, off-again, now-sorta-off boyfriend, would say this trip was some deep-seated need to settle things with my mother, so I could finally grow up.

He was right, damn him.

As much as I tried to be an adult, I still felt like a kindergartener around the woman who had shaped my formative years. I was here, not just to be a taxi driver to my Uncle Morty’s house in San Francisco, but to find that missing key—the one that unlocked the secret to why I’d inherited dysfunction, along with her blue eyes and fondness for fried clams.

I didn’t actually intend to have a conversation about the past. Rather, I’d devised a nice, elaborate backdoor plan to skate around the issues.

Actually touching them with words?

There weren’t enough miles on Planet Earth for that.

This was also a chance to put some distance between Nick and me, and his sudden detour into a serious relationship, which took me down a path I didn’t want to travel. The girl was supposed to be the one hinting around at churches and preachers, not the guy. But Nick wanted more, and I didn’t, which made me push the “off” button between us and agree to this insane trip with my mother.

As a diversion, I’d brought not one, but four books on tape and a dozen new CDs of music that I thought she’d like and knew I’d hate. I had a roadside emergency kit, a brand-new, responsible-as-hell AAA membership and a cell phone. I was as prepared as I could be.

I’d planned for everything. Except Reginald.

He came trotting out of the house, little hooves clacking on the wood porch, before he lumbered down the four front steps, his backside teeter-tottering like a Weeble from side to side as he crossed the sidewalk, then used the crumbled curb as a stepstool into my car. He settled himself in the backseat and began snorting and rooting at the black vinyl, as if I had some truffles beneath the springs. I shuddered and bit back a wave of revulsion.

“No. No, no, no!” I put up my hands, warding off the pig from hell, “I will not bring THAT PIG along.”

There was no other way to talk about my mother’s potbellied pig but in capital letters. Babe he was not.

“That pig? He’s my best friend, dear,” Ma said, innocent, high-pitched. “He has to come. Whither thou goest, Reginald goest, too.”

“I thought you made arrangements with the vet.”

“I tried, I really did. But once I got there with Reginald, and saw that cage they planned to put him in…” My mother heaved a sigh. “I just couldn’t do it. So I packed his bags and here we are!” She lifted the handle on the passenger’s side door and settled herself inside the car.

For a woman who has climbed the career ladder with single-minded determination, my mother is insane when it comes to her pig. I don’t get it. It’s as if she puts all her immaturity into her relationship with Reginald. There’s simply no dealing with her when she starts to baby him, doing things like grinding his pig chow into miniscule pieces so he won’t choke. I have tried explaining to her that he has a mouth the size of the Grand Canyon, but still, she treats him like a two-year-old. She even has a comprehensive health plan for him and a plot picked out in Lazy Daisy’s Pet Cemetery.

She’d bought him after she retired two years ago, when I told her she needed to find something to do—something besides calling me three times a day to tell me how to run my life. I’d meant she should join the horticultural society or start scrapbooking or look into rental properties in Florida, not fall in love with a mammal that starred on platters at restaurants.

My mother put her boxy navy purse on her lap, clamped her hands over the clasp, sat ramrod straight and stared at the road ahead of us, showing me the debate was over and that she was ready to go.

When my father used to take us all to the Stop & Shop, she’d always assumed the same position, as if somewhere along the way, she had seen a billboard of a mom in a car and decided that was how it was supposed to be done.

“Ma…” I began, trying to fit in another protest toward Reginald before I got in the car and made him a permanent part of the journey. But I knew it was a losing battle. Anything with my mother was a losing battle. Rosemary Delaney was a former defense attorney—a very successful attorney—and she could debate everything from toilet paper choices to murder weapons quite literally to death.

Before retiring, she’d made it to the top of her field, even becoming a partner at Fitzsimmons and Wilson, but she had never learned to drive. She got her master’s degree by taking the bus to Suffolk University. She went to work by train, taking the subway downtown every day for thirty-two years. She’s a woman who can understand the most complicated laws in the Massachusetts legal system and argue them in front of the sternest judge in America, but had always been too terrified to conquer Park-Reverse-Neutral-Drive.

It’s like she only took the parts of the women’s lib movement she liked and left the rest stuck in a fifties time warp.

My mother reached behind herself for the seat belt, buckled it, then reseated her purse on her lap. “Well? Are we going to get started? Or just sit here and let the neighbors stare?”

I reminded myself again of my no-homicide, no-suicide pact.

Our trip was going to take a minimum of five days to reach California, figuring in stops for sleeping and eating. I would have driven all day, but knew my mother wouldn’t hear of it. For one, she’d start to lecture me on all the horrible things that could happen if I sat in the driver’s seat for too long—lockjaw, nerve damage, insanity. For another, Reginald would undoubtedly need frequent potty breaks, which would mean letting him christen every rest stop between Massachusetts and San Francisco.

And I’d be left standing by the PETS AREA: PLEASE CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR FURRY FRIEND sign, grinning like I didn’t mind and secretly steaming inside because I’d be the one doing the furry-friend poop patrol. My mother had actually hired someone to be her backyard pooper-scooper, because as much as she loved Reginald, she didn’t love the things that came out of him and had never scooped a poop in her life. That left me to do the dirty work on this trip, unless I could convince that guy from The Discovery Channel to come along and do his “Dirty Jobs” show from the backseat of my car.

My mother was self-sufficient, smart and—

A huge pain in the ass.

My ass, in particular.

Still, she was my mother and I loved her. Ever since my father died five years ago, I’d tried…well, more or less, to build a closer relationship with her. She was my only living immediate relative in a hundred-mile radius. And, she was my mother. But trying to get close to her was like trying to hug a cactus. She just wasn’t that kind of person.

She never had been. I accepted that. It was what I knew, and I was, after all, thirty-six, way past the age where I needed someone to fix my boo-boos and give them a kiss to make it better. I was all grown up and cool with it.

Then why was I suddenly so damned nervous about the prospect of having to converse with the woman who’d given me life?

It was only a few days, I reminded myself as I got behind the wheel, buckled my seat belt even as my mother reminded me to, and started the Mustang.

Behind me, Reginald began grunting and oinking, his black-and-white body shaking and shimmying like John Travolta in the seventies, then he let out a gassy bomb that gave new meaning to the words “going nuclear.”

It was going to be a long ride.

two

Reginald apparently hadn’t thought to go before we left. We were barely onto I-93—not even in sight of the turnpike yet—before he started to make whiny noises and pace the backseat, his hooves leaving crescent-shaped dents in the vinyl. I exited the highway, then searched for a good ten minutes for a shrub that wouldn’t make Reginald wince. According to my mother, Reginald had a boxwood phobia and a shy bladder, so I had to keep walking into the thick woods along the highway, searching for a suitable shrub for his purposes.

I was waiting for Reginald to make his deposit, or whatever it was that a pig would do, when my cell phone rang. “How are you holding up?” Nick asked. I missed him already, but wasn’t going to tell him, because being “off” meant not being needy.

“No one’s dead yet, not even the pig. I count that as a victory, considering we left ten minutes ago.”

Nick groaned. “She brought her pig?” Nick was very familiar with Reginald, after a nearly-disastrous babysitting incident a few months ago, when my mother had gone on a girls’ weekend with her Bingo buds, Erma and Rhonda, to a bed and breakfast that didn’t allow porcine pals. It had been her one and only trip sans Reginald.

“Of course she brought him. They’re pretty much attached at the hip.”

“You poor thing.” He chuckled, then sobered. “Anyway, Hil, I called you for a reason.”

The way he said it, I knew I didn’t want to hear the words. For a second, I considered hanging up the phone, feigning a bad connection. Considering only a few suburbs of Boston separated us, I doubted he was going to fall for that.

“Nick, can we not—”

“Hilary, I should have said this before you left this morning, but you ran out the door so fast, I never got a chance.”

“I was in a rush, which was partly your fault.” I’d spent the night at Nick’s place, intending to stay long enough for him to cook me breakfast and entice me to chuck the whole road-trip idea, pleading typhoid or something equally convenient. The majority of me had wanted to opt for a weekend in bed with the man I hadn’t seen nearly enough of lately, or at the very least, go back to bed for seconds.

As soon as I got out of the shower, though, I’d sensed he had something on his mind, and in typical Hilary fashion, I’d changed the subject to Top Ten Reasons Why Hilary Should Stay in Boston and Avoid Her Mother, and let him shove me out the door toward my mother before we could discuss anything more serious than where my underwear had gone.

Okay, so my version of being broken up involved still seeing him, but not “seeing him” in a serious manner. I liked it that way. No expectations, no strings attached, but I still had Nick to wake up to every morning.

Any guy in his right mind would like it that way, too. But Nick, apparently, was losing his mind.

“You can’t run from everything for your entire life,” Nick said now. That was the biggest drawback to dating the same man for years. He knew you too well. “Once in a great while you’re actually going to have to have a serious conversation. Or at least a few serious thoughts. I’d like one of those to center around me.”

Across the way, Reginald had finally picked a shrub. He looked at me, then shoved his whole face into the bush, as if embarrassed. A minute later, he let out a grunt of relief and began watering the grass beneath him. I wondered at the irony of that, given the conversation with Nick. “What kind of serious thought do you mean?” I already knew the answer, but hoped maybe his spiel had changed in the last few months.

“Marriage.”

The line hummed between us, silent yet pregnant. Reginald had finished his first order of business and was busily scoping out a second location. “Nick, I gotta go.”

“Don’t do that. This is exactly why I didn’t bring up the subject last night. I knew you’d run. You have a million-hour trip ahead of you. All I want you to do is to think about it while you’re driving.”

“Nick, we’re not even technically dating. Last I checked, we’d decided to take a break.”

Uh-huh. Which was exactly why I’d spent the night snuggled up to him and sinking into the center dent of his queen. Because I wanted a break.

Yeah, a break from any serious talks, and a return to the relationship we’d had before Nick had gotten this marriage hair up his butt. Lately, he’d been worse than the girls in my senior class who’d snuck peeks at issues of Bride behind their American History textbooks, as if the whole point of graduation was to get them into a white dress and a lifelong union with the pimple-faced kid who’d asked them to the senior prom.

“I told you I wasn’t going to spend another three years of my life in the same place,” Nick said. “I’m forty, Hilary. I want more than just a girlfriend to sleep with on Friday nights. I want a life.”

“Are you nuts? Most men would give their right testicle for a woman who didn’t want anything out of them but a night in bed and the occasional help installing a garbage disposal.”

On his end, I heard Nick let out a sigh, which sounded so odd, so out of place. In all the years we’d been together, I’d never seen Nick sad. Never seen a side of him that wasn’t celebrating a good time. But lately, there seemed to be less of the party Nick and more of some other man I didn’t really recognize, which was part of what had driven me to push him away. Now I knew why.

It had been self-preservation. I wasn’t cut out for what Nick wanted, but I also couldn’t let him go.

“Marriage isn’t always a bad thing, Hilary.”

Reginald had found his second location and was cheerfully creating a hideously smelly mountain on it. I looked around, figured we were in the woods, not in a public rest area, and I could get away with calling it a nature dump and leaving it to feed the flora and fauna.

“For some people, it is. I told you already, Nick, I won’t marry you. It’s not about you, it’s about me. Why can’t we keep going the way we were? Why do we have to change?” Hadn’t he been happy thus far? I had been. Wasn’t that enough?

“Because I’m tired of the status quo. I’ve been tired of it for a while.” He drew in a breath. “I’ve asked you to marry me at least a hundred times since I met you, but I don’t know if I ever meant it before now.”

“That was always cool with me. It’s kind of like playing the game of Life. We can put those little blue and pink plastic kids in the car and drive them around the board, but never have to change a diaper.” I had, indeed, liked the thought of being asked, but not the thought of actually putting on a white dress and pledging forever.

Even now, the words iced my ears, tightened in my chest. I sucked in some air, held it for a long while. Above me, a bird squawked at another, then fluttered away. A turf war? A marital spat?

“I mean what I’m saying,” Nick went on, ignoring my attempt at a joke. “I want you to take me seriously this time, because I’m not going to ask again. If you don’t want to get married, then…” At this, he paused, and again, I could hear another Nick on the other end, a more serious, no-beer-in-hand man. “Then that’s it, Hilary. We’re through.”

Something hard and cold slithered down my throat and landed with a thud in my gut. This was a different tone than I’d ever heard from the man who built entertainment centers and kitchen cabinets for a living. A man who worked with his hands, making wood bend to his will, polishing it until it shone with his reflection.

Today, there was finality in his voice, commitment. It scared me and made me want to end this trip before it began, run back to his apartment and shake that feeling out of him. What if I ended up on the other side of the country—

And lost him in the process?

Tomorrow, I reassured myself, dismissing the foreboding in my gut, Nick would feel differently. He always had before. I smiled, and slipped back into joke mode. “Are you giving me an ultimatum, Nicholas Warner?”

“Yes, I am.” He sounded tired, lonely, and if I could have, I would have crawled through the phone line and teased him with a touch, a kiss, until this somber mood lifted and we were back to all lightness and fluff.

I did that well. I was, after all, my father’s daughter. It was the serious, let’s-stick-together-forever kind of thing that I had trouble with. Nick knew it, but he persisted, either because he had some fairy-tale version of our reality playing in his head or he was a glutton for punishment.

Reginald had finished his business and was now twirling around me, wrapping the leather leash against my legs. I stood there, bound by a pig in one place and by a man wanting more than I could give in another.

“I have to go, Nick. I’ll call you when we stop tonight.” I hung up the phone before he could say anything else, like that he wouldn’t be there when I called. Then I untangled myself from the pig and headed back to the car.

I didn’t want to think about Nick’s words for the next gazillion miles. I didn’t want to ponder marriage or anything more committed than a date for Friday night. I wasn’t good at that kind of thing and I was too old to learn a new trick.

Woods behind me. My mother and an endless cross-country trip ahead of me. Nick somewhere in the next county, expecting an answer. I considered ditching it all and heading into the forest.

Considering I’m the type of woman who can’t survive without indoor plumbing and take-out Chinese, I’d have better survival odds with my mother.

three

I reached the Mustang, opened the door to let Reginald in, giving him a little shove when the speeding traffic whipped by and freaked him out, causing him to skitter back, bumping into my knees, nearly knocking me over. “Come on, Reginald,” I said, pushing on his rear, but Reginald held firm on the road, refusing to move.

Then I saw why. It had nothing to do with rushing semis. And everything to do with a six-foot cardboard cutout sitting in the backseat, unfolded but still crinkled in four places. “What the hell is that?”

“Your father.”

It was indeed, a giant picture of my father, like one of those stand-up G.I. Joes they put in stores to tell young men and women the Army wants them. The photo, so lifelike and real, socked me in the gut, rolling over me with memories. For a second, I could really believe he was there, then reality slapped me.

It was as if my mother had given me a Christmas present—the one I really, really wanted, the top one on my list to Santa—but after I’d torn off the wrapping and exclaimed with delight, the box turned out to be empty.

“Why is this in my car?”

“Your father always wanted to travel and never got the chance. I thought we’d take pictures along the way, of him enjoying the different stops we’re going to make.” She held up something small and silver. “Look, I even bought a digital camera so I can send the pictures back to Erma and Rhonda.”

A digital camera? My mother, the one who had yet to install cable or buy a VCR and had fought the touch-tone revolution like some people resisted root canals, had bought a digital camera?

I stared at her, searching for signs of early dementia. “That’s insane.”

“It’ll make for great memories.” She put the camera into the ashtray that now served as my change dish. It snuggled up to my cell phone, twins of technology.

“Of what?” I lifted Reginald into the backseat, grunting under his hundred-twenty-plus-pound body. He scrambled away from me, nicking the vinyl again, and began searching under the front seat. No wild mushrooms there, I wanted to tell him, just some cold, hard French fries and a couple dimes.

Reginald knocked into the image of my father, and suddenly anger rushed over me. How could my mother be so cavalier about my father?

“What were you thinking, Ma? That us and Flat Stanley here were going to be traveling the globe? Dad died five years ago. I don’t think he cares about seeing the world’s largest ball of twine.”

Silence carpeted the car, as heavy and uncomfortable as tacky shag. Outside, the traffic whizzed past in a high pitched whine and tornado-force winds, shaking the sports car.

“Your father and I never had an opportunity to go anywhere outside of Massachusetts. We even honeymooned on the Cape. But he always said he wanted to travel, and tried to talk me into taking time off to see more than the state of Massachusetts. One day, I kept telling him, I would. Then one day passed, and it was too late.” She watched a moving van rush by, its white rectangular belly shimmying. “I want your father to experience this with us.”

“But, Ma, he’s gone,” I said, as gently as I could. I slipped into the driver’s seat and gripped the leather steering wheel, right then missing my father and the way he could intercept an argument between us, serve as the mediator, the cushion between our personalities. I wanted him to come along and cajole my mother out of this insanity with one of his “Oh, Rosemarys” and give me that secret smile that said he and I were on the same side in some battle neither of us had asked to fight. But he wasn’t coming and I was left alone, not quite sure how to deal with her. “You do know that, right?”

“That doesn’t mean I stopped loving him.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.” My paper father grinned back from the rearview mirror. I remembered when the picture had been taken. I’d been twenty-five and my mother had talked me into taking a beach vacation with them, in Truro. At the time, I’d just ended another crappy relationship and blown my paycheck on a beater box that redefined the state lemon law. A parental-funded vacation sounded like a really good idea, until a once-in-a-zillion-years cold front had moved in, forcing us all indoors for the better part of the week.

But not my dad. He was, as he always had been, determined to have a good time, regardless of the weather. The photo on the cutout was one of my father standing on the beach in shorts and a T-shirt, ignoring the biting wind sweeping along the coast. When I’d taken the picture, he’d been happy and laughing, daring me to dip a toe in the Atlantic.

It was a good memory, one I’d tucked into my mental files and pulled out from time to time.

But that didn’t mean I wanted a two-dimensional version in my backseat.

“I need him along,” my mother said, her voice soft and quiet for a brief moment before she stiffened and slipped back into being Rosemary Delaney, lawyer.

I glanced over at her and knew, even though she was not the type to show it, that she missed him, too. I wondered sometimes if the ache in her heart bordered on that same fierce knife edge as mine. If the same questions haunted her nights, the same what-ifs rolled around in her head, playing a game that couldn’t be won, because he wasn’t there to fill in the blanks.

Their marriage may not have been perfect, but she was alone, more alone than I because he’d been her spouse, her other half, and if it gave her comfort to have a pig and a six-foot picture of my father along for the ride, who was I to argue?

I had Nick, after all.

“Okay.” I reached for her hand. It felt cold beneath mine, and I realized I could count the number of times I’d purposely touched my mother. Either way, this was the right thing to do, and the right time to do it. Our ivory skin was nearly a perfect match, long thin fingers blending one into the other, lacing together for a brief moment of bonding. “It’ll be nice to have Dad along for the ride. Kind of like a guardian angel.”

She smiled at me and a flicker of a tear shone in her eyes. “Thank you, Hilary.”

I nodded because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Then I buckled up and steered the car back into the busyness of I–93.

A few more miles passed, with neither of us saying anything. Reginald lay down in the backseat, let out a piggie yawn and went to sleep.

But the peace didn’t last long. My mother and I were pretty much like two Middle Eastern countries. We’d get along for a while, then one or the other would say or do something that would resurrect old battles again.

She drew first fire.

“Hilary, have you given any thought to your career?”

“Ma, can we save the heavy conversations for boring states like Iowa?” I eased into the exit lane leading to the toll road and rolled down my window in anticipation of the upcoming take-a-ticket booth. “We haven’t even left Massachusetts yet. There’s plenty of opportunity for you to give me well-meaning advice later.” I pointed to the road atlas lying open on the console between us, the map of the United States spread across two pages. “See that long green line? We have that whole time to talk.”

“I know how to read a map, Hilary.” She toyed with the clasp on her purse. A Kate Spade, I noticed, something that surprised me. I don’t know why. My mother was as entitled to nice things as anyone else. I guess I never pictured her plunking down several hundred dollars for something to hold her compact.

How well did I know my mother? She’d surprised me more than once in the last few years. The pig, the digital camera. Now the Kate Spade.

She sighed. “As long as you’re happy working in a strip joint.”

Then again, there were times she said and did exactly what I expected.

“It’s not a strip joint.” I ignored the barb and dutifully took the white ticket from a skinny man with glasses and all the job enthusiasm of a rubber plant. “It’s a plain old bar. And I manage it, not just work in it.”

“You could have been so much more.”

I had the college degree, she meant, which should have been my one-way ticket to achievement. With a bachelor’s degree in psychology from UMass, my mother figured I had the goods to be President—or something close. I’d taken the degree, put it in my closet and never used it to figure out myself or my family, because the classes clearly hadn’t prepared me to see the problems all around me. Or to figure out what anyone was thinking after the fact.

Instead, I’d ended up working at Ernie’s Bar & Grille during my junior year, and never left. Ernie was generous with vacation, turned a blind eye to the occasional late lunch hour, and in general didn’t gripe much to his help. He’d added the “e” onto Grille eight years ago, hoping it would boost business by giving the place an air of sophistication.

It hadn’t.

He made me manager in a fit of desperation when his cousin Rita had walked out in the middle of a Friday night after a fight with her boyfriend over some barfly who’d made a pass at her. I convinced him to take all the things named “roadkill” off the menu. Whether or not the entrées were really peeled off the pavement didn’t matter; the novelty of ordering dead animals went away after the first time or two. It also took a bit of convincing, and a case of Heinies, to get Jerry, the chef, to stop frying every single thing he served, but once he expanded his repertoire and word got around, Ernie’s started making a decent income.

After that, Ernie gave me a generous raise and “retired,” leaving me in charge most nights. Which was the way I liked it. I called my own shots, and sometimes closed my eyes and pretended the red and gold décor belonged to me. It wasn’t much, but it was better than working in the suffocating environment of an office or sporting a “53 Years of Service” button on a McDonald’s uniform. And, with Nick working his own hours in his carpentry business, it left us free to pretty much do what we wanted. We were both night owls, so it worked out perfectly for our lives.

Until Nick started talking about having an “ordinary” life six months ago. Settling down in the suburbs. In a house with a fence. I glanced over at my mother and wondered if maybe the two of them had cooked up a conspiracy.

“The partners are looking for a legal secretary,” my mother said. “How fast are you typing these days?”

“The last thing I typed was my papers in college. Besides, I don’t want to be a legal secretary.”

“You went to school—”

“We’re not having this conversation.” I jerked the Mustang into the right lane, which elicited a frown of displeasure from my mother. I wanted to tell her that I had a whole list prepared of things we were not going to discuss on the way to San Francisco but the list got lodged somewhere in my throat. For God’s sake, that was how a five-year-old felt.

Nick’s words came back to me, but I pushed them away. No time for serious conversations. There was driving to be done.

“Watch your driving,” my mother said, reading my mind. “I’d like to get there alive.”

“If we’re dead, we won’t get there at all,” I pointed out.

“Hilary.”

Behind me, Reginald’s snores came in regular chainsaw riffs. The smiling face on the cardboard human beside him never changed.

“Why couldn’t you have just asked Uncle Morty to send you your half of Grandma’s stuff?” I asked. Maybe there was still hope of turning around, of convincing my mother we didn’t need to go there in person.

“I don’t trust him.”

“He’s your brother.”

“There’s an unresolved theft between us.”

“Unresolved theft?” I zipped past a semi and down 90 West, ignoring my mother’s exhale. “Ma, you were ten and we’re talking change here, not a Chevy Malibu.”

“He’s a thief. He took your grandfather’s coin collection.”

“It was a roll of quarters, Ma. And Grandpa told me he only gave them to Uncle Morty because Morty was interested in coin collecting and you weren’t.”

“Still, they were supposed to be mine. I’m the older one. And when I was three—”

“When you were three, Grandpa said he’d give you the coins,” I finished. I had heard this before. “You liked how shiny they were, yada, yada, yada.”

“A promise is a promise, Hilary.”

“Do you collect coins now?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Ma, Uncle Morty grew up to become the most respected numismatist in the Bay Area. That quarter collection became the basis of his business. He’s like the cover model of Coins Monthly or whatever. Can’t you forgive him?”

She raised her chin. “He manipulated your great-grandfather into giving those coins to him. Stole my inheritance right out from under me. I call that being a thief. If you can’t trust your own brother, who can you trust?”

I rolled my eyes and bit my lip. I repeated my mantra again. I would not kill my mother. I would not kill myself…

My mother’s poor circulation kept her from flying; her distrust of the cross-country rail system precluded a train trip, which left me and my Mustang. For years, she’d been asking me to make this trip to California, and I’d kept putting it off. Then, when Ernie had decided to shut down the Bar & Grille for a much-needed renovation, and handed me an instant paid vacation, I’d run out of excuses.

So, here I was. If I started getting stressed now, I’d end up in prison orange before I got to Indiana.

“Did you put in the good gas before we left?” my mother asked. “That cheap stuff is bad for your engine. I don’t want us breaking down in the middle of Nevada. Poor Reginald would be too tempting for the buzzards.”

“I used the good gas, the good oil and the good driver,” I said, looking at her and grinning. I lifted my hands off the steering wheel and slipped my knees beneath the circle. “Look, Ma, no hands.”

“Hilary! I swear, if you don’t drive right, I’ll—” Her voice cut off as she realized she didn’t have the joy of taking away my privileges anymore. I was a GROWN-UP, something I also tried to emphasize with capital letters on a regular basis, and wasn’t under anyone’s thumb. Not even my own, to be honest. “I’ll…start singing and I won’t stop until we get to Morty’s house.”

That was enough to get me to put my hands back on the wheel. My mother may be talented in a lot of areas, but music wasn’t one of them and it was the only threat she’d used on me in childhood that worked, at least in public. I had a nightmarish childhood memory of my mother crooning “Time After Time” when I pitched a fit in the children’s department of JCPenney. I wasn’t even going to revisit the seventh grade spelling-bee debacle.

Already, the trip seemed too long, the distance to the other side of the country as interminable as a stay on death row.

“Or…” she began, a teasing light in her eyes, a light I knew meant nothing good, “we could talk instead.”

“I liked the ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ option better.”

My mother let out the heavy sigh she’d perfected through my teen years. Behind me, Reginald started his mushroom hunt again, backing his buttocks into the poster of my father and making it bounce up and down on the seat.

“So,” my mother said, ignoring my song request. “Why haven’t you married Nick yet?”

four

We had just crossed over the Massachusetts border and entered New York when I pulled into a rest area and shut off the car.

“What are you doing?” my mother asked, her purse still in the same position, her posture clearly ready for a little more car time. Reginald had settled down again in the back, apparently done with his French-fry foray.

“I need coffee.” I needed more than that, preferably something that came in a bottle and burned on its way down my throat, but I wasn’t about to drive after having a fifth of vodka.

My mother wagged a finger at me. “Too much caffeine, Hilary, will—”

I’d already exited the car and shut the door. I leaned against the car and drew in several deep breaths, but they didn’t cleanse an ounce of frustration out of me. All they did was make me wonder how well my lungs would hold up if I started running.

Probably not so well, considering I’d quit smoking six months ago. Lung cancer risk notwithstanding, I should have kept up the Marlboro habit. If I had known then what I’d be going through today, I’d never have quit.

I inhaled again. A lot of dangerous things might be hovering in the smoggy air of New England, but nicotine didn’t seem to be one of them. Caffeine would have to do instead. I thought of calling Nick again, but then remembered the question he’d asked me, and decided no. I already missed him like crazy, and hated that I did because that made him right—

And made me vulnerable, not a position I liked.

I started toward the restaurant plaza, when I heard the click-clack of sensible pumps behind me. I closed my eyes, drew in another breath, then turned around. “Do you want me to bring you back a cup of decaf?” I gave her a hopeful smile.

“No, I want to go with you,” my mother said, her steps measured and slow as she drew up alongside me. “It’ll be fun. And, I, ah, want to stretch my legs for a bit.”

I murmured something that sounded like agreement, but wasn’t a binding vocalization. Inside, we found a real coffee spot, not a fast-food joint handing out burned-tasting grounds that had sat in the pot since breakfast.

My mother slipped into place beside me in line, scanned the list of offerings, then smiled at the barista. “Grande mocha with a double shot of caramel.”

He turned to me, finger poised over the cash register. “Are you sure that’s what you want, Ma?” I asked her.

“It’s what I always get, Hilary.”

I started to ask her since when, then realized I’d never visited a coffee shop with my mother, nor had the topic of Kenyan roast versus Arabica come up between us. Once again, the feeling that I didn’t know her as well as I’d thought returned.

Could Nick be right? Could this trip be an opportunity for us to actually bond? To make up for more than three decades of distance? Or was I putting a little too much into a cross-country road trip in a Mustang, with a stowaway pig?

And reading way too much into a shared taste for mocha?

“I’ll have the same,” I told the guy, then turned back to my mother. “That’s what I always order, too.”

My mother smiled. “I’d call that common grounds.”

I laughed, surprised more by the commonality we’d found in a coffee shop than by the fact that my dour mother had made a joke. A wave of something—sentimentality, residual childhood angst—swept over me and for a second, I wanted to hug my mother. Hug her tight, like I had when I’d been four and trying so hard to crack the tough shell around the woman who may have given birth to me but who’d never let me see inside her, not really.

I shook off the feeling, paid the barista, who hadn’t even cracked a grin, waving off my mother’s offer to cover the bill. “I work, Ma, I can afford to pay for your coffee.”

I saw her open her mouth to argue, then shut it again. Maybe she didn’t want to ruin the moment of détente, either. A smile winged its way between us, as fleeting as the steam coming from the cappuccino machine.

As we waited for the barista to finish making the mochas, my mother turned away and reached for the back of one of the chairs that ringed the tables in the shop. A sound escaped her—a moan, a grunt, I wasn’t sure. She stood still for a second, holding on to the maple arch of the chair back.

“You okay, Ma?”

She nodded, then straightened, but it seemed as if she had to put a bit of effort into the movement. “Yes.”

My mother had always been the stoic type. Went to work, rain or shine, cold or flu. She wouldn’t let me stay home from school unless I had a temperature in the triple digits or had deposited my breakfast into the toilet. Anything other than that—stomachache, headache, nausea—wasn’t enough to merit missing a day of school. She didn’t hold much faith in doctors, and was one of those people who put off her annual physical for years, only going when she absolutely had to because my father insisted she needed a checkup at least once a decade.

After my father died, she’d done two things—she’d quit smoking, giving up a lifetime habit in one afternoon, and avoided doctors altogether for four years, as if they might diagnose something fatal in her, too.

But last month something had sent her into the hospital. She’d never told me what it was and hadn’t even, in fact, told me she’d been at Mass General. I learned it secondhand from Mrs. Whittaker, her next door neighbor, when I’d stopped by for Easter dinner and run into her on the sidewalk. Mrs. Whittaker lived alone with seven little dogs of mixed breeds and varying bowel issues. Incurably nosy and given to long-winded speeches about the Medicare system, Mrs. Whittaker liked to make herself useful by tattling on every incident up and down the street.

“I just need to walk around.” Ma circled the room, returning to my side when the barista called out our orders and handed us two paper cups. Happy dancing coffee cups with skinny, Rockette legs ringed the paper sleeve.

“We’ll take our time then,” I said, hovering close to her as we left the coffee shop, insisting on holding both coffees, my arms wide like I might catch her, but not touching her, because I knew she’d only shrug off any attempt at assistance.

The bright sunshine hit us square in the eyes when we exited the building, blinding us for a moment to the parking lot. A second later, my eyes adjusted. I walked at a slower pace than usual, waiting for my mother to catch up, her breathing more labored than usual. Clearly, she was having difficulty, trouble she was keeping from me. “Ma, when are you going to tell me why you were in the hospital last month?”

“It was nothing.”

“That’s what you said the last three times I asked. I’m your daughter, I have a right to know, HIPAA or not.”

“Really, Hilary, it was nothing much. I got nervous, was all. I live alone and every little bump on your nose gets blown out of proportion.”

“What do you mean, every little thing? Did you fall? Have chest pains? Find a lump? Tell me, Ma. Don’t—” But I couldn’t finish that sentence. I didn’t want her to surprise me, the way my father had. Didn’t want her to shut me out, like he had. But for some reason, actually saying it was harder than thinking it.

“Don’t worry. If there was something I thought you should know, I’d—” She cut off her sentence. “Hilary, where is the car?”

“Right there, Ma. In the spot next to the—”

Before the words “white van” escaped me, I saw the empty space. My mind rewound quickly, slipping in the mental tape of when we’d parked. What had been near us, where we’d entered the building. Had we come out of the rear exit by accident? Gotten turned around? Been sidetracked by a second white van?

I spun around, my wrist shading my eyes, looking for my little red Mustang.

And seeing nothing but a sea of primary colors, the shiny finishes of America’s rental car industry.

“The car was right there, I swear.” I left my mother on the sidewalk with the coffees, then ran down the length of the sidewalk, weaving in and out of travelers heading inside for a comfort break. Back again, around to the back of the building, up to the gas station, down to the trucks lined up domino-style. No Mustang anywhere.

“It’s gone,” I said, my pitch high with disbelief as I returned to my mother’s side. “Who would steal my car?”

“Oh, God.” Ma pressed a hand to her heart. “Who would steal Reginald? And your father?”

Two hours later, we finished filing the police report and going over the meager evidence. The parking lot surveillance tape revealed that my car had, indeed, been jacked by a redheaded guy wearing a blue bandana and a backpack. He’d jimmied the lock, slipped inside, his head disappearing beneath the dash for a moment, before he had the car running and gone. All in all, it took exactly sixteen seconds for my car, my father’s picture and my mother’s pig to disappear.

“We’ll keep an eye out, ma’am,” said the cop, who didn’t look old enough to shave, never mind pin a badge on his chest, “but a car like that, in a state this size…” He shrugged, then left the room, not leaving so much as a shred of hope behind.

“Goddamn it!” I shouted at the cold cement block walls of the New York State Police building. “Who the hell would do this?”

“Watch your language, dear,” my mother said, but her words sounded robotic, dull.

“My car has just been stolen. I think it’s a good time to swear.”

She considered that. “You may be right. When we catch the monster who did this, I’m going to sue him for everything he has, right down to his goddamned underwear.”

We shared a laugh. A second thread of connection extended between us and I wondered if it was possible to stitch a connection, one thread at a time, and build a bridge over that glacier between us, rather than trying to thaw it. Had I been going about this all wrong for years? Or was I just reading too much into a few hours spent together in a plain gray police station room?

My mother rose and paced for a moment, muttering about lawsuits and car thieves before returning to her seat, seeming winded. Or maybe just overcome by the whole grueling experience. Either way, I had no doubt she’d go after the guy who did this. People didn’t mess with Rosemary Delaney because she wasn’t the type to forgive and forget, even when the judge found in the other party’s favor.

That, she said, was why God created appeals court.

Even after sitting for a bit, Ma’s face was red with exertion, her breath coming a little too hard, too fast. “You okay?” I asked.

“Fine. Upset. That’s all.”

“Listen, we should rent a car and go back home. I’m sure the police will find mine. And if not, there’s always insurance.”

“No,” my mother said, the word quiet and final, in her no-argument voice. “We will not go home.”

“Ma, we have no car. No luggage—”

“And no Reginald. I will not leave here and trust these—” she leaned closer to me and lowered her voice while she gestured toward the door the troopers had just exited “—these buffoons to find the car. They didn’t even care about my pig.”

“Well, he is a pig, Ma. It’s not like he’s a dog.”

As soon as I said the words, I regretted them. Her entire body seemed to tighten up, anger knotting her features. “You are under a great deal of stress because your car was just stolen, so I will forget you said that about Reginald.” She drew in a breath. “I cannot believe you let this happen.”

“I didn’t let anything happen, Ma. I locked the doors, I kept the keys with me. I know I’m a screwup and a disappointment in many other ways, but you’re not going to blame me for some drug addict who decided to go on a joy ride.” I drained the diet soda I’d gotten from the vending machine, crumpled the can and made a two-pointer into the trash, then reached for the door handle. “Now, let’s accept the offer of the nice officers for a ride over to the nearest rental place, get a car and go home.”

This was a prime opportunity to talk her into giving up this insane idea of a cross-country trip. Get me out of this torture chamber and back to Nick, where I could straighten out our relationship and get things back to where they were before.

But my mother wouldn’t budge. “You can go home. I’m going after Reginald.”

THAT PIG again. There were days I wondered if she loved him more than me. “Ma, he could be halfway to Mexico by now.”

“Technically, because we’re only in New York, he couldn’t have—”

“It’s a phrase!” I shouted, frustrated and angered by the car, the hassle and the whole trip and her love for Reginald. What about me? I wanted to scream. Had she ever loved me that much? What if I’d been carjacked? Would she have been so hell-bent on tracking me down? “I didn’t mean it literally. Besides, it’d take a miracle to find the car. You heard the cops.”

She held her tongue for a minute, then turned her no-nonsense face on me. “I am going after Reginald and when I have him back, I’m going to Uncle Morty’s. You are welcome to come along.”

In other words, I could be a passenger in her mission. The pilot. Disappointment settled in my stomach with the acidic soda.

There was simply no arguing with my mother when she got like this. Behind her back, the other lawyers had called her a bulldog. I knew why.

I sighed, then held the door for her. “We’ll drive for one more day and if we don’t find Reginald, then we’re going to the nearest airport and flying to Uncle Morty’s.”

She shook her head. “I won’t fly.”

I bit back a scream of frustration. My mother wouldn’t drive, wouldn’t fly. And sure as hell wouldn’t go home without her pig.

Reginald.

That damned potbellied pig, as much as I hated it, was all my mother had, now that my father was gone. She indulged him, because she had no other pets, no other companions living in her house. He was her best friend, as weird as it seemed. And though I might not like it, saving her bacon buddy was the right thing to do.

“All right, Ma,” I said after a while, wondering myself what I was doing. This was my chance to go home, to end this trip before it really even began. But no, here I was, pushing forward with the mileage and the search for the pig. Because I knew what he meant to her, and because I understood the need for that connection. If the roles had been reversed and it had been Nick in the car, I’d have been as ballistic as my mother. I may not have wanted to marry Nick, but that didn’t mean I wanted some idiot in a bandana to steal him, either. And I would have moved heaven and earth to get him back if that had ever happened. “We’ll hire ourselves a bloodhound and find your pig. I promise. We won’t go home until we do.”

A soft smile stole across her face, one that seemed to transform her entire face from the rigid woman I knew into someone as inviting as a hot cup of tea. Suddenly, I felt like part of the team again, not just the driver. “Thank you, Hilary,” my mother said, then before I realized what she was doing, she had leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

Okay, maybe miracles could happen. Or maybe my mother really was slipping into early dementia.

five

The cops saved us from all of the above. They found the car a couple hours later, abandoned on the side of the road, Reginald, my father and luggage intact. The ignition had been jimmied with a screwdriver, which meant a few hours’ delay in a shop to get it rekeyed, but other than that, the Mustang appeared undamaged.

I wanted to kiss it, but figured that would look weird, so I settled for patting the hood instead.

My mother’s relief, however, was no-holds-barred. She nearly ran to the car, embracing Reginald with the kind of fervor most people reserved for missing children. A weird little surge of jealousy rose in my chest. I couldn’t remember her ever grabbing me like that after preschool or kindergarten.

But then again, I’d never been stolen out of a travel plaza by a guy with a bandana and a screwdriver, either.

“You’re lucky,” the repair guy said to me. “Most of the time people never see stolen vehicles again, or if they do, they’re torched and abandoned. Your thief must have felt guilty about the pig.”

“Yeah, leave it to Reginald to save the day.” I hated having to owe the pig, of all things, for rescuing the car I’d scrimped for years to buy.

My mother was so happy, she was humming. As much as I hated to admit it, I’d made the right choice in deciding to stay instead of insisting we go back home. If I’d forced her to go back to Massachusetts, instead of remaining behind to find the pig, I’d have caused an irreparable rift between us.

We had enough cracks in our relationship already.

A little while later, we were back on the road, though we didn’t get far before night fell and we started looking for a pet-friendly motel. I had to call Nick, who used Google to find a place for us, and made a quick reservation. I wasn’t in the mood to argue with some desk clerk about whether a potbellied pig qualified as a pet or not, and was glad to leave that in Nick’s hands. “You owe me,” he said when he called me back with the confirmation number.

My heart softened when I heard his voice, and the extra mile he’d gone to, for a pig he didn’t like, and a woman who’d just turned down his marriage proposal. I missed him already, and again found myself wishing I could crawl through the phone line and be back in his bed, his arms, my face against the end-of-day stubble on his cheek, inhaling the scent of wood on his skin. Instead I joked, because it was easier than saying all the things that bubbled in my heart. “I’d say this makes us even. I took you out for Chinese last week, remember?”

“I want more than take-out.” Unanswered questions from the morning hung in the air between us. Nick had a way of doing that, of layering heavy meanings into simple statements. Hemingway would have loved him.

I sighed. “Like what?”

“Home-cooked meals. Maybe a kid at the table. Things to come home to, Hil, instead of everything being disposable.”

“Then buy some dishes, Nick, instead of Dixie plates.” I knew what he was talking about, but I couldn’t go down that conversational path. Me, with a child? I could barely care for myself. How could he even envision us with kids?

And where was this coming from? Was he hormonal?

Could men even get hormonal?

“I’m tired of everything being disposable, Hil. Aren’t you?” Then he clicked off.

My mother flicked off the penlight she’d been using to read the map. “What was that about?”

“Nothing.”

“You don’t want to tell me?”

I tossed the cell into my purse, then turned on my directional for the upcoming exit instead of answering the question. If I wasn’t going to give Nick an answer about the future—and kids, Lord help me, kids?—I certainly wasn’t going to give one to my mother.

Nick had thankfully booked us two rooms in the motel, at my request, to avoid any other deep conversations. I couldn’t really afford the extra expense from here to California and probably should have taken my mother’s offer to stay for free with her, but was prepared to take out an equity loan to pay for it if need be.

Okay, assuming I had some equity. Which I didn’t. I had credit cards, though, so what was a little more debt to add onto the pile?

“Why won’t you talk to me?” Ma asked, closing the atlas.

I glanced at her. “Since when do you take an interest in my life?”

“I always have.”

“No, Ma, you haven’t. You’ve told me what to do, but you’ve never paused long enough to listen.”

“I’m listening now.”

“I’m thirty-six. Don’t you think it’s a little late?”

As soon as I said the words, I felt bad and wanted to take them back. We’d barely spent one day on the road and already I’d screwed it up, par for the Hilary course. “I’m sorry, Ma, I—”

“It’s all right.” But the words came fast, like applying a Band-Aid over a gaping wound. It couldn’t stop the bleeding.

And here I was, fresh out of tourniquets for our relationship. Jeez, I was ruining them all over the place. Nick back in Boston, my mother here.

The bright neon sign announcing the motel came into view. My mother elected to stay in the car while I checked us in, got the keys and parked by the rooms. She seemed tired as she headed into hers, Reginald trotting along by her feet, both of them going inside without a word of goodbye.

I should have been relieved. But I tossed and turned all night, overindulging in junk TV, feeling as guilty as a six-year-old caught eating the Christmas pies before the company arrived. I’d screwed things up with my mother—again—and watching too many reruns of The Jerry Springer Show didn’t give me any ideas on how to fix the mess. Nor did it help me sort things out with Nick. All it did was give me a nightmare preview of my future, should the improbable happen and Nick decided to have a food fight over the Thanksgiving dinner with his cousins after his father got a sex change and married the live-in maid.

I finally nodded off just before dawn, only to be awakened an hour later by the sound of the phone. I grabbed blindly for it, knocking the white plastic to the floor, trying twice before I got the receiver in the proper place against my ear and mouth. “Hullo?”

“When are we leaving?” My mother, sounding as chipper as a squirrel on Acorn Dropping Day.

“Later. I’m sleeping.”

“We have a lot of miles to cover. We can’t stay in bed all day.”

“Ma, I’m the driver. If you don’t let me sleep, I will crash the car into one of those concrete barriers and we’ll both become highway pancakes.”

I could almost hear her disappointment in me. Apparently, she forgot I worked in a bar and “grille” and didn’t keep banker’s hours like the rest of the world. “There’s no reason to get smart with me, young lady. I was only asking a simple question. Are you ready to go?”

“No.”

“It’s already ten past seven. If we leave much later—”

“Ma, listen to me. I am going back to bed. I am going back to sleep.” I used small, precise syllables. No room for misunderstanding. “I am not getting up now.”

“Why? You sound awake to me.”

I gritted my teeth and gripped the phone tighter. “It’s an act. I slept with a ventriloquist last night.”

“Hilary, don’t be vulgar. Just tell me how you want your eggs and I’ll order for you. You can meet me in the restaurant attached to the motel in a few minutes.”

The thought of breakfast made my stomach roll. My eyes closed and the phone slipped a little in my grasp. “Ma, for the love of all that is holy, please let me sleep for another hour.”

Another pause of disappointment. “Fine. I’ll get takeout and bring it to you.”

“Whatever.” As long as she let me sleep, I didn’t care if she wheeled in an entire Swedish smorgasbord. I dropped the phone back into the cradle and buried my head in the foam pillow again.

Ten minutes later, she was at my door. “Hilary! Eggs, sunny side up with a side of wheat toast.”

I stumbled to the door and yanked it open, blearily focusing on her fully dressed and smiling self. “I thought you were going to let me sleep for an hour.”

“Then the eggs would have been cold. And you know how you hate cold eggs.”

“Ma, I hate eggs, period.”

“Since when?”

“Since forever.” I turned, leaving the door open and climbed back into my bed, pulling the covers over my head, knowing I was acting like a three-year-old. And so not caring.

“But you always liked eggs when I made them.”

“And when was that?” My voice was muffled by the scratchy floral polyester coverlet. “Because last I checked Dad was the one who fed me breakfast. Got me dressed for school. Made sure I got on the bus.”

I closed my eyes and squeezed my temples. What was with me this morning? Had I not just vowed a mere twenty-four hours ago that I would not get into a verbal match with my mother? That I would behave for this road trip?

Uh-huh. And look how well that was going.

She brought out the worst in me, like sandpaper on a callus. It was why I kept a mental egg timer on our visits, because I knew if I went over so many minutes, someone was bound to blow.

“Will you please come out from under there and eat your breakfast? You need to start the day right.”

I flung back the covers, annoyed and frustrated and not in the mood for anything sunny side up. I stalked over to the breakfast tableau she’d set up on the cheap laminate table in the corner, grabbed a piece of wheat toast, then perched on the corner of the armchair and nibbled.

“For God’s sake, Hilary, put on some clothes.”

I looked down at my tank top and panties. “These are clothes, Ma.”

She glared at me.

I had two choices. I could continue to stand there, just to tick her off, an art I had perfected during high school, or I could throw on a pair of jeans and buy some peace.

I had learned some lessons in three decades of life. And one of them was that some battles were not worth the fight—like what I wore to bed.

I put down the toast, picked up the Lees I’d dropped on the floor the night before and wriggled into them, ignoring the way my mother’s nose wrinkled in distaste, then went back to my breakfast.

“You’re getting crumbs on the—” She cut herself off, apparently deciding I was a lost cause, and rose. “Reginald and I will meet you in the car. Be sure to make the bed before you leave.”

“Ma, that’s what the maids do.”

“We don’t want them thinking we’re total slobs.” She glanced around my room, at the shirt draped over the armchair, the open duffel bag, its contents strewn in a circle, the blankets puddled on the floor. “Even if some of us are.”

Then she left the room without shutting the door. I crossed the room and closed it myself, muttering unflattering things about passive-aggressive relationships under my breath.

Then I threw the eggs into the trash and stood over them, watching the little tendrils of steam rise off their happy yellow faces. If I’d thought it would make me feel better, I’d been wrong.

six

My mother, I discovered, only liked to read books, not listen to them. I tried each of the books on tape—New York Times bestsellers and Oprah picks—and she rejected them all. One reader was too slow. One was too hard to understand. The third had a drawl. “Grates on my nerves.” The fourth was a male. “Men shouldn’t read books written by women.”

“Ma, he’s playing a character. He’s an actor. That’s his job.”

“If I want an actor, I’ll watch a movie.” She settled her purse in her lap again and stared straight ahead. Reginald snarfled in agreement and laid his head on the console between us. I had to work really hard to not be grossed out by the thought of a pig lying on the leather of my car, his wet nose against my elbow, and Lord only knew what was coming out of said nose every time he made a noise. “It’s not natural to listen to a book anyway. That’s why they have pages, Hilary. So you can read them.”

“Fine.” My teeth hurt. “Let’s try some music. I brought several CDs of—”

“I don’t like music in the car. It’s too distracting.”

“Distracting for what? You’re not doing anything.”

“For you. You could get all wrapped up in—” she reached into the plastic dish that held the CDs, yanked one of them out “—Barry Manilow Sings the Fifties and next thing I know, you’re plowing into a North American Van Lines truck.”

I laughed. “Ma, I seriously doubt I’ll get distracted by Barry Manilow. I don’t even like Barry Manilow.”

“Then why did you bring that CD?”

“I thought you’d like it.”

“Oh.” She turned the plastic case over, read the list of songs on the back, then placed it back in the dish. “That was very thoughtful, Hilary.”

She said it like I’d bought her a gift certificate for hangnail removal. “I thought you liked Barry Manilow. You went to his concert.”

“Your father liked him. I went along for the ride.”

“You went to a concert just because Dad liked the singer? Why would you sit through something like that if you didn’t even like it?”

She turned to face me then, her face clear and surprised. “I loved your father, Hilary. Why wouldn’t I do that?”

“Because you’re allowed to have your own likes, Ma. You didn’t have to pretend to like things just because Dad did.” Would Nick and I end up like that five years down the road, ten? Me pretending to like things just to make him happy?

“He knew how I felt. We didn’t have any secrets, your father and I.”

And yet…the way she said that—too fast, too pat—I wondered how many secrets they’d had that she wouldn’t admit. What marriage didn’t have a few secrets? I thought of Karen and Jerry, who had been my next door neighbors and relationship-advice gurus for ten years. Karen had told me about the shopping she kept from Jerry, the receipts she kept in her wallet, and the blind eye she turned to his occasional after-work beer with his buddies.

What if the buddies he shared a Coors Light with had breasts and wore high heels? What if her trips to the mall involved more than a few sweaters and a new raincoat? They told lies, kept secrets, and each seemed to know, but ignored them, like messes behind closet doors. “A little space,” Karen said, “is a necessity. If he knew everything, I’d be suffocated.”

That’s what I was most afraid of with Nick. Being suffocated. Moving in with him for good, having him know everything, from my bra size to how often I washed my laundry, to whether I ate breakfast. I liked my space, and I didn’t want to answer to anyone for where I had been last Saturday or what I’d spent last week’s paycheck on.

And I didn’t want to spend my Saturday evenings wondering if he’d really been knocking back a Bud with Lou or LouAnn.

Space. I needed lots of it.

Karen and Jerry had gotten more or less lucky, my parents, I suspected, not so much. To me, that meant I had a fifty-fifty chance with Nick. Those odds simply weren’t good enough to be betting the rest of my life.

“So who do you like, Ma?” I asked.

“Who do I like for what?”

“Singers, music.”

She lifted one shoulder, dropped it, stared out the window. “I never really thought about it.”

“Oh, come on, everyone has a favorite singer. A favorite song or two.”

“Do you?”

I didn’t say anything for a second, watching the signs carefully as we made the switch on 90 north to Albany. The signs were tricky, a little confusing, and I was quiet until I was sure we were going the right way. “Yeah, but I’m kind of fickle. I think that comes from working at Ernie’s. I hear so much music that I have a new favorite every year. I used to be strictly a Bruce girl then—”

“Bruce?”

“Bruce Springsteen. You know, ‘Glory Days,’ ‘Born to Run.’”

“Oh.” She thought a minute. “Is that the song you used to play all the time in your room? The one about cars and getting out of town?”

My gaze settled on my mother, absorbing her lean frame with surprise. She’d passed by the closed door of my room hundreds of times over the years, and I’d never thought that she’d paused, maybe put her ear against the six-panel oak to listen, to take an aural peek into her daughter’s world. “Yeah, that’s the one.”

She nodded. “It’s a nice song. Kind of…wild.”

“Like me.”

A smile crossed her lips, the kind that was soft, almost private, caught up with memories and shared connections, and in that moment, I felt like maybe there was hope for my mother and I, that a bridge really did exist somewhere out there, and all we had to do was find the right path to get to it. “Yes, like you,” she said.

The angry blare of a horn sounded behind us and I jerked my attention back to the road, pulling the wheel straight again. My heart leapt in my throat, pulse jumped, breath caught, then all settled again when I realized all I’d done was stray a few inches too far to the left.

“See?” my mother said, her voice back in full-on parental mode. “This is exactly why I don’t like to listen to music while we’re driving.”

And just like that, the bridge disappeared into the mist.

“If we keep stopping like this, we’ll never get to Uncle Morty’s.” We’d stopped at the Shaker Heritage Society in Albany, the Corning Museum of Glass in Syracuse, made a quick one-day detour to Niagara Falls, and were now trying to fit in one more stop before the sun went down. I was exhausted, irritated and felt like I’d done an entire week of both The Amazing Race and Survivor, all in a two-day period.

And all the while, I wondered what was going on back home. In Nick’s head. He’d issued me, more or less, an ultimatum. I was putting distance between us, literally and figuratively. The more I did that, the more I worried that he wouldn’t be there when I got back. That there’d be no returning to the easy, comfortable relationship we’d had.

Considering I was not going to take that next step with him—already I’d had that nice little Barry Manilow preview of my future and it scared the pants off me—I fretted about what steps he was making.

“Your father needs to see the country, and so do I.” My mother was standing on the rough beach shores of Lake Erie, holding up the cardboard figure of my father. A howling wind curled around the lake, turning the edges of the waves to froth, then pushed at my father, as if trying to knock him over, testing my mother’s strength. “Take the picture, Hilary.”

Reginald had opted to stay in the car. Smart pig.

“Ma, this is crazy.” Nevertheless, I raised the digital camera and snapped the picture, capturing my father’s windswept head, just before the real, present-day wind bent it back.

Red filled my mother’s cheeks, her hair lifted in the fierce breeze and her navy pumps sank in the damp sand. Yet she stood there, even after I shouted that I had taken the picture, clutching the cutout of her husband.

“Ma? You coming? We have to get back on the road.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” But the wind battled against her, pushing her toward the lake, using my father as leverage, sinking her kitten heels farther into the earth. She bowed her head and pressed forward, but seemed frozen there. I slung the camera over my shoulder and hurried down the beach, sand gritting between the foam of my flip-flops. Lake Erie clearly wasn’t as friendly as the tourist brochure made it out to be, at least not on this late-May day.

“Let me get that,” I said, taking my father from her. She gave him up without argument, then gripped my arm, her breath coming labored and short as we made our way up the beach to a bench that sat at the edge of the parking lot. “You okay?”

“I’m perfectly fine.” That no-nonsense, lawyer tone. The dare-you-to-disagree one. I could almost believe her.

“You don’t sound okay.”

“Well, I am.” She took a seat on the bench. When she did, I noticed her left leg seemed swollen, larger than the other, and the skin of her foot pressed over and above her shoe, like a marshmallow.

“Then why are you sitting down? And why is your leg puffy?”

“I want to enjoy the scenery. And you know I have poor circulation. That car of yours is no help. Stop trying to read something into my every move.” Again, that arguing-for-the-defense voice that left no room for quarreling. I shrugged, loaded Dad in the car, then came back and sat beside her. After a few minutes of silence, she rose and climbed into the Mustang, purse in supermarket position again.

My hand hesitated over the ignition. I could easily let this go, avoid an argument, get on the road, put some more miles behind us. “What was that about back there?”

“Your car sits too low. I needed to stretch my legs.”

I still didn’t believe her, but all my medical knowledge came from watching television, and shows like Grey’s Anatomy. Didn’t exactly make me a medical expert.

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.” Ma turned to the window, averting her too-red cheeks from my continued suspicious analysis. “Can we get going? Uncle Morty could drop dead of heart failure by the time we get to his house.”

“Now you’re in a rush?”

In answer, she flipped the road atlas onto her lap and began tracing our future route with her index finger. Plain, short nails. The tips accented with a white pencil that she ran beneath them every morning, part of a daily ritual she’d been doing for as long as I could remember, the nail beds polished with clear, no-nonsense Sally Hanson.

That pretty much summed up my mother, I realized. Neat, clear and no-nonsense. Whereas I—I looked at my own hands for further clarification of how different I was—had raggedy nails. Hilary Delaney—low-maintenance, not always sensible. A mess, my mother would, and had, said.

Up until now, Nick had liked the mess that was me. But lately, he’d wanted me to straighten, fly in the V that was the rest of middle America. Become part of the two-point-five kids suburbia flock. At some point, I’d have to choose whether to be in that group or without him, and that made my head hurt.

It made everything hurt.

I started pulling out of the parking lot, heading back toward Peninsula Drive. The shiny Tom Ridge Environmental Center winked back at us from a little farther down the road. I glanced at my mother, sure she’d want to see this tourist attraction, too, but she was slumped in her seat, clearly tired.

As I drove, my cell phone rang. I reached for it, in the dish of the car’s console, but my mother was faster. “You are not going to answer that while you’re driving, Hilary. You could cause a wreck.”

Not a single other car shared the road with us, just a bunch of crazy people on bikes who clearly didn’t notice the wind or what felt like sub-zero temperatures. The sun above was bright, I was barely driving twenty-five miles an hour. To my mother, though, that didn’t constitute a preponderance of evidence on my side, so I didn’t even bother to bring up those facts.

I appealed to her Reginald emotions. “It’s Nick, Ma. Calling to find out where we’re stopping for the night so he can find us another porcine-friendly motel.”

The phone rang again. My mother’s grip tightened. “I can talk to him. You drive.”

“No, no, no. You cannot talk to Nick. If you do, you’ll—”

“I’ll what?” She held it up, against her window, the third ring making the slim Motorola dance against the glass.

“Give me the phone, Ma.” I needed to talk to him, make sure all was as it had been before I’d left. This wasn’t just about motel rooms. It was about checking the status quo.

She flipped it open, as defiant as I had been in preschool. Now I saw where I got a few of my more undesirable traits. “Hello, Nick. This is Mrs. Delaney. When are you going to make an honest woman out of my daughter?”

“Ma!” I hissed. Why did she have to add fuel to that fire?

She ignored me. “Really? And she said no?” My mother turned a sharp glance on me. I had racked up one more disappointment in her eyes. “Oh, you are such a dear. Yes, yes, I believe we are just a few miles from that area now. Oh, they do? Wonderful. Yes, we’ll look for that exit. Oh, thank you, Nick.” Another pause. “You too, dear. Have a wonderful evening. And don’t worry, I’ll be sure to talk to Hilary. I’ll put in a good word for you. You are such a sweet boy. Good night now.”

Sweet boy? Nick was nearly forty, for Pete’s sake.

She closed the phone and placed the Motorola in the empty ashtray, giving it a little pat, as if all had been settled with my future.

I glanced at the dish with longing that bordered on pain. I would have given my right arm for a Marlboro Light right now.

“Hilary, Nick said—”

“Don’t say one word about my love life. I don’t ask about yours, you don’t ask about mine.” And don’t interfere in that particular discussion. Could she have made it any worse?

“I don’t have a love life to ask about.”

“You don’t? What about Mr. Messinger across the street?”

My mother’s face reddened, crimson coloring from her cheeks to her chest. Reginald poked his head up, looked from one of us to the other, then went back to sleep. “He’s a neighbor, nothing more. We talk about tulips and…gardenias.”

“That’s not what I heard.” I grinned. Mrs. Whittaker was a fountain of more than just medical gossip. “Ma, it’s okay for you to have a little romance. You may be older, but you’re not dead.”

“Your father is in the backseat, Hilary.”

I rolled my eyes.

“All right, I know he isn’t really, but…well, I don’t feel comfortable discussing Mr. Messinger with you.”

“Exactly. And I don’t feel comfortable discussing my relationship with Nick with you.”

“Why?”

I blew out a gust of air, instead of cursing. “Because it’s complicated, Ma.”

“What’s complicated about it? He loves you, he wants to marry you. You call Reverend White, we book the church…”

That icy knot formed again in my stomach, tightening into a twisted ball of frozen vines. If I hadn’t been stuck behind the wheel of a car, driving my mother and her pig across the country, I’d have run.

Run back home, run away from these questions. Run away from giving answers I didn’t have.

Didn’t want to provide, not to her, not to Nick, and most of all not to myself. Because that would mean looking into mental trunks best left shut.

“Quit,” I said, softly at first, then, again, the word gaining in volume. “Quit it. Quit planning my life. My future. Just quit”

Ma put her purse on the floor, turned in her seat and faced me. “What’s so wrong with a little planning? With looking ahead to the future? You are not getting any younger, my dear, and you need to think—”

“I know what I need to think about!” The words exploded out of me, pent up for so many years, this little time bomb exacerbated by the close quarters of the car, the incessant woodpecker of my mother’s proximity. Why had I thought we could spend all this time together without committing murder? That simply adding a few birthdays would change our relationship? Make her see I was an adult? One capable of making decisions? “Have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, what you want for my life isn’t what I want?”

She leaned back, putting distance between us. It was only a few inches, but it felt like the Panama Canal, and guilt washed over me, fast and hard. “Yes, Hilary, I have,” she said, her voice quiet.

And hurt.

“Ma, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“No, I’m sorry. I’ll stay out of your business.” She picked up her purse, sat it back on her lap and turned to face the road again. As still and cold as the bronze statue of Red Auberach sitting miles and miles behind us in Faneuil Hall.

seven

“So how’s it going?”

I was curled up in the double bed at the motel with my phone pressed to my ear, Nick’s deep, husky voice about the only comfort I had. Okay, Nick’s voice and the four-pack of wine coolers I’d picked up at the convenience store across the street from the motel. I’d been hoping for something harder, but had to settle for a quartet of bottles called Seabreeze Delight.

“It’s not. We’re not getting along at all.”

“You’re stuck together all day in a car. Heck, even you and I would fight.”

“We don’t fight,” I said, suddenly missing Nick so bad, I wanted to cry. I wriggled my hips against the mattress’s lumps, trying to find a position that didn’t require Pilates to feel restful. Wishing he was here, wishing I could hit Rewind and go back to where everything had been perfect.

“Yeah, Hil, we do fight,” he said softly. “We just don’t yell.”

I wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but didn’t. Because I knew that would open up that can of worms I didn’t want to open, that set of capital-letter subjects I avoided like the plague—MARRIAGE, PERMANENCE, WHERE OUR RELATIONSHIP WAS GOING.

And why I kept a toothbrush at his apartment but not a change of clothes.

“How’s work?” I asked.

“You’re changing the subject.” He sighed. “Okay, fine. We’ll talk about work. You know what I’m building right now? A set of cabinets for a playroom.”

“Great. Sounds interesting. Who for? What kind of wood?”

“The cabinets are for a family, Hil. Two parents, two kids. I’m down in their basement, measuring the space, installing the shelves, and seeing people who took a risk. Who made the leap.” How did he manage to do that? Turn every single question and conversation back to the same subject? The man was a broken record. “Nick, there are a gazillion people in the world who get married every day. And a half a gazillion who get divorced. Then they fight over those same cabinets like two Rottweilers in a butcher shop.”

“When did you become such a pessimist?”

I let out a gust. “It’s called being realistic, Nick.”

“Sure it is. When you walk into Ernie’s on a Friday night and you’re out of beef, and thirty people want burgers, and the keg of Bud goes flat, do you shut the place down? Close the doors? Give up?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Then why are you giving up on us before we’ve even started?”

I didn’t say anything for a while. He was right. Nights like that happened at Ernie’s all the time. We ran out of the special just when a party of ten came in, expecting to find that exact thing on the menu. A delivery driver got lost, and an expected shipment arrived late. The air-conditioning broke down on the hottest night on record in Boston.

I’d learned to take it all in stride. To improvise. Because shutting the doors meant losing money. In the long run, that hurt Ernie’s more than figuring out some way to make everyone happy.

“And when I find a knot in a piece of wood that’s supposed to be perfect,” Nick went on, “I work around it. I see it as part of the design. A touch of something unique. I work with what I have, Hilary. I don’t give up just because it’s not perfect.”

“You gave up on us once.”

The phone line crackled, tension cutting across the miles. Nick drew in a breath, let it out again. “That was a long time ago. Things are different now.”

“I’m supposed to believe you? Why? I moved in, canceled my lease, talked cabinets with you, Nick. A future.” Albeit, not one with marriage, more a joining of appliances and furniture. It had been a huge step for me, one that I had contemplated and fretted over for weeks, but Nick had cajoled and tempted, and finally, I’d relented. “And what did you do, Nick?”

He didn’t have to answer. We both knew how that had ended. He’d done the Man Dance, panicking within a month, and we’d broken up. I’d found my own place, and maintained my space ever since.

Then, six months ago, he’d started the same talk. Only this time, with a more serious edge, the permanent, gold-bands-and-marriage-licenses type. Now, I was the one who was as skittish as a horse in the starting gate. What if the same thing happened? What if it was worse this time?

“I’m ready for more now, Hilary. I have been for a long time. You know that,” Nick said. “Everyone grows up eventually and I’d like us to.”

“I’m happy with the way things are. Why can’t you be?”

He sighed. “Because I can’t keep doing this. I need to know where we’re heading.”

“I’m heading west, young man.”

But Nick didn’t laugh. I took a bigger gulp of the Seabreeze Delight. Silly thing didn’t leave me any more delighted. It was too sweet, too fruity, and oddly made me wish for some wheat toast to temper the taste.

“I have to go, Hil. I’m going out tonight.”

A wild, crazy surge of jealousy rose in my throat. Three hundred questions crowded my mind at once, like voices in an insane asylum—who with? Where to? Why now? What time are you coming back? What will you do?

And who will you do it with?

Never before had I cared or asked Nick about what he did when he wasn’t with me. I figured I had no right to make demands on him if I wanted no reins on me. It had to be the distance, the emotional tornado stirred up by my mother. Or the aggravation of dealing with THAT PIG all day because I found myself asking words that I knew I shouldn’t. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere. Just out with some friends.” Then, I could hear him smile. See that smile across the phone line, and it made me want to take back the question, to close that gap in my armor, a gap I knew he’d seen. “Why? Are you worried about me?”

I took a sip of wine cooler, making him wait before I answered. Pretending I didn’t care; hadn’t been bothered one iota by what he’d said. “Nope, not at all. Just making conversation.”

“You’re a bad liar, Hilary. You should be able to trust me by now anyway. And, you love me. One of these days you’ll realize that. Hopefully sooner rather than later. I’m running out of patience.”

Then he was gone. I hung on to the cell phone, the cold metal against my ear for a long, long time, until David Letterman ended and the Seabreeze Delight finally stopped delighting and let me sleep.

I woke up the next morning and vowed to do better, like a seventh-grader with a failing math grade. Only this wasn’t pre-algebra, and this wasn’t about just mastering the solution to x.

It was my mother. And she didn’t grade on a bell curve.

The clock on the bedside table rolled from seven fifty-nine to eight. The phone hadn’t rung. No one had knocked on my door, bearing an egg-white omelet or some other equally healthy way to start my day. I showered, pulled on a clean pair of jeans and a non-holey T-shirt, slipped into my flip-flops after rinsing off the remaining sand in the sink, then headed out of my room and over to the one next door. “Ma?” I called, rapping on the wood.

“Coming,” she called back, the tone in her voice too high, like a rookie opera singer reaching for a note she couldn’t carry.

“You okay?”

“Fine.” Another falsetto note, this one even shakier. A sense of foreboding whispered through me.

“Let me in.” I tried the knob, a futile exercise.

“I’m not dressed.”

“Ma, let me in.” The dread doubled now, tightened in my throat, wrapped around my chest, and with a whoosh of memory sent me spiraling back five years.

To another door I couldn’t open, another calling of fine on the other end, when things hadn’t been fine at all.

Not at all.

“Now, Ma. Open the door. Please.”

I tried the knob, but the door held fast. “Let me in.” More urgent, my hand working the knob, even as I knew it wasn’t going anywhere. Her voice on the other end, muffled, but finally, an “I’m coming,” and then, the sound of metal clicking against metal, chambers sliding into place, and then it gave way, allowing me entry.

“See? I told you. I’m perfectly fine.” She stood in her room, one hand gripping the back of a dark blue armchair, the cheap kind with a printed finish to cover for food stains. Sweat marched across her brow, and even in the dim light from the bedside lamp I could see a flush in her cheeks that had nothing to do with Maybelline.

Relief rolled over me, then anger, then worry, like tides coming in at the end of a long day. I wanted to shake her, to make her sit down, to give her some eggs. But most of all, to get her to stop covering up. It was something our family had always done too damned well. “You’re not fine. You’re sick. We should stay here today. Take a rest.”

A flicker of movement, and an almost imperceptible push off from the chair, like a swimmer who didn’t want to get caught cheating in the pool. A few measured steps to where Reginald lay on a quilted blanket, his name embroidered in bright blue letters underneath his snout. A Zip-Loc of pig chow sat beside a monogrammed ceramic bowl. My mother bent to open it, and a sound, almost a mew, escaped her. Betraying something I’d never heard before.

Weakness.

“Ma?”

She drew in a sharp, quick breath. “I’m not sick.” But she wouldn’t look at me when she said it and she had yet to get the pig chow. Her hand reached out, searching blindly for the edge of the bed, banging in a widening circle, grasping at the ugly brown and peach floral quilt, curling around it in a rosette, before hauling herself to the corner of the bed.

I didn’t wait or argue. I crossed the room, dumped what looked like a reasonable amount of feed into Reginald’s bowl and then faced my mother, hands on my hips. Roles reversed. Me, the irresponsible one, giving her the grown-up glare. “You look anything but fine. And we are not getting in that car until you tell me what’s wrong.”

“Noth—” She cut off the word when she saw it wasn’t getting her anywhere. “I’m tired. You try getting to sixty-seven and see how you feel.”

“You’re lying.” I should know. I’d become an expert, just ask Nick.

“I’m not.” She drew herself up, dared me to disagree. All traces of weakness disappeared, to the point where I could almost think I’d imagined it. She got to her feet, brushed off her dark blue traveling suit, but I noticed she’d traded her pumps for slippers, and her leg still had that water-logged look. Again, I questioned the wisdom of travel.

“Are you ready to go?” Ma said, clear and chipper as always.

I glanced again at her leg. “I really think we should—”

“Get in the car, Hilary. We have a lot of road to cover today.” And just like that, my temporary rule as leader was toppled.

I opened my mouth to protest, shut it when my mother brushed past me, her packed suitcase in hand, Reginald at her feet. I packed up his bed and bowl, grabbed his package of food and fell into line behind the pig.

I think God put Ohio—flat, plain, filled with nothing but corn and cows—in the United States to torture me. It was hours before we saw anything remotely interesting.

I drove and drove, missing Nick, my mind playing awful tricks, flashing scenarios about where he’d gone last night—without me. Why was I worried? Nick had never given me reason to doubt his fidelity, but something about the distance, about his pressure for us to commit, had my mind conjuring up images it never had before.

Was I playing with fire by not committing to him?

I knew that answer as well as I knew my shoe size, but that didn’t make me any more anxious to rush into marriage prison. Things were, in my opinion, already perfect between Nick and me. I couldn’t understand why he wanted to mess them up with a gold band and a marriage license.

We’d been together for four years, brought together by an entertainment center. I’d moved into my apartment, bought a TV that was too big for the console I’d found at a garage sale and decided to grow up and buy a real piece of furniture. Someone had recommended Nick, and the next thing I knew, I had a custom oak cabinet and the carpenter in my living room.

It wasn’t the way he worked that I fell for; it was the way he worked the wood, made it shape and mold to his will. He had a patience that I admired, a quietness about his spirit. I’d never met anyone who was both gentle and strong, who could confront me and give me room in the same breath.

And it helped that he not only looked damned good without a shirt, but that when he kissed me, the world turned upside down.

He called me just as my mother and I pulled into Cleveland. I don’t know what had me more excited—the familiar ring tone that meant Nick was on the phone, or the sight of something besides the vast desolation of Ohio.

That something was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which even got Nick excited. “Get me a picture of The Clash exhibit, will you?” he said, with no mention of last night’s conversation. “And Jimi Hendrix’s guitar. Just one snapshot, so I can hang it on my wall and drool.”

Nick and his buddies played at Ernie’s on Thursday nights, a garage band they’d put together three years ago when Kevin Linton had had a midlife crisis and realized he’d never experienced his dream of becoming Jon Bon Jovi. Nick played electric guitar—and he was good, very good, as good at coaxing music from the instrument as he was at coaxing beauty from wood.

“Do you want me to see if they have a miniature reproduction of Hendrix’s guitar in the gift shop?” I asked, happy to keep things on this conversational level. “That way you can carry it around for good mojo or something.”

“If you get me one, I’ll love you forever.”

We’d gone all these years without saying those words, or at least not saying them seriously, but now that tone had returned to Nick’s voice. Again. It hung on the last four words, weighing them down, talking about a lot more than a plastic replica of the late-sixties rebel’s strumming machine.

An ordinary woman would have thrilled to hear those words. Not me. Because I knew I was supposed to say the same thing back, and with those words came expectations, the very thing I sucked at. “Nick, I have to go.”

“Sure,” he said, but I could hear the hurt in his voice. And it had nothing at all to do with souvenirs.

I hung up the cell, put it in the ashtray, then stared at it for a second, my fingers lingering as if I could touch Nick, too.

“You should marry him,” Ma said. Had she overheard Nick’s side? Or read my mind? I didn’t doubt she could do either.

I put my hands back on the steering wheel, its leather hard and firm under my grip, a direction to somewhere other than a discussion I didn’t want to have. “We’re almost at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. What exhibit do you want to see first?”

“I like Nick, I always have. He’s a little…unconventional, but he’s nice. And he wants you. Lord knows your ovaries aren’t getting any younger.”

I shuddered. I swore she and Nick shared a telepathic link. “Can we not have this conversation?”

“Why? When’s a good time, Hilary? Do you want to pencil me in for next June? Third Tuesday? Because I may not be—”

My mother turned away, watching the pavement pass in a blur. She bit the edge of her index finger, the rest of her fist curled in a tight, white ball.

What the hell was going on with her? One minute, my mother was the same pain in my butt I knew, the next, she was an emotional mess, and then the moment after that, she was acting crazy, dragging along this cardboard cutout of my father and taking pictures of her and him with a cow in a field. And now…

Now she wanted to build a relationship with me after three decades of almost nothing?

“Because you may not be what, Ma?” I said to her silent frame. “Able to wait that long?” My exasperation boiled over, that teakettle once again unable to hold in its stopper, the water too close to the surface, too jostled by the hours together, the years of frustrations, of unspoken words. “You’ve waited thirty-six years, what’s one more? I know I’m not exactly the child you dreamed of, Ma, but you should have doubled your odds. Had another one. Then maybe you could have had a daughter who actually lived up to your expectations.”

Well.

It hadn’t taken me long to lay it all out there. Leave it to me and my big fat mouth, and one long stretch of boring highway.

This was why I hated Ohio.

“I did,” she said quietly.

“Did what?”

She turned and faced me. “Have another.”

The Mustang’s tires slapped against the pavement. Slap, slap, slap, slap. Like mini clocks ticking away the silence between us. I froze in my seat, those words repeating in time to the rhythm of the tires.

“Another?” I echoed.

“You were two. You wouldn’t remember.”

That was true. The first memory I had came from my third birthday, when my father had brought a pony into the backyard. My mother had screamed at him, aghast at the four-hooved animal tearing up the perfect, manicured lawn. But Dad had been determined to make my birthday a success, to give his daughter a party she’d never forget.

He’d definitely accomplished that.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“There were just some things we decided you didn’t need to know.”

“A sibling was a need-to-know kind of thing?” I stared at her, dumbfounded, until the car drifted into the other lane and I had to jerk it back.

“You were two years old, Hilary. You didn’t know how to use a toilet or count to ten. I wasn’t going to get into the facts of life.”

But a sister, or a brother? She couldn’t have trusted me with that? With what had happened? Hurt stung at my eyes, my throat. I swallowed it back, determined not to let her see me cry. “What happened?”

“I…” She took in a breath. “I lost it.”

Not lost like a penny or the second sock that the washer always ate, but lost forever, to some cruel twist of fate. “But how…why? What went wrong?”

She sighed. “Why do you want to know?”

“Ma, I’m grown up now. I can handle whatever you hid from me at two.”

“That’s not it, Hilary. Some things are…personal.”

I thought of all the need-to-know items in my own history. The edited version of my life that I’d fed to my mother over the years. Of course, I hadn’t kept any secret babies from her, but I did have a couple of whoppers in my own background.

She, however, had opened this Pandora’s Box and I wasn’t ready to shut it, not yet. “But…why didn’t you try again?”

My mother looked out the window for a long time, so long I didn’t think she would ever answer. Behind us, Reginald snored, completely unaware. “Because your father was never the same after we lost the baby. It changed him. He tried…but he began to slip away and I was afraid…” Her voice trailed off, the sentence unraveling into a whispered sob.

“Afraid of what?” Maybe, I thought, if I could understand more of who I was, where I’d come from—why my parents were the way they were—I could figure out why I wanted to run every time Nick got too close.

My mother didn’t answer. And I guess I hadn’t really needed to ask what she’d been afraid of. I knew what my father had become. Had seen the hole he’d fallen into and never climbed out of.

“Maybe if your father had talked to me,” my mother said softly, “everything would have been different. But we’ll never know, will we?”

I bit my lip. “No, Ma, we won’t.”

She nodded, quiet and severe, tucking her emotions away. I don’t know where she kept them, somewhere knotted in her colon, I supposed, because barely a flicker showed on her face. And yet, I knew, with the connection of DNA, of being a woman, too, that losing a child, whether it had been three years or thirty years ago, still hurt her.

A rectangular blue sign announced food at the next exit. Saved by the bell, a welcome interruption to a topic too heavy for either of us to handle. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to push it, to know more, or to just leave it alone. After all, this had happened more than three decades in the past. How much could it possibly matter now?

And yet, I knew it did.

I wanted to call Nick and tell him, see, this is why I don’t want to journey down these roads. I don’t want to feel this way in a year or two years or five. Why set myself up when I’ve already seen the end of the movie?

Maybe there was a way to find a happy medium with Nick. To maintain the relationship we had and not take it to the next level. Or maybe it had come time to cut Nick loose, as much as that would hurt, because I was so clearly not the kind of woman who should get married.

We passed the sign, and I glanced back at it, not wanting to let that oasis go. “I think it’s time for coffee, don’t you?”

My mother gave me a smile. “Yeah, Hilary. That sounds good. Really good.”

A few minutes later, we got out of the car, stretched our legs, ordered twin brews, then headed back to the Mustang, all without ever bringing up the topic of confusing relationships, lost babies and need-to-know subjects.

Again, she moved slow, deliberate, not like the Rosemary Delaney I remembered. Worry pushed at me, telling me there were more things my mother had edited out of her conversations. “Ma, you are not okay.”

“It’s that car. Seats are too low.” Her hand gripped the doorframe, and she eyed the leather bucket with obvious trepidation.

“If I’d known, I would have rented a bus or something. An RV. You should have said—” I cut myself off. My mother was no spring chicken. Not to mention, I was thirty-six. Old enough to have more than two brain cells and at least some common sense. I should have thought about her age, the impracticality of the car before I brought the Mustang. Damn. How selfish could I be? Guilt ran through me like bad seafood. “No. I should have thought about you first. I’m sorry, Ma.”

“That’s okay.” She laid a hand on my shoulder, instant absolution in that touch. “We’ll stop a lot. I’ll be fine.”

As much as the thought drove me crazy, because that meant extending the trip, and already it seemed like it was taking an eternity, I didn’t see another option. I’d brought this on myself by insisting on driving the Mustang instead of having a little foresight and renting something practical. For once, couldn’t I have taken my mother’s advice instead of being so stubborn?

I laid my hand atop of hers, the guilt not entirely gone, wishing I could rewind and undo this particular mistake. “We’ll stop as often as you want.”

I held the door and helped her down to the seat, ignoring her as she tried to brush off my arm, my help. Reginald watched us, his buttocks flush against my backseat, content and happy to be laying on his Reginald-emblazoned fleece blanket.

My father sat beside him, perpetually happy, not cramped at all. Some people didn’t mind the car one bit.

As I came around to my side, I paused before getting in and leaned against the door. I’d meant what I’d said to my mother on the road. I was the family screw-up, and this incident with the car had proved that in spades.

I glanced down the highway, which seemed to stretch to infinity. Miles and miles yet to go. And just maybe…

An opportunity to prove to my mother I could be the kind of daughter she wanted. And in the process, prove it to myself.

eight

Nick hid his disappointment well. “You never even made it past the Everly Brothers and Dion?”

I sat in my car in the parking lot of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and sighed. Poor Nick. “I don’t think my mother realizes anyone made music after 1965.”

“Not so much as a picture of Hendrix? A bit of dust from his Stratocaster?”

“I think I glimpsed it from one of the halls, if that helps.” A heavy thud sounded on the other end of the phone. “What was that?”

“Me. Shooting myself.”

“You and I can always go sometime. Cleveland’s not that far from Boston.”

“Yeah,” Nick said, but he didn’t sound convinced. He paused a long moment, and I could hear him walk around the apartment. I pictured him, phone in hand, barefoot, padding across the wide pine floors, scuffed by years of past tenants doing God only knew what, their furniture, their lives, leaving imprints. “That implies a future, Hil. Sticking together down the road. Beyond tomorrow. You up for that?”

My gut tightened with tension, laid out like wires stretched too long, too far. I glanced out the window, but my mother had yet to emerge from the gift shop to save me from this conversation. “Well, you know, I meant going together to Cleveland in the vague kind of, whenever sense.”

A sigh weighed down by disappointment and missed expectations traveled across the phone lines. I closed my eyes, wishing I hadn’t heard it, that Nick would take it back, laugh, anything. The thread I’d always counted on between Nick and I, however tenuous it sometimes became, was unraveling one word at a time, and I couldn’t twist it together again.

Not without giving him the one thing I was incapable of handing over.

I thought of the conversation I’d had with my mother, about her and my father, and all the things she wished she’d talked to him about. There were words I wished I could say to Nick, too, but I was afraid—afraid that if I told him how I really felt, I’d lose him. Or worse, if I never said them, and we ended up in the same unhappy cage I’d seen my parents inhabit.

I didn’t want that for either Nick or me. But I didn’t want to lose him, either. Instead, I said simply, “I miss you, Nick.”

“Yeah, me, too,” was all he said back.

My mother headed across the parking lot, waving a stack of postcards from the gift shop, all bearing the faces of fifties icons. “I have to go. My mother’s coming and you know her, she’ll want to hit the road immediately and she’ll freak if I’m on the phone while I drive. I’ll call you when we get through Indiana.”

“I won’t be here.” A pause, a heartbeat. “I’m going out tonight.”

“Again? You never go out two nights in a row.” Or at least, he didn’t without me.

“Yeah, well, things are changing around here.” Then he hung up the phone and left me hanging in cell hell.

The implied message—either I change, or he was going to do it without me. Or even worse, find someone willing to change with him. And here I was, a thousand miles away from being able to do anything about it.

I stared at my phone, mad at him, mad at the entire situation.

Reginald perked up when Ma got in the car, moving around on the seat, settling down only when she tickled him behind his ears and cooed at him. Once we were back on the road, she went on for ten minutes straight about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but the only one listening was her pig.

I drove, nodded my head at appropriate times and places, but all the while, my gut and my mind churned over Nick’s words, looking for an out, a way to make everyone happy.

And came up empty.

I was literally standing in the middle of a Robert Frost poem. Two roads in the woods, and either I took the one with Nick, or went on alone. Every time before, Alone Avenue had been the more attractive route. This time, though, I wavered, thinking of Nick on the beach in Mexico, scooping me up and striding into the water so that I wouldn’t have to step on the conch shells lining the island, a natural barrier to the pristine ocean beauty. He’d cut his foot, bled like a Red Cross donor, which set off some lady on the beach. She’d run screaming to the lifeguard, sure there were sharks in the water.

The lifeguard, a kid fresh out of swim school, had panicked, and waved everyone out of the water. Nick and I tried to tell him there weren’t any sharks, but our Spanish was bad and his English was worse. Finally, we’d given up, and collapsed on the sand in a heap of laughter. Nick had showered me with kisses and a dusting of pure white sand, then, without a word, carried me back to the room, stripped me down, showered off every tiny grain, then made love to me until I forgot what country we were in.

That was Nick’s specialty. Taking care. But every time, when we were done, I’d wake up in his arms, and panic would grip me as surely as Nick had an hour earlier. I’d bolt from the room, wander the beach alone, and make plans to fly out on the next plane.

Before I relied on that care. Started to count on him being there tomorrow. And the day after that. Did exactly what he wanted me to do—make plans.

Because I knew how easily people you depended on could take it all away, could wash that foundation out from under you, like the tide sucking the sand back into the ocean, greedily eating the very thing you’d been counting on building your life upon.

“Hilary, you should have seen the Little Richard—” She stopped talking midsentence, and I turned to look at her. My mother shaded her eyes against the sun, even though she had her visor down. “Is that what I think it is?”

I followed her gaze and squinted. No way. “On a highway? In broad daylight? On a Wednesday?”

“We should stop.”

“Or get someone else to. There are psychos on the highway. Don’t you ever watch horror movies?” I glanced in the rearview mirror. Not another car anywhere. Yet a second reason to hate the state of Ohio.

“Hilary, we have to stop. We’re the only ones around for miles.”

She was right, and truth be told, this was about as far from psycho as you could get. I traveled across the two empty lanes of highway and braked behind a Dodge minivan with its hatch up—

And holding a fully geared up, ready-to-go bride sitting on the back, her dress hiked to her knees, baby’s breath sticking out of her blonde hair like trees gone wild, and her veil clutched in one wadded up ball.

“Whatever happened to her, it’s not a happy ending,” I said.

“You think?”

We shared a laugh, the same one we’d shared over coffee. And for just a second, I felt that bridge between myself and my mother again.

I got out of the Mustang, my mother doing the same, and together we approached the weepy bride. “Do you need some help?”

She looked up, mascara running down her face in squiggly black rivers. Her blue eyes were red rimmed, looking like an ocean at sunset. “What I need is a lawyer. A divorce lawyer.”

“But didn’t you just—” I gestured toward the dress. The veil. The obvious signs of a wedding.

“I can’t be married to him. I just can’t.” She dabbed at her face with the veil, but being made out of tulle, it didn’t do much more than leave a tiny basket-weave imprint of mascara on her face. “He said, and did, such awful things.”

Ma settled on the carpeted edge of the van beside the bride. She laid her hand on the girl’s. “What could he have done that was so terrible?”

“I can’t even talk about it. If I do, I’ll…I’ll…” She inhaled, a jerk of a sob, “cry again.”

And she did exactly that, blotching and crying, her whole body shaking with the effort, the shoulder ruffles on her dress doing a backup pity concert.

I looked at my mother, giving her the “let’s go and get away from the crazy lady” glare, but Ma ignored me. She just went on patting the girl’s hand and there-thereing her.

It took a few minutes, and nearly the entire mini package of Kleenex from my mother’s purse, but the bride-not-to-be finally stopped crying. “Why don’t you start with your name?” Ma said. “It’s always easier when everyone’s introduced, don’t you think?” She pivoted on the edge of the van and thrust out her hand. “I’m Rosemary Delaney, from Dorchester, Massachusetts. And this is my daughter, Hilary.” Ma gestured toward me, apparently not realizing that now this insane woman on the side of the road knew our names.

She could track us down, sell us Mary Kay or something. I did not need that. “Ma, we should go. We have a lot—”

“I’m Sally Wilson, well, Carmichael now, I guess.” One corner of her mouth turned up in a watered down smile. “From Sandusky.”

“Well, Sally Wilson Carmichael from Sandusky, why don’t you come have some lunch with us and tell us all about what went wrong?”

And just like that, we ended up at a Cracker Barrel with a bride, listening to her sob story over a couple of plates of mashed potatoes and meatloaf.

Sally Wilson Carmichael had married Michael Carmichael that morning in a quickie courthouse ceremony in one of those small Ohio towns with a name that ended in Ville and didn’t stay on my mental map. She’d known him since seventh grade when his family had moved to town and his father started working at the steel factory. They’d become sweethearts in freshman year, gone to both the junior and senior proms together, and except for one two-week period the summer after graduation when he’d gone to visit his uncle in Oregon, been inseparable.

He’d proposed the day of her twentieth birthday, and though they had planned on waiting for a year to have a “proper” bells-and-whistles wedding, Sally and Michael had rushed off the minute she had a dress, he had a ring and they could get a blood test.

“We were in love,” she said and blushed—actually blushed.

For a split second, I envied Sally that certainty about how she felt. She had that Hollywood love, the kind they wrote about in romance novels. When I’d been five and playing with Barbie dolls, I’d imagined that kind of love for myself, but then I’d grown up and gotten real.

Still, a part of me still held on to that fairy-tale notion, dusting it off every once in a while, before my better senses returned to remind me marriage wasn’t some happy Disney-palooza where everyone sang and danced through their days, but rather a box that sucked your spirit dry.

I’d tried to explain this to Nick, but he’d just hugged me and told me I worried too much.

“I think true love is wonderful.” Ma gave Sally a smile, then ordered a round of fudge cobbler for all of us.

The waitress deposited three dishes of brownies topped with vanilla ice cream before us. If she found it strange to be serving a woman in a wedding gown flanked by another in a dark and dour business suit and one in scruffy jeans and flip-flops, she didn’t show it. The other diners, however, did stare and whisper, and one little girl kept asking her parents if she could go talk to the fairy princess at the next table.

I pushed the dish aside, my appetite for it gone a long time ago.

“Don’t you want dessert, Hilary?” Ma asked.

“I’ve had enough sugar already.”

“There’s no sugar in meatloaf, dear.”

I sent a glance in Sally’s direction. Thus far, all I’d heard was a nicely rehashed romance story. I half expected the directors of General Hospital to yell “Cut”, run in and redo Sally’s makeup for the reunion scene, just before Michael rushed in with a secret baby or a case of amnesia. “We need to get back on the road, Ma.”

“No. We need to help Sally get her life on track, fix things with Michael.”

“I’m sure she’ll work it out with him. Whatever there is to work out.” Thus far, I hadn’t heard a single complaint about the groom.

Sally shook her head at the same time she shoveled in a forkful of brownie, which resulted in a brown smear on her pink lips. “I can’t go back to him.”

“Why?” I threw up my hands. “All I’ve heard is thirty minutes of perfection. He’s the football captain. Love of your life, yada, yada, yada. What could he have done that was so awful that you had to run away from your own wedding in a minivan?”

Sally pointed the fork at me, its tines accusatory and almost lethal. “That was exactly it. The minivan.”

I waited for her to explain, but she sat there, wide-eyed, expectant. Like I should get it instantly. “You left your new husband over a Dodge Caravan?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t have a husband.”

“Hilary is a spinster,” my mother said, spitting out the word like a watermelon seed.

“Ma.”

“What else do you call an unmarried woman at your age? You passed young lady a long time ago. And I can’t exactly call Nick a boyfriend. He’s forty, for God’s sake.”

“Can we not have this conversation now? Or ever?”

“At least Sally got married,” my mother said, then dug into her cobbler. She went on eating her dessert, one tiny bite at a time, smiling at Sally, who had clearly done her life all right, even if she had done it a little too early and a little too impetuously.

Then she struck up a conversation with Sally about keeping house, sharing tips as if she were Martha Stewart, the two of them chatting happily about everything from cooking a pot roast to ironing curtains. Before the ice cream was gone, they had bonded like conjoined twins.

That left me, the unmarried spinster failure daughter, sitting on the outside, and for the first time, wishing I was part of that inner circle.

“Why is the minivan such an issue?” I asked. “I mean, it’s just a van.”

“Just a van? Don’t you get it?” Sally cried, so loud, even the little girl next to us turned around in alarm, her mouth in a wide little O. Her mother drew her close and pointed at her fries, trying to redirect the toddler’s attention. Probably a wise move. “A minivan screams stay-at-home mom, take care of the kids. Have no life of your own. I’m not even old enough to drink yet.”

Probably shouldn’t have gotten married, I thought, but kept that to myself. I wondered about a country that set age limits on driving, voting and drinking, yet allowed marriage at eighteen. Wasn’t a gold ring a bigger deal than popping the top on a can of Bud?

“He gave me the minivan this morning, after we got married. Had it waiting outside the courthouse with a big red bow on it. He thought I’d like it.” Sally started sniffling again. I looked around the restaurant. We were already a traveling circus. I didn’t want to make it worse by adding in a dramatic performance. I shoved a napkin at her, but she ignored it. “I wanted a sports car. An SUV. A motorcycle. Anything but a-a-a Mommy bus!”

Again, the little girl looked at us, but her mother wagged a French fry in her direction.

“Well, dear, maybe Michael is just pragmatic,” Ma said. “Thinking of your future.”

Sally pouted. “Maybe. He is smart that way. But still…a minivan?”

“He could have bought you a bus,” I pointed out. “Look at the Partridge family.”

My mother shot me a not-helping look, but Sally laughed. “Okay, yeah, that would have been way worse.”

“Excuse me, girls, but I have to go to the ladies’ room.” Ma got up, slowly, then made her way to the restroom. I watched her go, her steps measured, and worried anew over her.

“Hilary,” Sally said, drawing me back to the table. She covered her hand with mine, clearly considering us best buds now. Sally was clearly one of those voted “Most Likely” kind of people. “How do you know if a man is the right one?”

I laughed. “I am totally the wrong woman to ask that question.”

She cocked her head, studying me. She’d gone to the restroom when we’d arrived, splashed some water on her face, cleaned up the worst of the mascara damage, and plucked the baby’s breath from her hair. Except for the white gown, she looked almost normal. “Haven’t you ever been in love?”

“Well…I…” Had I?

I’d never thought about that subject, not really. I’d been in infatuation before, a dozen times. That particular emotion had caused me to make numerous stupid choices. But in love?

Those words put me into Sally’s world, the very planet I avoided orbiting. With Nick, I’d been circling that solar system, but not quite bumped into it, because actually falling in love would mean trusting him with my whole heart—

And then going to the next step. The leaving-my-clothes-in-his-apartment, moving-in-with-him step. I’d done that once with Nick, and it had been a major mistake. Before Nick, I’d almost gotten married once before, and thankfully come to my senses just in time.

But in love…also known as open-heart-surgery vulnerable? No way. Not me. I’d rather run the Boston Marathon naked.

“No, not really,” I said.

“Why not?”

“I’m of the marriage is a prison club.” I gave her a little smile, then drummed my fingers on the table, wishing my mother would hurry back. For the first time ever, I missed Reginald and wanted to get back in the car and on the road.

“I think love can be really freeing,” Sally said on a dreamy, read-too-many-fairy-tales sigh.

“Five minutes ago you were ready to file for divorce over a minivan.”

Sally plopped her chin into her hands. “I know. But maybe, it’s just because I was so nervous. Getting married is scary as h-e-double hockey sticks,” she said, gesturing toward the miniature ears still watching our entire conversation.

“You can say that again.”

“But when I think about Michael, I think about how much he loves me and how excited I am about waking up as Mrs. Michael Carmichael tomorrow. And the next tomorrow. And the one after that.”

I looked at Sally, at the incredibly happy smile on her face, and no longer wanted to puke.

Suddenly, I envied her in a way I had never envied anyone before. Sally was in some elite club I couldn’t gain access to. She glowed, with some knowledge I didn’t have.

If I married Nick, would I look like that? Would we have that happy ending?

Or would we end up like my parents? Essentially two strangers, one locked away in a room, hiding a sorrow too deep to share?

“Hey, Hilary, is your mother okay?” Sally asked.

I glanced across the restaurant and watched my mother make her way through the crowded room, her movements seeming slower than before.

Images of my mother, struggling to get in and out of my low-seated Mustang came to mind and guilt pricked at my conscience. Every stop we made seemed harder on her, more labor-intensive. We’d gone from stopping every four hours, to every three, to every two.

The Mustang sat in the parking lot, cherry-red, gleaming in the sunshine. My baby. I’d saved for so long to buy it, working night after night, coming home smelling like beer and stale nuts, stuffing my stash of hard-earned ones into an old pretzel jar, with a picture of the car taped to the front. I’d put up with rude drunks, leering old men, complaining women who thought their burgers were undercooked. I’d worked every Friday and Saturday night for a year straight, had gone without cable and didn’t even take a vacation, just to get that car.

I’d dreamed of a Mustang ever since I’d learned to make the Vroom-Vroom sound. It was my pride and joy, the one treasure I owned.

I looked at Sally, at the car, then at my mother.

An idea came to mind, but I pushed it away. There was no way I was giving my car to an emotionally unstable girl in a wedding dress who wasn’t even legally old enough to have champagne. And especially not in exchange for a Mommy bus.

“I need to make a phone call,” Sally said, and got up, her dress almost a lethal weapon every time she moved, white ruffles pinging against chairs and coats, legs and shoes.

“Wait,” I said, reaching for her hand.

“But, Hilary, I need to call Michael now, before he gets too worried. Just talking to you made me realize how important he is to me. I need to tell him I’ll learn to live with the minivan. I’ll try not to feel like a Mommy in it. I love him, and he’s more important than a silly old car.” But her voice caught on a sob as she said it, indicating she was still not completely okay with the minivan idea. Sally from Sandusky was clearly still holding out hope for her SUV.

“Please, sit down. I have an idea.”

“An idea?” She dropped into her chair again, the skirt forming a huge white puddle around her chair.

I gave her a smile, then let out a gust of air. “Yeah. A real Cinderella, happily ever after ending for all of us.”

Sally beamed. “Oh, those are my favorite kind.”

nine

Driving a minivan was on par with driving a Mack truck. Except without the fun horn to toot. I kept looking in the back, expecting to see a set of twins and a diaper bag.

“I can’t believe you did this,” Ma said.

“Me, either,” I muttered. Thinking of my precious red Mustang in the hands of one very happy Sally from Sandusky. Who’d driven off with a war whoop and a screech of the tires, beaming from ear to ear, and no longer needing my mother’s Kleenexes.

“This is so much more comfortable than the Mustang. And fun, too.” A whine of electricity announced my mother shifting her seat back, allowing her to stretch out her legs. Contentment spread across her face, and all thoughts of my Mustang—and any lingering regrets about my impetuous trade in the parking lot of Cracker Barrel—disappeared.

I’d done the right thing, and as much as I hated the van, I was glad I’d made the trade.

Even if she refused to tell me, something wasn’t right with my mother, and clearly the vehicle trade had been the right decision. After the trip was over, I could always head to a Ford dealership and undo it.

But until then, there was me, Ma, Reginald, Dad in the back, flat on the floor now with all that extra room, and the big old Dodge under my tutelage.

“I still don’t understand why you did it, though.” My mother glanced at me. “You loved that car.”

I wanted to tell her that I loved her more, but the words got lodged in my throat. “You shouldn’t be riding in a Mustang. I don’t know what I was thinking.” I turned in the seat and faced my mother. “I’m sorry, Ma.”

“You don’t need to apologize, Hilary. I should have told you I was uncomfortable or offered to rent a bigger car.”

“No problem, Ma. Really.” I gave her a smile, a truce. “Let’s call it a draw.”

She laughed. “Okay. Sally sure seemed happy after she called Michael and drove off to meet him.”

“She was leaving for her honeymoon. Everyone’s happy going on a honeymoon.”

“Not everyone.” My mother picked at the Kate Spade clasp, flicking and unflicking it.

“You weren’t?” Another surprise to me. I’d always thought they’d at least started their marriage on a happy note. Another chalk mark in the Why Marriage Is Not a Good Idea column. I should have been keeping notes to show Nick later.

“I…got married fast.”

I arched a brow at her. “You? The woman who creates a pro/con list for her grocery shopping?”

“I do not.”

“You did, too. When that new Stop & Shop moved into Dorchester, you posted a list on the refrigerator of reasons why you should and should not shop there.”

“It was out of my way.”

“But the prices were lower.”

“Which was what finally swayed your father. He really liked shopping at the corner market.”

“Where you bought your green beans a gazillion years ago isn’t that important to me. But I am a little surprised by this honeymoon bombshell.” I was, in fact, surprised that my mother would drop any bombshells at all. She’d opened up to me more in the last three days than she had in the last thirty-plus years. Was that all it would have taken? Forced proximity? One hell of a long road trip and we could have avoided all those shouting matches and slammed doors? The years of silence?

“Your father was impetuous,” Ma said.

I snorted. “That’s putting it mildly.”

“And when he met me, he didn’t want to wait to get married.”

“I know this story. He proposed after just three months.” My mother getting married that quickly still shocked me. Here I’d been hemming and hawing for four years, and would keep on riding that seesaw as long as I could.

My mother fiddled with the clasp again and cleared her throat. “I might have fibbed a bit on that.”

“Fibbed?” I nearly took out a Honda in the next lane. Rosemary Delaney, attorney of the year, who had, as far as I knew, never told a lie in her life. “You?”

“You were young, Hilary. We couldn’t very well tell you we got married after our first date.”

“You what?” And now I did swerve, into the next lane, meriting a strong honking from the other cars, before coming to a screeching halt in the breakdown lane. My heart leapt into my throat, beating fast and furious, half from the near collision, half from the shock of my mother’s admission. “First date?”

The words didn’t get any less shocking when I repeated them. Nor did their meaning.

No way I could have done that. Well, okay, there was a time—

A time when I’d been that insane, but I’d grown up since then. I wasn’t that rash anymore. I thought out my decisions, like I was doing now with Nick. Of course, he called it stalling, but I called it being smart. Instead of rushing into a mistake that would only add to the divorce statistics later.

“I liked that about your father. His impetuousness.”

“You?” I closed my eyes, but still had the sensation of an electric chair coursing through me. Maybe I hadn’t just traded the Mustang with Sally from Sandusky. Maybe I’d also traded in my maternal relative. “Ma, you don’t like surprises. Dad and I threw you a birthday party without telling you and you were so mad, you walked out of the house. It took Dad twenty minutes to convince you to come back. You lay out your breakfast dishes the night before. Plan your Christmas shopping for next year on December twenty-sixth. You’re like the poster child for structured.”

“Which was why I married your father. He helped me loosen up.”

I turned and stared at her. Gaped, really. “I think I missed that part, where you loosened up.”

“I never said I was good at it. Just that he tried.”

I shut my mouth, then opened it again. “And your first step after joining Control Freaks Anonymous was to get married on your first date?”

“You’d have to have known your father back then. He was—” at this, a soft, private smile took over her face, swiping years off my mother’s countenance, reducing her age instantly by fifteen years “—handsome, so, so handsome. And very persuasive.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror at the image of my father, lying flat on the floor, beside a sleeping potbellied pig, and looking about as persuasive as a term paper. “Dad never struck me as the forceful type, Ma.”

“Oh, he had his ways of talking me into things. Crazy ideas.” She let out a laugh and her gaze strayed to some far-off place I couldn’t see. “Driving to the country in the middle of the day, then going skinny-dipping in some lake we stumbled upon. It could have been public or private, or a huge watering hole, for all we knew. But your dad, he talked me into it. Next thing I knew, I was taking off my—”

“Eww, Ma, too much information.”

She flushed, jerked out of the memory, and back into her stern no-nonsense self. “Well, yes. You know what I mean.”

“Were you drunk?”

“When we went skinny-dipping?”

I shuddered. Already I had way too many mental pictures of that day. “When you got married.”

“No. Why would I be?”

“Ma, I’ve seen pictures of Dad when he was young and he was no Viggo Mortensen.”

“Who?”

“James Dean,” I said, translating into a star term she knew. “I just can’t see you running off to Vegas and eloping on your first date.”

“Well, there’s a lot about me you don’t know, Hilary.” She plopped the purse back on her lap, hands again in the driving-to-the-grocery position, and stared straight ahead. “Now, can we get going?”

I shook my head, reached for the gearshift, but paused before putting the baby RV into gear. There was a lot about me that she didn’t know, too, to be fair. “Why are you telling me all of this now?”

Quiet filled the space between us, its weight heavier than the storm clouds gathering along the corn fields lining the road. My mother started to say something, then Reginald inserted his snout between us and let out something akin to a bark. “Time for a potty break.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “There’s something smelly in here, and I haven’t quite figured out what.”

But my mother was keeping mum, and left me to deal with her pig, instead of the stories she hadn’t told. The gaps left in what she had said.

I walked along the edge of the highway with Reginald, thinking about Nick, and never feeling as far away from him before as I did right now.

My mother had been deeply in love with my father once. Eloped with him on their first date. I’d glimpsed a side of her I’d never seen before, and for just a second, I envied that rush of happiness she’d had with my father—

But look how that had turned out.

Reginald ducked behind a shrub and I wondered what other secrets my mother was keeping. And whether I wanted to hear them at all.

ten

True to his word, Nick went out again. Or, pretended to and didn’t answer his phone. I went to bed in a cheesy motel room—the only place I could find off the highway that didn’t blink an eye at a potbellied pig—with my cell in my hands and an empty spot in my stomach that had nothing to do with the lukewarm spaghetti we’d eaten at a nearby diner.

Bright Indiana sunshine streamed through the window, straight into my eyes. No room-darkening shades here, nothing between me and the farmer’s daily crop joy but a flimsy wheat-patterned curtain that stopped halfway to shut. I groaned, rolled over, pressed my forearm to my head, and then revisited the gnawing vacancy beside me and inside me.

Nick.

Blindly, I patted the bed until I hit the small, hard security of my cell phone. I peeked open one eye, pressed the speed dial for his apartment, then waited through the rings. One. Two. Three. Four.

And was sent to his voice mail, his chipper short greeting, set to the strains of his band practicing in the background. “Not here, dude. Leave a message. I’ll catch you later.”

“Hey, Nick,” I said, forcing brightness into my voice. I was cool with this. I’d done it a hundred times before, and this time was no different. Then why did my heart lurch, and feel like someone had taken a twisty tie to my aorta? “Just calling to say hi. We’re off to, oh…I don’t know, wherever the hell somewhere across the country is. The pig isn’t bacon yet, so I take that as a good sign. I’ll, ah—” and I paused. What was I going to do? Call him later? Wait for his call?

I’d been thrust into that awkward position of WAITING ON A MAN. I’d taken a Bikram Yoga class once, part of some Bohemian phase I’d gone through, where class members were essentially tortured for ninety minutes in a room kept at a hundred and four degrees and performed things like the “warrior” pose and the “corpse” pose.

WAITING ON A MAN—that capital-letter, awful thing I’d vowed never to do again—made Bikram Yoga look like Richard Simmons’ Sweating to the Oldies with a dash of Emeril’s trademark “Bam!”

I clicked my phone shut without finishing the sentence. If I’d known Nick’s voice mail password, I would have called back and deleted the message entirely.

Idiot.

I smacked myself in the head with the Motorola. But it didn’t feel any better.

I didn’t know what I wanted out of our relationship but it definitely wasn’t this limbo, this uncertainty. This pain.

I didn’t do pain well at all. I was my father’s daughter, after all, which meant I liked things fun and light, not deep and meaningful. None of the straitjackets that came with commitment.

My mother had married my father hoping he’d loosen her up. If anything, marriage had made her tighter than a ball of twine. If I married Nick, would I end up the same way? Would he?

If Nick would just leave well enough alone…then we could stay the same. I didn’t want to mess with our recipe and sour the batter.

But that didn’t stop me from missing him like crazy and wishing he’d just answer the damned phone. I cursed again. I hated that I needed the reassurance of his voice. It meant I cared. That I was vulnerable.

That I could be hurt. And that was the one road I tried never to travel.

After a shower and a change of clothes, I realized I hadn’t heard from my mother, either. It was nearly nine and this was the second day in a row when she hadn’t been at my door, bright and early, ready to go. I packed up, loaded my bag in the van, then headed over to her door. “Ma? You ready?”

No response.

“Ma?”

Nothing more than some grunting and shuffling from Reginald. I knocked harder, calling her name louder. I paused, pressed my ear to her door. Reginald, making every noise a pig was capable of—and a few I didn’t know he could make—was scraping at the door now. Damn thing probably desperately seeking a shrub.

“Ma! Answer me.”

“Hilary?” She called my name so faintly, I almost didn’t hear it.

“Let me in.”

No response. Just Reginald and his oink-bark-scrape noises. Dread returned with his haunting grip, curling around me with familiarity, rooting me to the concrete stoop for one long, terrifying second. I thought of my father, of how I’d called to him and how he hadn’t answered with his voice, only with that terrible click, and then the explosion—

My mouth went dry, my hand still fisted against the door. Time ground to a halt, and it seemed even Reginald stopped moving.

“Help me, Hilary.” The words, faint, almost childlike, caught in a sob.

I threw myself against the door, but the cheap motel had scrimped on everything but the damned locks. Reginald let out a yelp, and I could hear his hooves as he scrambled backwards. Again, I slammed into the wood, but the door held, a steadfast pine soldier between me and my mother. My vision clouded, obscured by the memory of my father behind another door that wouldn’t open and me, too late, too slow.

“I’ll be back! I have to get a key! Don’t move. Don’t do anything!”

I hoped she knew what I meant. I could only pray she listened.

I spun so fast, my flip-flops flew off my feet, scattering onto the concrete like sparrows. I shot toward the motel office, blasting through the glass door, screaming on my way in for help, for somebody with a key and an ambulance, knowing without being told that whatever was behind that door—

Wasn’t good.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

We’d been sitting in a semi-private curtained area in the emergency room of what I was relieved to see was a large and bustling Indiana hospital for two hours, while the hospital staff tended to people who had more pressing needs.

As much as I wanted to grab the nursing staff and force them to help my mother, even I had to admit that a woman who had impaled herself on a kitchen knife—I didn’t ask how—was more of an emergency than my mother’s cut leg, which had been bleeding like a sieve until now. She’d cut herself getting out of the shower, nicked it badly on the sharp edge of the cheap shower doors, and nearly passed out, a combination, the doctors told her, from her Coumadin dose being too high, her blood being too thin, and her doing too much when she should have been taking it easy.

Classic Rosemary Delaney, I could have told them, although I was still reeling from the blood I’d seen, the way it had coated the bathroom floor, my mother, her leg, her hands, and how it had nearly made me pass out, too. For a long, awful second, I’d stood there in her room, with a very nervous, green-faced motel manager beside me, sure she was dead, sure I was looking at a horror film remake of my worst memory, before I’d spun back into action and called 9–1–1.

But now, in the pristine, white, antiseptic hospital, it seemed as if all of that hadn’t happened. My mother’s medication would be adjusted, she’d take care of herself—or I’d yell at her—and we’d go home tomorrow.

Uncle Morty, and the division of my late grandmother’s possessions, would just have to wait.

While I’d been waiting in the emergency room, I’d left another message on Nick’s machine, then called Karen, and talked to her, telling her about my mother. A half hour of spilling my guts to my best friend had left me feeling much better, and shored up for the battle ahead with my mother.

Who was being stubborn. Big surprise there.

“I didn’t want—” my mother waved a hand at me, then at the IVs, the bandage wrapped around her leg “—this.”

“The hospital? The huge Band-Aid?”

“You. Worrying. Hovering.”

I sank onto her bed, covered her hand with mine. Regardless of the words we’d flung at each other over the years, the wall that remained between us, she was my mother and I loved her. “Ma, that comes with the DNA.”

A smile crossed her lips. “Yeah, it does. I had a lot of those nights myself.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t exactly an easy kid.”

“Yeah, well, that was a million years ago.”

I leaned closer, staring at her. Wishing I could read her mind as easily as she seemed to read mine. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You just had an opportunity to run down the list of my bad choices, to pick apart all the mistakes I have made, and I know I have quite the list. You have me, right here, apology in hand, and you wipe the slate clean, just like that?”

She shrugged. “I’m not in the mood for a fight.”

I snorted. “Since when? I have never seen The Bulldog in the mood for anything other than a fight.”

“You knew about that nickname?”

“Ma, you were on the cover of American Lawyer. I may have skipped Algebra, but I did go to English class and learn how to read.”

“You read the article?”

“Yeah.” I studied the white sea of sheets around her. Smoothed out a wrinkle. Ran a finger over the hospital’s name, imprinted in faded cranberry letters, then finally rested my hand again on hers. “I was…well…proud of you, too.”

I didn’t look up. But I felt her hand tighten under mine. And that was enough.

A nurse came in and provided enough chatter and distance so that both of us could pretend that moment hadn’t happened, and by the time my mother was in a regular room and eating a crappy, cardboard-looking lunch, we’d gone back to our usual bickering, with her complaining about my disheveled state and lack of appropriate footwear.

All was normal in my world. Exactly how I liked it.

Except…

That empty feeling I’d woken with had yet to disappear. My cell phone bulged against my jeans pockets—turned on despite the hospital’s poster in big bold block letters banning all cellular usage. I’d talked to a couple of my friends, to Karen three times, to Ernie twice, but not to Nick.

I refused to call him. No matter how many times my fingers traced over his phone number, the pad of my thumb hesitated a breath above dialing. I did not want to be WAITING ON A MAN. But waiting I was.

Never before had I been like this with Nick. Ever since we’d met, he’d been the one doing the pursuing, playing the traditional guy role.

Even the way he’d asked me out had been traditional…in an untraditional, totally Nick way. He’d left a note inside the double doors, so that the first time I went to watch TV—and he’d installed it on a Thursday, knowing full well I was impatient for an ER fix—I’d find an invitation to meet him for dinner. At his place, where he’d had wine and burgers on the grill, about the only meal Nick ever mastered.

That night, he’d been waiting on me. And now, the tables had been turned.

I paced, the phone cold and heavy in my hand.

A doctor who barely looked old enough to have passed his boards poked his head into my mother’s room. “Miss Delaney?”

I left the uncomfortable vinyl armchair and crossed to the door. Ma had fallen asleep a few minutes earlier, so I shut the door most of the way and stepped into the hallway to meet the doctor. Paul Barton, M.D. scrolled across his breast pocket in dark maroon script. It seemed a trustworthy name. Had he graduated at the top of his class? Or at least somewhere in the upper ten percent? Did he have a degree from a medical college not located in a third world country?

Too bad there was no non-rude way to ask for a peek at his MCAT scores.

“I get the impression your mother is a bit…” His voice trailed off and his cheeks brightened.

“You don’t have to be polite. She’s as stubborn as crabgrass. She knows it, and so do I.”

He chuckled. “Then it’s a good thing she signed a HIPAA form allowing you to be included in her current medical decisions.”

“She did?”

Paul Barton, M.D., nodded. “We advise our patients to do that, in case they’re incapacitated. It’s good to have a family member on board, just in case.”

“She’s not incapacitated now.”

He gave me a lopsided grin. He was cute, in that young, fresh-out-of-med-school way, complete with a dark lock of hair across his forehead and a gee-whiz boyish smile. I refrained again from asking where he’d completed his residency—and whether he’d killed anyone in the process.

“Well…she’s asleep. Close enough for me. I simply want to make sure she doesn’t end up back in a hospital again. I’ve talked with her and she’s bound and determined to make this road trip, even though I advised against it. Vehemently, I might add.”

I bit back a laugh. My mother had undoubtedly had the poor young M.D. quaking in his lab coat. “And you want me to enforce your directions?”

He sobered, and again Mr. Dread knocked on my heart. “You have to.”

“But I thought it was just a bad cut, and she was bleeding heavy from the Coumadin and…” My voice trailed off. I took in the seriousness in his eyes, the way he pinched his lips together, gathering his words, reinforcements for his argument.

Preparing to tell me something I didn’t want to hear.

“Your mother is very sick. Right now, the most pressing concern,” he said, leaving me to wonder for a flicker, if there was something else, because he looked away, then back, but went on and I forgot about it because my attention became riveted on the next few words, “is what we call deep vein thrombosis. Blood clots develop in her legs and if they break free and travel through the body, they can cause a pulmonary embolism.”

The words slammed into me one right after another.

I may not have gone to medical school, but I knew enough to put those pieces together. Blood clots did awful things.

They were body bombs. Exploding in the lungs. The brain.

I glanced at my mother’s door, realizing that any instant, one of those bombs could go off and I could lose her.

“Blood clots?” I repeated, my throat so tight, the words nearly did make it out of my mouth. “Those are fatal, right?”

Damned ER and Grey’s Anatomy. Why did they put those stupid shows on TV? And why did I watch them? Now here I was, standing in the middle of the real-life version of an episode, filled with way too much medical knowledge, thanks to Drs. Carter and Kovac.

“They can be, but your mother is in no danger right now.”

I took a breath. No danger. Okay. I was going to hold this doctor to that. All of a sudden, he’d become the person I trusted most in the world. Because I needed to trust him.

“She’s on blood thinners, which is what caused her to bleed so heavily this morning when she got that cut. A simple thing like that can turn into something really big, really easily. But the anticoagulants—” at this he drew in a breath, and Mr. Dread tightened his grip again, refusing to let me turn away, to stop listening “—aren’t working as well as we’d hoped, because she didn’t keep up with monitoring her dosage. She should have been having labs drawn every four weeks, but skipped her last appointment.”

“Why would she do that?”

He shrugged. “I think some patients assume if they’re feeling fine, they must be fine. Non-compliance happens more often than we’d like to see, and it can lead to all kinds of trouble down the road.”

“Once she’s on track with that, she’ll be okay, though, right?”

His gaze flickered away one more time, which made me nervous, as if there was a box that hadn’t been checked on the HIPAA form, but then he nodded, all reassurance one more time. “That’s the plan. We’ll get her blood thickened up again, then let her go home in a couple days, make sure her levels stay consistent. But…” He drew in a breath, and here, I knew, came the left hook, the punch I didn’t want to take. “Eventually, she’s probably going to need a vena cava filter. It prevents the clots from getting to the heart, but it’s a procedure that comes with its own risks.”

“What kind of risks?”

“It can lead to the very kind of thing we’re trying to prevent. Strokes, pulmonary embolisms.” He put up a calming hand, waving those horrors off. “By and large, these go smoothly, but with any surgery of this kind, there’s always a chance of complications. And your mother…well, she’s not interested in taking that chance, not now.”

I sagged against the wall, seeking strength from the gray zigzagged wallpaper. “She never told me any of this.”

He nodded, non-plussed. Apparently, keeping relatives in the dark was par for the course. “She shouldn’t be in a car. And she especially shouldn’t be making a cross-country road trip. She needs to be close to a hospital. Please talk some sense into her, because she’s not listening to me. Believe me, I’ve tried several times. Perhaps there’s someone else at home?”

I shook my head. “No, there’s just me.”

“I wish you well then.” He laid a hand on my arm, offered me a look of sympathy, before walking away.

Chicken. I had to face my mother alone, without even medical back-up. Apparently, Paul Barton, M.D., had already fought that battle and wasn’t going in there again.

The fluorescent light above Ma’s bed cast a grayish tint over her face, deepening the valleys beneath her cheeks, the shadows under her eyes. Every one of her sixty-seven years showed, a harsh reminder of time’s onward, brutal march.

“Hilary,” she said, rousing, her voice still thick with sleep. She turned, a slight smile on her face, then reached for the button on her bed. With a reluctant groan, the electric motor inched her torso upward. In the darkened bed to the right, an elderly woman snored, while a machine hissed, dispensing something in a steady drip.

“Hi, Ma.” I pulled the pink vinyl chair closer to her bed, bent one of my legs beneath me and sat.

“You used to do that all the time when you were little. Never knew how you could stand to sit like that.”

I looked down. “Oh, this. I don’t know. I guess it’s comfortable. Or I’m a glutton for punishment.” I drummed my fingers on the armrests. “Are you sleeping okay?”

Her gaze narrowed. “What did the doctor say to you?”

“Nothing.”

“You don’t lie any better at thirty-six than you did at sixteen.”

Putting off the conversation would only delay the battle. I’d read my history. Stalling didn’t tend to work out too well, not for Napoleon, and not for me. “He doesn’t want you traveling. I think he’s right. Why don’t we just turn around and go back home? You’ve waited this long to divvy up grandma’s stuff, what’s a few more—”

“No.”

“Ma—”

“I said no. We’re going and that’s the end of it.”

“This isn’t a trip to church for Easter service, Ma. And you aren’t Captain Picard. Just because you say it, doesn’t make it so.”

“Captain who?”

“Jesus. Don’t you watch any TV?” My feet plopped to the floor and I spun out of the chair. “I refuse to drive you one more mile when you could have a clot explode in your lungs at any second. I know how to mix a mai tai, find a cab for a guy who’s had a few too many, balance the books for Ernie, but I can’t perform goddamn emergency surgery on the turnpike in the back of a minivan.”

“We’re going.”

“I’m not.”

“Fine. I’ll drive myself.”

I wheeled around. “Are you suicidal? Didn’t you hear what he said?”

“I heard every word that Dr. Barton and my doctor said and all the others have said and I am still going.”

I let out a gust, heaved in another breath, prayed for patience that didn’t come. “Why the hell would you do that?”

“Because—”

“Will you two just please shut up? Some people come to a hospital to get rest, ya know,” the old lady in the next bed grumbled. “I can hear you jibber-jabbering away. You should stay, no, no, I wanna go. I say you should both go. I need my damned sleep and all you’re doing is keeping me awake.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Lott,” Ma said, “but—”

“No buts. No ifs, ands or otherwise out of either one of you.” She propped herself up one elbow, her hair a cumulous cloud of curls on the left side, a flat pancake of white on the right. “I’m not getting one day younger here and I refuse to go to my grave with two strangers yammering in my damned ear.” Then she flopped over, grabbed her pillow and jammed it over her head.

“I’ll see if I can get you a private room,” I whispered.

“Mrs. Lott’s okay. And she has every right to expect us to be quiet.”

“I can still hear you,” Mrs. Lott sing-songed. “My God, you East Coast people must come born with megaphones in your mouths.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Lott,” Ma repeated, as calm as a lake, “my daughter is just being stubborn. We’ll try not to bother your sleep anymore.”

“You young people should know better than to disagree with your elders anyway. What’s this world coming to?”

“Forget it, Ma.” I threw up my hands and walked out of the room. I knew my mother when she got like this. The Great Wall of China had better odds of moving.

I leaned against the hard hallway and closed my eyes. Grief settled its weight on me, along with the realization of my mother’s mortality. Rosemary Delaney, the immovable force in the Delaney family, the one who kept the engine rolling, had been running around with a ticking time bomb in her leg, and hadn’t even told me.

But then again, my father had had one in his head—a time bomb of a very different kind—and he hadn’t told a single soul, either. This time, though, I knew and I could stop her. I held the keys—literally.

And yet, she insisted on arguing with me, pushing that envelope. I sighed, and wished for one day of peace, one moment without an argument.

“This is a long way for a man to come just for a Jimi Hendrix keychain.”

I popped forward, opened my eyes and gaped at the last person I expected to see in Indiana. Joy burst in my heart, an explosion so strong, it nearly toppled me. “Nick. What are you doing here?”

He grinned. “Embarking on my new career as a stowaway.”

“Oh, God, I’m so glad.” I stepped forward and into his arms, inhaling the scent of cotton and wood that was uniquely Nick. His arms wrapped around me, with no room to spare, his grasp tight and firm, forming our own little world. The hospital went on around us, nurses bustling down the hall, patients calling for food and bedpans, the murmur of TVs whispering a talk show undertow behind us.

But for me, there was only Nick. The feel of him, the solidity of him. The realness of him. For a long, long time, I simply leaned into his body, inhaled his scent, felt his body beneath mine, the scratch of his stubble against my cheek, the sturdiness of his shoulder under my jaw. When the reality of him became as sure as the tiled floor, I drew back. “Why are you here? How did you find us?”

“Second question first. I talked to Karen, and she told me your mom was in the hospital, and which one she was at. I took the first plane out to Indiana and paid an obscene amount of money to a taxi driver to bring me here.”

“But why?” He’d flown all this way, without saying a word, doing something no man had ever done for me, ever before. I stared at him, dumbfounded.

He smiled the smile that I knew as well as my ABCs, the sum of two and two. “Because I knew you’d need me.”

I buried my face in his shirt again, the worn cotton as soft as down. “Even if I didn’t get you a keychain?”

He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, then let his lips linger there, warm breath in the top of my hair. “Even if.”

eleven

I’d always thought hospitals would serve healthy food in their cafeterias. That they’d ban French fries and grease, nix anything with trans fats and high cholesterol. Apparently, even the people who knew better couldn’t resist a culinary waltz with the dark side.

“She’s still determined to go to your uncle’s house?” Nick asked, as he stabbed a pile of lettuce coated with tuna and ranch dressing, then popped it in his mouth. Nick had willpower.

I’d given up on my waistline three states ago. I reached for a French fry, dipped it in a tiny paper cup of ketchup, then realized how much the ketchup resembled blood, which led me to a frightening thought about what I was doing to my arteries, and how it could easily be me in that hospital bed in just a few years. I pushed my tray—which had seemed so appetizing five minutes ago—to the side.

Without a word, Nick halved his salad, dumped the second portion into the clear plastic lid and slid it over to me.

I smiled my gratitude. “I don’t deserve you.”

“No, you don’t,” he said, then grinned. “But I’m no angel, either.”

I waved a spork in his direction, keeping it light, always light. That was me. “You do have your bad habits.”

“And not to mention I come with my own baggage, and an ex-wife in Tulsa. No kids, unless I can convince you to—”

“Can we stick to the subject of my mother? One nightmare at a time, please.”

His lips thinned into a straight line, but he didn’t say anything. He went back to his lettuce and ranch dressing, the air between us a few degrees cooler, the distance a few inches farther. “Are you going to take her to California?”

“Of course not. She could die.”

“I think you should.”

“Are you crazy? Just because she wants to do this doesn’t mean we should.”

“You need to work things out with your mother, Hilary. I learned that with my parents after college.” He shrugged. “I think you should go.”

He made it sound so easy. “What if something happens, Nick?”

“I’ll be there.”

Knowing he would do that—drop everything to ride along from here to the other side of the country—filled me with an overwhelming relief. This man had come halfway across the country and was willing to traverse the rest, just because I needed him.

Why wouldn’t I go the distance with him emotionally? I looked down at his hands, work-toughened, dependable, strong, which lay just inches from mine, and knew why. Because somewhere down the road, those hands would inch away from mine.

I’d become someone else. Someone domesticated, like a lion kept too long in a cage, and so would Nick. We’d end up unhappy, and chained together, all because we’d made things legal.

No, I decided. I liked his hands as they were, and where they lay.

“So, what do you say? You and me, taking your mother to California?” he asked.

“That’s like having Tweedledee and Tweedledum along for medical backup. Neither one of us knows what to do in an emergency.”

“Your mother is not stupid, Hil. I’m sure she’ll take her medicine and listen to her doctors. I found this vein thing on Google and if she does what the doctors say, she’ll be okay.”

“You found my mother’s medical condition on Google?”

“Yeah.” His gaze met mine. “That’s what men who love their women do.”

My heart melted, and I wanted to crawl across the table, into his lap, and give in to that feeling for a while. To give in like I had in the hall for that one second, lean into him and let him take care of me.

But doing that would mean believing he would be there tomorrow. Sure, he was here today. And he was saying all the right things and doing all the right things, but in five years or ten, or when the road got a little bumpier, would Nick still stay? Or would the smile in the photo fade and he’d stop taking airplanes to meet me in the middle of the country, stop using Google, stop taking care of the woman he loved, and instead turn away?

Would he start to feel imprisoned by marriage and lock himself away? Would one or both of us stop laughing, watch our spirits get sucked down a deep, sorrowful drain? I’d watched it happen to my father.

I couldn’t watch it happen to Nick, too.

I wagged a French fry at him, passing it off as a joke, because I had no other way to deal with the seriousness on his face. “You are way too beta for me.”

Nick didn’t laugh—which wasn’t typical Nick. Instead, his lips thinned again, and frustration took over his normally placid features. “Fine. You want me to ride in on a motorcycle with a leather jacket and treat you like crap, I will. Will it make you think I love you because I ignore you or stand you up because my buddies are having a beer, like every other man you’ve dated?” He shook his head. “Is that what real love is to you, Hilary? Or are you finally ready for a grown-up relationship where a man actually cares about what is important to you and maybe, just maybe, once in a great damned while, takes care of you?”

“I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”

“Yeah, because you’re doing such a damned fine job of it yourself.” He rose, making his chair screech in protest against the tile, threw his paper napkin on top of his tuna and stalked out of the cafeteria. The ranch dressing soaked through the napkin, and absorbed it in a spreading circle of destruction.

If there’d ever been a metaphor for my life, it was sitting on the black paper plate before me.

“You got any advice? Because everyone else seems to be hell-bent on telling me what to do.”

Reginald grunted again, burrowed his head into the ground and rooted around in the grassy field behind the motel. Looking for leftover Halloween candy, the second coming of Jesus, I didn’t know and I didn’t care.

Rather than going back to my mother’s room to face her, Nick and the wrath of Mrs. Lott, I’d returned to the motel to walk Reginald. The pig had practically bowled me over when I’d opened the door, clearly in desperate need for a potty break.

“What do you want to do, Reginald? Go back to Boston, or forge westward?”

He grunted, wiggled his tush, and pawed at the ground. I’m sure in some bygone primitive culture, that would be a communicative sign.

In my culture, it was simply a pig getting ready to let loose another one.

I stepped out of the line of fire and sighed. “I’m not taking her to San Francisco. Uncle Morty’s the one with all the money. He can just load up a U-Haul, drive it on out to Boston, let Ma pick and choose, and then drive himself back with the leftovers.”

Reginald toddled over, his tail wagging back and forth behind him.

“I’m not going.”

Reginald seemed okay with that, and seemed done with his afternoon toilette, so we headed back into the motel room. I took off his leash, refilled his food and water bowls—undoubtedly wreaking havoc with his dining schedule—then lay on the bed for thirty minutes, waiting for an answer.

I already had my answer. But for some reason, I kept stalling on the action-and-exit plan.

I heaved myself off the bed, heading toward the bathroom to fill one of the hotel’s plastic cups with some tap water, too lazy to go fill the ice bucket. My father stood to the right of the bathroom door, on permanent vacation.

I stopped, drinking in the sight of his blue-green eyes, his windswept dark blond hair, his lean, but over-fifty-and-starting-to-go-soft frame. An ache I hadn’t felt in a long, long time started in the pit of my stomach and grew, building in intensity like fire in a dry woods, gathering steam with every breath, curling around emotions that had lain in wait for a thousand miles.

“Dad,” I whispered.

I wanted him to step out of that cardboard, to pouf into three dimensions, but most of all, to come back to me and sit between my mother and I, to form that cushioned barrier. He’d been the only one who could soothe the waters between us, and ever since this third leg of the triangle had left the family, the rest had collapsed. Neither one of us knew how to hold up just two sides of something that could—and had—only worked with three.

I took a step forward, my grief giving way to anger, disappointment, frustration, the miles, the long day, the shock in the hospital hallway, all of it catching up with me in one big torrent. The cheap plastic cup crushed into a hard tight ball in my fist, then fell to the carpet with an almost imperceptible plop.

“Why did you leave me with her?” I asked. “What were you thinking?”

Dad stared back, a slap-happy grin on his face. That “there’s nothing wrong in my life, all is well, we’re so happy” smile sitting there.

One of the biggest lies in the room.

“You knew,” I said, moving even closer to his picture, to face those pixels, one-on-one. “You knew we didn’t get along. How did you expect us to make it without you?”

No answer, just that same damned smile. I’d thought I’d known that smile.

I ran my fingers along the crease of his grin, tracing the familiar line, wanting it back so bad, the ache nearly tore my heart in two. I closed my eyes, the cardboard cold beneath my fingertips, yet solid and real, and tangible enough that I could just pretend that he was here, and not in a small brass urn atop my grandfather’s casket at Blue Hills Cemetery in Braintree.

In view of the koi pond, but not me. Never me. Had he really seen me, he wouldn’t have left.

“What am I supposed to do, Dad?” I whispered, as lost as when I was four and had wandered off in the JCPenney men’s department, bored because my father took too long to pick out a tie for my grandmother’s funeral. It had taken them an hour to find me, an hour I’d spent huddled inside a rack of suit jackets, tucked inside myself like a ball, scared and sure I’d never see his face again.

And then, he’d been there, parting the sea of navy and gray, reaching long arms in to pull me out, drawing me to his chest, warm and safe and secure. Home again. Always, I’d thought, my father would be there.

Until he wasn’t.

And this time, too, he wasn’t coming, and I had to handle all of this on my own. Without a compass, without a map, without a single damned clue.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked again, my voice a sob now, the tears I’d held back from Nick coming hard, streaming down my face, but I didn’t feel them, didn’t wipe them away, just let them wash over me. “Dad, tell me. I don’t know. I don’t know her.”

He didn’t put out his arms.

He didn’t smile and make it all better with a joke, or an impromptu magic trick.

He did as he’d done for the last seven states. He stood there with that look on his face that said “Come on out in the cold, Hilary, it’ll be fun.”

But it hadn’t been fun at all. And I was still lost, still without any answers. I stumbled back onto the bed, dropped my face into my hands and cried. For what I didn’t have anymore and for what I couldn’t find.

Something nudged my ankle. I turned around, and found Reginald at my feet, his blanket in his mouth, as if he was packing. Ready to go. He oinked.

“But she could die,” I said to the pig.

Reginald grunted, waved his snout, the blanket like a toreador’s cape.

“I can’t—” The sentence lodged somewhere between my heart and my throat. I turned again to my father’s picture, seeking an answer. And still didn’t find anything but an empty, silent smile.

I was on my own—

Unless I wanted to take the advice of a pig.

Reginald still stood beside me, waiting, four little patient hooves and a pair of beady eyes that seemed far smarter than mine.

twelve

“Are you sure you don’t want to stop? Walk around? Maybe we should. You need to move your legs, Ma.”

The hospital was forty-five minutes behind us. My mother had dutifully written down the doctor’s instructions, even though he’d also given her a typed copy of his exit advice. She’d taken her prescription, gone over the writing on the label with him twice, then tucked it in her purse, and kept both on her lap ever since we’d left. “I’m fine, Hilary. If we keep stopping, we’ll never get to California.”

A little blue sign appeared, announcing a rest stop in three miles. I put on my directional, moving into the right lane. Already ready to get there, miles ahead. From the rearview mirror, I saw Nick smirk.

“No more Stormin’ Norman?”

“Shut up, Nick,” I muttered. Later, I’d show him where to put that nickname for my driving style.

“What does he mean, Stormin’ Norman?”

Nick shoved his face forward, right between us, all sweetness and light. “First Gulf War, Mrs. Delaney. Norman Schwarzkopf just went on in there, plowing over anything in his path. That’s pretty much the way Hilary normally drives.”

My mother raised a brow. “Oh, really?”

Oh, Nick was going to pay, and pay big later. “I have to, Ma. It’s Boston. I think Dukakis reclassified the city as a war zone back in the eighties.”

“He did not.”

I shrugged, and kept on plugging toward the exit. I would not raise her blood pressure. Or mine. It was bad enough I’d let a pig talk me into finishing this trip.

“I told you, I don’t need to walk yet.”

“You’re going to walk and that’s that.”

“When we get to the Illinois border. That way, at least we’ve made some progress.”

“Ma, that’s almost an hour away. The doctor said—”

“I know what the doctor said, Hilary,” my mother exploded, her voice louder than I’d ever heard it before. It reverberated off the interior of the minivan, startling Reginald, who scrambled to his feet with an oink-grunt and backed up against the side of the van. Nick reached out a hand and soothed it over the pig’s head. Reginald sighed and pressed up against Nick. My mother smiled. Jeez. The man had everyone in the van on his side. “I have Dr. Barton’s instructions.”

“Then why the hell haven’t you been following his or any other doctor’s all this time? You didn’t go in for your regular blood tests, or your Coumadin wouldn’t have gotten out of whack. I talked to your doctor, Ma. I know what went wrong.”

“Hilary, you don’t understand. I have my reasons.”

“Reasons you choose to keep to yourself. Especially the really big one. Like why we are driving to California when we should be driving you home so that you can put your feet up and be near a phone with 9–1–1 service?” The last part shrieked out of me. Especially since parts of Indiana had limited cell reception, which raised my blood pressure and had me popping aspirin just to keep my head from exploding with worry.

Nick sat back, quiet, and out of the fray. Wise man.

“I want to see my brother. I want to see California.” Ma looked over her shoulder at my father, half-folded to keep his head from blocking my rear view. “I want your father to see California.”

“Why?” I flicked on the directional again. I didn’t care what she said, we were getting off, and she was walking, if I had to put one of her feet in front of the other myself. “You keep saying because you want to, but not why. What are you, two?”

“I am sixty-seven years old, Hilary Jean.” She gave me the evil eye she’d perfected during all the nights I’d come in after curfew, or with beer on my breath, or with a C on a report card. It didn’t quite have the same effect on me at thirty-six as it had at sixteen. “I don’t have to tell you why I want to do anything.”

I gritted my teeth. She made me insane, but I searched deep inside myself and found a hidden well of patience. The well was about as shallow as a teardrop, but it would have to do, because California was still a long ways off. “I am driving you all the way across the country, Ma. You do too owe me an explanation.”

Nick leaned forward, clearly not smart enough to stay out of our argument. He caught my eye in the rearview mirror, as if trying to imbue me with some visual patience. “Mrs. Delaney, I don’t mean to intrude, but I think the little hospital thing—”

“Little hospital thing?” I mouthed at him.

“—gave Hilary a scare,” he went on, ignoring me. “So what do you say we stop here, stretch our legs a bit, let Reginald out, give him one more taste of Indiana, and then go on our way? I could use a snack anyway.”

My mother considered this a moment, then nodded. “Okay, Nick.”

“Just like that, you’re agreeing with him? After I—”

Nick put a hand on my shoulder, his wide palm as calming as a Valium. “I think we all could use a snack. And a break.”

So we did as Nick said. I thought of nominating him for the U.N. by the time we were done. He clearly had hidden skills in peacekeeping.

This was part of what I’d always loved—loved? I left that word alone for now—about Nick. How he could smooth over a situation, as easily as he could smooth the wood he worked with. If I was Stormin’ Norman, he was Gandhi, making sure no innocent civilians were harmed in the process.

I flicked a glance in his direction, but he was no longer watching me. Instead, his gaze had gone to the passing scenery.

He never had told me where he’d been those nights he’d gone out. Even though he was here, I sensed a fence between us, a line in the sand. And like sand was wont to do, there would come a time when it would all shift beneath me—

And probably leave me with nothing but some algae and a bunch of cracked shells.

At the rest stop, we ended up with ordinary coffees this time, because the fanciest thing available was a gloppy cappuccino that sputtered out of a wheezing, dirty machine in the gas station. I grabbed a packet of M&M’s, two bags of Doritos, a fully caffeinated and sugared Coke and a chocolate chip Grandma’s cookie. Ma didn’t so much as glance my way when I dumped my junk food frenzy on the counter, slapped a few bills in front of the pierced and bored clerk, then headed back to the van, after Ma shrugged off my attempts to help her.

Before I could get there, Nick wrapped his arm around my waist and stopped me. I leaned against him, wishing I could read his mind, then again not so sure I wanted to know what he was thinking about us right now. “It’s going to be all right, Hil.”

“She won’t listen to me,” I said, the words tearing out of me on a sob, but I refused to cry, and kept the tears in check. “I can’t do this if she’s going to break all the rules. That’s what landed her in the hospital the first time.”

“Maybe she’s not listening because you’re not talking.”

“What do you call this?” I mocked mouth movement with my fingers, quacking them up and down.

Nick raised his brows, then took the junk food out of my hands and climbed into the van, taking the driver’s seat before I could protest. I sulked a little in the back, then brightened when he dumped my snacks into my lap with a smile. He added a Clark bar that he had bought to the stack. “Here. Eat up. Sugar always makes you feel better,” he said. And he was right.

The man knew me well. He’d clearly paid attention, and I appreciated that.

My mother settled into the passenger’s side, sharing a snack of crackers with Reginald, making sure she broke the treat into teeny tiny pieces before feeding them to her pig, who slobbered said pieces all over the floor at my feet. I rolled my eyes and tried not to gag.

When everyone was buckled in and the car was gassed up, Nick turned to my mother. “Mrs. Delaney, I looked at our route, and I know you wanted to see some travel spots with Mr. Delaney,” he said, as if my father were real, and sitting right there beside her, “but I think it might be wise if we spent the next couple of days getting some miles under us. There’s a lot of the country to see when we get closer to California. I’ve been out that way myself and I can show you some great things. Where the Donner party disappeared, for one. That’ll make a great snapshot, especially the lake. It’s gorgeous, even though it has a sad history.”

“You never told me you’d been to California,” I said. When had he gone? Who had he gone with? Suddenly, I was Jealous Jan, which was completely unlike me. I opened the M&M’s and popped a few into my mouth, quick, figuring it had to be a dip in my blood sugar.

He grinned. “You never asked.”

“What else don’t I know about you?”

Nick pivoted on his seat, draping his arm over the headrest, his brown eyes meeting mine, a dare in them. “Marry me and you’ll find out everything.”

My mother looked at Nick, looked at me. I fully expected her to put in her two cents, but she didn’t. She kept silent. Waiting, watching, for my response. I hadn’t felt this much pressure since the eighth grade spelling bee.

I yanked the road atlas out from between them and flipped to the full map of the United States. Didn’t see a thing on the pages, but still studied them, avoiding everyone else’s stares. “Where did you say the Donner party disappeared?” I glanced at Nick. “I might have some plans for that place.”

He just laughed, put the van in gear, and started driving.

Miles to go—and lots of secrets still untold.

thirteen

That night, in a four-star hotel room we splurged on in Omaha—with Nick finessing the desk clerk so that Reginald could room with my mother—I crawled into bed beside Nick, spooning my body against the familiar warmth of his. It had only been a few days since I had lain in his pillow-top queen in Boston, but it felt like ten years. “You’re warm.”

“And you’re too far away.” He rolled over and hauled me into his arms, his lips landing first on my forehead, then the bridge of my nose, then my mouth, his kiss so known to me, I could have described it and yet never managed to find exactly the right words to capture how Nick managed to both ignite a fire in me and manage to make me feel—for the moments I spent in his arms—safe and content.

I didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to ask him any questions. Right now, I didn’t even care about the answers. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to feel much like talking, either.

He wrapped me tighter, tighter I think than he ever had before, and shifted, deepening his kiss. I twisted beneath him, running my hands down his back, slipping my fingers beneath the plain cotton edge of his boxers, something that on another man would be considered dull, but on Nick, who had the muscles and planes of a man who worked hard for a living, they seemed right, perfect. Sexy in their own way. I began to slide the fabric down, but he reached back and stopped me. “No. Tonight it’s all about you.”

I grinned. “Yeah, you say that now, and then who always gets to ride the carousel first?”

He chuckled. “Not tonight, Hilary.” He buried his face in my neck, his kisses heating up, one right after the other. His hands cupped my breasts through the cotton of my T-shirt, bunching the fabric in a fisted rose, sliding it up my thighs.

I arched beneath him, knowing with the familiarity of an old lover how it would be, the anticipation sweet and aching. His erection pressed against my pelvis, already in concert with the quickening in my veins, the pooling want. Nick watched me, brown eyes glittering in the dark, moonlight reflecting in tiny stars.

A long, breathless moment passed between us, filled with expectation. I knew what was coming next. Knew how good it would be. Simply being away from him had been foreplay enough, and I was ready to get down to business. A smile curved across my face, the smile Nick could read as easily as the morning news. He pressed a finger to my lips. “Patience, Hilary, is a virtue.”

“Ah, but I don’t have any virtues.”

He chuckled. “Which is half the reason I love you.”

Even said in jest, the words took on new meaning, and I couldn’t return them, though the sound of them coming from him sent an odd new thrill through me. My mind savored them as my body savored his kiss, tasting the syllables, for the first time, holding them in a mental file that had never been opened before. The one in the back, kept under lock and key. What would it be like to tell him the same thing? To trust him with my heart?

To think about a future beyond today?

And then, all thoughts of love and futures left, as Nick’s finger trailed down along my jaw, my throat, the valley of my breasts, to the tail of my shirt, teasing along the hem, skirting my skin while he kissed me, his mouth sure and firm, as intimate with mine as two vines on one tree.

He lifted my shirt high above my head, flinging it onto the floor. It landed with a soft plop in the darkness. Nick’s hands danced along my skin, warm, work-chafed palms and guitar-callused fingertips that set off a fiery trail he soon followed with his mouth.

I did as he’d said and lay there, accepting the royal treatment, though every inch of me longed to give back as good as I was getting.

It felt odd at first to be so passive, especially with a man who had enjoyed many healthy give-and-takes with me. In fact, the giving and the taking had been half the fun with Nick. But now…

Just taking was…divine. Giving myself up entirely to him, to this no-responsibility, no decisions, just being sensation felt damned good.

Nick spent time, considerable, sweet, amazing time, on my body, swirling his tongue around my nipples, sucking the tender tip into his mouth, until I thought I’d die, then releasing the first to do the same to the other one.

“Nick,” I said, my hands in his hair, wanting to haul him back to my mouth, and at the same time wanting him to do that all over again.

“Let go, Hilary,” he whispered. “Just let go.”

“I’m doing that,” I said, half laughing, half…something else that nearly bordered on a moan.

“Oh, yeah, then why are you still tense?”

“You call this tense?” And I slid along his body, skin against skin, heat against heat.

“What I mean isn’t about sex, it’s about in here,” he said, running his hand along my left breast, tracing where my heart beat. “Let me in.”

I spread my legs, teasing him, smiling at him. “My door is open, Mr. Warner.”

“Ah, Hilary,” he said my name on a sigh. “In your heart.”

In answer, I reached down and slid off his boxers, raising my hips to meet his, bringing us together in the only way I knew how, the only way that kept my heart safe. Because that was the one door I had always kept shut and he knew it. The part of me that had envied Sally in Sandusky was always beaten down by the part that feared getting lost in a relationship that required giving all of yourself to another person.

Nick gave up the battle for possession of carotid arteries and slid into me with a deep sigh. He made love to me, his strokes long, perfectly tuned to what I needed, bringing me to an orgasm that sent those stars into my eyes, circling my brain, erasing every thought for one amazing moment.

It was good—with Nick, it was always good. But this time, our lovemaking had a different edge. Either because Nick had taken over the reins, or because I had missed him so much, I wasn’t sure.

When we were done, Nick once again pulled me into his arms, sharing the heat from his body, the beat of his heart. I listened to those regular pulses, my head on his chest, my hand pressed to the rise and fall of that beat.

“I really do want to marry you,” he said.

I traced the curlicue of the thin, tiny hairs on his chest, like dark question marks. “Why?”

“Because I love you. Because you’ve become the first thing I think about in the day, the last thing I think about at night. Because I can’t imagine spending a day of my life without you.”

The words terrified me, and it felt like the walls were closing in, pressing down on my lungs. I had to fight the urge to run again. “But why marry me? We could try living together again. It works for Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins. Oprah, for Pete’s sake.”

“Unlike them, I do need a piece of paper now, Hilary.” He tipped up my chin. “What am I supposed to tell the guys at the bar? I’m embarrassed. My girlfriend won’t make an honest man out of me.”

I laughed at the joke. “You are not.”

“Yeah, I am. You might not believe this, but even guys wonder what’s wrong with them when their girlfriends turn down a serious marriage proposal twice in one week.”

I went back to studying the question marks on his chest. So many of them, like a mirror of my brain. “You know how I feel about marriage. You used to feel the same way.”

“I don’t anymore. And I also know that you’re more committed to things than you think. You’ve worked at the same place for fifteen years. You’ve been with me for four. And you’re driving across the country with your mother. That’s enough to get you committed.”

I let out a gust. What was with him? It was like he suddenly decided to get on the adult train. “That doesn’t mean I want a ring on my finger.”

“Or does it mean you just don’t want a ring on your finger from me?” When I didn’t answer, he rolled away and out of the bed, pulling on his boxers, followed by his jeans. He flicked the button fly closed. “Maybe you should go sleep in your mom’s room. She’s got two doubles. That way, if something happens—”

“Are you kicking me out of my own room?”

He stood there, staring at me, and I could see in his eyes and the droop of his shoulders that I had disappointed him. Again. “Yeah.”

I slid out of the bed, pulled on my T-shirt, not even caring that it was inside-out. “What did you think, Nick? That you would ride in on the big white horse—excuse me, big white airplane—and I’d be so grateful that you showed up that I’d rush off to the nearest chapel? Believe me, I am grateful you are here. I couldn’t think of another person I would rather have by my side right now. But just because I want you here doesn’t mean I want to get married.”

He shook his head. “You know, Hilary, I don’t get you. Every time you come close to having everything you want, you go and ruin it.”

“Me? You’ve done it, too, Nick.” I threw up my hands. “You forget that our relationship has a track record. You haven’t been so perfect yourself.”

“I’m here now, Hilary, and I’m serious this time. We’ve been together for four years. That has to count for something, and it also means it’s about damned time we moved forward.” He picked up his shirt, put it on, then grabbed his shoes off the floor and headed for the door. “I’m going down to the bar to get good and drunk and forget we had this conversation because if I don’t, I’m going to have a hell of a time getting in that van tomorrow morning.” He grasped the doorknob but didn’t open the door. Instead, he hung his head. My heart screamed at me to call him back, to undo this, to stop him from leaving, but my brain knew better, and kept my heart quiet. My hands fisted at my sides, and I sank onto the bed, letting him go.

“I’ll go with you to California,” he said, his voice low and hurt, “but after we get back, I think we should end this. If you stand in stagnant water too long, you get sick.”

Then he left.

fourteen

The Rocky Mountains took my breath away. For the first time on our trip, none of us, not even Reginald, made a sound for miles and miles. The mountains rose like stone castles, Nature’s warriors set up to show man there were still things in this world bigger than all of us put together. All three of us bonded in our oohs and aahs, pulling over several times just to gape and wonder over the majestic beauty surrounding us.

For a long while, I could pretend that the conversation with Nick had never happened, but from time to time, I’d catch his eye, and a shade would drop between us. He’d turn away, point out some landmark to my mother, and another brick would go into the wall that hadn’t existed in our relationship. Either my mother didn’t notice or didn’t say anything.

“Stop the car, Hilary,” Ma said. “I want this picture.”

“Ma, we’ve taken a hundred.”

“This is the one I want with your father.” She pointed out the window at a stone outcropping that curved like a finger and a thumb, then dropped into a small lake, framed by lush green pine trees. Before I even had the minivan fully stopped, she was already unbuckled and out of her seat, flinging open the side door, hauling my father down to the guardrail.

“When your mother gets an idea, she gets an idea,” Nick said.

“Stubborn, that’s what she is.” I sighed and grabbed the camera.

“Gee, wonder who inherited that particular trait?” He grinned, but it was a tempered version of his regular smile, then got Reginald’s leash and clicked it onto the pig’s collar. “I’ll do pig duty while you get the picture.”

“Thank you,” I said, laying a hand on his arm. Heat extended between us and his gaze locked with mine, each of us clearly wanting the other, despite everything. “You’re being awfully nice to me, taking over the pig like that.”

After our argument, Nick had gone down to the hotel bar, but later that night, crawled into bed beside me and without a word, curved against my body. Nothing was said about our fight, about the unanswered marriage proposal, but it had hung in the air between us all morning.

Even now, it still lingered in the teasing over Reginald, and in his smile. “Hey, I’m just trying to show you that I have good qualities,” Nick said. “Husband qualities.”

I groaned. “You never give up, do you?”

“I have a couple thousand miles left to show you that being married to me wouldn’t be such a bad idea. After that, yes, Hilary, I will give up.” Then he climbed out of the van, Reginald click-clacking behind him down the pavement. They ducked down the hill and disappeared behind some shrubbery.

Putting physical distance between us, mirroring the emotional space.

I left the subject of Nick and marriage alone. Plenty of time to deal with that after I was done with my mother and this road trip. I had enough on my mind, and enough to deal with, just with her.

“Ma, why this picture?” I asked, already tired of raising and lowering the digital camera. The memory bank was full, so I had to load a new SD card. My mother had even bought three extras of those.

When had she learned to plan ahead for technology? And why had she done all this?

“I like this particular view,” Ma said. “It’s my favorite.”

I put my fist on my hip, the camera banging against the bone, and winced. Something was up, had been up for hundreds of miles, that went beyond what had happened in the hospital. “What is going on with you? We have tons of pictures of pretty mountains and lakes and trees. And I agree, the Rocky Mountains are beautiful. But why this one with Dad? Why all these pictures with Dad in general?”

She clutched the cardboard image of him and bit her lip, the sign that she was reaching into some well deep inside herself to dig up some more “dealing with Hilary” patience. “Just take the picture.”

“No. Not until you tell me why.” She was hiding something and damned if I could figure it out. This whole plan about getting closer to her, bonding—if there was such a thing between myself and my mother—had gone so far off track, I wondered if it was possible to right the train again.

A week ago, I would have given up, retreated into the same familiar frustration I knew with my mother, and allowed to serve as the cement in the wall between us. But ever since the hospital, since that awful time outside her door, when she’d needed me and I hadn’t been able to get inside, something had changed between us, or maybe only changed on my side, and I refused to let this train wreck get any worse.

Demanding answers only led to derailment. I’d learned that lesson with my father—and so had she, I suspected. Hadn’t we already seen the door shut, a little at a time, until it was closed entirely? Somehow, I needed to keep the door open with her, and find a way to nudge it open more, to get closer to her.

So I framed her image with my father’s in the camera, and a wobbly smile came to her lips. “Tell me what you like about this picture,” I asked again, softer.

She paused, thought for a second. “It reminds me of him.”

Click. I took the picture, and when the pixels filled the screen, I saw the love she still had for my dad, spread across the plasma. Hope rose in my chest. Could Nick and I have that someday? Make our feelings last over years, over the divide of death? Despite everything, she still loved him, and I wondered why. I raised the camera again. “Why?”

“Because it’s hard and soft at the same time.”

Click again, but I didn’t glance down at the result this time, because I heard in her voice what the picture would become. Tender, vulnerable. An inside peek into her heart. Curiosity bloomed in me, to know the woman who had been such an enigma, this half of my biology I barely knew. Finding the keys to her, I realized, would unlock the parts of me that I needed, too. And maybe, I thought, glancing toward where Nick had gone with Reginald, provide the answers I needed in that relationship, too. “Tell me more.”

She turned, peering over her shoulder at the view for a long time, just staring at the splendid, larger-than-life, impossible-to-capture magnificence. “Your dad, he was strong, you know. He held us together, held everything together, but underneath—”

I lowered the camera, no longer able to see what she saw. “Underneath he wasn’t what we saw or what he thought.”

She pivoted back, a tear running down her face. “He was like that lake, wasn’t he? Deep, and dark, and full of secrets. And maybe if we had seen past the stones, we might have—”

“Oh, my God, Louie, would you lookee here at that great big picture of that man! Ain’t that ’bout the cutest thing you ever did see?” The high-pitched, grating Southern voice caused my finger to falter on the shutter release, adding one memorable photo of my mother’s shoes to the collection.

I turned around to see Daisy Duke—or what Daisy Duke would look like, if she had five kids, let her body go, and stopped coloring her roots. “Uh, hi.”

“Hi! Whatcha doing?”

I cursed the interruption. Every time my mother and I took two steps forward, something caused us to slide back three steps.

“Taking a picture, that’s all.” I held up the digital camera for proof. Where was my bodyguard boyfriend and Reginald? Granted, he wasn’t exactly a feral pig, nor did Nick make for a menacing presence, but these people were WEIRD, in capital letters, and I wanted some backup.

“I meant, with the cardboard man,” Daisy Duke said. “If I had me one of those, why, I’d just love it. I could set him up in the living room, make him a real conversation piece, if you know what I mean.” She gave me a wink and a side-mouth “chuk-chuk,” like she was calling a horse.

“I’m sure you would.” I turned back to Ma, reframed the picture, and clicked, this time getting it right. “All set, Ma.”

“Is that your man?” Daisy Duke asked Ma. “Did he not want to come along on your trip to the Rockies? Or are you just framing him for blackmail purposes? I only ask because my neighbor Jolene did that and Lordy, she got a whole bunch of money from the divorce settlement for setting her man up in a compromisin’ position with a compromisin’ woman.” Daisy sighed. “’Course, she did have to pay it all back, once Jeremiah proved, with videotape, that she’d been compromisin’ with a little filly of her own, if you know what I mean. Seems videotape trumps photographs every time.”

I didn’t know what Daisy Duke meant in that long-winded paragraph of a sentence and I wasn’t going to ask for an explanation. Some things, I figured, were better left unknown.

“Louie! Come here! You gotta see this! It’s just amazing. My Lord, the things you can do at Kinko’s these days.”

A man rounded an RV that had seen better days and better paint jobs. It was long and bright green, with “See the Country or Bust Tryin’” painted in swirling neon-yellow letters down the side. Louie hitched up his jeans as he walked, one finger in the belt loop, apparently serving as suspenders.

But his ample gut hung over the front, undoing all the hard work of that one digit. He had day-old stubble coating his neck and chin, a grease-stained John Deere cap shading his face, and a Budweiser frogs T-shirt straining over his chest, the frogs looking ready to either belch or make a run for it.

Nick came out of the woods then, Reginald trotting beside him on his leash, looking lighter and happier than five minutes earlier. Nick gave me a grin and an arched brow that asked, “Who are these people?” I just shrugged in answer.

“Howdy,” Louie said, extending a hand toward me, then Ma. “Nice to meet some fellow travelers. You folks broke down?”

“No, just taking pictures.” The digital camera, clearly, wasn’t a hint.

“Of what?” Louie looked around, holding tight to that belt loop as he did. He spat a wad of tobacco behind him, then swiveled his gaze forward again. “I see nothing but trees and rocks. You can get them ’bout anywhere, ’specially in these parts. Don’t they have rocks where you live?”

“Not so much,” Ma said, moving forward, Dad under her arm. He wobbled a bit with the movement, and she nearly lost her footing as she navigated over the rough, rocky gravel at the edge of the road. I rushed forward, taking Dad from her. “My husband here—” she gestured toward my father “—didn’t get to see the country before he died, so we’re taking pictures with him.”

Daisy Duke pressed a hand to her chest. “Oh, Lordy, that is just the sweetest thing I ever heard. About makes me want to cry. It’s like a Nicholas Sparks book.” She sniffled and I worried I’d have to go get Ma’s Kleenexes again. I was half tempted to ask if they were related to a Sally from Sandusky.

“Where you folks from?” Louie asked.

“Boston,” Nick put in, coming up beside me. My hero, albeit too late to rescue me.

“Lot of rude yokels, that’s what you got there. No offense to you folks, of course.” Louie tipped his hat with his free hand. “I used to be a truck driver and I tell you, them Boston people, they scare me.”

Daisy Duke slipped in beside her husband and nodded. “Louie here is out on disability because of it. Post-drama stress.”

“You mean post-traumatic stress syndrome, don’t you, from driving in Boston?” Nick asked.

“No, post-drama.” Daisy Duke leaned in close. “He had an altercation with a high maintenance actress over a parking space outside the Macy’s. It got ugly pretty quick. Delivery driver versus diva, and the diva, she wouldn’t back down, not her or her little dog.”

“Those Chihuahuas, they can get pretty mean,” Louie said, his eyes wide. He shuddered.

“I guess there was a big sale at the Macy’s and she wasn’t going to let my Louie keep her from her Ralph Lauren. Let’s just say the cat came out and she had some pretty sharp claws. My poor Louie hasn’t been the same since.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. Nick had to look away, and I could see him doing the same thing as me. “Oh. I see.”

“Well, that’s neither here nor there, not anymore. Though, we’re still fighting the restraining order by Macy’s. Totally unjustified. I mean, Louie has rights and he may someday really want some designer duds.”

I glanced at the faded, redolent frogs on his T-shirt. “Yeah, he…might.”

She thrust out her hand. “By the way, I totally forgot to introduce myself. My name’s Carla, Carla Weggins, wife to my sweet Louie here. And you are?”

My mother, who I had fully expected to run these people off or better yet, run from them, was the first to put her hand into Carla’s. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Rosemary Delaney. This is my daughter, Hilary, and her…‘significant other’—” Ma air-quoted the words “—Nicholas Warner.”

“Nick,” he corrected, when it came time to shake his hand. “And I’d be Hilary’s fiancé if she let me.”

I groaned. “Do we need to make my love life public knowledge?”

“Yes,” Ma and Nick said at the same time.

I threw up my hands, grabbed Reginald’s leash, and walked away from all of them. I had enough people standing over there to open my own looney bin. “Come on, Reginald, in the car. Westward, ho, and then maybe we can get home again. Back to normal life.”

But Reginald was having no part of getting back in the minivan. He dug in his little hooves and refused to climb inside. When I tried to lift him through the open side door, he went limp, dead pig weight in my arms. “Stop it, or I’ll turn you into bacon.”

He oinked.

“Come on, let’s go.”

He wouldn’t. I hefted and shoved, but he squealed and flung out his hooves, squirming wildly in my arms, twisting until he fell to the ground and scampered away—or at least as far away as his leash would take him.

And barely leaving my arm in the socket in the process.

“You are so becoming breakfast tomorrow,” I said to the pig. He plopped his bottom on the road and ignored my threat.

Behind me, Carla and Louie were laughing at something my mother had said. I could hear the murmur of conversation, four voices exchanging bonding over God only knew what. Nick, I could see. He had the ability to converse with everyone from the governor to the homeless guy who spent his summers living in the alley behind Nick’s building, refusing help, but accepting the occasional bottle of wine.

My mother, however, had nothing in common with people like that. She was an attorney. She went to bar association events, cocktail parties, wine tastings, not church bingo and flea markets. Surely she was only biding her time until I could force-load Reginald into the van, and give her an excuse to ditch the Colorado Hillbillies.

“Ma,” I called, giving up on her stubborn pig. “Reginald won’t get in the car. Will you come over here and talk some sense into him?”

Ma waved a hand in dismissal. “Let him be, Hilary. We have time. Maybe he just needs some more fresh air. Besides, I’m enjoying myself. Carla and Louie said there’s a picnic area down the hill a little ways. We could stop and have lunch with them.”

I gaped. Had I heard her right? She was unconcerned about Reginald’s uncooperativeness and she was enjoying herself with these people? And what’s more, wanted to detour for an impromptu picnic with total strangers? “You want to have lunch? With them?”

“Sure. We’ll make some new friends, have some…” She looked at the Weggins couple. “What’d you say you were making?”

“Hot-dog casserole. My specialty. I won a yellow ribbon at the state fair last year for it. Would have won the blue if that Deanna Compton hadn’t come along and swept the category with her venison-and-parsnip stew.” Carla put a fist on her hip, which only served to raise her shorts and expose cellulite-dimpled skin I didn’t need to see—especially not just before a meal. I vowed to get myself to Gold’s Gym way more often. “But I got a copy of Deanna’s recipe. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to bribe an eleven-year-old. One Nintendo Game Boy and wham-slam-thank-you-ma’am, Vanessa Compton is singing her Mama’s secret recipe like a pet-store parakeet. Deanna’s never going to see the color blue again. Y’all just have to try my hot dog casserole. I’ve kicked it up a notch since last year’s fair, too.”

“We’d love to,” Ma said before I could refuse.

Twenty minutes later, I found myself sitting on the other side of a pine picnic table avoiding splinters while I pretended to enjoy something made with hot dogs and crescent rolls. Some kind of green vegetable also lurked in the cheesy mixture, but I decided not to ask its identity.

Nick sat down beside me and handed me a purple Tupperware glass of Mountain Dew. “This is not so bad,” he whispered in my ear.

“The food or the company?”

“Both.” He teased a bite under my lips, and I took it, but only because it was from Nick.

He was right, though I wouldn’t tell him that. Carla and Louie were not such bad company. Originally from Georgia, they’d traveled all over the country, after selling their house and trading the subdivision life for one on wheels. “We couldn’t stand being in one place,” Carla explained to my mother. “So Louie and I decided to become full-time road warriors.”

“Yep. We just pull up stakes and move on, whenever we feel like it.”

“That means we can see the grandkids any old time we want to. All totaled, we have four grandkids. We got Tyler and Leigh in Tulsa, Miranda and Catherine in Connecticut, and another one on the way in Georgia.” Carla gave Louie’s arm an excited squeeze. “We’re going to be putting some more miles on the old Green Monster again soon.”

“I always wanted to do that,” Ma said, her sentence ending on a sigh. “Well, my husband and I did. We talked about doing exactly what you two are doing.”

I pivoted on the wood seat. “You did?”

She nodded. “It was our retirement dream. Your father and I thought we’d sell the house and travel for the rest of our lives.”

I glanced over at the big green monster, which didn’t exactly seem like my mother’s preferred mode of vacationing. “In an RV?”

“Well…” Ma gave the Weggins couple a smile. “I’m not quite as adventurous as you two. I’m more of a hotel kind of girl, but if my late husband, Jack, had tried talking me into an RV, I might have given it a shot. He was the adventurous one, and he could be pretty convincing when he wanted to be.”

Carla snorted. “Oh, I don’t know about that, Rosemary. Look at you. You’re travelin’ clear across the country with a pig. That’s not what you read in your ordinary travel brochure, if you know what I mean. Though I bet he’s a pretty fun traveling companion and just cute as a button, to boot.”

Ma laughed. “I suppose you’re right.” Then she sobered and looked out over the vast, exquisite view, nature’s beauty, an elegant backdrop for our simple, rustic picnic. “Still, I wish…” Ma’s voice trailed off, filled with a wistfulness I’d never heard before, the notes sharp and pained.

I looked at Nick, unsure of what to say. Seeing my mother vulnerable, needy, wasn’t something I knew how to handle. His hand covered mine, and I leaned into his shoulder, needing him even if I wasn’t going to tell him that I did.

“You know what I say about wishes?” Carla butted in. “That they’re just sentences waitin’ to be finished. So you just get on out there, Rosemary, and find the words you need.”

Ma laid her hand over Carla’s and gave it a squeeze. Once again, I wondered about this new side of my mother, this woman who now easily made friends, connected with people who five days ago hadn’t even been in the same social solar system. “Thanks, Carla,” Ma said. “I think I really needed to hear that.”

“Anytime you need advice, you just come to Carla. I’m a regular Dear Abby, aren’t I, Louie?”

“Oh, she’s got the words of wisdom all right,” Louie said, rolling his eyes. “Tells me what to do every damned minute of the day.”

Carla swatted him, then dished up second helpings, before heading into the RV for a chocolate silk pie. She was like those clowns in the circus, just pulling one miracle after another out of the vehicle.

After everyone had been served another cholesterol-raising dish, Carla snuggled up to Louie and gave the three of us a smile. “You know, you three are more than welcome to hang out with us for a few days. Louie and are thinking of just camping in the Rockies. We have a few weeks till the new grandbaby comes along, and we were going to do some rock huntin’.”

“Rock hunting? Is that when you look for rare and unusual types of rocks?” Nick asked.

“Hell, no!” Louie laughed and drew Carla closer to him, pecking a kiss on her cheek. “Me and Carla, we get out the air gun, and we shoot us some rocks. We can’t really shoot ’em ’cuz that gets the park rangers’ panties all in a wad, but we have our fun, don’t we, sweetie?”

“Oh, we do indeedy.” She laughed. “Never a dull moment around here.”

“Rock hunting literally,” Nick said, catching my eye. “Who’d have thought it?”

“You should try it. It’s fun you can’t find in a place like Boston.” Louie nodded. “I know, ’cuz I tried. Got myself arrested over it, too.” He shook his head and cursed under his breath.

“There, there, Louie. Don’t get yourself all worked up again.” Carla patted his back. “Let me get you a pill, baby. Make you forget those awful memories.”

“What I need is another slice of pie.” He gave Carla a smile.

“Of course. Rosemary, can I get you anything else?”

“Just show me the way to your ladies’ room.” The two of them headed into the RV, chit-chatting the whole way, immediate and fast friends. I watched her go, worried my mother was going to go back home with recipes for varmints and roadkill.

When they were gone, Louie turned to Nick and I. “I’m not one for butting in, but—”

Clearly, a sign he was going to do just that.

“—there’s a reason your mother wants to get to California. I know a stubborn woman when I see one. I been sleepin’ beside one for twenty-seven years. I think, no matter what mountains get in your way—” he chuckled at his own pun, waving toward the Rockies as he did “—you better keep on truckin’. That woman’s on a mission. Her and her pig, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so.”

“Actually—”

“No, we don’t mind,” Nick interrupted me, his hand holding mine tight, cutting off my objection. “And we appreciate your hospitality.”

Louie nodded. “I’m only saying somethin’ ’cuz my Carla, she had a bad scare five years back. Breast cancer. She don’t talk about it much, but it changed her, made her want to see the world, get out of the mud we’d been stuck in. So we sold it all, packed everything into the big Green Monster over there, and the Good Lord, he seen fit to give Carla lots more years.” Louie leaned forward and lowered his voice. “You just never know when your cards are gonna get reshuffled. So don’t worry too much about the hand you already have ’cuz the Dealer—” at this, he sent a thumb heavenward “—could change it at any moment.”

I wasn’t quite sure what point Louie was making here, and had to wonder how much of his post-drama stress was figuring into his convoluted advice. Either way, before I could get him to clarify, Carla arrived with his second piece of pie, and my mother emerged from the trailer, looking tired, and ready to go.

“Wait, Hilary. I have one more thing to do,” my mother said. She turned to Carla. “Are you sure?”

“Abso-toot-ley.” Carla gave my mother a huge grin.

Ma crossed to the van, opened the side door and took out Reginald’s bed, food bag, and then Reginald himself, holding tight to his leash. My jaw dropped as she crossed back to Carla and Louie and handed all of it over to them. Reginald just stared up at my mother, not even aware he’d been handed over to a new owner. “Ma, what are you doing?”

“It’s not fair to Reginald to take him on this trip. He’s cooped up in the car all the time, and he’s not happy. With Carla and Louie, he’ll get out more. See the world.” A tear glistened in her eyes as she said the words, made her case.

“Ma, you love that pig.”

She bent down, took his snout between her two hands and gave him a kiss. “I do love him, and I want him to…” She didn’t finish the sentence, just rose and met Carla’s eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Carla drew my mother into a tight hug. “It’s nothing, Rosemary. We’ll take good care of him.”

I looked at Nick, who stared at me, just as shocked. A battalion of aliens could have landed in the middle of the Rocky Mountains and we would have been less surprised. “Ma—”

“This is best for…” She swallowed. “For Reginald.”

I gaped at her. What the hell was going on? This was not my mother. Maybe her legs were bothering more than she let on? Maybe it was getting difficult for her to walk the pig? But still, giving him to total strangers?

“Is your mother all right?” Nick whispered.

“I don’t know anymore,” I said. Nothing was making any sense to me. Not my relationship with Nick, not my mother’s actions. I wanted to hit the rewind button, go back to Massachusetts and start all over again.

There was a flurried exchange of hugs, addresses and promises to write and keep in touch. Carla even cried, vowing to pray for safe travels for all of us, saying something about a road warrior code. Then she gave my mother one more tight, tear-filled hug and bade us all goodbye.

I walked my mother back to the car, noticing how she leaned on me. I didn’t mention Reginald, sensing she wasn’t ready to talk about him, even though I still didn’t understand what had transpired—or why. Nick and I exchanged concerned looks over her head. “Ma, do you want to get a room and call it a day?”

My mother shook her head. “I think we should keep going. We’re running out of time.”

I helped her into her seat, and buckled her in, like a three-year-old. She didn’t complain or argue. “Ma, Uncle Morty isn’t going anywhere and Ernie said I can take as much time off as I need.”

My mother laid her head back against the seat and closed her eyes, her age showing in every line on her face, every wrinkle. The woman who had once seemed invincible suddenly looked as vulnerable as a child.

I came around to my side and climbed into the driver’s seat, then reached out and laid my hand over hers. “Ma, you need to rest.”

“I’ll sleep in the car.”

“No, you’ll sleep in a real bed. And we’ll push it further tomorrow. So don’t argue with me.” I caught Nick’s eye in the mirror.

“I think she’s right, Mrs. Delaney. We’ve all had a big day, making new friends in kindergarten here.”

Ma chuckled, her eyes still shut. She yawned. “All right, I’ll agree but only if you promise that we’ll make it farther tomorrow.”

“I promise.” I watched her sleep as I drove, no longer aware of the breathtaking Rockies, only of her. I kept casting worried glances from her, to Nick. I glanced in the rearview mirror at Carla and Louie’s big Green Monster that held Reginald until it became a tiny dot, then finally disappeared.

My mother’s beloved pig, left behind. Why? What wasn’t she telling me?

It took a long time of driving—too long—to get us out of the Rocky Mountain National State Park, and back onto a road with an exit for a motel with a neon vacancy sign.

But by then, my mother was totally asleep, her face pale as paper. Nick kept his hand on my shoulder, comfort in his touch, support by my side. But the dread I’d felt miles before, temporarily alleviated by the hot-dog casserole and chocolate silk pie, returned anew.

fifteen

Later that night, I found Nick in the dark, country-music-playing bar next door to the motel, nursing a glass of ice water and a bowl of peanuts. Nothing in my world made sense anymore and I needed him to help me set it to rights. “You heavy drinker you.”

He turned on the stool and grinned. “Hey, you drive me to it.”

I slipped in beside him and ordered a diet soda. The bartender made a face at me. Clearly, we weren’t making any friends here. “You coming to bed?”

“I was thinking about it.” He sipped at his glass, then toyed with the lemon. “Depends.”

My soda arrived, I thanked the bartender, and overtipped him, which made him stop glaring. “On what?”

“What’d you think of Carla and Louie?”

“That’s a bit of a conversational detour.”

“Just answer the question.”

I shrugged, picked a peanut out of the dish and popped it into my mouth. “I thought they were borderline insane, but harmless.”

“Did you think they were happy?”

Happy.

Yes, they had been happy, and I’d been envious of their happiness, as odd as it had been. I’d watched the way they’d cared for each other, laughed with each other, so easy with one another. No fences, no walls. Could it ever be like that with Nick and me?

That people like that existed should have given me hope, but all it did was piss me off, because Carla and Louie seemed like some mountain too impossible for me to climb.

“Aren’t all crazy people happy?” I said finally. “Especially the ones that don’t know they’re crazy?”

He gripped his glass with both hands, staring at the ice, as if it could provide the answers I wasn’t. “For once, Hilary, be serious.”

“I am, Nick.” I pushed the peanuts away. “What do you want from me?”

He turned to face me. Behind the bar, three plasma screens played three different channels of ESPN, the closed captioning scrolling black tapes of wins and losses across the bottom of the screens. Every male eye in the room was glued to those TVs—except Nick’s. “I want you to tell me you really love me. I want you to tell me that you want to have that same kind of happiness we saw today.”

“We’ve been happy, Nick. Haven’t we?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Do you remember the time we went to the New England Aquarium?”

A deep laugh escaped him. “Yeah. Not one of my most romantic dates.”

“One of my favorites, though. I love the ocean. Always have. It’s why I still live in Boston, even though I’m not much for winter.”

“All the more reason to snuggle up when it gets cold.”

How I wanted to just fall into his deep baritone voice, his strong, thick arms, the temptation of being with him, and forget what I needed to say. But these conversations were long overdue, so instead of meeting the warmth in his eyes, I fiddled with my straw. “Do you remember which exhibit was your favorite?”

“Sure. The seals.”

“The ones that lived outside, free and easy, in the ocean.”

“Yeah. And you liked the blue tangs. What does this have to do with anything?”

“It’s how I see marriage, Nick.”

He arched a brow. “As one giant fish tank?”

I laughed. “In a way. I don’t want to get married and feel like we’re stuck together, a couple of fish in the same tank, with no way out. No way to grow, either.”

He wrapped his hands around his glass, staring down at the ice. “I felt that way, Hil, when you first moved in. That’s what scared me. So I panicked. Like some animal in a zoo.”

“One of the pacing lions, huh?”

He chuckled. “Yeah.” Then he shrugged, turned his dark eyes to meet mine, and a smile crossed his lips, the smile that I could draw in my sleep, the one that had caught my heart the first time I met him. “Do you remember the trip you took to that restaurant convention in December?”

Ernie had sent me, to network with vendors, attend some training and grab freebies. There was nothing he liked more than a few free neon Coors Light lamps to hang on his wall. “Nothing beats being paid to go to Orlando in the middle of winter.”

“It was the longest four days of my life.” Nick reached across the bar, took one of my hands in his own. I loved the way his hands felt. Honest hands, the hands of a man who worked hard. “When you were gone, I realized what it would be like without you. And it sucked.”

I laughed. “Always the romantic, Nick.”

“Don’t joke.” His face was so serious, it could have been a da Vinci painting. “Not every marriage ends in failure, Hil.”

“I know everyone walks down the aisle thinking the rest of their lives together will be wonderful, but…” I drew in a breath, let it out. “It doesn’t always turn out that way.”

“You’re talking about your father.”

Those five words sat between us, heavy and fat. I wanted to ignore them, to push them away, but couldn’t. “Yeah.”

I’d told Nick the story of my father’s suicide a long time ago. We’d talked about it that one time, then Nick had left the subject alone. He’d told me it was mine to open up again. But I never did.

In a way, I wished he had pushed me to talk about it more. Because all this dancing around the hard stuff was making my feet hurt.

“Have you talked to your mother?”

“About my dad?” I snorted. “No. Not really. That’s a taboo subject.”

“How do you ever expect to escape the tank if you don’t talk about what’s putting you there in the first place?” he asked. “Wasn’t that the whole problem in your house? No one ever talked about anything? Your father shut down?”

“He didn’t shut down. He just…” My voice trailed off. How to explain the way my father’s light had dimmed, then gone out? “Okay, maybe he did.”

“Remember the sharks,” Nick said, “how they circled and circled, and never stopped swimming? You wondered if they ever felt exhausted, and whether they noticed how beautiful the water was because they were so busy swimming and swimming. That’s you, Hil. You’re too busy running to slow down and notice what’s waiting for you.”

Suddenly, all his patience, coupled with the way he kept pushing me for more, came to a head. Nick kept waiting—and wanting. But what was he giving me in return?

I felt pulled in two hundred different directions at once, and I was sick of it.

“And what, you’re Joe Perfect?” I said, drawing my hands out of his. “All this time, we’ve been dating and you haven’t said word one about wanting a marital commitment until now. All of a sudden you want me to turn into Martha Stewart and you’re going to be Boy Next Door. But you haven’t changed a thing in your own life, Nick. You haven’t traded in the motorcycle, quit the band, bought a house, taken out an investment fund or done a single thing that screams grown-up, settle down in suburbia. Yet you want me to become a Stepford wife overnight.”

He recoiled. “I never said that.”

“You were the one talking about kids and a dog the other day. A picket fence, for God’s sake. But I don’t see you making any moves in that direction. It’s all, ‘Hilary, make some changes. Hilary, grow up.’ What about you, Nick? A man who wants to settle down needs to rearrange his priorities, too.”

“My priorities are just fine.”

I shook my head, angry not just at him but at all the pressure caving in on me at once. It seemed as if my head would explode, and part of me knew I was taking it out on Nick but another part wanted him to back off, to give me back my space and stop laying these heavy questions on my doorstep. “Yeah, that’s why you’re going out at night without me. That’s a man with his priorities in the right order. That’s why you’re still playing in a rock-and-roll band at forty.”

He jerked back, and I knew I’d hurt him, but the words were out and I couldn’t stuff those tissues back into the box. “So you think getting married is all about giving up your dreams? Staying home every night and watching 20/20?”

“All I’m saying is you can’t have everything. You can’t expect me to be the only one changing here. You want the picket-fence life, Nick, you have to at least be willing to be home at night to latch the gate. That’s what marriage is about. Change and sacrifice. It won’t always make you happy, and the sooner you realize that, the better off we’ll both be.”

Hadn’t I seen that with Karen and Jerry? My parents? Sally from Sandusky? Even Carla and Louie had sacrificed and changed for each other.

“What about you? If I make these changes, these sacrifices, will you come along for the ride?”

I couldn’t answer him. What if I did that and we didn’t end up like Carla and Louie and instead ended up miserable? And fifteen years down the road, I was the one holding a gun to my head behind a locked door—or Nick was?

I did love Nick, but trusting him—forever—meant walking down a road I was too afraid to traverse.

So I reverted to my safety zone, the one where sarcasm and jokes were my best friends. “You want me to get in an RV with you and travel the country making blue-ribbon hot-dog casseroles like them?”

“That isn’t what I meant and you know it.” He shook his head and pushed the water aside. “I’m tired of this game, Hilary. I’m tired of asking you a straight question about marriage and getting a zig-zag answer.”

“Then quit asking me, Nick! You already know my answer. Why are you being so damned selfish? Can’t you see I have enough on my plate to deal with right now?”

“You think me wanting to spend the rest of my life with you is selfish?” A glacier formed in Nick’s gaze. He rose. “I thought I could stick with you until California, but I can’t. I’m done, Hilary. I’m going home. I’m sorry.”

He walked out of the bar. The ice in my glass cracked.

And so did my heart.

I raised my hand and rapped on the door, hard enough to hurt my knuckles. It took a while before it was opened. There she stood in her robe and slippers, the last person in the world I’d ever expected to ask for advice.

“I need to ask you a question.”

Ma waved me in without a comment. The room seemed so silent without her pig. She looked lonelier than ever before and again I wanted to ask why she had given him away, but she still didn’t look ready to talk about it.

We took up seats at the little round maple table by the window. Below us, Colorado blinked and flickered, a city view—a city whose name I had forgotten after all these days on the road. It was beautiful out there, beautiful in a much different way from the Rockies. Typical city in the night, lights twinkling, cars rushing by, the red-and-white parade of evening traffic. It could have been any city anywhere in America.

Ma poured us each a glass of ice water, crossing her legs as she always had, then uncrossing them, as if she’d suddenly remembered the doctor’s warnings about doing anything that might mess with her circulation.

I hesitated. This was new territory, me asking her for advice. More often, she gave it without being asked, and I ran from the words, doing the exact opposite of what she told me to do.

I drummed my fingers on the table. Sipped from my glass. Glanced out the window. Watched several cars go through a stoplight. Admired the stars. The moon. In short, looked at everything.

And dealt with nothing.

“What is it, Hilary? Why are you here, at half past ten at night?”

I sighed. I’d come here for a reason and avoiding it wasn’t going to make the reason go away. “Nick.”

My mother didn’t say anything, just waited.

“He asked me to marry him.” She already knew this, and I knew it, but it seemed easier to bridge the subject by offering up something everyone already knew. And it helped me delay getting to the meat of things. I was very good at the delaying part. I’d done it with Nick for four years—delaying the answer to why I didn’t want to get married, why I had never committed to him beyond plans for next weekend.

Heck, I’d delayed giving my mother answers, too, for thirty-plus years. I hadn’t talked about the hard subjects, the bad choices I’d made.

The choices I hadn’t made at all.

Like why I’d never used my psychology degree. Why I’d never advanced beyond working at Ernie’s. Why I hadn’t advanced in my life in general.

I drew in a breath, held it, then let it go.

“I don’t want to get married.”

My mother nodded. “I gathered that. You telling him no was a pretty big clue.”

“It’s not that I don’t like the idea of marriage, for other people. Just not for me.”

“And not with Nick.”

“I don’t mind the idea of marrying Nick,” I said, and as I did, I realized that was true. The idea of Nick in general was a good one. “I love Nick. And he loves me. That’s never been the issue.”

My mother put out her hands. “Then what is the problem?”

I sipped at the ice water, looked out the window some more, and glanced down at the traffic for an answer. But I didn’t find a solution in the Mazdas and Toyotas below me, or above us, in the stars, or even gleaming back in the scuffed finish of the table.

The answer, I knew, was inside myself.

It wasn’t a place I liked to visit very often.

I sat in the uncomfortable armchair for a long time, silent, waiting for Ma to butt in, to give me her two cents. But not a word came. I turned, surprised. “What, no answer for me? No listing of all the reasons I don’t want to get married? I would have thought you’d be ready to tell me. That’s why I came here. So you could tell me what to do.”

My mother sighed and rose. She seemed to be in pain again and took her time crossing to the bed. She sank onto the corner of the double, eased into it really. She splayed her hands across the comforter, glancing down at her neat, no-nonsense manicure for a moment before catching my gaze. “Hilary, I’m not going to tell you what to do, not anymore. You’re old enough to make your own decisions. And frankly, I don’t know if I have the right decisions for you anymore, or the right advice to give. I don’t even know if I have it for me anymore, either. Not really.”

I sat back against the chair, the hard wood hurting my shoulder blades, almost cutting into the skin beneath my T-shirt. “What do you mean you’re not going to tell me what to do? That’s your specialty, Ma.”

A weak smile swept over her face, not the full version of herself. “That hasn’t worked out so well, now has it? All my advice hasn’t actually led anywhere.”

“That’s because my specialty is doing the exact opposite.” I returned her smile with a watered down version of my own. “And look where that got me.”

She drew in a breath, smoothed over the comforter again, then looked at me. Really looked at me, her gaze so piercing, so deep, that I knew she was seeing me in a way she never had before. She seemed to peer past the T-shirts she hated, the flip-flops, the raggedy jeans, the unfulfilled life, and see the daughter I was, for better or worse. I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable, bracing myself for her judgment.

“Hilary,” she said, biting her lip, then going on, the words coming out of her with a catch on the end of the syllables, “I am so proud of you, of the woman that you have become—”

A lump formed in my throat, thick and hard. I didn’t think I could ever swallow again. I had never heard those words from my mother before. For a second, I wanted to tell her to stop, to not finish the sentence, because I wasn’t sure I could hear it, as weird as that sounded. I didn’t want her to add a but, to take it back with a conjunction that could sweep it all away.

She didn’t do that. She went on, not even aware that three decades of unspent emotions were clogging my throat and stinging my eyes, completely oblivious to how utterly unprepared I was to hear her speak these words.

“—You may not have become what I thought I wanted.” She let out a little laugh. “Okay, not at all what I had dreamed, what I imagined or what I planned when I got out my silly little spreadsheets and lists. But you became what you wanted to be, which is exactly what should have happened. You were living your life, not mine. And well…it turned out not to be so bad in the end. You’re happy, right?”

“Yeah. I am.” But was I? Hadn’t there been this ache for more? This constant wondering if this was all there was? And yet, fear held me back from moving from my spot, as if holding on to the bus could keep it from moving to the next stop.

My mother’s smile widened, this one strengthening and becoming more like the usual Rosemary Delaney. “If there’s anything I have learned in this week we’ve been together on the road, it’s that that’s what’s important. That we’re truly happy, not just pretending to be.” She looked down again at the bedding, tracing the outline of a green leaf with a finger, her nail skating along the edge of the reed-and-lily-pad pattern. “We get so few of those days. So few when we are really happy.” She lifted her gaze to mine. “And we had some of those days, didn’t we? Not just this week, but before?”

I rose, crossing to the bed, sinking down beside her. “Of course we did, Ma.”

Her eyes glistened, and I wondered again at this woman that I didn’t seem to know, who hurt, like everyone else, and who maybe had a few secrets of her own, a need to be loved, to be told it was going to be okay, just like I did.

Who wondered about what had happened behind that closed door every single day of her life. What could have been done before that door shut. Just like I did.

She covered my hand with hers, a bond forming between us that went beyond a cup of coffee. “I want you to have more of those happy days, Hilary. Marry Nick, honey. Take a risk.”

Fear returned again, beating like a flock of birds in my chest. “I don’t know, Ma. The whole thought terrifies me. Too many what-ifs.”

“I know that feeling, that fear.”

“You? What have you ever been afraid of?”

Her gaze drifted off into the past. “I never tried for another baby because I couldn’t face losing another one. And I was afraid of making things worse.”

“With Dad,” I finished.

She nodded, then gave my hand a squeeze. “If you live your life by what-ifs, Hilary, you’ll never find out what could be. And I really want you to find that out.” Ma leaned over and pressed a kiss to my cheek, lingering for a long moment against my face.

My mind rocketed back to when I was five, six, little enough to be tucked in bed by my father, to still take a bear with me, to still have a night-light, to still believe in Santa Claus. My mother would get home well after my bedtime, because she’d been immersed in studies at Suffolk, or working long hours in her internship.

More often than not, I’d be asleep, but once in a while I’d still be awake when she’d come home. And when she did, she’d always stop in my room, her shoes in one hand—those pumps, always pumps, as if she was dressed to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court even when she was just going to school—her nylons swishing in the quiet darkness, the scent of Chanel No.5 carrying lightly in the air as she bent down over my bed and pressed a kiss to my forehead.

I’d keep my eyes shut, my breathing even, my body still as a statue. For just that moment, I wanted to be caught up in that magical embrace of my mother’s. Because that was the only time she would let her guard down and be a mother, not a taskmaster, not a judge and jury, but just a mother, an ordinary mother, inhaling the scent of her daughter’s hair, and holding a kiss for a long, quiet moment in the dark.

“I love you,” she whispered now, her lips against my skin, soft and tender. A mother’s kiss.

And one of us began to cry.

sixteen

I’d worried that without Nick to serve as buffer, my mother and I would slip right back into what we had been before—adversaries. But as we drove through the rest of the Rocky Mountains, a never-ending vista of beauty, our conversations became, well—

Conversations.

Good thing, too, because it helped take my mind off how badly I had screwed things up with Nick. How he was flying back to Massachusetts as I drove in the opposite direction—the very metaphor for our relationship. Just a few days ago, everything had been wonderful with us, and now, we’d diverged. I didn’t see a way to bring us back together without giving Nick the one thing he wanted, and I didn’t.

“Did you always want to be a lawyer?” I asked my mother, focusing on her, instead of my deplorable love life.

She laughed. “I did. You know me. I could argue the price of peanuts with an elephant.”

“That’s true.”

“I drove my mother crazy, always arguing back with her and breaking all her rules.”

I shifted in the driver’s seat to stare at her. “You? You’re kidding me.”

“Believe it or not, but I was quite the hellion when I was younger. Why do you think I tried so hard to keep you in line? I knew what could go wrong. Because I’d…Well, I’d done a few of those things myself.”

“Yeah, right.” I snorted. “Ma, you’d make Miss Goody Two Shoes look like a juvenile delinquent.”

“I’m serious. I broke a few laws in my day. Nothing that got me put in jail, but still, I wasn’t perfect.”

I found that hard to believe, especially given how tight my mother toed the legal line now. “What’d you do? Commit jaywalking? Spit your gum on the sidewalk?”

“Try grand theft auto.”

I sent a sharp glance her way, and saw a smug, almost conspiratorial smile on her face, as if she was proud she shared a little mischief in her past. “No way!”

“Yep. I stole my grandmother’s car when I was eleven. I was running away from home after a dispute over my bedtime. I got as far as the telephone pole in front of Mrs. Feehan’s house four doors down.”

I laughed so hard, I nearly had to pull over because tears were streaming down my face and blocking my vision. “You really did that?”

She held up three fingers on her right hand. “Scouts’ honor.”

“That almost makes my own car theft pale in comparison.”

Whoops. I hadn’t meant to let that one slip out. But I couldn’t reach out and shovel the words back into my mouth. They sat there between us, like a third passenger. I sidled a glance my mother’s way to see her reaction.

“1998,” she said. “When you stole the landscaper’s truck, went to Niagara Falls and got married.”

My jaw dropped, nearly hit my chest. “You knew?”

“Why do you think your annulment went through without so much as a blip? And why do you think the landscaper didn’t press charges?”

I swallowed those tidbits. Digested them, churning them around with the surprise already there. The biggest secret of my life, the one I’d gone to elaborate work to keep from my mother. I’d done a lot of things in my life that I didn’t want her to know, but breaking laws hadn’t been on the list—except for this one time. I’d thought I’d dodged a bullet when the landscaper had either not noticed or not reported the truck stolen, and that my mother, the lawyer, wouldn’t end up defending her own daughter in court.

“Don’t end up in jail,” had been Rosemary Delaney’s biggest piece of advice as I’d been growing up. Because she knew what jail was like. Knew what kind of evil lurked there. And I’d known the last photo she’d want to see of me would be a mug shot. So I’d kept the secret, begged everyone I knew never to say a word to my mother. Snuck back into the house, done extra chores, been on my best behavior for weeks, and never mentioned that boyfriend’s name again.

Until now.

“But I thought you hated Tommy McGrath. Didn’t even want me dating him.” He’d been in that bad-boy category, the kind of guy who stomped on my heart and treated it like dirt.

In other words, not a Nick kind of guy. Who my mother considered a keeper, but I hadn’t exactly done a good job in the keeper category, either. Thankfully, my mother hadn’t leaped on criticizing me for that today.

“I did. But your father kept telling me that the more I harped on about Tommy, the farther and the faster you’d run away.”

“Which is exactly what I did.” I thought of the fight I’d had with my mother, that last night I’d spent in my parents’ house. I’d packed a bag, stolen the truck, because my mother had hidden my car keys, and taken off for Niagara Falls. Picking up Tommy on the way—because he hadn’t been able to hold down a job, and thus, didn’t own a car.

Right there should have been a good clue that he wasn’t Mr. Right.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything about what I did?” I asked.

“Because I didn’t want you to run again.” Her eyes met mine, misty with a two-decades old hurt still lingering in them, and I could see the worry, the pain I had put her through, for my impromptu, selfish decision to run away.

“I’m sorry.”

She smiled, and the mist disappeared. “I know.”

“I’d been so convinced he was the man for me. I thought I’d convince you, too, by marrying him.” I laughed. “That backfired.”

Back then, I’d had the crazy idea that marriage would save a relationship. Prove something about how much a guy loved me, and I loved him. But as I’d gotten older, and seen the end result of an unhappy relationship, I became more and more skittish around gold rings, like a horse that had been locked too long in the barn.

“What finally changed your mind about Tommy?”

“When I had to pay for my own wedding. Or maybe it was when he tried to slide a beer tab on my finger instead of a wedding ring. Or could have been when he had the bright idea of embarking on a life of crime instead of getting a real job. He had issues with the whole nine-to-five thing.”

My mother’s mouth formed into a little O. “Not exactly Mr. Perfect, was he?”

I shook my head. Thinking of Tommy made me miss Nick even more. Nick wasn’t perfect, but he had a lot more going for him in the Mr. Right category than Tommy had ever had. If only Nick didn’t come attached to so many expectations…

“Tommy wasn’t even Mr. Perfect’s ugly second cousin. I clearly drew the short straw in the frog lottery.”

“If he didn’t have any money, why did you run off and elope with him?”

“Tommy had a plan, all right—turned out he thought he could pay for the wedding with a little help from the casinos. He had five bucks on him and lost it all in a few pulls of the quarter slots. After that, he tried to talk me into robbing a convenience store. I guess he figured if I could steal a truck, I’d have no problem with knocking over a gas station or two.” I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Actually, I wasn’t thinking at all. You were right about him.”

My mother cupped a hand around her ear. “Did I just hear you correctly? Did you say I was right?”

“Maybe,” I said, teasing her, laughing with her. “Okay, yes, you were right. There. I said it twice. Mark the occasion in your Day Planner.”

We looked at each other, and I knew in that moment that we were sharing the same thought. When had she and I ever laughed together, just us, without my dad serving as joke teller, comedian, entertainer? When had we ever found a moment of camaraderie, of such solid agreement, before this trip?

“I’m glad we did this, Ma,” I said, the lump in my throat so thick, it nearly blocked the words from getting out.

“Me, too.” She reached for me, her hand so like mine, only with the wisdom and lines of age and experience. I saw my future in that hand, and for the first time, it didn’t look so bad. “Now, how about a cup of coffee?”

“Sounds like a good idea.” I squinted against the glare of the sun and the lingering sting in my eyes. “A really good idea.”

We made it all the way to Utah. To the painted purple mountains, the stuff of songs, before the petals began to fall off the rose.

I noticed the swelling first. My mother’s left leg, taking on a life of its own, becoming nearly twice the size it should be. She gave up wearing shoes at the Utah border, kicked off her slippers after the first rest stop.

“You’re feeling bad again, aren’t you?”

She didn’t bother lying, nor could she cover the flush in her cheeks, the way her face scrunched up every few seconds when a fresh wave of pain hit her. “I think the Coumadin has stopped working.”

I missed Nick more in that moment than ever before. His steady, even keel, the way he could lay a palm on my shoulder and make it seem like everything would be fine. But I’d screwed everything up with him and now, he’d stopped taking my calls. I could hardly blame him. He’d said it was over—

And when Nick was done with something, he was done. The man recycled, for God’s sake. He didn’t hold on to mementos. Or dead-end relationships.

I glanced again at my mother. “Maybe it’s time you went in for that catheterization thing the doctor talked about.”

Why had we decided to keep going? Why had I let her talk me into continuing toward California? I should have kept her in Indiana, or brought her back to Massachusetts, not driven her through state after state full of nothing but desert and mountains.

She shook her head so hard even the hairspray had trouble holding on. “No. We have to keep going.”

“Ma, your health is more important.”

“I won’t have another opportunity like this.” Her hands went to her purse, again in her lap. The all-business, travel posture. But her fingers fluttered over the clasp, and the flush in her cheeks deepened to a darker crimson. “I promise to go to the doctor as soon as we get home.”

I sent another glance at her leg, at the ballooning, reddened skin that used to be a calf. Not good. Not good at all. Panic rose in my throat, expanded my chest. I could handle this alone. I had to. “I don’t have to be Marcus Welby to tell you don’t have that much time.”

“Hilary—”

I jerked her purse away, yanked the road atlas up from its place on the floor and laid it on her lap. No. “Find the nearest damned hospital, Ma. And don’t argue with me anymore.”

She blinked in surprise. “Now you’re the mother?”

I gave her a grin, but it was only a mask for the worry mounting with every mile passing under our wheels. Miles that brought us farther from home and deeper into the remote, vast boondocks of Utah, light years away from anything resembling emergency medical personnel and the comfort of a big blue H sign. “I think it’s about time somebody told you what to do for a change. And, even better, about time you listened.”

I pressed harder on the accelerator. To hell with speeding tickets, with rules of the road. In fact, I could use a police escort right about now. Or at the very least, those miracle pigeons that had carried Brigham Young over the mountains.

Ma shifted in her seat. Pain flickered across her face. Sweat beaded on her brow, and her eyes fluttered shut.

“Good,” she said on a staggered breath, “because I think I need someone else to be in charge for a while.”

seventeen

This time, my mother’s doctor was old, grizzled and a man of few words. Joel Gifford, M.D., stood six and a half feet tall, with white hair, a rough, bushy white beard, and a loosened, blue-striped tie at the neck of a slightly wrinkled blue oxford shirt. If trustworthy had a face, it would be his. “She did fine.”

“The catheterization was successful?”

The doctor nodded. His beard did a little jig.

“Will there be any side effects? Problems?”

“Time will tell. We’ll watch her for a few days.”

“And then—”

His green eyes met mine, and in them, I read knowledge that he held, but wasn’t sharing. “You need to talk to your mother about that.”

“What do you mean?”

He put a hand on my shoulder, and the sternness in his face softened for a moment. For a moment, he resembled my late Grandfather Delaney, who’d played Santa, and had a way of telling a story that took an afternoon but never managed to bore his audience. “Talk to her. Talk a lot. That’s all I can say.”

He gave me a pat, then turned and left, a tall man with a slight shuffle in his gait, as if trying to keep his height, his presence, to a minimum.

I held my cell phone, wanting to call Nick, but didn’t. Instead, I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes, remembering the first morning I’d woken up in Nick’s apartment. He’d pulled me into his arms, held me tight, and somehow our conversation drifted toward the type of house he’d build if he ever had enough time and money.

I’d bolted from the bed, claiming I wanted a shower. Nick tried to tease me back under the covers. He’d promised to cook me breakfast. Instead, I’d gotten dressed and ducked down to the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts, returning with a bag of artery-clogging fried holes.

We’d laughed, we’d eaten, but we hadn’t talked—really talked about anything deep and meaningful. I thought back over our relationship and realized that the closer Nick got, the more often I ran out the door. Found other things to occupy our mouths and time so that I could push off the heavy stuff until tomorrow.

Now where had that gotten me? Nick was gone, probably for good. And my mother was ill. Heavy stuff was sitting in the next room and I couldn’t ignore it anymore or buy myself time with some doughnuts.

A few minutes later, I sat in another hospital room, this one almost an exact replica of the one in Indiana, right down to the antiseptic smell, the sounds, the sheets, the cheery but cheesy décor. I wondered if you could travel the country and visit hospitals like hotels, interchanging one for the other and not tell which was which. Would a facility in Boston be any different from one in Texas, save for the addition of a few r’s in the nurses’ diction?

“Hilary,” my mother said, the syllables slightly garbled, her voice groggy, her movements nearly as slurred as her speech.

“Hey, Ma.” I sat down on the bed beside her, sinking into the vinyl mattress, my hand snaking across the knit blanket to take hers. “How you doing?”

She took a moment to rouse herself, gather her wits. “I feel like a vampire who got kidnapped and drained by the Red Cross, but other than that, okay.”

I sat back, surprised. “Did you just make a joke?”

“Hey, I’m learning a new skill every day.” She shook off a little more of the grogginess, becoming more of herself. Showing more of the bulldog, less of the woman who’d just been under anesthesia moments before.

I grinned. “Hey, if you can become Jay Leno, that gives me hope that I might be able to do something else, too. Something I’ve been dreaming about for a while now.”

“Like what?” She pressed the button on her bed, raising her head a few inches.

“I’ll only tell you if you promise not to laugh.”

“I can’t laugh. I just had surgery. And you know how surgery goes, sometimes they take out the wrong thing. Like a funny bone.”

I did the laughing for her. “That’s two jokes in five minutes. What did they put in your anesthesia?”

“Nothing.” She brushed her hair back off her face, the usually pouffy style now flattened by her time in bed, the blue paper surgical cap that had spent an hour on her head. “Tell me about your dream.”

I drew in a breath, and with it, the courage to give voice to a thought that had lain dormant for years, never becoming much more than a flitting idea, something I had shared with no one but Nick, who had bugged me for years to pursue the thought. All those hours behind the wheel of the minivan had kick-started my imagination somewhere along the road, making me wonder what roads were open in my own life, if I decided to veer off the current path. “I was thinking of maybe opening my own restaurant.”

“Your own restaurant? But—” Ma cut off the objection, slid a smile onto her face. “I think you’d be great at that.”

“You were just about to tell me what a crazy idea it was.”

“I was not—” Ma bit her lip. “Okay, yes I was. But I’d be wrong. You’ve done a good job with Ernie’s, and I bet you’d do a great job with your own place, too.”

I rose and went to the window. The heater at my knees blasted hot air straight up, giving me a desert-worthy facial. “Ma, you don’t know that. You only know what I’ve told you.”

“I’ve been to Ernie’s. Several times.”

I dropped to the corner of the heater, perched on the closed control panel. “You’ve eaten at Ernie’s? When?”

She nodded. “The girls and I go there almost every Tuesday night before we go to Betty’s house to play cards. And it’s not a bad place at all. I was wrong for ever calling it a strip joint and for giving you a hard time for working there. The girls and I enjoy our Tuesday night nachos and margaritas.”

Tuesdays were the nights I spent mainly in the office, paying bills, placing orders for the next week, filling out the schedule. Ernie generally handled the floor, because it was one of our least busy nights. She’d been there, what’s more enjoyed it, and never come to see me? Never mentioned the visit? “Why didn’t Ernie ever tell me?”

“I told him not to.” My mother smoothed the blanket in front of her, creasing a fold that didn’t need to be creased. “I was afraid that if you knew I was coming to the restaurant, you’d…”

“What?”

She shook her head and reached for the foam cup of ice water on her table. “Never mind, it’s not important.”

I leaned my elbows on my knees, pressing forward, closer. “No, it is. Tell me.”

She hesitated, just as I had done a hundred times when confronting difficult subjects.

Okay, started confronting the difficult subjects. I hadn’t actually tackled too many until this trip. For more than thirty years, I’d done my best to avoid them.

When I was three, maybe four, I’d put my fingers into the flame on the gas stove, fascinated by the way the dancing colors shifted from orange to blue, to nearly white. I wanted to capture some of that, hold it in my palm, play with the beauty.

The burn had seemed to sear all the way to my toes. I remember my father scooping me up, rushing me to the sink, turning on the cold water with one hand, while he opened the fridge with his toe, grabbed the butter out with his other hand and smoothed it all over my red, throbbing fingers. My mother had called the ambulance, coordinating their arrival and the subsequent medical treatment like a general on the battlefield.

Ever since, I’d stayed away from stoves. I didn’t cook, ever. In fact, I couldn’t cook for beans, and left everything kitchen related up to Nick, who wasn’t much better at it than me, which was why we both kept a slew of take-out menus near the phone. I could manage Ernie’s Bar & Grille, could taste a dish and tell if it would be a hit or a flop, but stayed far away from anything potentially flambé.

Heart-wise, I’d touched the emotional stove one too many times and been burned, too. It had made me skittish around Nick, around any man. Just as I’d learned to stay away from the kitchen stove, I’d learned to avoid confrontation, discussion and debate of topics that tread too close to teary eyes and broken hearts.

Now, in a too-warm Utah hospital room, I watched my mother—a woman I’d always thought of as cold and distant, unfeeling, an emotional stone—fold and refold the edge of a blanket. What if she had simply been burned once too often, too? And was only holding her fingers back from the flame? What if that was what made her hesitate about opening up to me, too?

Could we really be that similar?

“Tell me why, Ma,” I said, softer now. As if I held the burn balm in my hand, and was trying to coax her back into the kitchen.

She met my gaze finally, her face pale in the overhead light, wan from the ordeal of the trip, the surgery. The cup went back to her end table, and she went back to folding the blanket’s edge. “I…I didn’t want you to be embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed? Why would I…” But then I realized that a week ago I probably would have been. I thought back to who we’d been before this trip, to the relationship we used to have.

If my mother had shown up with her friends in Ernie’s back then, I’d have braced myself for the worst. For her complaints, for her nitpicking, and not seen it as interest in my life, but as her taking an opportunity to complain. Again. Hadn’t that been my exact attitude on the sidewalk outside her house a few days ago?

And I’d have been embarrassed, yes. I would have stood there in Ernie’s, feeling awkward and unsure of what to say to her, to her friends.

I looked at her now. I wasn’t sure things had entirely changed, or whether this rush of empathy came from seeing her in a weakened state, a temporary bond forged out of her illness, and a truce called by our trip. Either way, she had wiped the slate clean with me earlier; I could do the same.

“Next time you’re at Ernie’s,” I said, “let me know and I’ll be sure you get the best table.”

Ma arched a brow. “There’s a best table at Ernie’s?”

“Sure there is, Ma. The one with me.”

She bit her lip, then released it. A smile wobbled on her face, then took hold. “I’ll do that, Hilary. I promise.”

When Rosemary Delaney made someone a promise, she kept it. I may have been old enough to have a five-year-old of my own, but the joy of a child who’d been given a gift by a parent rose inside me. I ducked my head, nodded, emotion clogging my voice. “That’d be nice, Ma. Really nice.”

The moment extended between us, that bridge being built as fast as the one on the River Kwai. Neither of us said anything, probably afraid of dislodging any of the newly laid timbers.

After a while, my mother cleared her throat, then released the blanket’s edge. “Tell me how you would do a restaurant different, Hilary.”

So I told her, sharing my dream of a place that offered more than Ernie’s, or any other restaurant, did, that created an environment like home, with sofas and coffee tables, cookies instead of cheesecake after dinner, a warm and friendly place, not so much a restaurant as an environment. As I did, it made me think invariably of Nick, who had loved the idea, too. He’d gone as far as sketching up some furniture for my dream restaurant, helping me create some on-paper plans. But that was as far as it had ever gotten, until now. A piece of paper and an idea he and I had tossed like a verbal football. He was the first and only man I’d ever shared my dreams with. I knew that meant something, but right now, I wasn’t going to visit that. “I guess that psychology degree came in handy after all, because I’ve heard enough people’s problems at Ernie’s to want to design a place that offers some sense of community, of a home away from home. A place where people can gather, laugh, talk. Sort of taking the coffee-shop concept up several notches.”

“I think it’s a great idea.” In my mother’s eyes, I read true support. Belief in me. I had never seen that before, and it hit me out of left field. But her next words came with an even stronger punch of surprise. “And if you want a backer, I have a nest egg that’s not going anywhere.”

I started waving it off. “Ma, you don’t have to—”

She grabbed my arm. “Yes, I do. Let me do this for you, Hilary.”

“But, Ma, you’re going to need that money for your retirement. You should hold on to it, pay for a condo in Florida or all those wild Bingo days ahead of you.” I grinned, but she didn’t return the smile.

“I’m really tired now.” She pressed the button on her bed. The top half lowered with a whine, and a slightly jerky movement. “I think I’ll take a nap, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, okay. Sure thing. I think I’ll go back to the hotel and take a shower.”

But as I left the room, a feeling nagged at me that had nothing to do with restaurants, nest eggs or surgical procedures. I thought back to what Dr. Gifford had said to me in the hall earlier and wondered what had just gone unsaid in that hospital room.

And what secrets my mother was still keeping to herself.

“I haven’t seen him,” Karen told me when I called her after I’d showered, changed and tried again to reach Nick. No answer on his cell phone, no answer at his apartment. I didn’t leave a voice mail—I was not going to make that mistake a second time, just hung up, and tried not to picture all the worst-case scenarios.

“What do you mean, you haven’t seen him?”

On the other end, I could hear Karen shopping. Hangers screeched against metal racks as she searched aimlessly through Macy’s for clothes she didn’t need. “He played at Ernie’s last night, but he hasn’t come over to our house; he hasn’t been down at any of the regular haunts. It’s like he just disappeared. He must be hanging out somewhere new now.”

Or with someone new. Man, when I screwed up, I did it royally big. I paced the hotel room my mother and I were sharing. Ran a hand through my wet hair, trying not to imagine Nick with another woman. Not doing too well in that department. “Do you think he’s seeing someone else?”

Karen didn’t say anything for a moment. The hangers stopped moving. She let out a sigh. “He loves you, Hilary.”

“That didn’t answer my question.”

“When are you coming home?” She went back to shopping. I heard the faint ring of cash registers.

“I don’t know. My mother just had surgery. She probably can’t travel for a while.”

“Don’t stay gone much more. You leave a man alone too long and he tends to forget.”

“You are not reassuring me here. You’re supposed to be my friend. This is not making me feel better.”

Karen laughed. “You’re right. Okay, I’ll go over to Nick’s place and plaster the walls with your picture. Is that better?”

“Yeah. And while you’re at it, get a life-size cardboard cutout of me and leave it on his doorstep.”

The hangers stopped moving again. “A life-size cardboard cutout?”

“Just kidding.” Even I knew that wouldn’t be enough. It was either me or nothing. Nick wanted the whole package. The problem was this package came with way too many ties to make it work, even with a man like him. And even if I could find a way back, his heart clearly had already been lost.

Or, had Nick simply gotten scared again and decided he didn’t want a commitment? Men did that every day, and he had done it once before, albeit four years ago.

I hated being this far away and not knowing.

I said goodbye and hung up the cell phone, then started pacing again. I looked up at the ceiling, but didn’t find any answers there. Instead, I ended up colliding with my mother’s open suitcase, knocking it off the edge of the second double bed and onto the floor, spilling the contents across the dark mauve carpet.

I cursed, then sighed, bent down and began refolding my mother’s clothes and putting them back into the Samsonite. Pajamas, underwear, blouses, slippers—

And a book.

My mother liked to read before she went to sleep, so the book wasn’t a surprise. I flipped it over, giving the cover a quick glance before laying it on top of the pile of clothes. The bright yellow-and-red cover caught my eye again, though, and I glanced at it a second time.

FIGHTING CANCER: MEDICAL AND NATURAL METHODS

My hand froze, fingers tracing over the raised letters in the title. “Cancer?”

The title didn’t change to a Stephen King or a Nora Roberts novel, just because I pronounced the words aloud.

I opened the book. Dozens of pages had been dog-eared. Passages highlighted. Yellow Post-it Notes stuck along the edges, marked with my mother’s tight scrawl. Notes marked in the margins about things to eat, alternative treatments to try.

And more notes about alternative treatments that had been tried—

And hadn’t worked.

I swallowed hard, betrayal slamming into me with a tidal force, knocking me from my knees and onto the floor. How could she have kept this from me? This wasn’t some simple blood clot, this was a major disease.

A life-threatening, life-ending disease.

I scrambled to my feet, clutching the book to my chest, leaving the rest of the clothes where they were, no longer seeing that mess, only this new, much bigger, much worse one.

My steps faltered, knees knocking together. I could barely see to get out of the room, the words on the pages still swirling in my vision as I hurried back to the hospital.

This time to find out the truth, the whole truth—

And nothing less.

eighteen

“You know.” My mother pushed her dinner tray to the side when I entered her room.

“When were you going to tell me?”

“I wasn’t.”

“What?” I glanced at her roommate, a woman maybe ten years younger than my mother, who was watching soap operas on her TV with a set of headphones, and lowered my voice anyway. “What do you mean, never? How could you do that to me?”

A heavy sigh escaped her, seeming to weigh down the very air, the room. “I didn’t want you to do exactly what you’re doing right now.”

“And what am I doing right now?” My words were a whispered shout.

“Worrying.”

“I’m your daughter, Ma. That comes with the territory.” I tossed the book onto the foot of her bed, then turned to pace and run my fingers through my hair, still damp, now a mess, like me. Worrying didn’t even begin to describe what I was doing, feeling right now. “Did you want to go through this alone? What was your plan? To run down to Mexico and try out some alternative treatment? Head to Canada and score some illegal drugs? Or maybe call up some faith healer and order some holy water over the Internet? Or were you going to actually go home, listen to some real doctors, and take their advice?”

She shook her head. “It’s too late for that.”

“What the hell do you mean, too late for that?”

“I have stage four lung cancer. Inoperable.”

The wind left me in a whoosh, sucked out by a giant vacuum. I rocked on my heels, unsteady now, looking for a compass, finding none, nothing to hang on to that would help me through this, hold me secure as I absorbed news I didn’t want to hear.

The second hand on the wall clock ticked along on its journey, a long skinny line marking time. Beside it hung a calendar, most of May marked off with big black X’s, as if the nurse had wanted her patients to see the days pass, one after another. What kind of masochist did that to people? Here, watch your life pass you by while you lie here, powerless to stop it?

And yet, even as I watched that second hand move, it seemed nothing else in the room moved. Not the air, not my lungs. I forced myself to turn back to my mother. To the truth I still couldn’t hear. “Did you…did you get a second opinion?”

She nodded. “A second. And a third. In two other states at that.”

“In Indiana and Utah,” I finished. My feet started moving again, taking me from one end of her bed to the other, trying to work off the frantic energy now running through my veins, my mind. Too late. How could it be?

Every step only seemed to make it worse, to multiply anxiety atop of panic, twisting my stomach into a tight, confused knot. I wanted to run out of the room, scream at her, and hug her, all at the same time.

But mostly I wanted to run. To get back in that minivan and be anywhere but here, to pretend this wasn’t happening, that I hadn’t just found that book, hadn’t just heard the words, “Stage Four. Inoperable.”

That I could go back to my life, to working at Ernie’s and living in limbo with Nick and everything would be as it was. That I wasn’t going to have to grow up really fast in some strange city in one of those square, in-the-middle states I couldn’t have picked out on a map of the country if you paid me.

My gaze strayed to the book, to the reality blared in red across its cover, then to my mother’s face, looking the same as it had last week. Last month. Last year. “But…but that’s impossible. You aren’t that sick.”

“Yet.”

One word, hanging in the air between us, ticking like a bomb. Only no hero was going to rush in and defuse it, no Bruce Willis type saving the day with a clever deadpan delivery and last-minute miracle. “Are you sure?”

She nodded, and averted her gaze, as if even she didn’t want to accept the truth.

And then, my legs went out from beneath me. I collapsed onto her bed, still not believing what I’d heard. The information refused to stick, as if its glue had no staying power. But somewhere deep inside me, the whisper had already begun. My. Mother. Is. Dying.

My mother.

Is dying.

Dying.

Our eyes met and held for one long, pointed moment, both of us mute. Inside my chest, the whisper gained in volume, tangling with my heart, and the disbelief I’d held on to so stubbornly began to crumble, broken down by the simplest of all weapons—

Tears.

No, no, no. Not now. Not yet. Not my mother.

One tear slipped down my cheek, then another, and then I was surging forward, gathering her into my arms, no longer separated by past arguments and frustrations, all of that set aside in the clarity of time’s shortened fuse.

“Oh, God, Ma,” I cried, my heart tearing in two, breaking in a way I had never thought it could break again.

She clutched at me, her hands fisted on my back at first, then one at a time, their tight grips released and her fingers sought strength in my back, in me. She sobbed into my shoulder, her tears mixing with mine, mingling together, shared grief for an invisible thief who was stealing her at the very moment when she had finally found me—and I had found her.

This time I was the one inhaling her scent, memorizing that Chanel No.5, as if I could commit every inch of her to my memory now and hold it for later.

But I knew—I already knew from losing my father—that in a year, two, five, there would be holes and gaps that I’d never be able to fill, and that only made me clutch harder, hold tighter, the rage inside building anew at those twin devil diseases of cancer and clots, that were mounting a dual war on the only parent I had left.

I ran a trembling hand along her hair, soothing and calming her sobs, switching roles. I drew in a breath, forcing myself to put my own tears aside.

In some intuitive sense I’d realized a startling twist in our relationship—she needed me to be strong. Now. She’d said as much back in the van earlier. She needed me to take care of her, to take over the wheel. To tell her where to go, what to do, what direction to take from here.

If I broke down, if I became the needy one, my mother would set herself aside and tend to me—because that’s what mothers did.

And that, I knew now, was what Rosemary Delaney had done, in her own way for me for the past thirty-six years. It may not have been the way I would have dreamed a mother should be. Or the way my childhood friend Lisa Rindell’s mother had parented her, with Oreo cookies and handmade jumpers.

But it had been the best way my mother knew how to do it, and I hadn’t ended up in jail or addicted to meth, so clearly it hadn’t been all bad.

Now, it was her turn, and I had damned well better suck it up and find a way to put on a smile, even as everything within me fell apart, piece by shattered piece, as it lost the woman who had come to mean more than I ever realized.

My mother is dying.

And I had to learn how to deal. Immediately.

I swiped the tears off my face before drawing back and facing her. “It’ll be okay, Ma, we’re going to fight this.”

She shook her head, defeat heavy in her eyes, her shoulders. “There’s not much we can do.”

“There’s plenty.” I didn’t know whether or not that was true, but did know there were chapters of that book she had yet to dog-ear. “There are other books, other doctors.”

Her face took on the stern, don’t-argue-with-me Rosemary look. “Hilary, the doctors told me—”

“Ma,” I said, cutting her off, not wanting to hear her death sentence, not again, not wanting to hear her give up. I only had so much strength in me right now. “I don’t give a damn what the other doctors told you. Like I said, there are other doctors. Besides, since when have I ever listened to anyone? Maybe it’s time you took a cue from me.” I planted my hands on either side of her hips and reflected that Rosemary look right back at her. “We are not giving up. Not now. And I am not letting you give up.”

A smile took over her face, but it barely reached her eyes. And when she spoke, I still heard tears. “You’re stubborn, you know that?”

I had to swallow so I wouldn’t cry, because in her face, and in those words, I saw the reflection of everything I thought had driven me crazy about my mother. And now I realized that was the very thing we needed for the days ahead.

Stubbornness. Who’d have thought that was exactly the key I’d be looking for to drive this bus forward?

“Well, who the hell do you think I inherited that trait from?” I sucked in another breath, and with it, one more ounce of strength. “We are going to fight this together, Ma.”

“Together?” She was asking for a promise.

For a commitment. For me to be there for the long, tough haul ahead. For me, the undependable one to finally step up to the plate, and not let go of the bat when she needed me most.

I smiled and I nodded, even though it hurt my face to be brave. “Of course. You didn’t think you’d get rid of me that easily, did you? Not after all these miles.”

Then I drew her into my arms again and hugged her very, very tight.

So that my tears could fall behind her back.

nineteen

“Why did the blonde get fired from her job at the pharmacy?”

“I give up,” my mother said.

“You can’t give up. It’s not allowed. You have to make an educated guess.”

“Isn’t that an oxymoron when you’re telling dumb-blonde jokes?”

“Probably. Now come on, guess.”

My mother thought a minute, her mood considerably brighter than when I’d arrived that morning. She’d been picking at her breakfast, barely eating any of the bland oatmeal and plain toast she’d ordered from the hospital cafeteria. I’d smuggled in a cheesecake muffin and a grande mocha with caramel from Starbucks, then sat down with the joke book, determined to get her laughing. It had taken one chicken crossing the road, two ducks in a bar and three monkey jokes before she’d found her good humor.

“Okay,” Ma said, a twinkle in her eye. “She was fired because she kept trying to sell the Q-tips as rectal thermometers.”

“Ma!” I covered my mouth to keep my laughter from waking her roommate, whose biggest problem seemed to be narcolepsy. “I cannot believe you said that. You are bad.”

“Hey, it’s all your influence.”

I put up my hands. “I take no blame for that. It’s your own twisted mind. But I have to admit that was a pretty good one.” I looked down at the book. “Okay here’s what it says. The blonde was fired from her job at the pharmacy for failing to print the labels on the prescriptions. ‘Helloo,’ she argued,” I said in a high-pitched goofy voice, putting on the full blonde act, ‘“The bottles didn’t fit in the typewriter.’”

My mother’s laughter rang like Christmas bells. “Oh, Hilary, that one was even worse and much tackier. But so, so funny. It’s a good thing you’re a blonde.”

“Hey, who better to tell blonde jokes?” I grinned. “Now, do you want to know how to thin your thighs, rid yourself of those pesky wrinkles?” I shuffled through the magazines beside me, reading the blaring headlines and their impossible promises aloud. “Or how to get men drooling over your amazing fashion sense?”

“Hmm,” Ma said, putting a finger to her lips, thinking it over, “I choose how to get the men drooling, because my fashion sense could use a little work.”

“What, you’re thinking of giving up the suits? The pumps?”

“Maybe it’s about time. I am retired, after all. Aren’t I supposed to be going around in polyester pants and a sun visor?”

“Only if you’ve got the matching bowling shoes.” I flipped through the first magazine, then turned it around, showing her pages of too-thin models in flouncy skirts with high-heeled boots, cowl-neck sweaters and hair that no one had in real life. “There you go. Fashion that attracts a man.”

My mother looked down at her diamond-print hospital gown. “And I take it this is the kind that attracts frogs instead of Prince Charmings?”

“Exactly.” I gestured at my own less-than-runway-worthy attire. “Though I can’t talk. I could pretty much pass for homeless.” Nick had never complained, I thought.

That brought back a pang. He still hadn’t called. I’d stopped calling him, because I couldn’t stand the ringing, the cheery voice mail. The no Nick on the other end.

And facing the fact that I’d probably lost the last great guy I’d ever meet. Right now, though, I was dealing with a lot, and trying to figure out the mess between Nick and I was one thing too many.

“Then we’ll have to go shopping together,” my mother said. “Make a day of it, take the train to Washington Center, grab some lunch in Boston.”

“That would be…interesting. You and me, shopping. We don’t exactly have the same taste, Ma.”

“What, you can drive all the way across the United States with me but you’re afraid to tackle a department store?”

I grinned, then tossed the magazine to the side. “All right. I’ll take your shopping challenge and raise you a shoe department. We’ll find some man-hunting-worthy attire for you, something more professional for me—”

“Something befitting a budding restaurant entrepreneur—”

“I like the sound of that,” I said, and as I did, I realized that I was excited about the possibility of owning my own restaurant. About a future that involved…dare I think it…responsibility. Challenges. Self-motivation. Big steps for a girl like me. “And after that, we’ll both get some really killer shoes that are not pumps.”

“I happen to like my pumps.”

“Ma, they are the ugliest shoes ever created by God or man, and you need something cute and more appropriate for a traveling woman such as yourself. Some kind of flats with—” I waved my hand “—I don’t know, ornamentation.” I grabbed one of the magazines, flipped the pages until I found a picture that summed up what I meant. “Like those. They have a cute bow and everything.”

“Those women have dainty feet. I have squat Fred Flintstone feet.”

“You are being uncooperative.” I wagged a finger at her. “That is not part of the plan.”

“And you are being very bossy. Like a mother.”

I sat back and laughed. “I am, aren’t I?”

“Yeah.” A smile stole across my mother’s face, one I’d never seen before. “I think you’re going to make a wonderful mother someday, Hilary. If you choose to have children of your own.”

“Oh, I don’t know…” But as my voice trailed off, I found the thought coming to my mind, as if all along that biological clock had been waiting for something to turn it on. Some trigger to open it up, take it out of the box, put it on the shelf and start it going.

Could I parent a child?

Could I see myself down the road, married to Nick, the two of us with a little girl? A little boy? Living in a three-bedroom Cape with the white picket fence that Nick wanted, wrapped around all of that?

“You really think I could be a mom?”

“Yeah,” Ma said. “I really do.”

Of all the people who would think that about me, my mother ranked last on the list. I’d always thought she considered me to be the most irresponsible person in the world. In fact, she’d told me exactly that after she’d left Reginald with Nick and me for the weekend. The pig had gotten lost for three hours because we’d neglected to leash him when he’d gone outside for a potty break.

We hadn’t expected him to make a break for it. But hey, if I’d been the pig, maybe I would have run, too.

Either way, ever since the toll booth in Massachusetts, Sally in Sandusky, Carla and Louie and their weird hot-dog casserole, and the odd way the hospital rooms seemed to bring us closer together than the cramped interior of a Mustang could, my mother had begun to see me in a different light.

A grown-up light. One with different possibilities for my future, different paths than I’d been taking.

And I suppose I’d begun to see myself in that light, too. So I heard that clock ticking and for the first time considered answering it.

“Are you going to hang around to be a grandma if I decide to have children?” Hope and a future hung in that statement, a white-picket-fence future I still wasn’t sure I wanted, but if it made my mother try harder, made her listen to her doctors, then I’d give that fence a little more thought, too. “Somebody’s going to have to tell me how to raise them.”

She smirked and eyed me, knowing full well I’d just thrown a trump card on the table, and the Rosemary Delaney I knew came back. “I’ll do my best.”

“That’s all I ask, Ma.” I gave her a smile. “That’s all I ask.”

Dr. Gifford rapped lightly on Ma’s door, then entered the room with the same slightly hunched, limited-presence gait as before. He gave each of us a nod. “Good afternoon. How are you feeling, Mrs. Delaney?”

Ma glanced at me. “Much better. Thank you.”

“Glad to hear it. We’ll let you go home tomorrow. Everything looks good—filter’s working as we planned.”

“She’s safe to travel?” I asked.

He nodded. “Safe as can be. Just take it easy going back to Massachusetts. Don’t push it. And check in with your primary care physician when you get there.” He gave my mother a smile, then patted her knee. “I’ll see you tomorrow before you leave.”

Then he was gone, the door shutting with a soft whoosh behind him.

“I bet you’ll be glad to get back home.” I picked up a magazine, flipping through it for another item that might tickle my mother’s funny bone. I was glad we were returning to Massachusetts, to a state where I knew doctors and hospitals were as plentiful as skyscrapers.

“Hilary, I want us to keep going.”

I paused, my finger running down the table of contents, my brain caught up in capital-lettered titles and cleverly written paragraphs. “What did you say?”

“I said I want to keep going. I want to finish our trip.”

“Ma, I understood why you said this back in Indiana. That was you being stubborn, wanting to pretend nothing was wrong, you were fine, all that. But now I know what’s going on with you. And we both know it’s really best if you go back home. For one, you’ve just had surgery and for another, you have…other things to deal with.” I didn’t want to come right out and say she had a battle with Death to fight, but we both could hear the implication left hanging in the air.

One I hadn’t quite completely accepted yet, as much as I tried. It still didn’t seem real, concrete. I’d deal with it in chunks, a little at a time.

Ma shook her head. “We need to keep going. I need to get to California.” She put up a hand, cutting off my objection before I could voice it. “Whether or not you want to face it, Hilary, I am dying. I may have a month, a year, two years. Hell, maybe God will take pity on me and give me five. But either way, I don’t have much time left.”

“Ma, no—”

“Don’t argue with me. I can’t—” She bit her lip and tears sprang to her eyes, choked in her voice. “I can’t do this if you argue with me.”

I didn’t want to cry. I had vowed to be strong, to be the one she could rely on, the rock my mother stood upon. But now, as she drove home the reality of her mortality, and asked the impossible of me, the sand shifted beneath my feet again, and I found my strength crumbling.

“Ma…” I didn’t finish the sentence, I didn’t argue, and I didn’t let the tears get any farther than the back of my eyes.

“Take me to the Pacific, Hilary. Let me dip my toes in the water. I did that with the Atlantic, and I’ve always wanted to do it with the ocean on the other side of the country. That was a dream your father and I had, all our lives. That’s all I want. Because—” And then it was her turn to cut off her words, to turn away, and swipe at her face.

“Oh, damn it, Ma. We can’t keep this up or the stupid hospital will run out of tissues,” I said, trying to inject a joke, some distance from all this heaviness, but it got all tangled in a sob.

Ma let out a half-laugh, half-sob and dispensed tissues to each of us, cheap scratchy slips of paper that did little more than blot the damp from our faces. After we’d cleaned up the worst of the damage, she met my gaze. “Will you take me? Please?”

“Why? Why has this trip been so important? It had nothing to do with Grandma’s china cup collection and love seat, did it?”

“No.” She shifted against her pillows, adjusted her blanket. Stalling. I’d have never thought that the woman who had argued cases that had been splashed on the front page of the Boston Globe would avoid the subject.

But then again, arguing for a defendant in front of a judge wasn’t about telling a personal truth. I realized then that my mother was more like me than I’d thought. She may have been the Bulldog in the courtroom but when it came to getting personal, she ran from the emotional flames as easily as I had.

So I waited. She was stuck in that hospital bed. She wasn’t going anywhere. And neither was I.

“I want to go to San Francisco because of your father.”

“Did Dad always want to see the Pacific Ocean? The Golden Gate Bridge or something?”

She laughed. “He didn’t give two figs about the Pacific Ocean or any particular place. All he ever wanted to do was experience life. Or at least, that’s what he used to want, before…” She grabbed another of those crappy tissues, but didn’t use it. “Before we lost the baby. Your father changed after that.”

“Changed? But I’ve seen videos of Dad before I was born, and when I was a little girl. I don’t remember him changing. I never saw…the trigger.” Everything my mother kept mentioning about change had never been some big moment in my life. All those days in those home movies seemed the same to me. My father, always jovial, always the jokester, mugging for the camera, my mother shying away, waving off my father’s attempts to get her face on screen. My father’s one-liner filled narrations of Christmas, Easter, summer vacations, first in jerky eight-millimeter, then, later, in the smoother, less grainy VHS format.

I’d searched my memory a hundred times but never seen a detour, a door opening down the dark path my father had finally chosen. No big sign that pointed to a change in him, a different man than the laughing, happy one immortalized in life-size cardboard back in my mother’s motel room.

Just a gradual decline, like a shade drawing closed, a little at a time, so slow you almost couldn’t tell the light was gone until everything went dark.

“There was never anything on the surface, Hilary. If there was one thing your father was good at, it was keeping that part of him hidden.”

“Even you didn’t know?”

My mother studied the blanket, her neat, perfect nails. “No. I never saw any of it coming.”

That was what I was most afraid of in committing to Nick. That was the elephant in the room I kept circling and avoiding. If things changed with him, with me, with us…and I never even realized it? What if I just blithely went along, never seeing his sadness, his dissatisfaction, until one day when he either walked out or ended it all with a bullet?

If I maintained the status quo, kept the boat we were on from changing course, then maybe Nick and I would never take the detours my parents had. Because I couldn’t bear that. Not a second time.

If the great Rosemary Delaney had missed all the billboards and road signs, what made me think I’d be any better of a navigator in my marriage?

The magazines beside me no longer seemed cheery and happy. I set their too-bright, too-fake headlines on the floor and slid them beneath the heater with my toe. “He left us both in the dark, didn’t he?”

She nodded without looking up.

I had to ask the question neither of us had ever voiced, never had the strength to ask the other. We’d simply gone on after he’d died, one day at a time, each of us in our own rooms, cocooned away, ignoring what had happened. Afraid to speak of it, as if giving what had happened voice would somehow make us responsible.

“Why didn’t he say anything? Why did he…” My voice trailed off, then caught on itself, and I redoubled my effort to get the words out, because I knew that if I didn’t do it now, we might never have this conversation and this thread would forever remain undone. Maybe, I thought, if I picked it up and dealt with it, I could move on with my life. With Nick. “Why did he kill himself, Ma?”

The room’s quiet wrapped around us, heavy and thick, a blanket filled with questions. My gaze met hers, both of our blue eyes swimming with tears. “He wasn’t happy, Hilary. That’s all I know.”

“He was always happy, though. That was how anyone would describe Dad. The joke teller, the comedian. He could have made a statue laugh.”

“He couldn’t make himself laugh.” She hung her head and I realized that my mother, the woman who I thought had been cold and unfeeling, had drawn into herself all those years ago not because she didn’t care, but because she felt guilty.

Because she, too, had missed the changes in my father’s personality. She hadn’t seen him slip away, hadn’t noticed him dropping into a deep well, losing his grip on the rope that would pull him out.

“I married him,” she said, “because he made me laugh, because he brought out the fun side of me. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not exactly a joke a minute.”

Each of us smiled, weak smiles, but the moment of levity eased some of the pain.

“I agree, Ma. You’re not exactly stand-up material.”

“And he married me because he needed someone to keep him on track, to give him ‘an even keel,’ as he described it. But then we had you, and we got busy and we forgot about having fun. We were tied up with being married, running a house. And then we lost the baby.” She drew in a long, sharp breath, and I could see her reaching for a memory she would have rather kept wrapped up, but like me, she knew she had to open that wound if she was ever going to heal the past. “It was an accident. But your father always blamed himself.”

“Why would he blame himself?”

“I was five months pregnant and we had gone on our first vacation alone since we’d gotten married. His parents watched you for the weekend while we went down to Cape Cod. We had no money. I think your dad was working for the paper factory in those days, making something like four dollars an hour. I wasn’t working at all because the pregnancy had been difficult from day one. Anyway, we rented a sailboat, and your father decided I should learn how to sail.”

“You? Learn how to sail? But you don’t even know how to drive.”

“I know. Your dad thought he’d start with a boat and work me up to a car.” She shook her head. “But I didn’t want to do it. I was afraid of the damned thing. I’m no good at mechanical stuff. Give me a book to read, a legal brief to analyze, an argument to make and I’m fine, but put me behind the wheel of a two-ton car or a fifteen-foot sailboat…and I panic.” Ma threw up her hands. “Your father was determined, though. He told me what to do, then stepped away and left me at the wheel. He thought it was funny, I thought it was terrifying. We had an argument, I let go of the wheel, the boat hit a buoy, and I lost my footing—”

“Oh, Ma,” I said, knowing what was coming next, not wanting to hear it, all of my mother’s fears falling into place, suddenly making a horrible sense.

“—I fell into the water, hitting against the side of the boat when I did. I lost the baby, and even though the doctor said it might have happened anyway, your father took it hard, took the whole thing on his own shoulders. Back then, there wasn’t anything like counseling and Dr. Phil and self-help books. You just kept on making dinner and making the best of things. We didn’t know how to talk to each other, or even what to say. So we let being busy take the place of saying the words we should have. We drifted apart and he and I…we stopped laughing. I threw myself into school; he threw himself into avoiding reality by putting on a show every day.”

The puzzle began to come together, the father I’d known who’d been so much fun, the one I’d held up as the example of the perfect parent. How many times had I tossed that back in my mother’s face when I was younger? Telling her what a better job he did, parenting me? How much more fun he was? How much nicer he was?

“He became a big kid,” I said. “He’d hold down a job for a few months, then quit and hang out at home, make popcorn, watch movies with me and my friends. He’d set up impromptu circuses in the backyard for me and the neighborhood kids—”

“And never cleaned up any of the messes.”

I understood my mother’s stress then, saw why she’d gone around with that perpetual tight look on her face as if she was an elastic stretched too far. He’d been the fun one—and he’d never had to deal with the consequences. “Why didn’t you ever yell at him? Make him run the vacuum? Do the dishes?”

She sighed. “I spent my whole day in court, confronting people. The last thing I wanted to do was come home and have another battle. And…to be honest, I didn’t want to lose him. I felt as guilty as he did about what happened. I was afraid, Hilary. Afraid I’d lose him, too.” Her voice cracked and so too did her hard shell.

I understood her then, so well.

Because she was me.

“I know, Ma. I do the same thing, with Nick. I keep trying to keep everything exactly the same as it was the day before because if anything changes I’m afraid it will upset the equation and suddenly two and two won’t be four anymore—and he’ll be gone.”

Surprise arched her brows. “Nick would never leave you on a permanent basis. I mean, I know he went back home, but break up?”

“He already did. Back in Indiana. Either I marry him or it’s over. Move forward…or don’t move at all.”

“What do you want to do?”

My gaze strayed to the window, as if the view would provide some answer I hadn’t found in the thousands of miles we’d already traversed. “I don’t know. I don’t want to lose him.”

I’d echoed my mother’s words. Was that what she had done? Maintained a static relationship all those years…only to see it slip through her fingers anyway?

“Don’t make my mistakes,” my mother said, reading my mind. “Take a chance, Hilary.”

“Ma, you didn’t make that many mistakes.”

She snorted. “I made plenty. That what-if tape plays in my head every day. What if I hadn’t fought with him that day? What if I’d just gone along with his plan and had fun? I mean, that was why I’d married him, so he could help me step out of that comfort zone.”

How true that was. I’d stayed in that comfort zone, motoring along, because it was easier. I hadn’t even explored those what-ifs because they opened too many doors.

My mother’s gaze strayed to the window, then returned to me. “It’s always easier to retreat to a rut than to climb out of one. After a while, you and your father became a team of your own, and I always felt like I was on the outside, looking in. You two would play Frisbee, and I’d do the dishes and watch.” She paused. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

I saw the look in her face and read it instantly, because I’d seen it on my own, more than once.

She hadn’t wanted to be rejected. To come outside, and have us turn her away. I could read the vulnerability in the way she picked at the blanket, even now, even after all the miles, all the coffees, all the words.

I slid my hand across the knit fibers and grasped hers, wishing I could go back in time and invite her in to our games. “You wouldn’t have been interrupting, Ma.”

“Thank you, Hilary,” she said, so softly I almost couldn’t hear the words. “I wouldn’t have been much of an asset to your Frisbee game either, though.” She gave me a smile, another attempt at humor, then raised her gaze to meet mine, sobering. “Do you think we could have stopped him, if we knew?”

The sixty-four-thousand dollar question. The one neither of us had dared to voice, though I’d be willing to bet millions we each had thought it a hundred times in the years since my father had taken the forty-five his father had brought home as a souvenir from World War II and put it to his temple.

“I don’t know, Ma.” I drew in a breath. “I was there…that day, but not there early enough.”

The heater blew its too-hot air with a soft high-pitched whine. Ma’s roommate continued to sleep, quiet snores providing a persistent rhythmic undertow. Outside, the hospital played its busy life in a music of beeps and shouts, footfalls and conversations. But inside room 305-A, it was nearly silent. “I know, baby. The police, they—”

“They probably didn’t tell you everything.” I swallowed and knew I had to tell her. What good had keeping secrets done either of us? All these years, she’d been so lonely, on the outside, looking in, when all it would have taken was a word, a conversation, for her to be included. Might that have turned the tide? And if I had talked more, opened up earlier, could I have changed this course?

Maybe. Maybe not. All I knew was that I wasn’t going to go down the same road any longer. And there wasn’t going to be any more closed doors between me and my mother. Not if I could help it.

“I stopped by the house to see him. I hadn’t been by in weeks. Months, I think. You know how it is, you get busy with work. With friends. Everything else seems so much more important.” My voice became this raw, painful thing that scraped by my throat. “Dad had called me on my cell a few days before, wanting to talk, but I brushed him off. I was at work and had some crisis that seemed more important. If I had taken that call, talked to him, maybe—”

I closed my eyes, bit my lip hard, wishing I could rocket back and undo everything, retrace steps that I had taken in the wrong direction.

My mother’s hand clutched mine. “You couldn’t have known, Hilary. Neither of us did. I kept thinking if I hadn’t gone to work, if I’d skipped that court case, but how was I supposed to know? Everything seemed so normal that day.”

But that didn’t make me feel better, didn’t diffuse the feeling that I too should have had some hint, some inkling to what had been going on behind his blue-green eyes, behind his smile. “He called me that morning, left a message on my cell. Just a regular old, ‘Hi, Hilary, how you doing, this is Dad,’ kind of thing. Even told me a joke at the end.” After he was gone, I’d listened to that voice mail over and over again, until the phone finally died, taking my father’s voice with it. “I went over to the house, but he didn’t answer the door. So I went inside, calling for him. I knew he was home, his car was in the driveway. And then I saw the door.”

The door to his study. Always open, like he welcomed one and all to come on inside, put your feet up, have a chat. A perpetual mess, filled with toys and newspapers and whatever took his fancy that day.

“The door was shut,” I said, the words coming now in a steady stream, as if I’d started something I had to finish, a Band-Aid I had to rip off, even though I knew it was going to hurt like hell. “I could hear him inside, muttering to himself. I called to him, but he didn’t answer. I tried the door, but it was locked. He never locked that door.” My mother nodded, listening, her eyes welling. I knew she had, as she said, heard the story from the police after I’d called 9–1–1, but had they told her everything? Told her how I’d felt, how I’d tried? Had they told her how the guilt had crushed me and become these bricks between my mother and me? “Even when I was little and I used to color on the walls, he never locked the door to his study. But this time…This time, he wouldn’t let me in and I just knew, I knew, something was wrong. I felt it. I could hear him, talking to himself, and I called to him, over and over, and I banged on the door, so hard, my hand was bruised for days afterwards. Then…then I heard the click.”

I paused for a breath, raising my gaze to my mother’s, clouded now by tears, by the images of that day. “You’d think with all my yelling and my banging, that I’d miss that sound, but it came in between, as if he wanted me to hear it. And I remember screaming, because something in my mind figured all that out, put it together that whatever he was doing was terrible and I had to stop him. But he wouldn’t let me in and the damned door was too hard and too strong and that stupid lock held against my fists and my shoulder and my body and everything I tried to do and then, oh, God—” The sound exploded in my head, as clear as it had five years ago and I took in a sharp, hard breath. “And then he did it. And I screamed and I screamed, and somehow, finally, I burst through that door. But it didn’t matter anymore. I was too late, and he was gone, and he didn’t stop, not for me. And I wasn’t there in time. Ma, I couldn’t stop him. I tried so hard. I’m so sorry. You have to believe me. I tried so hard.”

And then I was sobbing, just as I had that day, sobbing in my mother’s arms, and she sobbing in mine, each of us having blamed ourselves for half a decade. We held on tight, pouring our grief back and forth like two pitchers.

She pulled back and tipped my chin until I was looking at her, facing red-rimmed eyes, tear-stained cheeks. “I know you did, Hilary. I know you did.”

“I tried,” I said, over and over, the words coming softer and softer until finally my tears ebbed and her comfort, her absolution, sank in.

“I don’t blame you, sweetheart. I never, ever blamed you.” She cupped my jaw with both her hands, swiping away the last of my tears with her thumbs. “You can’t stop someone who won’t let you in,” she said. “Not into the room, Hilary. Into his mind.”

“He never let us in there, did he?”

“No.” She sighed, a heavy sound filled with years of what-ifs. “I think all those jokes were his way of coping, and I never really understood that, not until it was too late. He had an awful childhood. He used humor to get through it, then later, to keep himself from having to deal with the heavy things in life.”

“Like the baby.”

She nodded, and in her face, I read the moments she wished she could undo, the moments she knew were lost forever. “Instead of talking, he put on a smile, kept on laughing, and inside it ate him up. But he wouldn’t talk about it. Lord knows I tried to get that man to talk. Maybe I should have tried harder.” She glanced out the window, at the busy city that surrounded the hospital, watching the helicopter approach for a rooftop landing. “No, I definitely should have tried harder. He missed out on so much. With me, with you. And that’s part of why I brought him along with us. So he could be there, to serve as a reminder to me.”

“Not to miss out on the good things in life.”

“No, not to miss out on you.” She took my hand, her grip tight and firm, her eyes locked on mine. “I don’t care if I have one day or a million days left. I don’t want to miss out on a single moment with the people I love. That’s what this trip was really about, Hilary. You.”

“Me?”

She smiled. “Yeah.”

My heart was so full, it seemed to take up my entire chest. For a second I couldn’t even speak. My mother loved me, had always loved me, not just in those late-night kisses, but in the moments when I hadn’t been looking.

I may have been thirty-six, but I still needed her. I always had, whether I’d wanted to admit it to her or myself. “That’s why I’m here, too, Ma. Because I need to spend time with you. To get to know you.”

The smile that curved across her face would stay with me forever, clutched in my memories like a butterfly. “I love you, Hilary.”

“And I love you.” I hugged her, without tears this time, and knew we had just covered more ground in this hospital room than we’d ever done in the minivan. When the moment of emotion had passed, I drew in a breath and gave her a grin. “How about some advice then, Ma?”

“Advice?” My mother couldn’t have looked more surprised if I’d stood on her bed and did the hokey pokey. “You want me to give you advice?” She put a hand on my forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”

Talk about doing a one-eighty. Maybe I was growing up, and it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. I might even be okay with it. “Yeah. And there’s no one I’d rather talk to right now than you.” I gave her a grin. “So, if it’s not too late to get your input on my love life—”

“No, Hilary,” she said, and a tear slipped down her cheek, “it’s never too late.”

“Good.” I curled up on her bed, and started to talk. Probably for the first time in my life I got honest. With myself and my mother.

Ma leaned back against her pillows and heard me, then did what any good mother would do—she gave me her two cents.

I left her room at the end of the day, feeling lighter and better than I ever had in my entire life. When I got back to the hotel room, I made a phone call and maxed out my Visa, taking the biggest risk of my entire life.

twenty

“Don’t hang up and don’t say no.”

“Okay.” The one word came out of Nick’s mouth easily, without suspicion or malice. If he’d been surprised to hear from me, he didn’t say anything. He’d simply shut off the sander in his workshop, then gone inside his office to take the call.

All I knew was that I was damned grateful he’d finally been on the other end when I’d called.

“I FedExed a plane ticket to you,” I went on. “Round trip, to San Francisco, with an open-ended return date. My mother and I should be there in two days and I’m hoping you will be there, too.”

“Why?”

No promises, no agreement. All right. I deserved that, I supposed.

“Because you and I have unfinished business.” I couldn’t quite come out and say everything I wanted to say. I wasn’t ready to answer the really big questions, and either way, talking about them over the phone wasn’t cool.

Besides, I didn’t even know where I stood with him. How he’d been spending his time or what he wanted next. And if I was going to ask him, it would be face-to-face, not over the phone.

“I can’t go back to the status quo,” he said.

“Neither can I. A lot has changed for me over this trip, Nick, and I’m ready for more. Maybe not right away, but down the road. Is that good enough?”

“I don’t know, Hilary. Seems to me we’re still in the same place.”

I sighed. “I’m working on a lot of stuff all at once, Nick.” I told him what had transpired in the last couple of days. And Nick, as Nick always did, listened. I curled up on the bed, tucked under the blankets, wearing a pair of worn flannel pants and a T-shirt of Nick’s that he had left behind, talking to him for half an hour, crying some of that time, sharing the feelings that I couldn’t in front of my mother.

“Do you need me to come now?”

I clutched the phone, and loved him more at that moment than I ever had before. Just because he would drop everything—again—if I simply said the word. “No. I’m okay. She and I are handling this. All I wanted was to talk to you, to hear your voice.”

“Talk all you want, hon. I’m not going anywhere.”

For a moment, I let Nick become my rock, something I’d never done before. Turned out he was a hell of a good stone to stand on.

“Are you really okay?” he asked when I was done. Nick’s voice was as comforting as an electric blanket while a good New England nor’easter blew on a January night.

“Yeah. I have to be.” But more than that, I realized I was okay. I’d changed in the last few days. Not so much out of a matter of necessity, as simply becoming a different person. I could write a book. How to Finish Growing Up by Taking a Cross-Country Road Trip.

“This is a new side of you,” Nick said, noticing the same difference in me. “An all-grown-up side.”

I laughed. “Think you can get used to it? Me being responsible, dependable?”

“Yeah.” His voice was deep. “Very easily.”

Whew. Once again, we were treading near forever territory and it ramped up my heartbeat, gave me that skittish feeling. But this time, I didn’t want to run, at least not as far, and not as fast.

A yawn escaped me, even though I tried to cut it off. “Sorry. I’ve been at the hospital all day and then had to run to the bookstore to buy some more joke books. I’ve been doing my best to channel Jay Leno and keep her mind off things.” I drew the blankets closer to my chin, too lazy to get out of the bed and adjust the thermostat. “Plus, it helps keep my mother’s spirits up so she’ll be encouraged to look at other therapies and options. And actually listen to her doctors this time.”

Nick chuckled. “You know, Hilary, I didn’t think you could surprise me anymore. But you just did.”

“How’d I do that?”

“A little over a week ago, you and your mother were like Russia and the United States during the Cold War. Now you’re Tony Blair and George Bush. You’re really working hard at this relationship and I’m glad, because I think you need her.”

I thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, I do.” I drew in a breath. Took another risk. Heck, I’d already come this far. Why not go another few miles? “And I need someone else.”

A heartbeat passed between us. “Who?”

“You.”

“Hold on a second. Let me check the Caller ID and make sure this isn’t a prank.”

“Shut up.” I laughed. “Sometimes I don’t know why I date you.”

“You love me, that’s why.”

“Maybe.”

“Aw, don’t chicken out on me now, Hil.”

The room still held a chill, a coolness no amount of blankets could break. I snuggled deeper into them, wishing Nick were there. “Think of me as art. A work in progress.” But I wondered if I would progress fast enough to hold on to this man, a man who deserved a woman who’d give him what he wanted.

He’d made it clear what that was. A full-bore relationship. One with commitment. Plans for the future, maybe even a white picket fence, kids, a golden retriever. I couldn’t string him along if I had no intentions of doing any of that. Did I?

I still wasn’t sure. I needed to see him, touch him, to know. Having him on this side of the country didn’t help me make up my mind. But one thing I knew for sure, I was done having closed doors between me and my mother, and me and Nick.

“Actually, honey, we’re both works in progress. Only you’re the one in the hot looking frame.” Nick chuckled. “I love you, Hil, even when you drive me crazy.”

“Well, you drive me crazy, too, Mr. Warner.”

He snorted. “You’re never going to get a career in sucking up.”

“Are you going to make me grovel?”

I could hear him smile on the other end of the phone. “Would you?”

“No.”

“Bummer. I would have paid good money to see that.”

I threw myself back onto the pillows and flung an arm over my eyes. “Remind me again why I stay with you.”

The soft sounds of Bruce Springsteen played in the background, the old radio he kept in his office, a gift from his father for his sixteenth birthday that he still held on to. “Because I love you like no one else will ever love you. Because I know you hate eggs and I know you love your margaritas on the rocks, not frozen, and that you can’t sit through The Way We Were without crying.”

Damn. The man did know me. But that was, after all, what made Nick good at his job. He got the details right.

“That’s not enough to base a marriage on.” Though didn’t I know people who had gotten married on less? My parents, married on their first date? Had they really been all that unhappy?

I thought of my mother, toting my cardboard father across the country. She still loved him, all these years later. Yes, he’d descended into depression but if he had gotten help, talked to a psychiatrist or tried medication, might their story have had a different ending?

Maybe I’d been reading them all wrong. And maybe Nick and I could write a different ending to our own story.

“You like sunsets, but not sunrises,” Nick went on, reading me as easily as a novel. “You love Thai food, but not Americanized Chinese. You can eat with chopsticks, but you never mastered ‘Chopsticks’ on the piano. And you wouldn’t sit through a subtitled film if I paid you, but you put up with Bruce Willis movies because you love me, too.”

“Well, you do have a few things right. Actually, an awful lot of things.” My smile curved across my face and I inhaled, catching the lingering scent of him on the cotton of the T-shirt.

“And as much as I love all those things about you,” he said, the tease dropping out of his voice, “I can’t be the only one carrying us anymore or the only one who wants to take this to the next level. So I don’t know if I should take that plane ticket, Hilary.”

I drew in a breath. If I let him go now, if I didn’t say the words I needed to say, the ones I’d never said, there’d be no getting him back. I knew that, as surely as I knew the sun would rise far too early for my tastes. “Please come, Nick. Because…I love you.”

On the other end of the phone, everything went silent except the radio. “You love me?”

“Yeah. Are you going to make me say it again?”

“Probably.” I could hear him smile.

I swallowed. “Okay. I’ll say that and more. I love you more than I have ever loved any man I have ever known,” I went on, before he could say anything else, before he could say those three words weren’t enough to change the course of our relationship. Or they weren’t enough to get him on a plane, convince him to meet me in California. I had no idea when I’d be back in Massachusetts—given how hard it would be for my mother to travel that far—and I couldn’t wait that long to settle things with Nick. “In fact, I don’t think I ever fell in love until I met you.”

On the other end, I heard him draw in a breath.

“I love the way you look when you wake up in the morning. I love the way you roll into me, and hold me, and the way your body feels like sunshine, only without that blaring light I hate.” Nick chuckled, but I kept going. “I love the way you can create things out of a block of wood and turn it into something that just knocks my socks off. I love the way you take care of everyone around you, like you’re a gardener tending to roses. I love that you want to do that with me—”

“Hil—”

“Let me finish. You were right to send me on this trip with my mother. She and I did have some issues that we needed to talk about and tonight, for the first time, we did. We talked about a lot. About her and I, about my father. About all those secrets that we pushed under the rug for far too long.” I drew in a breath, and thought of what had happened in my mother’s room, how the bridge between us had gained a few more struts, maybe even a railing.

“I’m sending you that plane ticket, Nick,” I went on, “and I don’t want to know right now if you’re going to use it. I want you to think about it because this is the rest of our lives here and that’s a long time.” I kept barreling forward, knowing if I stopped, I’d lose my nerve. Maybe lose him, and I prayed I wouldn’t lose him, not after coming this far. “Over the last few days, I’ve been on a really long trip. And I’m not talking about the miles, I’m talking about what’s happened inside me. You said I’ve grown up and well, I guess I have, Nick. But I’m not at the end of this journey yet and when I reach the end, I’m hoping you’ll be there, waiting for me, in California, to hear what I have to say. But if you’re not, I understand. Either way.” I drew in a breath, let it out, with a silent prayer and a hope. “I love you, Nick.”

Then I hung up the phone before I made any promises I couldn’t keep—

And before he could say no.

twenty-one

The surf laughed with my mother, its light froth tossing and tumbling along her legs, rolling in and out, not-so-warm, not-so-blue water with whitecaps whipped up by a storm threatening San Francisco Bay. But my mother didn’t notice. She darted in and out of the water, grabbing my hands and pulling me with her, as giddy as a preschooler.

“You’re acting like a kid,” I said to my mother.

“I know,” she replied, laughing and smiling. “Isn’t it wonderful?” She didn’t look at all sick, and had left that defeatist attitude back in the Utah hospital. “I’ve decided something, Hilary. I’m going to keep on living the way we have for this trip.”

A wave burst against my ankles, the cold still a shock even though I knew it was coming. I’d expected California to be warm, but apparently even here it took a while for the ocean to heat up in spring. “What do you mean?”

“Whatever time I have, I’m going to live as deep and as rich as I can. I’m going to see everything, enjoy all that I can. Take the pictures, laugh at the jokes. Wear the cool shoes.” She gave me a grin. “And talk. To you, to the people that matter.”

I smiled at her. Her blue eyes were a mirror to my own. For years, we’d shared that common eye color—and yet, nothing in common.

Until now.

“I think that’s a great philosophy, Ma. Mind if I copy it?”

“Not at all.” She squeezed my hand, and it seemed we hadn’t just come across the country, but across light years.

I glanced at the sky, now darkening, the clouds moving with a menacing, gray tint. “There’s a storm coming. We have to get out of the water. We can come back to the beach tomorrow. I booked us a hotel right across the street.”

“You did?”

“Yes, and I booked several days there, too.” I nodded. “Believe me, we’re not getting back in that minivan anytime soon. We may even live here for a while. I don’t care if I never see a road again.”

My mother laughed. “I think my butt is permanently shaped like the passenger’s seat.” She brightened, then got that twinkle in her eye that I knew meant she was up to no good. “I have an idea.”

“I don’t think I want to hear this.”

“We could…buy an RV for the drive back.”

I groaned. “Get our own Green Monster to take home? I don’t think so, Ma. I’ve come a long way on the domestication scale, but I am not, in any way, shape or form, an RV-er.”

“The term is road warrior, dear.” She followed me out of the water and back up to the edge of the beach. A few of the other people who were picnicking on the beach gave us strange looks but my mother ignored them.

“I’m not a road warrior, either.” I handed her the sneakers we’d bought back in Utah, a comfortable pair that gave plenty of room for her feet and made walking much easier. She’d even let me glue on some decorative flowers to the toes, a concession to our new commitment to fashion. I slipped on my new wedge sandals, a compromise between flip-flops and real shoes.

“Oh, come on, Hilary. An RV would be a blast. And it would be perfect for traveling around to all the major bodies of water.” My mother’s goal, starting with the Pacific Ocean, the first one we’d nailed down. She also wanted to hit most of the major contiguous United States, and after our talk, I’d agreed to extend our trip for as long as possible, taking it slow, because of her legs. I’d talked to Ernie, who wasn’t happy about my indefinite vacation, but understood my need to be with my mother. “After all,” she continued, “it worked for Carla and Louie.”

I made a face, but in the back of my mind, I heard Louie’s advice about the cards being reshuffled. Who knew? Maybe my mother’s would be. Either way, I wanted to be with her, for whichever hand she was dealt. “Would I have to eat hot-dog casserole?”

“Only if you wanted to.”

I made a face. “What do you think?”

“Okay, no hot-dog casserole. But, if you agree to the RV, I’ll spring for a cappuccino machine and fix us our own personal mochas whenever you want.”

“Ma, you are so not playing fair.”

My mother grinned. “I’m your mother, dear. I’m not supposed to.” We paused by one of the benches, watching the water some more. “By the way, I talked to Carla and Louie this morning. They’re really enjoying Reginald.”

“Ma, why did you give him up?”

My mother looked down at her hands, gripping the green wooden slats of the bench’s back. “I don’t know how much time I have, Hilary. And I want to spend it with—” she drew in a breath, then turned to face me “—the people I love.”

“Aw, Ma, we could have handled Reginald. You could have told me and I would have taken care of him for you. We would have made it work, even if we had to buy an RV to do it.”

“Carla’s already dressing him up in baby clothes. She’s spoiling him more than I did. She loves him to pieces.” My mother smiled, and I sensed that she had read some kind of longing in Carla that I had not seen. Maybe all those days as a road warrior, traveling the country far from her kids and grandkids, left an opening in Carla’s heart, a hole for family that Louie alone couldn’t fill. “Reginald is in hog heaven.” I laughed. “And you, you’re okay?”

My mother took my hand and nodded. “Yeah. I’m fine.” Then she glanced at her watch, the little pixie Anne Klein face ticking alone. “Speaking of which, I have to go.”

“What are you talking about? We have dinner plans.”

She shook her head, the smile widening. “No. You have dinner plans, or some kind of plans. Uncle Morty is coming to get me. You’re not the only one who gets calls on her cell phone, you know.” Then she turned and gestured toward the parking lot.

I followed her gaze and froze. Standing on the sidewalk was Nick. A bouquet of flowers in one hand, a tiny wooden box in the other. And one unanswered question waiting between us.

twenty-two

Uncle Morty pulled up a second later behind Nick in his customized mint-green “Morty’s Mega-Millions Coins and Collectibles” truck. He toodled the horn, letting out an obnoxious “ah-ooh-ga,” then got out, waved a quick hello to me, his dark brown toupee lifting in the breeze. He helped my mother in, all in the span of about a half a second. They took off, without so much as a goodbye—

But one heck of a knowing, conspiratorial smile.

“Here. These are for you,” Nick said, handing me the flowers. We started walking across the parking lot and over to the grassy area at the rear, where several picnickers were hurriedly shoving blankets and food into bags and cars as the clouds began to move in and block out the sun.

“You came.” Joy at seeing him rose inside me faster and stronger than the surf behind us.

“Someone sends me a free ticket to California, I’d be a fool to throw it away.” But he grinned.

I cocked a smile at him. “That’s the only reason you came?”

“I’ve never seen San Francisco. I hear they have good rice and cool cable cars.”

I slugged him. “You are a total pain in the neck.” I buried my nose in the scent of the bright white daisies he’d given me, their happy faces dancing up at me. My favorites. Nick, a detail man in everything he did.

“You’re right.”

Laughter bubbled out of me. “You don’t say that very often.”

“No, I meant you were right about me expecting you to be the only one who changed.” We walked along the grass, the blades crushing their green carpet beneath our feet. Nick let out a breath, then paused, stopping where he was. “Hilary, this isn’t going to work.”

My heart fell. We hadn’t moved any further along than four years ago. The only difference was that I hadn’t put my furniture into his apartment. I tried to tell myself that at least I’d saved a bit of heartache.

But I hadn’t. Because this time, I’d gone all in and fallen in love with Nick. I hurt all over and I wanted to leave, to not hear what was coming next. But I didn’t, because that would be running, and I was done doing that.

“This isn’t going to work,” he repeated, “unless I…”

“What?” I asked when he didn’t finish, hating myself for even prompting him to say another word.

A smile took over his face and then I knew he had me. “Unless I show you this.” He pulled out a sheaf of papers from his inside jacket pocket and handed them to me. I tucked the daisies under my arm and flipped through the documents.

It took a second before they made sense, then I started to laugh. “You started an investment fund?”

He nodded. “I’m responsible. As of three days ago. And, I called a Realtor. Told her to start looking for a house in the suburbs. Three bedrooms, a fence and a garage, hopefully room for a workshop, too.” He drew in a breath. “Plus, I told Ernie that the band and I can’t play anymore on Thursday nights—”

I put a hand over his mouth. “Stop. I didn’t mean for you to become Ward Cleaver, Nick.”

“But I thought—”

“Hey, I was stressed and I took it out on you. I want you to have your dreams. I want you to be happy. And if playing in a band on Thursday nights makes you happy, do it.” I thought of my father, and wondered if there might have been something that would have made his smile real, not cardboard. Maybe for both my parents. Maybe my mother would have enjoyed life more, not been so wooden. It had taken her sixty-plus years to find her joy. I didn’t want Nick and I to turn out that way. “We can have both, Nick.”

He drew me into his arms, his chest warm, solid. I could have stayed there forever. “Okay. You can open your own restaurant, and have this really cool band, with a sexy guitarist and all the women—”

“Will steer clear or I’ll hit them with a frying pan.”

He laughed. “Of course.”

We stood there for a while, seagulls circling overhead, screeching to each other. On a dock a few feet away, sea lions barked, then slid into the water and disappeared before the storm set in.

“I’m glad you came,” I whispered.

“I’m glad you asked me.” Then he stepped back. “Speaking of things that need to be asked, I need to ask you a question, Hilary Delaney.” My heart caught and held. He still wanted me. I had hoped, but wasn’t sure.

Then I saw him begin to bend down, the small, handcrafted wooden box in his right hand. Daisies were carved into the cherry exterior, a looping, intricate pattern that had to have taken him days. Was that where he had been all those times I’d called? In his workshop? Not out with other women at all?

“Hilary, will you—”

“Stop.” I reached out, grabbed his arm and hauled him back to his feet. “Don’t, Nick. Don’t get down on one knee. Don’t propose.”

His hand curled around the box, a man’s hand, large enough to cover it, and it disappeared from my view. Nick shut his eyes and shook his head, cursing. He let out one long sigh, then without a word, turned on his heel.

But I hadn’t let go of his arm and he jerked to a stop. “Let me finish. Don’t propose, Nick, because…”

He looked at me, waiting.

“Because I think you’ve asked me more than enough times.” I came around to the front of him and dropped to one knee. Still holding his arm, I thrust up the flowers and gave him a smile. “Nicholas Warner, will you marry me?”

His jaw dropped. “Are you proposing to me?”

“Are you going to make me ask you again?”

That smile I loved more than anything else about him curved across his face. “Yeah. I think I am.”

I laughed. “Marry me, Nick.”

“Why?”

“Because life is short. Because I used to be afraid that you’d keep the most important parts of yourself hidden from me, that you’d lock up your heart and never let me see inside. And damned if your heart isn’t the most open book I’ve ever read. Mine was the one that I wouldn’t let you check out of the library.” Tears had started streaming down my face, but I let them fall, unchecked, no longer worried about keeping any of myself held back. I loved this man more than I could ever imagine and I trusted him, with all of myself. “I don’t want to do that anymore, Nick. I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with that door open.”

He hauled me up against his chest, the daisies caught between us in the rush, casualties of the moment. His mouth sought mine, his kiss tender but hungry, familiar and yet new, filled with a taste of a future I hadn’t expected, hadn’t really known I wanted until just now. And oh, how sweet it tasted. His fingers tangled in my hair and for a moment, I forgot we were on a public beach, until he pulled away, his gaze dancing with desire, my heart still hammering.

“I love you, Hilary,” he said against my mouth.

“Nick,” I said, the word a breath, “I love you, too.”

He wrestled the daisies out from between us, then laid them on the ground. “Sorry. I’ll have to get you some new flowers.”

I didn’t care. “We’ll plant some. When we buy that house.”

He arched a brow. “You really do want to buy a house? With a fence?”

“When I’m done with this trip with my mother, yes, I do. As long as we have a dog and not a potbellied pig for a pet.”

He laughed. “That is one thing we definitely agree on.” Then he paused, searched my face—probably making sure I wasn’t about to bolt—and asked me one more question. “Down the road a bit, maybe even a couple of kids?”

“Maybe even,” I said, then wrapped my arms around him and drew into his strength. I closed my eyes, picturing a future. “Yes, definitely.”

“You forgot something.”

I glanced up. “What?”

“This.” He held out the box, then pulled away from me long enough to open it up and showed me a perfect round diamond. Not too big, not too small. Not at all showy. He slid it onto my finger, then wove his hand into mine. “It’s perfect.”

“Yes, it is.” I looked up at him, then pressed a kiss to his lips. “The whole package is perfect.” It always had been, I just hadn’t realized it.

But the weather didn’t agree. A breeze whipped up off the water and whisked a drop in temperature past us. I shivered. “There’s a storm coming, Nick.”

He glanced up at the sky, then at me. “I think we better hit the road.”

“Yeah,” I said, taking his hand and heading for the minivan together. Whatever paths we took in the weeks and months ahead, I knew he’d be there for me, and I’d do the same for him. The road, I already knew, wouldn’t always be smooth sailing, but we’d find our own way, even if we had to be creative in our detours. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the keys. “This time, Nick, you’re driving.”

When he took them, his hand curled around mine. “Where to?”

“Anywhere you’re going.” I leaned into him, and then he wrapped his arm around my waist, buffeting me from the coming storm.

We’d found our common ground—all of us had—and I finally felt ready to face the trip ahead. In an RV, a minivan or a Mustang, it didn’t matter, I realized. As long as I had the people I loved along for the ride.

The Other Wife

To my good friend Janet Dean, who has helped me make every book better and supported me even when I thought there was no way I could pull off a funny story about a two-timing husband and his piano-playing dog.

Also, a big thanks to Joe Murphy and his adorable wonder dog, Katie, who has brought smiles to hundreds of people over the years.

Finally, as the owner of a shelter dog myself, a huge thank-you to all the hard workers and valuable volunteers at animal shelters across the country. Consider opening your heart and home to a rescue animal. Yours might not sing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but will undoubtedly bring some wondrous fun to your life.

one

The last person I expected to see at my husband’s wake was his wife.

Yet, there she stood, to the right of his casket, wiping away her tears with a lacy white handkerchief, a fancy one with a tatted edge and an embroidered monogram, the kind your grandmother hands down to you because tissues aren’t as ladylike.

She was tall, this other wife, probably five foot eight, and wearing strappy black heels with little rhinestones marching across the toe. I wanted to grab her, shake her and tell her those stupid shoes were completely inappropriate for the funeral of the man I’d been married to for fifteen years. Go get yourself some pumps, I wanted to scream. Low-heeled, sensible, boring shoes.

I wasn’t mad at her. Exactly. I was madder than hell at the man lying on the top-grade satin in an elaborate, six-thousand-dollar cherry box, a peaceful expression on his cheating face.

Even in death, he looked ordinary and normal, the kind of guy you’d see on the street and think, oh, he’s got the American Dream in his hands. A slight paunch over his belly from too many years behind his desk, the bald spot he’d been trying to hide with creative combing, the wrinkles around his eyes from finding humor in everything from the newspaper to the cereal box.

Just your typical forty-year-old man—a forty-year-old whom I had loved and thought would be sitting beside me on the porch, complaining about the neighbors’ landscaping habits and debating a move to Florida, long into our old age. A man who could make me laugh on a dime, who’d thought nothing of surprising me with flowers, just because. He’d been a typical man in a hundred different ways—and so had our marriage.

Sure, a little dull at times, marked by trips to the dry cleaner on Tuesday and scrambled eggs every Sunday morning. But it had been a marriage, a partnership.

Or not, considering the two-wives-at-one-time thing, something I’d discovered last night in a picture of his double-wedded bliss, stuffed behind the AmEx in his wallet.

Forty-eight hours ago, my life had been normal. While I was picking out a roast for dinner that night, paramedics had been rushing him into the hospital. Someone found my number on his cell phone because I, being the practical one, had seen some commercial about setting up an I.C.E. list, in case of emergency, and inputted my cell number. Dave, the spontaneous one, had laughed at me, but kept the number there.

The voice on the other end told me he’d had a heart attack. I’d rushed to Mass General, then stayed by his bedside fretting, pacing, shouting at the doctors to do something. But there wasn’t anything they could do.

The Big Macs and Dave’s habit of burning the candle on all ends had caught up with him.

Either that or the weight of his conscience had squished an aortic valve. In my less-charitable moments, I wanted to think it was the latter.

“Penny,” someone said, laying a hand on my arm.

Kim Grant, my next-door neighbor, who had baked cupcakes to welcome Dave and me to the neighborhood last month, stood before me in the receiving line with a look of true sympathy on her face. A flash of guilt ran through me. I still hadn’t returned her Tupperware container.

I hoped she wasn’t in any rush for her plastic.

“Hi, Kim. Thanks for coming.” The words flowed automatically, the same ones I’d said already a hundred times today, feeling sometimes that I was the one giving out comfort instead of receiving it.

Yet, even as I stood in Kim’s embrace, in my peripheral vision, I was always aware of her, standing at the edge, blending in with the other mourners, as well as someone could blend when dressed like Marilyn Monroe. The insurance company my husband had worked for was large, and nearly a hundred people from the offices were there. I doubted anyone noticed her.

How many of them, I wondered, knew about her? Did anyone? Or did everyone?

Had I been the only one left out of the secret? The poor, silly wife, sitting at home with a pot roast waiting on the table, completely oblivious to the train wreck that had derailed her marriage.

I still didn’t know her name, where she lived, or how long she’d been married to him. All I knew was that she’d been with my husband, in the Biblical sense, that day. Dave, the man who preferred T-shirts over sweatshirts and cotton blend over straight cotton, had been rushed into the E.R. naked. I knew he’d left the house dressed that day—I was the one who’d finished pressing his shirt while he hopped into the shower.

I thought of that shirt, remembering how I’d run my hand over the flat fabric while it was still warm, pleased with the neat creases, then, later, the kiss Dave had given me as a thanks. The way he’d smelled of steam and starch and Stetson.

“That’s the way we found him in the Marriott, ma’am,” one of the paramedics told me, shrugging, as if it were completely ordinary to bring in a naked guy on a gurney.

“The Marriott?” I’d asked—twice—trying to get my head around that. Had it been a meeting gone wrong? A robbery? And then, the worst had hit me. “Was he—” I paused, my entire marriage flashing before my eyes like a jerky home movie, with edits I couldn’t see, moments left on the cutting-room floor “—with anyone?”

“The, ah, bellhop said he checked in with his wife.” The paramedic had looked at me hopefully. I didn’t answer, letting the silence push him to add more. “She wasn’t there, though. Apparently already left because they were, ah, done.”

Done. I didn’t have to ask what Dave had done. The nudity was a pretty good clue.

“I’m so sorry, Penny.” Kim’s voice drew me back to the present. “Dave was such a great guy.”

I used to think that. Had even bragged about him to my friends when we met, about how I got the last great guy on earth.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one.

She crossed my line of vision again, as she read the tags on the flowers to the right of the casket. I maintained my position in the receiving line, stoic and reserved, the portrait of the grieving widow.

Lillian, Dave’s mother, stood beside me, tears flowing nonstop, shoulders shaking a little as she cried. Still, Lillian Reynolds maintained a level of reserve, as always the gracious former debutante who’d married a lawyer. She didn’t know about the second wife and I wasn’t going to announce it between “ashes to ashes” and “dust to dust.”

Maybe, I thought, if I never spoke the words, I could pretend it had never happened, that this other wife was a figment of my imagination.

“It was so sudden,” Kim said, shaking her head as she looked at Dave.

As Kim continued speaking words I didn’t hear, I glanced at my husband, lying there in his good blue suit, the one with the silver pinstripe that we’d picked out at JCPenney last Christmas, and for a second, felt a pang of grief so sharp I wanted to collapse. He was gone. Forever. For five seconds, I didn’t care about the bigamy, didn’t care what else he had hidden from me, I just wanted my husband back.

I wanted my life back, damn it. Rewind the clock, stop the tape, just get me out of this lily-scented twilight zone.

I wanted to be able to wake up, knowing that today would be the same as yesterday, that the numbered boxes on the wall calendar in the kitchen would follow one another with the reliable sameness of ironed shirts and scrambled eggs.

Insanely, I stared at his chest, willing it to rise and fall. It didn’t.

So I stood there in Perkins & Sons Funeral Home, wearing a black suit I’d had to borrow from my sister because I was in no condition to shop, and trying not to picture my husband having a heart attack while he was on top of another woman, probably using the same well-practiced missionary moves he’d used on me last Saturday.

The Marriott, I’d found out, after pumping the paramedic a little more, was in downtown Newton. A convenient location. But for whom? For him? For her? The hotel was only three miles from our house. Close enough that he could have stopped by for a little afternoon delight with me. Also close enough that had I gone to my usual Thursday manicure instead of going to a last-minute client meeting, I would have passed right by the hotel parking lot and maybe seen the “Insurance: The Investment for Those You Love” bumper sticker on his Benz.

For a guy who worked in risk management, he’d clearly liked to live on the edge.

I stepped back from the casket, from the cloying fragrance of the enormous white bouquet sent by the company, pressing a tissue to my eyes, willing my own tears to stop. I was mad at him, mad at myself, mad at the world. And yet, another part of me just wanted to curl up in the corner.

Kim finished whatever it was she had to say to me, so I smiled politely and thanked her for coming. She released me and moved to stand in front of Dave, dropping to the kneeler and making the sign of the cross over her chest.

I had a few uncharitable thoughts about God just then, ones that I was sure were going to get me sent to hell, so I turned away from my husband to do what needed to be done.

Face the other wife.

She skipped signing the guest book and had stopped at the casket, her hands gripping the velvet-covered rail, tears flooding her eyes. Now that she was closer, I could see that she wasn’t Marilyn Monroe—she was a mess, all wrinkled and jumbled. The perfectionist in me wanted to get out the iron and the starch, maybe a lint roller, too, and straighten her out before sending her back out the door.

She was pretty, I’d give her that. Buxom and blond, the typical other woman. Except, I was a blonde, too. Just not so well-endowed.

Had it been that simple? He’d needed some 36Ds to keep him company so he’d married another woman? My 34Bs weren’t enough? I could have gotten a Miracle Bra, for God’s sake.

Her diamond ring, the same shape as mine—apparently Dave hadn’t been inventive enough to get something other than a marquise cut when he proposed a second time—sparkled in the muted light. Her mascara ran in dirty little rivers along her cheeks, and for a moment, I felt sorry for her. Had she known about me before today?

Had she loved him?

And would it really make a difference to me if she had?

She stepped back from the casket, but hesitated, clearly wondering if she should do the receiving line. Always the polite girl I had learned to be, I stepped forward, reached for her hand. “I’m sorry,” I said, before she could turn away or, worse, say it first.

Her eyes widened with surprise. “Me, too,” she said softly. “I really am.”

I wanted her to be some evil demon who’d stolen my husband with promises of chandelier sex and perfect Baked Alaska. But as I looked into her blue eyes—such a vibrant color compared to my own plain brown ones—I couldn’t hate her. But damn it, I wanted to. It would have made the whole thing a lot more convenient.

“I didn’t know,” she said, taking a step closer, lowering her voice. “Not until I read the obituary in the paper.”

I decided to believe her. If he’d fooled me for fifteen years, surely he could have fooled her, too. A hundred questions filled my mind. But then his mother was reaching for me, wanting to introduce me to some distant cousin I’d never see again, so I gave the other wife a slight, dismissive nod, and slipped back into the perfect portrait of what everyone expected of me.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her walk away, those crazy shoes sparkling in the muted light of the funeral parlor. We were members of the same club now, she and I.

I hoped like hell I wasn’t going to find anyone else with a membership before this day was over.

two

Somehow, I got through the wake without smearing Dave’s good name or shrieking like a lunatic. My sister, Georgia, Dave’s brother Kevin and Dave’s mom were all there, keeping me company in the line beside the casket. That was it for family. My parents had died when I was seventeen, my grandparents shortly thereafter. Dave’s father had passed away seven years ago from a heart attack, leaving Lillian to begin retirement as a widow.

I went home the night of the wake and cleaned a house that didn’t need cleaning, organized closets that were already perfect and went through every pen in the house, scribbling the tips across an old magazine, looking for duds.

For something to do, to keep me from thinking.

At the funeral the next day, I did everything I was supposed to do. Laid a white rose on his casket before they lowered it into the ground, said thank you to everyone who offered their sympathies, turned down the offer of another casserole I wasn’t going to eat. After a funeral dinner hosted by the ladies of the same church that had married and now buried my husband, I sent my sister home, telling her I would be okay. I thought of trying to talk to Dave’s brother, to find out what he knew about this other woman, but right now, I wasn’t strong enough to handle one more thing.

The other wife didn’t show at the funeral and for an hour or so I pretended I was the only woman in Dave’s life, that the words the pastor said about my late husband were true. “Good man…loving husband…devoted son.”

At the end of the day, I slipped into the limo beside my mother-in-law to go back to the house Dave and I had bought a month ago.

The house where we were going to start a family.

He’d told me it would bring good luck, this change of residency. We’d been discussing the idea of kids for ten years, but I’d always had an excuse, a reason we should wait. I’d put him off and put him off, hoping that someday, Dave would just give up on the idea.

But then, finally, after Christmas, I had relented, conceding my fight to add anything more complicated than a potted plant to our lives. Because I was thirty-seven and Dave forty, we’d gotten checkups to make sure nothing was wrong. It wasn’t his fault, the doctor had said. Dave had plenty of sperm to go around.

I stifled a laugh in the back of the limo. He’d had plenty of sperm to go around, all right.

My mother-in-law gave me a sharp glance, then let out a sigh. “Are you okay, Penny?”

“Yeah.” As fine as I’m ever going to be after coming face-to-face with my husband’s extracurricular life. “Lillian, if you want to stay at my house for a few days—”

“No. I’m going back to Florida, back home.” She averted her face, watching the pastel tones of spring pass by the window. “I’m best going through this on my own. Do you understand, honey?”

She’d flown up as soon as I’d called her from the hospital and hadn’t left my side since. I couldn’t blame her for wanting some time away from this, to deal with her loss.

“Yeah. I feel the same way.” Though I wanted to be alone for an entirely different reason, so I could sort out the mess of my husband’s life and figure out how I could have been so easily duped by the same man whose underwear I had washed every Saturday. How could I have been handling those Fruit of the Looms and never realized he was a cheater? A bigamist?

A stranger?

I reached out and clasped Lillian’s hand, giving it a squeeze. A tear ran down her face. She smiled at me, her eyes kind and worried. I’d always liked my mother-in-law, figuring I’d gotten awfully lucky to have married into a family where the normal jokes hadn’t applied. Considering my own parents had been the dysfunctional poster children for how not to parent, I had latched on to Lillian soon after meeting Dave.

“Thanks for being here for me the last two days,” I said. “I needed the support.”

“I needed you just as much, dear,” Lillian said, then sighed. “He’s gone for both of us.”

And for someone else. I bit my tongue. “He would have hated this, you know. The big funeral. The music.”

“The flowers.” Lillian laughed. “God, how Dave hated flowers at funerals. Said they were a waste of good landscaping plants.”

I thought of the mums in our garage, the ones we’d planned on planting this weekend. He’d left me with a bunch of plants and a life half-done.

In the space of a day, my life had been thrown into a shredder, taking with it what I had hoped for my future, what I believed about my past, and what I thought I knew about my heart.

Talk about killing a whole bevy of birds with one stone. Dave’s death had pretty much wiped out a species.

We pulled up in front of the house, the limo easing to a stop without even a squeak of the brakes.

Through the car’s tinted windows, I saw her. Again. Like a bad nightmare I couldn’t get rid of. Sitting on the swing—the swing Dave had installed last month—on my front porch, waiting.

“Who’s that?” Lillian asked. “I don’t think I saw her at the funeral.”

“She’s a good friend of Dave’s.” I didn’t want to lie, but I couldn’t tell anyone the whole truth. Not today. Maybe not ever. Heck, even I didn’t want the whole truth.

“I’ll let you two visit,” Lillian said, giving me a final, comforting pat. “I want to go see Kevin again before I head to the airport.”

Later, when I was ready, I’d corner Kevin and see what he knew. He and Dave had been close, going on annual fishing and hunting trips. He had to have told his older brother something.

Then as soon as I solved this mystery—and dealt with any financial ramifications—I’d bury it all in the back of my mind and get back to my predictable days.

It was the only way I knew how to deal.

I got out of the limo, said goodbye to Lillian, then strode up my walkway, not looking at the newly mulched beds waiting for plants. Ignoring the freshly painted white picket fence, the new front door. Projects we’d done last weekend. Apparently my weekend with him since the one before he’d been in “Toronto.”

A fresh wave of pain slammed into my chest. Toronto, Denver, Dallas—how many of those trips had been lies? And to think I’d packed his suitcase, even throwing in a sexy note once in a while, and one time, a pair of my panties, because I felt bad for him attending those boring insurance conventions and client meetings.

I’d thought I was being so clever, such a perfect wife. Clearly, I hadn’t, not if my husband had gone out and found himself a spare.

The other wife rose when I approached, still clutching that lace hanky. “I should have introduced myself,” she said, extending a hand. “Susan Rey—” She cut herself off before giving me my own last name. “Susan.”

Susan. It wasn’t the name of a woman you could hate. It was one of those nice names, the kind given to the girl down the street who always let you play with her Barbies. She should have been named something else—Bambi, Cinnamon, Cassidy—something I could latch on to and despise.

“Penny,” I said, shaking her hand and feeling weirdly like we were at a cocktail party, meeting for the first time over the crab dip.

“I know you probably have a million questions,” Susan began, her voice filled with a nervous giggle.

I nodded. Actually, I thought a million was a low estimate.

“And I’d love to answer them,” Susan said. She was neater today, more put together in jeans and a black top, but still with the same damned shoes. “But they’ll have to wait.”

“Wait? Why?” I wanted her to just tell me everything, to rip that Band-Aid off in one quick swoop.

Susan shifted on those heels and bit her lip. Her lipstick was darker than mine, I noticed, a shimmery cranberry compared to my muted coral. “Well…I have a favor to ask you,” she said.

“A favor? You’re asking me for a favor?” The whole day had become as surreal as a Jackson Pollock painting. I wanted to hit the wall, hit the mums, anything. Hit her, actually. “I want a favor, too. I want to know what you were doing with my husband.”

“I can’t—” She pressed a hand to her eyes, then fluttered her fingers. “I can’t talk about that right now. I need a little space. I just found out about you, too, you know. You have to give me some time.”

I didn’t want to feel sympathy for her. I wanted to hate her. Right now, anger was a lot more comfortable to wear than grief.

But damn it all, she had that nice name and big blue eyes and looked like the kind of woman I’d have coffee with. Not someone I could give a permanent placement on my shit list.

“Later, I promise,” Susan said, and for some reason, I believed her. “But for now, I need you to take care of something for me. It’ll be easy, I’m sure.” She smiled, then stepped back and gestured into the shadows of my porch. When she did, I saw a cage.

It was small and tan, and filled with something that was so excited—or so vicious—it was shaking the plastic crate, causing it to tap-tap-tap on my wooden porch.

“What the hell is that?”

“Harvey the Wonder Dog,” Susan said with a burst of enthusiasm, as if she’d just given me a long-awaited Christmas present. She backed down my stairs and onto my walkway. “And he’s all yours.”

“He’s what? But—”

“I can’t take care of him,” Susan was saying, still moving very fast, considering her shoes. “Dave had left him at my house while we went into the city and then…” She left off the rest. “Anyway, I’ve brought all his things. You’ll love him. Really.” Then she was reaching for the door of her black Benz, a car much like mine.

What had Dave done? Bought everything in pairs?

“Wait!” I shouted, barreling after her. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving.” Susan withdrew a set of keys from her pocket and thumbed the remote. “Sorry.”

“You’re sorry…Sorry you married my husband? Sorry you showed up at his wake? Sorry you were on my porch, waiting for me to come home from burying him? Or sorry you dumped an animal on me that I don’t want?”

Susan wheeled around, her hand on the door handle. “Sorry. But I’ve had him since Thursday and I can’t take care of him anymore.”

“He’s your dog. Yours and Dave’s,” I said, the words thick as a turnip in my throat.

“No, he’s not. I’m not even a dog person. He was Dave’s. I never even met Harvey or knew Dave had a dog until Thursday. Now, he’s yours.” Susan let out a sigh. “Think of Harvey as a part of Dave, left to you.”

Then, before I could ask her anything else, Susan had climbed inside her car, slammed it into gear and left, leaving me choking in her exhaust.

And apparently with one more member of the Dave Reynolds fan club.

three

Harvey the Wonder Dog came with his own bed, a backpack of toys, his own special food and a rather vague set of notes, written in a six-by-nine composition book in Dave’s tight scrawl.

The book had plenty of information about Harvey’s tricks—balancing a beach ball on his nose while standing on his hind legs, barking the “Star Spangled Banner,” complete with the high notes—and data on where he had appeared—Letterman twice, Animal Planet seven times and Good Morning America once.

But not a word about why Dave had kept this circus side of himself, or the extra wife, secret. After Susan left, I brought the dog into the house, opened his crate to let him out, then sat down to read. Three hours later, I looked up to find Harvey the Wonder Dog still in his cage, shaking like a leaf, apparently not wonderful enough to conquer his fear of my kitchen.

How had he ever gotten up the gumption to appear on Letterman?

Then I remembered the note on page three. For every good deed he did, Harvey received a treat.

As I went to retrieve the bag of Beggin’ Strips that had come with the dog, I wondered if that had been Dave’s philosophy for everything. The new house, the tennis bracelet on my wrist, the love seat I’d admired in the showroom window of Newton Furniture—each thing bought after I’d done something that Dave decided needed a celebration. A new promotion, landing a big account—

Accepting his proposal of marriage.

I hated my husband right then, hated him as much as I had loved him. I felt the hatred boiling up inside of me, choking at my throat, begging for release. I wanted to tell him he’d screwed up my life but good by dying and then springing a secret existence on me at his funeral.

I didn’t even want to think about what his dual marriage was going to do to our finances. To the life insurance, the 401(k) money. The house. Not to mention to my plans, my life.

“I hate you,” I screamed at the walls. “I hate what you did. I hate how you left me. And I hate that you left me a dog instead of a goddamned explanation.”

Harvey let out a bark and raised himself onto his hind paws, begging.

My sister, who’d always been a bit on the flaky side, would have said it was Dave’s spirit, communicating through his canine counterpart to offer contrition. To me, it was a dog who’d spied the bag of treats in my hand and knew when to put on his sad face.

“Sorry, Harvey. I wasn’t talking about you.” I withdrew one from the package and waved it in Harvey’s direction. “Here, puppy.”

He bounded out of the crate, snatched the strip from my hand, then sat down in front of me, tail swishing against the floor. He didn’t eat it, just held it between his teeth, his mouth spread so wide it looked as if he was grinning. His pointy brown-and-white ears stuck up, tuned to my every move.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” I said. “I’ve never even owned a dog, for Pete’s sake.”

Harvey wagged his tail some more.

“And I can’t take you to—” I looked down at the book, flipping to the page of upcoming appearances “—the Dog-Gone-Good Show on Thursday. I have a job, you know, and it’s not puppy chauffeur.”

Harvey stretched his front paws across the floor, then laid his head down on them and let out a sigh. The Beggin’ Strip tumbled from his mouth and landed on the beige ceramic tile.

“I’m just going to have to find you a good home.”

Harvey looked up at me, wide brown eyes in a tiny, triangular face, and waited. He wasn’t an ugly dog, I reasoned. Why had Dave bought him? Trained him? Toured the country with him?

And most of all, why had he kept him secret?

A snippet of a conversation came back to my memory. Years ago, Dave had asked about getting a dog. I had turned him down, afraid that adding one more thing into my perfectly balanced life would make everything topple.

It was why I had gone into accounting. Nice straight lines, perfect columns of numbers. Everything adding up at the end.

Before I put one foot on the floor of my bedroom, I liked knowing what was coming each day and how the day was going to end. And yet, I wanted more. Wanted to have a taste of spontaneity, which was what had attracted me to Dave.

He was the Mutt to my Jeff, the Felix to my Oscar. I’d married him, thinking he’d help me loosen up a little, and he’d said he’d married me to keep him on track. But once we had the joint checking account and the mortgage to pay, it seemed those plans were dampened a bit.

I had liked our life just fine. Dave, clearly, had not.

The fact that I could have been so wrong hammered away at my temples. How could I have let details like this slip past me? What had I missed?

I looked again at the book, flipping back to the prior appearances page. Harvey had been at the Dog-Gone-Good Show last year. And the year before. Where had I been then? Where had I thought Dave had been? I tried to think back, but my mind was as jumbled as a bag of jelly beans. “Maybe there are some people there who knew Dave,” I said aloud, talking to the dog, for God’s sake. He barked, as if he agreed that it was about damned time I tried to sort this out and restore order.

He was right. If I was ever going to move past the shock of Dave’s second wife—and his well-trained dog—I had to find out where things had gone so totally wrong. “I need to find some people who can give me some answers.”

Harvey perked up, his ears cocking forward. His tail began again.

“And maybe I’m just nuts for talking to a dog about my cheating late husband.” I tossed the book onto the sofa and crossed into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of wine.

The knock on my back door made me jump and nearly spill the Chardonnay. Through the glass oval I saw my sister. I groaned.

I love my sister, Georgia, and though we’ve always been close, our personalities couldn’t be more distant. We were as far apart as Venus and Earth. She’s the Venus, I’m the Earth. Georgia believes in taking life as it comes, living by the seat of your pants and saving for retirement when you get over the hill, not while you’re still climbing it.

The most spontaneous thing I ever did was buy Tide without a coupon.

I looked down at Harvey and realized I hadn’t managed to avoid a damned thing.

“Hi,” Georgia said, letting herself in. “I figured you could use some company tonight. I brought wine.” She hoisted a bottle of Lambrusco.

I have told my sister at least seventeen times that drinking a sweet, full-bodied red is the equivalent of downing sugar straight from the box. Give me something dry, unadorned and I feel I’m actually having a drink.

Georgia never listened. She’d probably gone and bought the bottle because it was the prettiest one in the aisle at the Blanchard’s Liquors.

Still, she was here, and no one else was. I had to appreciate her for trying. “Come on in,” I said, gesturing inside. “And meet Harvey.”

She halted inside the door, blinking at the Jack Russell terrier. “Harvey’s a…dog.”

“Dave’s dog, to be precise.”

“When did Dave get a dog?”

“According to his notes—2000.”

Georgia’s eyebrows knitted together. She laid the unopened wine bottle on the counter. “Notes?”

“It’s a long story.” I suddenly felt tired, so tired. I wanted to collapse onto the floor and stay there until a different day dawned. One without a dog looking at me expectantly, waiting for his road trip to Tennessee. One where everything was as regular as a clock and I didn’t have to face a new question around every corner.

“Here,” Georgia said, pressing me into a chair. “You look like hell.” Once I was situated, she crossed to the counter, opened the Lambrusco and poured each of us a glass. I thought of protesting, but the energy to do it had left me a long time ago.

“Thanks,” I said, and took a long swig of the wine, forcing myself not to gag.

“Harvey is Dave’s dog,” she repeated. “And he—”

She cut herself off. I looked at her face, noticed her staring at the dog, and turned my gaze to him. He was balancing on his hind legs, that silly Beggin’ Strip on his nose. “And he does tricks,” I finished.

“Oh, my God,” Georgia said. “I recognize him now. I saw him on the Late Show once. He’s, like, famous.”

“And now he’s mine. Surprise, surprise.”

Georgia ran a hand through her riot of blond curls. Last month, she’d had it straight and red. The month before, it had been black and spiky. I was surprised Georgia’s hair hadn’t mutinied. “Wait a minute. You didn’t know Dave had a dog?”

“I didn’t know a lot of things.” I took a second swig of wine. A third. “Like that he also had another wife.”

There. I’d said the words out loud. Now it was real.

All I had to do now was figure out a way to make it all go away.

Georgia opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. “Another wife?”

“And apparently a road show with Harvey at the center.” I shook my head. “I swear, I’m in The Twilight Zone.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Do?” I shrugged, then tipped the rest of the wine into my mouth. “Go to work. Try to lead a normal life again. And find a home for Harvey.”

At that, he slid back down onto the floor and let out a whine.

“You can’t do that. He’s like—” Georgia gave the canine an indulgent smile “—a lost spirit himself. He’s been through a lot, too.”

“He’s also, like, a reminder of a husband who betrayed me,” I said to Georgia, “then left me with a mortgage and a funeral bill I can’t afford because God knows Dave was way too cavalier and happy-go-lucky to invest in something like long-term planning.” I drew in a breath, tried not to choke on it. “Or a marriage.”

Georgia let the heated words roll away. “But aren’t you the tiniest bit curious? Like about why Dave did it?”

“No.” I paused, finally listening to the thoughts and feelings that had been waiting behind Curtain Number Two in my head. “Okay, yes. I am.”

“Then I say you investigate.”

I shook my head, toying with the empty glass. “No. No way. I don’t go running around, investigating. I go to work, pay my taxes and balance my checkbook. Like a normal American.”

“Who happens to be married to a bigamist.”

The word hung in the air, heavy, fat. I wanted to pluck it up and toss it away, bury it under the brown carpet I’d never liked but agreed to because Dave had thought it was homey.

I shook my head. “All I have to do is talk to Kevin. He and Dave were closer than anyone I know.” Or at least, they’d seemed to be. Of course, I’d thought I was pretty close to my husband. But apparently knowing the man’s inseam length and his favorite brand of shaving lather wasn’t intimacy.

“What about the other wife? Did you meet her?”

“She was at the wake.”

“She was?” Georgia let out a couple of curses. “Which one?”

“The one with the rhinestones on her shoes.”

“Oh, those were cool shoes,” Georgia said. “But on her, totally inappropriate.”

I loved my sister for adding that, for saying the words she knew I was thinking.

“Did you talk to her?” Georgia asked.

“For about five seconds. She was here when I got home, but only stayed long enough to ditch the dog and run.” I got to my feet, poured Chardonnay into my empty wineglass and returned to the table. “I don’t know where she lives, and with a last name like Reynolds, I’ll be banging on a thousand doors trying to find her.”

Georgia thought for a minute, twirling the glass between her hands. “Did you check Dave’s cell phone?”

Of course. He’d undoubtedly stored her number in there, probably with a voice tag, because he’d been incapable of dialing while he was behind the wheel.

“I got the feeling she doesn’t want to talk,” I said. “Besides, I’m not so sure I want to know what went on between her and Dave. I’ve had enough information to last me a lifetime.”

“Have you asked the dog?”

“Asked the dog? Are you nuts? I can’t talk to a dog.”

“I bet Harvey is your key.” Georgia nodded. “And I bet he knows a lot more than he’s letting on with that little snout.”

“I am not asking the dog. Or anyone on his upcoming six-city ‘tour.’”

“He has a tour planned?” Georgia’s turquoise-contact colored eyes grew bright. “Perfect! I see a road trip in your future, sis.”

“No, no, no.” But even as I said the words, Georgia was off and running, retrieving the road atlas from the den.

“You have to do it, Penny,” Georgia said. “Where’s Harvey supposed to go first?”

“The Dog-Gone-Good Show in Tennessee in three days.”

“How cool,” Georgia said, flipping the pages, moving us visually toward Tennessee. “It could be the key to solving the greatest mystery of your life.”

There’d been a reason I’d hated Nancy Drew books as a kid. I couldn’t suffer through two hundred pages of mystery. I wanted to know the end before I began. I didn’t want to take a path filled with unknowns. Dave was the one who would read Clive Cussler and Stephen King into the wee hours, who’d watch all eight weeks of an eight-week miniseries, content to wait a month and a half for the story’s resolution. Me, I went for the TV Guide recap, the fast way to cut to the quick and eliminate anything extraneous.

I thought I’d lived my life the same way.

Until this week.

But as I sat in my kitchen, looking around at the sage-green room Dave and I had painted on a sunny afternoon last month, I realized I was living in a house filled with questions, not memories. There wasn’t a corner of this house, a picture on the wall, that I could look at and not feel the doubts crowding in, jostling around in the spaces of my mind. Was any of it real? Or was I just clueless?

All I wanted to do was return to the life I’d recognized. Not run around the country with a dancing Jack Russell terrier, trying to figure out who Dave Reynolds had really been.

Even as I held back another round of tears, as reality slammed into me with the force of a nor’easter, I knew I had no choice but to start assembling this puzzle.

And the first place to start was with Susan.

four

Susan Reynolds’s phone number stared back at me in rounded tiny numbers, displayed on the tiny screen of Dave’s Motorola phone. After my sister left and after two more glasses of Chardonnay, I’d finally gotten up the nerve to scroll through the listings in his phone book. I recognized only a handful.

What scared me was the names I didn’t know. There was an Annie, a Kate, a Mindy. Two Pats—which could have been men or women—and a Matt. I’d stopped scrolling at the S’s, too afraid to go farther. None of those names were familiar. They weren’t people I’d met at the Greendale Insurance Company Christmas parties. They weren’t names Dave had used in conversation.

I could, of course, call them and ask, Uh, how did you know my husband? And did he tell you he was married to a Susan or a Penny?

But no, I couldn’t do that—not yet, anyway. I wanted the truth, but I also didn’t want it, as if I could hold on to my fantasy that everything between Dave and I had been genuine.

Because if he’d duped me about being married, what else had been fake?

That was the real question I didn’t want to answer. The one that clubbed my heart and broke it into smaller pieces every time I gave it voice.

I put the phone down, avoiding it to dig through drawers and filing cabinets, searching for Dave’s will. I came up empty-handed and made a mental note to check his desk at work. Any man who was trying to hide multiple marital beneficiaries probably was smart enough to store that kind of evidence elsewhere.

Throughout it all, Harvey sat there and watched me, his little face jerking quickly with my every movement.

I found nothing. Not so much as a matchbook with a number scribbled on it. The only clues I had were in the Motorola.

I went back to the phone and scrolled through it again, leaving Susan down in the S’s and went to Kevin. I hit Send, then waited for him to pick up.

“’Lo,” he said. Behind him, I heard rock music playing in his bachelor apartment. Apparently Lillian was gone, because he had heavy metal going at full blast.

“Kevin, it’s Penny.”

“Oh, hi, Pen.” His voice softened and he turned down the volume on his stereo. Kevin was the quiet one in the Reynolds family, who’d lacked the charm and sense of humor of Dave, but had the same studious way of watching someone while they talked, making them feel like the only person in the room. “How you holding up?”

“Fine. Ah, listen, I wanted to talk to you about Dave. About…well, what he did when he wasn’t with me.”

A pause. “I don’t know anything about that, Pen. Sorry.”

Across from me, Harvey started nosing at his little denim backpack, his name emblazoned in red glitter across the front. He pawed at it, then sat back and whined.

“You’re his brother. You knew everything there was to know about him. You guys went everywhere together. Fishing, hunting, you name it.”

“I didn’t go.”

The words lingered between us, made raspy by the cellphone static. There hadn’t been an annual hunting trip to Wisconsin. Or the fishing trip to Maine each May. I’d never thought my husband was much of a sportsman, considering I was the one who baited the hooks at our lake vacation last August, but now I realized he hadn’t been out looking for elk at all. He hadn’t gone to any of the places he’d said he’d gone.

He’d been with her.

And Harvey.

It had all been a show. Another batch of lies. And Kevin had known, at least that Dave had been lying to me. The new betrayal slammed into me.

“I have to go, Kevin,” I said, the nausea lurching up inside my throat again. I closed the phone and tossed it onto the sofa, not wanting to touch it—and the dozens of names I didn’t know—for another second.

I curled into a chair and drew an afghan over my knees. The worn, multicolored blanket was as old as me, made by my grandmother when I’d been born, a blend of blues and pinks. I pulled its softness to my shoulders, then over my head, burrowing myself inside its comfort and darkness.

Here, the world was gone, quieted by the muffling weight of the thick, fuzzy yarn. Like I had throughout the rocky, tumultuous years of my childhood, I imagined staying right where I was until the worst was over. Harvey stuck his head under a corner, took one look at me and began wagging his tail.

The ringing of Dave’s cell phone forced me out of my cocoon. I threw off the blanket and watched the Motorola, its face lighting up in blue to announce the incoming call. For a moment, I hesitated, afraid to answer it. Afraid of who might be on the other end.

Eventually curiosity won out and I reached for the cell, flipping it open. “Hello?”

“Hey, is Dave there?” said a male voice I didn’t recognize.

“No. He’s…” I couldn’t get the words out. I tried, even formed them with my lips, but they refused to be voiced. It wasn’t bigamy I was afraid to say, it was dead. “He’s gone right now. But I’m his wife. Can I help you?”

“You’re Annie? Hey, cool to meet you. Dave talks about you all the time, you know.”

Annie? Who the hell was Annie? A nickname for Susan? Or worse…

Another wife?

“Who did you say you were again?” I asked the voice.

“Oh, shit, I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Vinny. I’m Harvey’s trainer.”

“Harvey’s…trainer?”

“Well, hell, you didn’t think he learned to dance and play the piano all by himself, did you?”

“He can play the piano?” I looked at the dog, sitting a few feet away, his tail swishing against the floor like a carpet clock.

“Not Mozart, but he can bang out a pretty good ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.’ That’s what got him on Good Morning America.”

I’d entered an alternate universe. Dave, a musically inclined dog and appearances on national television. Not to mention Susan and Annie. And whoever else I didn’t know about.

“So, is Dave going to be at Dog-Gone-Good?” Vinny asked. “I was hoping he’d get here a couple days early so we can give Harvey a refresher on his dance routine. I tried calling Dave yesterday but he didn’t pick up.”

“He’s…” I closed my eyes, took in a breath. “He died on Wednesday.”

Silence on the other end, then an under-the-breath curse. “For real?”

“Yes.”

“Aw, Annie, I’m sorry. He was a great guy. We’re really going to miss him.”

I pressed a hand to my stomach, as if putting a palm against my gut would give me strength I couldn’t seem to find today. At least it would help me keep the soggy lasagna the church ladies made from making a return appearance. “And, my name isn’t Annie,” I said. “It’s Penny.”

A confused moment of silence. “But…but I thought you said you were his wife.”

“I thought I was, too. Apparently I was sharing the job.”

“Oh. Oh. Holy crap. Well, uh, I’m, ah, sorry.” I could practically hear him fidgeting on the other side. “Listen, I gotta go. You, ah, take care. And if you want to send Harvey down to me, I’ll make sure he does Dave proud at Dog-Gone-Good.”

Before I could say anything else, Vinny was gone, leaving me with a phone that only seemed to quadruple the horror of my widowhood every time I went near it.

The pain of it all—of Dave’s death, his betrayal, of the loss of my life as I knew it—ripped through me in a sob so big it tore through my throat.

“Oh, God,” I cried, sobbing and yelling at the same time. I banged my fist against the carpet, then pulled back my stinging palm and pressed it against my chest, trying to hold my breaking heart in place.

Something wet and cold was on my hand, then on my face. I opened my eyes to find Harvey the Wonder Dog licking me, his tail wagging in ginger little movements, his ears perked like antennae, seeking, I supposed, signs of normalcy.

Harvey. Dave’s legacy. What had Georgia called him?

The answer to all my questions.

Not much of an answer, considering he probably only weighed fourteen pounds soaking wet. But he was all I had, so I was starting there.

“Harvey,” I said, swiping at my eyes, “want to go on a road trip?”

five

To say Susan was surprised to see me on her Rhode Island doorstep the next morning would have been an understatement. She lived a little over an hour away from our house in Newton, in a small ranch with a magnolia in the front yard, which was starting to bloom in the bright early April sunshine.

When she saw me, Susan teetered on her high-heeled boots, enough that I thought she was going to faint. Then Harvey sprang out of my arms and into her house, and Susan recovered her wits.

“How did you find me?” she asked.

“Reverse lookup of your phone number in Dave’s cell. The Internet is a dangerous thing.”

She nodded, as if that all made sense, then opened her door wider. “Want to come in?”

“Actually,” I said, drawing in a breath, “I want you to come out. And go to Tennessee with me.”

She blinked. Behind her, Harvey was running in circles around the perimeter of her braided rug, apparently seeing its endless oval as a challenge. “A road trip? To Tennessee?”

“Did you know about Annie?” I asked.

She thought a second, running the name through a mental phone book. “No.”

“Well, it seems she might be Dave’s wife, too. Meaning Mrs. Reynolds number three.”

“He had another? Besides you and me?” Susan gripped the doorjamb. Now I really did think she was going to faint. I knew those feelings, having had them myself quite recently.

“Listen, why don’t we sit down, have a drink and talk about it? I’ve already had time to digest this.” I paused. “More or less. But I could still use a stiff one. Or two. Or ten.”

Susan nodded, stepped back and turned to go down the hall, leaving me to follow. I shut the door, left Harvey to his circles and walked into Susan’s bright yellow kitchen. It was a nice room, small but tidy, decorated in sunflowers and navy accents. The kind of kitchen I imagined a neighbor having. The kind of kitchen where I could see myself sitting down for a cup of coffee on a Thursday morning and gossiping about the guy across the street who mowed his lawn in his Speedo.

It wasn’t, in other words, what I had expected from Dave’s 36D wife.

“I have rum. And…tequila,” she said, searching a cabinet above the Kenmore stove.

“Do you have Coke?”

She shook her head. “Diet Pepsi.”

“It’ll do.” Heck, I would have had the rum straight, but I figured Susan didn’t know me well enough to see me get drunk, something I’d done more in the past few days than in my entire life. After all that had happened, I was beginning to see the upside of staying perpetually toasted.

She poured two rum and Diet Pepsis over ice, then returned to the table, sliding one in front of me. Apparently Susan also wasn’t paying attention to the clock when it came to having a respite from the shock-and-awe campaign executed by Dave’s funeral.

I drank deeply, then pushed the glass away and folded my hands over each other. Susan was one of the keys to what had happened with Dave, to why he had married another. I needed her, even though I didn’t want to.

“The way I see it,” I began, “both of us have been screwed, pardon the pun, by Dave.”

She nodded. Slowly.

“And I want to know why. I was married to him for fifteen years.”

Susan raised a palm, wiggled her fingers. “Five here.”

I swallowed that fact, allowing it to hit my stomach and churn in the empty pit with the rum. Five years. That meant he’d married her the year I was in the hospital having my appendix removed. I tried to think of when Dave had been gone then, but my brain had become a fuzzy mess of dates and lies.

For a second, I thought of telling Susan the whole thing was a huge mistake. Thanks for the rum, but I gotta go.

Then I realized leaving wasn’t going to do anything but put me back to square one, and instead I stayed where I was, taking another gulp of my drink from a glass decorated with flowers around the edge, and tried to regain some kind of normalcy.

Ha. There wasn’t any of that here. What I had was a whole lot of questions and a piano-playing dog who kept looking at me with expectant eyes, as if I was supposed to do some amazing trick, too.

“Well,” I began again, trying to drum up the courage to press forward, to force myself out of the comfort zone where everything was a known quantity. “I don’t know about you, but I want some answers.”

Susan shook her head. “I—”

“Don’t say you don’t want to know.” I waved the glass at her, the ice clinking in the emptiness. “Because you will. An hour from now, a day from now, you’ll wonder why. You’ll look in the closet and see his shoes—”

Oh, God, his shoes were under her bed, too. In her closet. Was this where his favorite blue shirt had gone? The one I’d torn the closet apart looking for last May? Or the yellow striped tie I told him I hated that he’d never worn again in my presence?

I clutched the glass tighter, to keep myself from running to her bedroom to peek and see how much of my husband was here.

“And you’ll want to know,” I went on, pushing the words past my lips, “because you’re some kind of masochist who hates to have a mystery unsolved.”

“I kind of like mysteries,” Susan said, a bright smile on her face, as if I’d just handed her a new Nancy Drew.

“Work with me, Susan.” I bit off the aggravation in my voice. “You can’t tell me you don’t want to know. About Annie. About where he went when he wasn’t with you.” I swallowed. “Or me.”

She toyed with her still-full glass. Silence descended over the kitchen, seeming to darken the bright, pretty room. “I left him that day, you know.”

“Yeah, the EMTs told me.”

“We had a fight,” she said.

I tried not to let on how much it weirdly pleased me to hear that he and Susan had had a fight.

“We had the fight after we…well, you know.” A faint sheen of red filled her cheeks, a surprise in this woman who seemed so Manhattan. “Anyway, I left and took the train back to Rhode Island, figuring he’d catch up with me at home. If I had known—” Her voice caught on a sob and held the last syllable. “I’m sorry, Penny.”

She was apologizing to me for leaving my husband. For not being there when he’d had a heart attack. She made it impossible to hate her. “I’m sorry for you, too.”

She nodded, then picked up the tumbler, knocked back half the drink and slammed the small glass back onto the wooden surface. Brown liquid sloshed over the rim. “You’re right. I want to know, damn it. I loved that man and I want some answers, too.”

To hear her say she loved him hit me in the gut, hard. I rose, poured myself another drink—skipping the cola this time—and the feeling went away. A little.

Harvey the Wonder Dog trotted into the kitchen, his nose to the floor, looking for scraps, or maybe another rug to circle.

“I say we take him,” I said, gesturing to the Jack Russell terrier, “to this doggie show and ask everyone there about Dave. They knew him, they know Harvey.”

“And if they won’t tell us anything?”

I grinned at my strange new ally and raised my glass. “We’ll break out the rum.”

As she toasted my glass with her own, I had a flashing nightmare of the two of us ending up on Jerry Springer, telling our tale of woe while Harvey did tricks in the background.

Surely, it wouldn’t come to that.

I’d go on Oprah before I’d ever sink to Springer.

Maybe.

six

The next time I took a road trip to discover the truth about my late husband, I would go it alone.

Susan wasn’t a bad person, but the combination of Harvey and her in the car nearly drove me over the edge. Susan chattering, Harvey pacing and whining. I was used to being alone in my car, listening to the music I liked, the talk-radio programs that interested me, but as we moved farther from Boston, the reception got worse and Susan’s voice box revved up. She’d talked all through the night, making me regret letting her get a fifty-five-ounce Diet Coke at our last gas fill.

We’d stopped for fast food at one of the exits off of Route I-81 in Virginia. The place had been littered by ten million roadies before us, but Susan had assured me, one hand securely on my arm, that there couldn’t possibly be any airborne viruses in a place like that.

Probably because they’d all run for the hills, overcome by the grease fumes.

I’d gotten a cheeseburger, but opted to have us eat in the car—breaking one of my cardinal rules—after I saw a fly groom himself on a table in the apple-themed food court.

“Here’s a napkin,” I said once we were back in the car. “You might want to spread it out, like a tablecloth. There are wet wipes in the glove box, so you don’t get any grease on the door handles. Oh, and watch those little salt packets. They have a tendency to spray.”

“Here, Harvey,” Susan said, ignoring my housekeeping instructions and opening a six-piece box of chicken nuggets on the backseat of my Mercedes. Harvey dug in, as if he hadn’t already had his shot of Purina for the day. His little jaws made quick work of the nuggets, spraying brown confetti crumbs over the leather.

“Can you get him to stop that?” I asked. “He’s making a mess.”

“He’s a dog. He’s allowed.” Susan let out a sigh, her hundredth of the trip, then made a face at her window.

“This is a Mercedes,” I said, realizing as I said it how pretentious it sounded. Like it was okay to get processed chicken tidbits all over a Chevy, but not a Benz. I relaxed my white-knuckled hold on the steering wheel, drew in a breath, let it out, then decided it was going to be a hell of a long drive to Tennessee if I didn’t get a grip. “Never mind, I’m sure he’ll eat all the crumbs.”

He did just that, leaving a gooey white trail of doggy saliva on my seats in the process. Eww. I made a mental note to get the car reconditioned. Or better yet, call one of those crime-scene cleaners to erase all trace of dog.

The miles passed, with neither one of us talking. Harvey thrust his muzzle out the three inches of open window, sniffing the air with an enthusiasm that bordered on cocaine snorting. Every once in a while, he’d let out a yip, as if he’d seen someone he knew, his tail beating a greeting against the backseat. Then he’d hop down, dance around the backseat, nudge at his backpack, hop back onto the armrest and start the process all over again. If I hadn’t known better, I’d swear he was doing doggy aerobics.

I switched on the radio, but couldn’t get anything besides static. I watched the mile markers on I-81, which come every tenth of a mile, as if taunting me with how far I had yet to go, dread building in my stomach with each round number—261, 263, 268.

“Did you ever meet Vinny?” Bracing for the answer, I stiffened my spine and concentrated on the road—and not what lay at the end of it.

Because it sure as hell wasn’t a leprechaun and a nice little pot of gold.

“Vinny?” Susan thought a minute. “No, though I heard Dave talking to someone with that name a couple times, if that helps.”

A pang slammed into my chest, as sharp as a steak knife. Picturing Dave in her kitchen, or worse, her bedroom, sitting on the Sealy, lying against the pillows, talking on his cell. He’d have one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, and he’d be slumped a little, relaxed. If there was one thing Dave hadn’t been, it was high-strung.

“Apparently, he’s Harvey’s trainer,” I said.

“Oh.”

In five seconds, conversation had died, may it rest in peace and never be resurrected. Had I really thought I could spend fifteen-plus hours in a car with a woman I didn’t know, and had nothing in common with—

Except a husband.

Susan fidgeted beside me, adjusting the strap of her purse in her lap, then the deep V at her neck. Susan had a way of dressing that was just a step above streetwalker and about five hundred steps away from me and my turtlenecks and St. John’s Bay suit jacket. I wondered if that was what Dave had needed, a little dash of Victoria’s Secret to keep my husband home. If I’d worn a V-neck instead of a turtleneck, would he have craved another woman?

I had to stop playing this guessing game. It certainly didn’t improve my mood.

“So, Penny, what’s the plan?” Susan asked me, pivoting in her seat as she did, her face now happy and bright, as if the whole thing was just oh-so exciting. Either she was putting on a good show because she was just as bored as I was, or she truly thought this was going to be one long pajama party.

“We go down to Tennessee, meet this Vinny, give him the dog and…” My voice trailed off.

“And find Annie?”

I turned and looked at Susan. “Do you want to find Annie?”

She sighed and, in that sound, I heard every emotion that had torn apart my heart in the past few days. Like it or not, the two of us were going through the same grieving, sharing the pain as if we were conjoined twins. “Not really. But I suppose we have to, don’t we?”

I wanted to say no, we didn’t. That we could leave Annie wherever she was in Podunk, U.S.A., and go back to our merry lives like nothing had happened. That we could dump the dog and run.

But the practical side of me knew if there was a will—which I had yet to find in my search through the house—insurance money, social security death benefits, then there were legalities to work out between the three of us. If there were three. Maybe Annie was Harvey’s breeder or dog food provider or something.

“This is kind of fun,” Susan said, resting one skinny bare arm on the door. “I’ve never been on a road trip before.”

Fun? She was having fun?

“I haven’t traveled much, either.”

“Why not? You seem the…sophisticated type.”

“I’m an accountant,” I said, as if that was an explanation for everything.

“But don’t you have, like, accountant get-togethers where you discuss exciting things about taxes or whatever?”

I laughed, the sound bursting from my lungs so spontaneously I almost didn’t recognize it. It had been days since I’d laughed. Weeks, maybe. “Well, they do have conferences, but I’ve only been to one.”

“Why?”

“I don’t do well in strange places.”

“Oh.”

“I mean,” I hastened to add, in case it sounded as if I was some kind of an agoraphobic conference freak, “that a conference throws me off my schedule.”

“I don’t even own a watch,” Susan said, as if that should make total sense to me.

In a weird way, it did.

In the beginning of our marriage, Dave had asked me to travel, to go with him to conventions and client appointments in different cities. I’d tried it, once, and found the whole experience so unnerving and so out of my control that I’d never gone again. I’d pleaded headaches, the flu, work deadlines—until Dave stopped asking.

Now I knew why. It hadn’t just been my reluctance that had made him quit inviting me along. He’d been hiding a life that he’d apparently decided I didn’t want to share.

If he’d asked one more time? If he’d told me…

What would I have said?

I already knew that answer. Hell, no, I didn’t want a dog that could pirouette. And a definite nix on the idea of trotting him around dog shows all over the country. I mean, we’d had a mortgage to pay, a lawn to mow, for Pete’s sake.

“Oh, look, hitchhikers!” Susan pointed at what was clearly a novelty to her, standing on the highway in the misty rain. “Let’s stop.”

“Haven’t you read Stephen King? Don’t you know the chances of us being maimed or robbed…or worse?”

Susan waved a hand in dismissal. “Oh, they look okay.”

I glanced at the couple by the side of the road as we neared them. A scrawny guy in jeans with long, unkempt brown hair standing beside a short, plump woman who was either pregnant or hiding an Uzi under her shirt. “No. We’re not picking them up.”

“Fine.” Susan pouted, then turned her face again toward the window, giving the couple a little wave as we drove past.

Mile marker 274. Tennessee had never seemed so far away.

If these miles didn’t start passing faster, or if Susan didn’t suddenly fall asleep in her seat, there was going to be a felony committed in this car. And it wouldn’t be at the hands of some nameless hitchhiker.

“Susan, listen, I—”

The Benz jerked to the right with a loud pop, cutting off my sentence. I gripped the wheel, struggling to pull the car back into the lane before we were creamed by a mint-green Honda Odyssey puttering along in the slow lane.

“Holy crap! What just happened?” Susan asked, her face deathly white.

“Flat tire.” Or at least, that’s what I assumed. I’d never had anything go wrong with the Benz. Dave had always taken care of maintenance and when one car wore out, he’d replaced it with another just like it, black, dependable. “I think.”

I slowed, waited for the Odyssey to go by, then pulled off the road, gravel spitting between my tires and dinging against the body. The Benz leaned to one side, sinking into the ground as if an elephant had taken over Susan’s spot.

I got out and walked around to the front of the car, feeling the whoosh of traffic passing by, lifting my hair and jacket, making them flap in the hurried sixty-five-miles-per-hour breeze. There was no mistaking what had happened. The tire on the passenger side had gone flatter than a sheet of cardboard.

“Do you know how to fix it?” Susan asked, climbing out of the car and standing beside me in her ridiculous heels, shoes that were definitely not designed for performing car maintenance.

“No. I know how to call Triple A, though.”

Susan looked disappointed, as if she’d paid her dollar for an adventure and was expecting me to provide one. I went back to the car, searching for my cell phone. It wasn’t in the ashtray/change dish. Not in the cup holder, not on the dash, not in my purse. I started feeling blindly along the carpet, trying to ignore the French fry and nugget crumbs, then finally found it. Under Susan’s seat, the cover flipped open.

The battery was dead.

When had I gotten this distracted that I’d forget to recharge my cell? That I hadn’t even noticed it had bounced out of my purse? I couldn’t think of a single other time when I hadn’t been on top of everything, knowing exactly how to get from A to B.

And yet, I’d left this morning in a car with a woman who was a total stranger with nothing more than an overnight bag, a road atlas and a can of soda. I’d never done anything that unrehearsed, that unplanned.

At least not until my dearly beloved and stone-cold husband had thrown a big old roadblock into my life. A roadblock with impossible shoes and a tendency to talk at the worst time.

I cursed and tossed the useless cell onto the seat. It hit the hard surface of the armrest, bounced up and pinged into the backseat. Harvey let out a yip, then cowered in the corner.

And peed on the leather.

That was it. The last straw in a haystack that was already depleted. I started to cry, collapsing onto the driver’s seat in a useless heap. What was I thinking, driving this far? I could have just stayed in Newton, handing off the estate to some attorney who would tell Susan and Annie they’d get to split the dog and none of the things Dave and I had worked so hard to build together.

I didn’t want to hear that our entire life had been a group effort, that I had to triangulate my assets, as I had my husband.

Soon as the tire was fixed, I was turning around, heading back home. I didn’t want to know what Dave had been up to. I didn’t want his damned dog. And I especially didn’t want his other damned wife.

“Penny?” Susan’s touch was light on my shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yes.” Years of conditioning, of pretending everything was all right even as it crumpled around me, spit that word out on a sob.

“Don’t worry about the tire. Help has arrived.” She gestured beside her with a flourish, at the two hitchhikers I’d bypassed five minutes earlier.

They grinned at me. I gave them a watery, please-don’t-rob-us-and-leave-us-to-die-here smile back.

Somehow, given the circumstances lately, I had a feeling my luck wouldn’t be that good.

seven

It turned out Norm, the scrawny guy, knew how to change a tire and pop off a wheel cover, but lacked the strength to get the lug nuts off, so he had his girlfriend stand on the tire iron. Apparently neither one of them cared that she was six months pregnant—something Norm proudly told me as his girlfriend lifted up her Penn State sweatshirt and displayed a big round belly with an outie that seemed a lot like a tongue sticking out at us.

“Are you sure she should be standing on that?” I asked Norm. I had finished cleaning the seat with the wet wipes, given Harvey the evil eye, then swiped the whole thing down again with the remaining napkins. What I wouldn’t have given for a little Lysol.

He shrugged. “Rita’s cool with it. Aren’t ya, baby?”

She beamed at him and gave the metal rod a little bounce. “Absolutely. I do it all the time in the garage where Norm used to work.”

“Where are you guys headed?” Susan asked after the kid—the closer I looked the more I realized Norm couldn’t be a day over seventeen—finished jacking up, replacing, then jacking down.

“Dollywood,” his girlfriend answered for him. “Norm’s a country singer. A real good one, too. We’re headed there for this season’s American Idol tryouts. Norm’s gonna be a star.”

Her smile for him was so filled with adoration and hope that I didn’t have the heart to mention Norm’s chances of breaking onto the Billboard Top 100 were about nil. Particularly since he looked more like Charles Manson’s younger brother than Clint Black’s replacement.

“You’re all set,” Norm said. He swiped his greasy palms across his jeans, then stared at me expectantly.

“Uh…How much do you want?” I said, reaching for my purse, keeping it hidden behind the open door in case Norm and Rita got any ideas.

“Nothin’,” Rita popped in. “’Cept maybe a ride. Susan says you guys are going to Tennessee, too.”

I shot Susan a glare, but she ignored me. “We really can’t—”

“Get on in,” Susan said, ignoring me. “We could definitely use the company.”

Which meant she wasn’t having much more fun than I was. I said a quick prayer that neither one of them was a homicidal maniac, then slipped in behind the wheel. I did owe Norm, after all.

I pulled out onto the highway, easing into traffic, giving the tire a test before getting back up to full speed. Behind me, Harvey settled in between the two new passengers, sitting up and panting something that looked oddly like a smile.

“Oh, my God!” Rita shrieked.

“What? What?” I whipped my head around, trying to ease across two lanes, back to the side of the road. Was she in labor? Had the wheel slipped off? Had Norm forgotten to reattach the lug nuts?

“It’s that dog, baby,” she said, smacking Norm on the arm, making his faux leather jacket crinkle. “The one from Letterman.”

Norm leaned around to look at Harvey head-on. “Holy crap, it is. Harry the Dog.”

“Not Harry, silly. Harvey the Wonder Dog.”

At that, Harvey let out a yip of agreement. He sat up and begged, then did a twirl of a dance around the leather. I thanked God that he didn’t get too excited. I only had so many wet wipes.

“You own Harvey?” Norm asked, clearly impressed. I could have been Dolly Parton for all the awe I saw reflected in my rearview mirror. “That’s, like, cool, dude.”

“I only sort of own him.” I concentrated on getting the car back on the road, without being creamed by a passing double semi.

“Oh, Penny, don’t be so modest,” Susan said. “She’s Harvey’s mommy.”

Only because you dumped him on me, I thought but didn’t say. “We’re both his owners,” I said, giving Susan a friendly you’re-stuck-with-me-in-this-one smile.

“Dude, this dog is, like, famous.” Norm let out a low whistle. “No wonder you’re driving an M.B.”

“M.B.?” I said.

“Mercedes-Benz, dude. A rich chick’s car.”

I wasn’t rich, nor was I a chick, but I let it go. The green sign on my right promised the Tennessee state line was only another forty miles away. Pigeon Forge was another thirty from there. Soon, Norm and Rita would be gone, off to pursue fame and fortune at Dollywood.

Or maybe just ride the rides and leave with their ticket stubs and some disappointment.

“So, like, what kinda tricks can you make him do? Can you get him to do that thing where he opens a can? Man, if he could pop open a brewski, he’d be a damned handy dog.” Norm thought a second. “Though, it might be better if he could open the fridge and the brewski. Save me from getting off the couch.”

I didn’t say anything about his obvious underage status and the fact that he was already sofa surfing and drinking beer. Not to mention the example he’d be setting for his future child.

“So, what can you get him to do?” Norm asked again.

“Hello,” I said, annoyed and frustrated with my passengers, “I’m not really his—”

I caught sight of Harvey in the rearview mirror. He was standing on his back paws again, waving the two others at me.

“Cool. He waves.”

I’d said hello, the dog had started to wave. Coincidence or was Harvey listening to me? I opted for the first one.

“He’s such a cutie,” Rita said. “Do you know how old he is?”

“How old are you, Harvey?” I asked, half joking, figuring the dog would ignore me and go back to his crumb hunt. Instead, Harvey began pawing at the seat, almost tapping on it. Once, twice, three times…eight times total. “Eight,” I said, not sure I’d just seen the dog count, but maybe…

I mean, he was called Harvey the Wonder Dog. Wouldn’t he at least be able to tell how old he was? Dave had mentioned a few tricks in the journal, but overall he’d been pretty vague, mentioning things like Harvey’s A Routine and his C Routine, whatever those meant. Either way, it didn’t matter to me. Soon enough, Harvey—and his routines—would be Vinny’s problem.

“Oh, my God!” Rita shrieked a second time.

“Don’t tell me that dog peed again.” My wet wipe supply was running low, along with my patience.

“Uh…no.” In the rearview mirror I saw Norm’s eyes grow wide as Rita began to curse and yell, grabbing at his hand. He held hers tight, their joined knuckles turning white, along with every feature in Norm’s face. “We gotta go to the hospital. I think Rita’s having the baby.”

At that she let out another scream and smacked him with her other hand. “Will you quit talking and just get this thing out of me?” She whipped her head around, glaring at Norm. “This is all your fault, you—”

Another scream, a third smack-down for the situation. Norm took it all, no complaint, but the color was a shade off in his face. “Dude, we gotta go faster.”

“You said she was only six months pregnant.” I swerved again, into the exit lane, narrowly avoiding a FedEx truck. My gaze darted to the roadside, praying for a little blue sign with an H.

Norm shrugged, cool as a cucumber. “What do I know? I failed math three times.”

eight

Pandemonium.

That word pretty much summed up the entire day. In Whitfield, we found a hospital, thank God, and brought in Norm and a nonstop screaming Rita. By the time we got there, she was full out thrashing and clutching at Norm and begging for drugs. I started calculating the chances she’d give birth on my backseat.

Not even Johnson & Johnson had enough wet wipes to cover that kind of mess. And I doubted Harvey’s skills extended to midwifery.

In the end, the leather was saved, the tire held and Rita turned out to be having a hell of a bad case of Braxton Hicks. The hospital kept her overnight for observation.

“You can’t be hitchhiking with her,” I told Norm in the hall, feeling like the housemom for Dropout U. Susan was inside Rita’s room, the two of them laughing and giggling, as if this had just been one more adventure.

Norm lifted one shoulder, then dropped it. “I gotta get my chance at Hollywood, dude. Rita’ll be cool.”

“Do you want your future son or daughter born on the highway? You need to get her home. Think of the baby, not yourself.”

“Dude, it’s American Idol. It’s like the biggest show on TV. If I go home now, I may never get my shot.” Norm toed at the floor, streaking black rubber across the pristine vinyl. “Besides, we ain’t got no place to go home to. Rita’s dad kinda blames me for her…condition.”

“Well, you did get her pregnant.”

“Yeah, but I, like, love her and everything.” He looked back at the room. His gaze softened and in it, I did see love, or at least I thought I did. I wasn’t sure anymore if I could read a man’s expression and know what he was really thinking. “I was gonna get a job, get us a place to crash, but Rita, she really wanted me to do this singing thing. She says I got charisma.”

He had something, that was for sure, because Rita saw the sun and the moon in his face. And whenever they were alone, I’d noticed he reflected that solar system right back at her.

I dug in my purse and pulled out the cash I’d withdrawn that morning. It was only a few hundred dollars, but I hoped it would be enough for the two of them to get back to their homes and some sanity. “Take this,” I said, handing it to Norm. “Go home, find a place, a job, some baby furniture. Promise me you’ll marry her. And keep it to one wife.”

Norm’s eyes grew wide. “That’s, like, a lot of money. I only changed your tire.”

“Be good to her. Talk to her and be smart about your decisions.” I left off the rest of the lecture that had been stewing in the back of my mind. Who was I, the Clueless Wife, to tell Norm and Rita what to do?

“Thanks. You’re, like, a chick with heart,” Norm said, closing his hand over mine, then releasing it to give me what I thought was a peace sign. “Keep it posi, dude. And good luck with Harvey.”

“Yeah, thanks.” I probably needed the luck more than Norm, who seemed oddly grounded and cool about the direction his life had taken. I grabbed Susan and we left, stopping by the hospital ATM on the way.

“I saw what you did,” Susan said.

“I didn’t want them holding up a minimart to pay for a crib.”

Susan laughed, then wrapped her arms around me in a hug.

I cleared my throat and pulled back. “We have to get Harvey to the dog show before he eats my dashboard.”

Susan kept up her usual chatter during the hour and a half it took us to reach Pigeon Forge and then the Grand Resort Hotel and Convention Center that was hosting the Dog-Gone-Good Show. She talked mainly about Norm and Rita, about their baby, about Norm’s singing voice and how his audition would go. I tried to respond but barely got more than a word or two in.

When Susan’s motor was started, there was no stopping it. I was actually relieved to park the car at the hotel and enter a whole new kind of crazy.

Harvey bounded out of the car the second I opened my door, ran through the lobby, past the bellhop’s attempt to grab him and straight into the Dog-Gone-Good registration fray. “Harvey!”

He ignored me and kept on going, weaving his little body in and out among the other dog owners and their pooches. He nearly missed being sideswiped by a Labradoodle, darted under a Great Dane as if it was a bridge, and skidded to a stop before the skirted table, leaping up onto the white surface and wiggling his way toward the third man on the right.

Around me, I heard people calling out Harvey’s name, telling each other the Wonder Dog was here, laughing at his break for freedom. People pointed, smiled, waved at the terrier.

Harvey, apparently, was a regular celebrity on the dog-show circuit.

“Harvey!” I screamed, mortified. Stupid dog, why couldn’t he obey? Wasn’t that what he was trained to do? And where the heck was a Beggin’ Strip when I really needed one?

“Harvey!” the man cried, wrapping his arms around the dog and submitting to the terrier’s wild tongue introduction. “Where you been, buddy?”

I made my way through the crowds, reached forward and snapped Harvey’s leash onto his collar. “I’m sorry. He got away from me.”

The man grinned. “Once Harvey gets an idea in his head, he goes after it. The only time you can get him to behave is on the stage.”

I studied the man in front of me. Not a bad-looking man at that. Dark hair with a dusting of gray, tall, reasonably well built. Green eyes that were just a shade above gray. No one I’d ever met before, but that didn’t surprise me. Dave had clearly kept this entire side of his life a secret. “How do you know Harvey? Are you his trainer?”

“I’m his agent.”

A woman slipped into the line beside me, carrying a white poodle whose froufrou hairstyle had been jazzed up with hot-pink bows. She was cooing to the dog, telling it everything would be just fine. Cee-Cee, the dog, quivered in the woman’s arms, as though she was about to pee. I stepped a little to the left, keeping my Rockports out of Cee-Cee’s aim.

“Harvey has an agent?” I said.

The man chuckled. “Hell, ninety percent of the dogs here do. And those that don’t are looking to chomp on to the first one who shows an interest.”

“Dave never—” Dave hadn’t mentioned an agent in the journal for Harvey, but I didn’t want to tell this guy that. Maybe they’d been on the outs? Maybe Dave hadn’t seen it as an important detail?

Or maybe the guy was making the entire thing up.

“Matt Shay,” he said, thrusting out his hand. I recognized the name from Dave’s cell directory. Success.

“Penny Reynolds,” I replied, shaking with him. He had a firm grip, the kind that said he was comfortable in his own skin, in the jeans and button-down shirt he wore.

“Are you related to Dave?”

“I’m his wife.”

I had to give the man credit, he didn’t blink an eye. Didn’t betray his surprise at all. “Penny. That’s right, he’s mentioned you.”

I didn’t want to call his bluff. I didn’t want to make him admit that he’d never heard of me before. That the woman Dave had called his wife had been Annie or Susan or worse…someone else. “Nice to meet you.”

“Vinny told me Dave had…passed away,” Matt said, drawing Harvey closer to his chest and absently fingering the dog’s ears. “I’m really sorry.”

The crowd pressed in against me, people shouting out their dog’s FAQs, their addresses, phone numbers, screaming names like “Sir Hightower Golden Fancy” and “Lady’s Lost Slipper Deluxe.”

I nodded, swallowing back the lump in my throat. “It was pretty sudden.”

“What happened?” Then he put up a hand. “No, no. You don’t have to talk about it.”

Good. Because I had no intention of telling this stranger, the dog’s agent, for God’s sake, that my husband had been found dead after screwing his second wife. A wife who was finally bringing up the rear, after a prolonged trip to “the little girls’ room.”

“Penny! There you are. You won’t believe it. They have dog biscuits in the ladies’ room. In the little—” Susan cupped her hand over her mouth “—candy machine, if you know what—” She stopped talking when she noticed Matt. “Hello. I’m Susan Reynolds.”

“Matt Shay,” he said, shaking with her, too. “You must be Dave’s sister.”

Susan laughed. “Oh, no. I’m his wife.”

Matt’s mouth dropped open. I wanted to die right there, sink into a hole in the floor and take Susan with me.

Susan and I hadn’t thought to discuss this. All those hours in the car and the whole “what do we say when people ask?” question had never come up. I guess I’d just assumed Susan would let me be the wife and she’d play Dave’s friend.

Susan covered her mouth as if she’d just realized what she’d said. “Well, Dave was a busy guy,” she said, with one of those little laughs of hers.

Cee-Cee’s owner turned around and stared at us. She elbowed the woman behind her. “Lucy, did you hear that? They’re one of them polygamy families,” she whispered, in decibels they could hear in space. “Bunch of perverts.”

“This was a bad idea,” I said, taking Harvey out of Matt’s arms, with a protest from the dog, and wheeling around. I hadn’t thought about how we’d answer these questions, how I would deal with what people would think. I’d been intent on getting here, ridding myself of the dog and determining how far I’d have to split Dave’s assets. My plan lacked…a plan.

Ignoring the stares and whispers, I wove my way quickly through the crowd, my eyes fixed firmly on the four red letters of Exit.

Go home. Go back to normalcy. Pretend all of this never happened.

“Penny!”

I ignored Matt’s voice and plunged forward, through a crowd of collies, their owners looking as poufy as the dogs themselves. A weird part of my mind, the part that had completely disassociated from this entire surreal experience, wondered if they’d be called a crowd. Or a litter. Or a bark, or some other weird thing. Tears rose to my eyes—when had I become this weepy creature? I never cried—and I stumbled into a group of poodles, the leather straps wrapping around my legs and tangling my steps.

“Penny,” Matt said, reaching for me across the over-groomed white dogs. “What’s wrong?”

I stepped back, out of the leashes, and kept backing up until I hit the solidity of a column. “Come on, Matt. Tell me you aren’t that clueless.”

“Actually, I am.” He grinned. “It’s part of my DNA, or so my ex-wife told me.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, the kind of relieved laugh you let out when you’ve narrowly missed creaming the neighbor’s bushes because a chipmunk ran in front of the car. I sobered when I caught a glimpse of Susan stuck on the other side of the dog pool, waving at me like a mariner lost at sea. “I think it’s pretty obvious. I’m Dave’s wife and so is she.”

He shrugged. “That’s okay. I mean, I’ve heard about those kind of arrangements, but never—”

“It is not that kind of arrangement!” I forced myself to lower my voice when several people turned to stare. “I never knew he had another wife.”

“Until after he—”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.” His eyes grew rounder. “That must have been horrible.”

“You know, this isn’t my favorite topic of conversation. I came down here to give Harvey to you or Vinny or whoever’s in charge because I don’t want a dog, I don’t want to go to the Dog-Gone-Good Show and I don’t want—”

And then I was crying again.

“Hey, hey,” Matt said, coming closer to me, taking my arm. “It’s okay. It’ll work out. Come on, let me buy you some coffee.”

“But what about the show and Susan and—”

“I think you need a cup of coffee more than any of those things need to be handled.” Still holding my arm, he gently led me out of the room, through a back door in the ballroom. Immediately, the crazy zoo behind us was silenced. Five minutes later, we’d left the building by a side entrance that kept us far from the registration fray.

As I thought of all the questions I needed to ask Susan—questions I still wasn’t a hundred-percent sure I wanted to know the answers to—I wondered if it might be less painful to just take a bath in gravy and offer myself up as a lobby sacrifice.

nine

I don’t know what kind of man I expected a dog agent to be, but it wasn’t Matt Shay.

“Hey, Matt, you escaping again?” the redheaded, statuesque waitress said as she led us to a booth in the back of a diner named The NightOwl. Situated down the street from the Grand Resort Hotel and Convention Center hosting the Dog-Gone-Good Show, it was one of those retro buildings made to look like an old-fashioned railroad dining car.

Most of the customers were males over the age of sixty, debating sports stats along with the talking heads on ESPN, which played on every TV in the diner except for one in the back running cartoons. No children were watching Tom and Jerry, but one middle-aged guy was, sitting to the right of the set and laughing as if Tom the cat had the comedic ability of Robin Williams.

“Thanks, Lucille,” Matt said as he slid into the booth. The waitress didn’t bat an eye at Harvey, who slipped onto the seat beside Matt and promptly fell asleep, apparently tuckered out from watching me do all the driving. “Bring me some high-octane coffee and for my guest…” He looked to me.

“A cup of the same. Leave plenty of room for cream, please.”

“Good,” he said, smiling, after Lucille left.

I realigned the salt and pepper, putting them squarely against the silver napkin holder. “What’s good?”

“You’re not one of those cappuccino women.”

“What’s a cappuccino woman?”

“You know, the kind that goes into Starbucks and orders a coffee like she’s picking out a car? Tall, noncaf, nonfat, venti mocha with a double sugar-free caramel shot.” Matt rolled his eyes. “Get a damned coffee, not a short story.”

I laughed. “I can honestly say that I am probably the only person on the planet who has never stepped foot in a Starbucks.”

He put out his hand and shook mine again. “Meet the only other one.”

I laughed again. At this rate, it was becoming a habit. “What’s good here?” I asked, feeling a wave of guilt that I was laughing when my life was such a shambles. I was a widow, for God’s sake. I shouldn’t be laughing at another man’s jokes.

I jerked a menu out of the metal holder and scanned the diner’s offerings, instead of the man across from me. My stomach rumbled, which reminded me I hadn’t eaten in hours, not since we’d done that live-action version of A Baby Story with Norm and Rita.

And Susan. Oh, no, I’d ditched her, without a thought.

“Everything’s good here. Willhemina, the owner, makes everything from scratch, the way her mother and her mother’s mother taught her. Which means this isn’t the kind of place where you watch your calories or your cholesterol.” Matt’s gaze ran over my face. “You worried about Susan?”

“Yeah.” I put the menu to the side and glanced out the window. “I shouldn’t have left her there.”

He flipped out a cell phone, punched in a number, then waited as the call connected. “Jerry. Look for a tall blonde in a black minidress and—”

“Red shoes with rhinestones,” I supplied.

“Red shoes with rhinestones.” He paused. “I should have known you’d find her before I could get past the word blonde.” Matt chuckled, a nice, hearty male sound. “Tell her Penny and I are grabbing a bite to eat and we’ll be back.” He paused, laughed some more. “Okay. Sounds good.” He closed the phone and tucked it back into his pocket.

“What sounds good?”

“Jerry offered, out of the kindness of his heart, I’m sure, to keep Susan entertained. He’s got a weakness for blondes.” Matt grinned. “I have a feeling you won’t see Susan for a while. Jerry’ll whisk her off on a tour of the city or something.”

Relief settled over my shoulders, displacing the heavy weight of worry. For a while, I could forget about Dave’s other wife. Have a meal and a conversation and pretend everything was fine. For now. “Thanks.”

He shrugged. “Hey, we’re a full-service agency.”

I laughed again, then thanked Lucille as she deposited two cups of coffee before us, along with a generous handful of creamers.

“Where’s Vinny?” I asked, laying my napkin on my lap and smoothing it into place.

“Harvey’s trainer? Oh, he usually doesn’t do these kinds of things. He’s not good in a crowd.”

“But isn’t he the one who takes Harvey onstage?”

“Yeah, when we can get him sufficiently liquored up and convinced he won’t die.” At my knitted brow, Matt leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Vinny has a bit of stage fright.”

“But he’ll be fine at the Dog-Gone-Good, right?” Suddenly, I wanted Harvey to succeed, to do as well as he had in the past. The part of me that still loved Dave knew he had loved that stupid dog, and had invested a lot in his success.

“Yeah, I’m sure he will.” But Matt didn’t sound so confident. “Vinny’ll get over his little problem between now and Tuesday.”

“Little problem?”

“He, ah, breaks out in hives whenever he has to get near a stage. He had a bad experience with Rin Tin Tin the second six months ago and ever since then, he gets a little nervous.”

“A little?”

“Okay, a lot. And the hives are…well, they’re more like facial explosions. The makeup artist on Letterman had to use a paint sprayer to cover them.”

That sounded like a lot more than a small problem. I fiddled with my silverware, aligning it, one bottom edge perfectly against the other. “Can’t you do it?”

Matt shook his head. “Harvey’s particular about who he listens to. Apparently I’m not on his friends-and-family list.”

“But he likes you so much.”

“Harvey likes everyone. He doesn’t obey everyone, though. He’s a star, so he tends to be temperamental.”

I slid a piece of ice into my mouth and toyed with it, before crunching the cube and swallowing. My dentist would have been appalled, but I figured if the worst thing I did right now was start chewing ice, then I’d take the tsk-tsk from Dr. Diehl.

Harvey had awakened and slid under the table, then up onto the vinyl seat beside me. He wagged his tail, prancing on the seat and watching me expectantly, probably thinking I had a few Beggin’ Strips in my purse. “Sit, Harvey,” I said. He did, tamping his enthusiasm a bit.

“Have you tried working with him?” Matt asked.

“Me? No, no. Not at all.”

“He likes you.” Matt gestured toward the dog with his fork. “And he seems to behave for you, too.”

I thought of the car ride and how Harvey had tapped out his age, or at least what I presumed was his age. How he’d sat when I’d told him to, stayed when I asked him to. Not to mention that whole thing with waving hello. Was he listening to me? “Are you suggesting what I think you are?”

Matt grinned, the kind of smile that normally would have had me thinking he liked me, that there was something more than a conversation about a dog going on here. “Only if you’re considering it.”

“No. No, no, no. I will not go onstage with the dog.”

“It’s an easy job. Harvey does all the work.”

At that, Harvey let out a yip of agreement, then did his turnaround dance on the seat.

I hadn’t driven all this way to end up onstage with a dog I didn’t even want. I was here for answers, not my shot—or rather Harvey’s shot—at fifteen minutes of fame. “I’m an accountant, for God’s sake.”

Matt grinned. “All the more reason to step out of your comfort zone.”

I dug in my purse, found a few ones and threw them at the table, then rose. “You don’t understand. This entire trip has been out of my comfort zone. My marriage, it turns out, wasn’t even on the same planet as my comfort zone. I’m not taking that dog onto a stage or in front of a camera or anywhere else for that matter. You’re his agent, you deal with him.”

Then I turned and walked out of the diner, leaving Harvey the Wonder Dog, and his wonder agent, behind. I’d done half of what I came here to do.

The easy half, my mind whispered. Dealing with Annie—and who she was or wasn’t—was going to be a lot harder than leaving a dog in a diner.

“There you are!” Susan exclaimed, coming up to me the second I hit the sidewalk. She was trailed by a man about five years younger than she, who was all puppy-dog eyes and clear infatuation with the statuesque, busty blonde. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“And I was on my way to find you. We need to—”

Before I could say “go home,” Susan grabbed my arm, her eyes bright with excitement, and dropped a bombshell in my lap. “I found Annie,” Susan said. “And you’ll never believe what I learned about her.”

ten

Susan hadn’t really found Annie, per se, she’d found Betty Williams, a friend of Annie’s, who had seen us with Harvey and gone up to Susan to ask where Dave was, which then somehow led into a conversation about Annie. I didn’t hear all of Susan’s convoluted explanation of how the conversation had come around to the third woman in Dave’s life, but it was something that had involved fall foliage, then Benzes, then who was the cuter ER doc.

“What did Betty finally tell you?” I asked. “About Annie, not the probability of George Clooney returning to the cast.”

“That Annie lives in Cleveland, which really isn’t all that much of a drive from here and—” at this, Susan drew in a breath “—that she has five kids.”

Kids.

The word slapped me, dropped into my gut with a sense of unfairness, of loss. That was supposed to be our next step, a baby to fill that empty bedroom at the top of the stairs. As I had for fifteen years, I’d put it off, figuring there’d be time. Time for me to get over my parenthood phobia, time for Dave and me to talk, for me to tell him the truth about how I felt about the baby issue.

Time, it seemed, had had the last laugh. “Dave had children?”

“Well, Betty didn’t say that exactly. She just said Annie had five kids.” Susan’s gaze softened and I wondered if she had been struck cold hearing that word, too. “That could mean anything, Penny.”

Five seconds ago, I had been planning on grabbing Susan and hopping in the Benz, heading back to Newton without stopping for hitchhikers, blown tires, emergency births or anything else. But the new information opened a window in me, a window that was both painful—

And curious.

Despite how my heart constricted like a rubber band had been tied across it, I wanted to know more. “Did she say if Annie was his wife?”

Susan’s attention dipped into her purse as she looked for a tube of red lipstick and a little mirror. “I think we need to go see her,” Susan said, avoiding the question as she smeared the tube across her lips, turning them from faintly pink to shocking crimson.

Something lurked beneath the surface of that L’Oréal, I was sure of it. But Susan had already replaced the tube and turned guileless eyes on me. “Shall we get Harvey registered for the show?”

“I left him with Matt, his doggy agent. I’ve done my part.”

Susan reached out and took my arm, her grasp firm. “You don’t honestly mean to leave Dave’s dog here, do you?”

“That was my plan.”

“Since when?” Susan put her other fist on her hip. “I thought we were down here to get to know Dave through Harvey. And his people.”

“I’ve done enough of that,” I said, lying through my teeth.

“Uh-huh. We know almost nothing more than when we started out. There has to be something else.”

My nonchecked list already told me that. I rubbed at my neck, trying to ease the building tension. “On top of that, Matt wants me to take Harvey trotting around the ring for the show. He says Vinny gets stage fright and Harvey will only work with certain people and—”

“That’s a wonderful idea!” Susan exclaimed, now pumping my arm up and down, using my extremities to emphasize her point. Two women passing by with We Love the Smokies shopping bags stopped and stared. Behind them, a slower-moving group of seniors was making its way down the sidewalk.

“It’s a terrible idea. For one, I have no training in this and for another—” Well, I couldn’t think of another just now, but I would.

“You should do it, Penny. It’ll help you stop being so—” She cut herself off and bit that perfect red lip.

“So what?”

“Well…” Susan paused, her gaze darting away, then back as if this was such a scandalous thing to say she had to make sure the entire busload of seniors with their red Merry Manor Retirement Home sweatshirts didn’t overhear. “You are a little uptight.”

“I am not.”

Susan just arched a brow. Apparently taking a fifteen-hour car trip with me had made her an expert on my personality.

“Why don’t you march Harvey around?” I asked her.

“Because that dog won’t listen to me. Why do you think I gave him to you?”

Thinking back, I realized Susan had hardly interacted with Harvey the whole time we’d been together. It was as if she were afraid of the dog, or maybe vice versa. If anything, I was sure the heels put him off. Little dog like that, tall spiky things near his paws…it had to look bad from his perspective. “I can’t, Susan. And I won’t.”

“Not even for Dave?”

“Why the hell should I do anything for Dave?” The Merry Manor crowd turned around, making no secret of their staring. I lowered my voice and whispered the words again.

“Because you used to love him, just like me, and he would have wanted Harvey to strut his stuff.”

“Dave is—” I still couldn’t speak the word, not without it choking up my throat “—gone, and he wouldn’t know if Harvey strutted or not.”

“Yeah, but you’d know and you’d feel bad.”

Susan was presuming an awful lot.

“I can’t talk about this now. I can’t decide right now.” I ran a hand through my hair, trying to make sense of the thousands of thoughts going through my head. I needed some time to regroup. Get my bearings.

“Listen, why don’t we stay here tonight?” Susan smiled. “Everything always looks better in the morning.”

For once, I couldn’t argue with Susan. After the long day, the exhausting drive through the night, I wanted nothing more than a good night’s sleep and a bit of distance between all of this and me. “All right. Just one night. Then we either go to Cleveland or back home.”

Susan hesitated only a second before nodding. Second thoughts or simply her not paying attention? “Right. And while we’re here, you’ll think about letting your hair down a little?”

“I think I already did that.”

Susan snorted a little in disbelief. “I know your personality, Penny. I see it in my lawyer and the man who does my taxes and that career counselor who tried so damned hard to convince me that I could be a flight attendant. I mean, could you see me in one of those ugly uniforms, handing out peanuts?”

Actually, I could, but I kept that to myself.

“You have everything in your life so tightly controlled, that one step outside the gate has you worried that the whole ball of wax will come crashing down. I mean, you have wet wipes in your glove compartment for eating French fries.”

Susan made it sound like a felony. “I don’t like the Benz to get dirty.”

“You stopped me from putting salt on my fries, in case the salt sprayed. It’s salt, Penny, not mud.” She shook her head, then went on. “You can live dangerously and everything will be as it was in the morning.”

“How can you say that after the week we just went through?” I turned away from her, willing the stupid tears that kept springing to my eyes to take a permanent vacation. “Nothing will ever be the same again.”

“That’s what’s so wonderful,” Susan said, pumping my arm again, like an oil rig that had hit a big cache of crude. “We can change. Do something different. Try a new life.”

“I don’t want to try a new life. I liked mine just the way it was.”

Confusion knit Susan’s brows together. “Then why did you marry Dave? I mean, he was all about change. About doing something different every day.”

And then I knew. I knew what had gone wrong; I knew why my husband had needed another wife, another life.

Because I represented sameness. Ironing on Tuesdays, scrambled eggs on Sunday. Sex on Wednesdays and Fridays, a kiss goodbye in the morning, a hug hello at night. Lasagna on Sunday—

God, I had been a walking, talking stuck record. Who the heck wanted that when they could have a shiny new iPod, one that came with bigger breasts and better shoes?

What made me think that returning to my old way of living wouldn’t net me the same result? Assuming, that was, that I moved on someday, considered another relationship.

What if I did, and ended up in the same boat as before? With a man so tired of the ennui that he had to seek something else to fill his days?

I looked down at my button-down silky shirt and gray trousers, all as neatly pressed as they had been the day they’d come out of the dry cleaners. Lines aligned, buttons were snapped, lint hadn’t dared tread anywhere near me.

“You’re right, Susan.” If there’d been a list of top ten sentences I never expected to hear come out of my mouth, that was number one.

She beamed. “Of course I am. So, will you do it?”

“There’s really not much to it.”

I wheeled around and saw Matt standing there. How long had he been there, listening? And what was he thinking about me and my wet-wipe issues?

“You walk Harvey around a ring,” Matt said, coming closer, “and toss him a treat from time to time. He’ll do all the heavy lifting.”

I looked down at the tiny, wriggling ball of fur at my feet and thought I’d done nothing but heavy lifting since Dave had died. If the piano-playing dog wanted to take a few of the concrete blocks off my shoulders, I’d buy him a year’s supply of Beggin’ Strips.

eleven

Georgia was thrilled when I called her later that night from our hotel room, a space that had all the personality of a cardboard box and about the same decor. “I knew this was going to go well for you, Penny. I had a feeling about it.”

“Going well?” I thought of the flat tire, the hitchhikers, the E.R. run and then Matt’s idea that I trot Harvey around. I’d left him with a dog, and without a commitment, because as much as I worried that my status quo was half the problem in my marriage, it still represented comfort. Organization was my life afghan and right now, I needed that crutch. “That’s like saying the Titanic had a great maiden voyage.”

Georgia laughed. “Look at it as an adventure.”

I glanced toward the closed bathroom door of the La Quinta Inn room Susan and I had rented. The Grand Resort Hotel had been full and we’d opted to share a space. I’d proposed it as a money-saving idea, since neither of us knew how the estate would pan out. Truth be told, she was beginning to grow on me.

And, the thought of being by myself didn’t exactly make me jump for joy. The last thing I needed late at night was to be alone with all these thoughts about why, and how, and when and where. I’d done altogether enough of that already.

“It has been different,” I told Georgia. “That’s for sure.”

“Different is good right now, Pen. I know you don’t think so, but it is.”

I murmured something noncommittal. Different had never been my strong suit. I didn’t plan on adding it to my personal deck of cards anytime soon.

“Oh, and you need to give Dave’s mom a call. She left a message on my machine, looking for you. Said something about wanting to clear up something unusual in Dave’s estate.”

I sank back against the bed, balancing the phone against my shoulder, and pressed my hands to my temples. “Do you think she knows?”

“She’s his mother. Don’t you think she would?”

“I was his wife. And I had no idea.”

“Oh, Pen, you’ll figure it out.” A doorbell sounded on Georgia’s end. “I’m sorry, hon, but I gotta go. My shiatsu massager is here.”

“You have a massage therapist who comes to your house?”

“Oh, no, not a person. A machine. Without you around to keep me busy, I’ve gotten hooked on QVC.” Georgia laughed. “So either send me money or come home soon.”

“I’ll be home soon as I can. There are a lot of…loose ends.”

Georgia paused and I could almost hear her sending me a mental hug. “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Penny.”

I glanced at the bathroom door, where Susan was inside, singing a Beatles song as she showered. “To be honest, I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for. Or what I’ve found.”

I told Georgia I loved her, then hung up and lay back against the pillows. A plan, that’s what I needed. I pulled out the pad of paper from the hotel, then started making a list of everything I wanted to cover tomorrow. Questions I still had, goals I hadn’t hit.

1. Find out who Annie is

2. Decide what to do with the dog

3. Call Georgia; ask her to take another look in Dave’s study for a will

4. Meet with Vinny. Tell him no way on the dog show idea

5. Determine legalities of this mess

6. Get myself untangled from the same mess

With each numbered item, calmness descended over my shoulders. Order was being restored, at least on this particular slip of paper. I studied the program guide for the Dog-Gone-Good Show, then tossed it to the side and slid under the covers.

The calmness ebbed, replaced by a wash of grief so strong it would have knocked me over if I’d been upright. The loss crushed my heart, squeezing it like an overjuiced orange.

Inside the bathroom, I heard the hair dryer start. The noisy Conair muffled my tears. I clutched the list, as if holding it could give me back the security I’d lost.

It didn’t. All I got was a paper cut.

A few minutes later, Susan left the bathroom, clad in a silky blue nightshirt that skimmed her thighs. Quite the contrast to the oversize T-shirt I’d gotten for opening a Christmas Club account. I tried not to think about whether Dave had seen—and appreciated—that nightshirt and the slim, busty woman beneath it.

“Penny?” Susan asked after I had turned out the light. In the dark, her voice sounded miles instead of just a few feet away in the other double.

“Yeah?”

“Why do you think Dave did it?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, rolling over and clutching the second pillow to my chest and trying to get comfortable on the cheap mattress, avoiding the dip in the center. I could make out Susan’s slim shape beneath the blankets, her back to me, her hair in a loose ponytail.

“I always thought I was the one, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah.” What woman suspected her husband had an extra wife on the side? It certainly wasn’t something you saw on Maple Street in Anytown, U.S.A. Maybe there were bigamists on every street corner, but I doubted it.

“It’s like that guy on Oprah, did you see that show?” She didn’t wait for my answer. “He had nine wives. Nine. And they all lived in, like, the same state, and they all thought he was this big-shot navy pilot or something. I don’t know how he kept that many secret. At least you and I live in different states.” Susan was quiet for a long moment, and the dark seemed to wrap around us, joining us in a way that we hadn’t been before. “Do you think Dave was like that?”

“With nine wives? God, I hope not.”

Susan paused a moment. I could hear the alarm clock flip the numbers from 10:56 to 10:57 p.m. “What did he tell you he did for work?” she asked.

Susan was trying to do what I had set out to do—uncover what was lies and what was truth. But I didn’t want her questioning my husband. To me, he was mine, always had been.

Susan had come after me, after Dave had said “I do” and “I promise” to me. Annie, if she even was a wife, had come after that. I was the first, I had the ownership claim.

But what did I really own? A man who’d run around the country, slipping marquise-cuts on women’s fingers, while taking his piano-playing dog on the road?

Not exactly a big prize at the bottom of my box of Cracker Jack.

“What did he tell you?” I asked Susan.

“That he worked in insurance. That’s how we met, you know.”

Oh, God. I didn’t want to hear this story. I didn’t want to know he had met Susan at one of the office parties I had skipped because it had been tax season. Or that she’d been the receptionist at the office, there to greet my husband every day with a smile and a stack of pink messages.

But Susan apparently lacked the ESP gene because she went on, undeterred. “I was in a car accident, a hit-and-run on the highway, when I was coming back from visiting a friend in Boston. This guy switched lanes and nicked me, sending my car into the guardrail. I was standing there, on the side of the highway, crying. I didn’t know what to do. I’d never been in an accident before and I was clueless. But then, Dave saw me and pulled over, got out of his car, and he helped me figure out what to do. Who to call, all of that.”

“That’s Dave,” I admitted. It was the husband I had known, a man who would stop and help a little old lady who had dropped her groceries, who never passed a man broken down on the side of the road with a hissing radiator without running to the closest gas station to buy him some water and antifreeze.

“And we got to talking, and because I was still so upset and shaky, he offered to drive me home. And we stopped for coffee and—”

“One thing led to another,” I cut in, not wanting the sordid details. Not wanting to picture them, swept up in the moment and hurrying off to the nearest Motel 6.

“No, not at all. It was a long time before anything like that happened. We kept in touch because I was having problems getting my insurance company to cover the accident and all, so he was kind of like my adviser.”

A friend. He’d started as her friend.

It was the exact way we had come together.

“So how did you two meet?” Susan asked, the question sounding like the kind you asked at a class reunion or a cocktail party, not in the darkened hotel room you were sharing with your husband’s other wife.

Nevertheless, she’d told me her story, and in that guilt women seemed to inherit along with breasts, I felt compelled to do the same. “I met Dave in college. He was a business major, I was going for finance, but we had a couple of classes that overlapped the two majors so we ended up in a study group together. We were friends, really, nothing else. Then he came up to me after a business ethics class one day, and asked me out. I said no.”

“You did?”

I nodded. “But he didn’t give up. He asked me out again the next day, but I still wouldn’t agree.”

“Why?”

“He wasn’t my type. I like men who are studious and quiet.” I laughed a little at the memory, the image I’d had for my future back then. “I guess I pictured myself marrying a professor in a tweed jacket. You know, the kind with the patches on the elbows? We’d sit in the study, him smoking his pipe while I balanced the checkbook or read the Wall Street Journal. We’d pour a glass of brandy and talk about world politics.”

Susan let out a yawn. “Oh, sorry. That wasn’t for you. It’s been a long day.”

I almost yawned myself at the thought of the future I’d once wanted, thinking it would have been so safe, devoid of the hairpin turns my younger years had held. “Dave didn’t fit that image.”

“He is the complete opposite of the tweed-and-pipe-smoking kind of guy.”

“Not to mention, every professor’s worst nightmare,” I said, laughing again, the memories seeming sweet in the dark, not painful. “Dave was the class clown. He’d crack up the class at the worst possible time.”

“He was good with a one-liner, wasn’t he?” Susan’s voice was soft, tinted with grief.

In that shared thought, a bond began to develop between me and Susan. Not the one forced upon us, but one that was growing out of the natural event of loss, and of sharing Dave.

“Yeah, he was,” I said. “He even…Oh, I shouldn’t tell you.”

“No, go ahead. I’m fine. I want to hear about what he was like. It’s almost like being with him.”

Susan was a stronger woman than I. There was no way I could have lain here, listening to her top ten favorite memories of my husband and found it anything short of torturous. But she seemed genuinely interested and the urge to voice Dave’s name had grown stronger in me, as if saying these words would help make all that had happened seem real, not some distant dream had by another woman.

“At our wedding,” I said, my mind winging back fifteen years as easily as if it were two hours ago, “when the pastor got to the part about whether there were any objections, Dave said—”

“Wait, I know this. Let me ask my lawyer for a second opinion,” Susan finished. “And then, he looked around, asked some poor guy who barely knew Dave if he had any objections, which about gave the pastor a coronary until Dave grinned. Five seconds later, the whole chapel was laughing and making lawyer jokes.”

Something hot and sharp stung at the back of my eyes. “He said that at your wedding, too?”

“Yeah, but Penny, you know Dave. Once he had a good joke, he used it everywhere he could.”

“Yeah.” I drew in a breath and rolled over, clutching a pillow to my chest that would never take the form of the husband I had lost.

In the space of a few minutes, I had lost more than a husband. Every memory I had of him was now tainted. I’d never be able to sit in his favorite chair again, flipping through our photo albums and thinking I was the only one who had heard that line, felt that kiss on my cheek, known that event.

He’d doubled everything, damn him, and now he’d stolen more than my life. He’d taken my memories, too. “I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.”

“Okay,” Susan said, but her voice said she didn’t believe me. I thought of apologizing to her for being short and crabby, of trying to explain, but I couldn’t. She meant well—if there was one thing I’d learned about Susan and her nonstop chatter, it was that she meant well by every word—and I wasn’t in the mood to hurt anyone else today.

Silence descended over the room, heavy and thick as a vat of peanut butter. I lay there, pretending I was asleep but really staring into the dark, busy hating my husband.

I hated him, I hated the dog, I hated the entire situation. I didn’t want to get to Annie’s house and hear Dave’s best lines again.

To hell with Cleveland. Let Susan rent a car and go meet Annie. Susan seemed remarkably well-adjusted to this whole thing, as if it were just a step out of her ordinary day. She’d been chipper and bright, as happy-go-lucky as a leprechaun. While I had a perpetual my-husband-betrayed-me stew cooking in my intestines.

Georgia had said I could do this, that it would be good for me to take a walk outside the perfectionist ring.

Fear tightened its grip on me. No way. I wasn’t strong enough for this.

Then the fleeting thought that this dog show could actually be fun ran through my mind. How would being a part of this change the Penny Reynolds I knew?

I shut the thought off, shoved it to the back. I’d already had one major life change this week. I’d hit my quota.

Tomorrow, I was going home and going back to work. To something more normal than a dog show and the Groundhog Day version of my marriage. A few days of tax preparation and I’d be deep in columns and rows, straight lines and balanced totals.

And maybe, just maybe, with enough little green grids, I could fool myself into thinking that I’d never heard Susan regurgitate what had been one of my fondest memories.

Yeah, and maybe the book of tax-code updates from the IRS would be a little light reading. I wasn’t simply looking for a miracle.

I was looking for a rearrangement of the cosmos.

twelve

It was Harvey who convinced me to stay.

Matt showed up early the next morning, undoubtedly clued in on our location by Susan, who seemed determined to keep me here.

And who seemed equally determined to sleep till noon. I couldn’t rouse her, no matter how hard I tried or how many times I opened the blinds and lifted her eye mask. She just groaned, rolled over and went back to snoring.

“Guess it’s just you and me,” Matt said. Harvey, who’d been waiting patiently at Matt’s feet, let out a yip and raised himself onto his back paws. “Oh, and Harvey.”

I refused Matt’s offer of breakfast and led him down to the quiet lobby, figuring the best thing to do was tell him I was leaving. Before he got any ideas that involved me, a stage and a dog who played the piano.

I sank into one of the crushed red velvet chairs, while Matt chose the one opposite. Harvey came over, plopped himself at my feet and then looked up, expectant. “I don’t have a Milk-Bone, if that’s what you’re after.”

“He’s not,” Matt said. “He’s concerned.”

“He’s a dog. All he cares about is eating, sleeping and dropping a surprise on the neighbor’s lawn.”

Matt chuckled. “Harvey’s got a lot more than that in his emotional repertoire. He’s empathetic, too. He knows you’re upset and he’s worried.”

I rolled my eyes. A dog that was worried about me. Yeah, right.

“I think he missed you, too. Last night, he paced my hotel room and whined half the night.”

“He misses Dave. Harvey and I didn’t meet until two days ago.”

Matt sat back in surprise. “You’re kidding me. Dave had a dog and you didn’t know?”

“Dave also had a second wife and I didn’t know.”

Matt nodded. “True.”

I reached into my purse, pulled out my list and a pen. Best to start right at the top. “What do you know about Annie?”

Matt shifted in his seat, moving from the relaxed, ankle-over-the-knee position to two feet on the floor and his back against the seat. “Not much.”

He was lying. Why? To protect me? To protect her? “Is she another of Dave’s wives?”

A couple with a bichon frise walked past us, chattering about the upcoming show and how well their pooch would do. “Blue ribbon,” the woman said, confident and sure. “Isn’t that right, Hemingway?” She nuzzled down and kissed the dog, her face disappearing in a mess of fur.

“I never met Annie,” Matt said after the couple was out of earshot.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Listen,” he said, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “I think you’ve been through enough. You don’t need to add to that pile.”

“What I need is to find out what my husband was keeping from me,” I said. “Besides the dog.”

“Oh, it’s Harvey!” An older woman, somewhere in her sixties or seventies, came hurrying over to us, bending at the knees to greet the dog. Harvey looked to me, as if waiting for permission to greet a member of his fan club. I shrugged and Harvey moved forward, ears perked, back straight. The woman looked up at me. “Can you make him do his Swan Lake thing? I so love the way he dances. He reminds me of my Fred. God rest his soul.”

“Uh, Harvey is a little tuckered out right now,” I said, considering I had no idea what Harvey’s Swan Lake routine was, or how to make him do it.

She pouted. “I really like that dance.”

“Maybe later.”

The woman harrumphed and gave me a glare. “Dave always did it for me. Where is he, anyway?”

I swallowed. “He passed away.”

“Oh, Lord, I’m so sorry.” The woman pressed a hand to her chest, her face filled with the embarrassed f lush of trying to extract a foot from her mouth. “Please give his family my condolences.”

“I will.” All three of them, I added silently.

The woman bent to give Harvey a quick snout kiss before leaving. She hadn’t gone more than five feet before she stopped another woman and passed on the news about Dave.

I sighed, turning back to Matt. “I didn’t think it would be this hard to tell people.”

Matt leaned forward and placed a hand on mine. “I’m sorry that you’re going through all this.”

“Yeah, me, too.” His palm on the back of mine was comforting, warm. It seemed a million years since anyone had touched me. I shook off the thought, then straightened. “Tell me everything about Annie.”

Matt let out a gust and leaned back into his seat. “Penny, let it go.”

“Why? What are you not telling me?”

“Meeting Annie isn’t going to help you get over losing Dave.”

I ignored what he said. It would help me. It had to. I didn’t have any alternative plans. I had Susan and Annie and an unfinished puzzle with my husband at the center. I swallowed hard, closed my eyes, then forced out the one question I had yet to voice. “Are there any others?”

“No.” But what hung in the air after his answer was the unspoken not that I know of.

None of this told me why. Why Dave had needed another woman or two, why I hadn’t been enough. “Am I the kind of person you’d picture with Dave?”

It was Matt’s turn to swallow, to shift again in his seat, then he took a good, long look at me. “You’re a confident woman. Strong. Organized as hell, I can tell, just by that list. All numbered, prioritized and laid out in perfect rows and columns. I bet you’re one of those people whose hall rug fringe is all in alignment.”

I chafed at the description. Being organized wasn’t a sin and was, indeed, the one thing my husband had said over and over again that he appreciated about me.

Or had he?

“In other words, I’m not the kind of woman Dave would go for.”

He considered that for a moment. “More the kind of woman Dave needed.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re the kind of woman who likes things to add up, to have everything in your life fit on little labeled shelves.”

“I don’t label my shelves,” I said, bristling. Okay, so maybe I had labeled the ones in the linen closet, but that didn’t count. I was merely following Martha Stewart’s example. “I plead the Fifth on all the rest.”

Matt sat back and grinned, a good-natured smile that didn’t condemn me for my Type A personality. “Dave was…spontaneous and quick, but a total slob. I know because I roomed with him for a week once in Denver.” I wanted to ask what year, what day, and compare that with my calendar, but I didn’t. I’d had enough illusions shattered already. “He was a guy whose idea of order was pulling up to a drive-through window.” Matt’s green eyes softened and he leaned forward, his face earnest. “He needed you, Penny, to keep him on track. To keep him sane. If he went looking for something more, then he was a fool, because he already had everything he needed right here with you.”

Tears welled up in my eyes. For God’s sake, the last thing I wanted to do was start crying in the lobby of a La Quinta Inn.

Nevertheless, the tears spilled from my eyes, trailed down my cheeks, plopped onto my jeans, spreading in dark denim puddles. “I’m sorry. I hate to cry.”

At the last word, Harvey took off at a scramble, darted over to a nearby table and yanked a tissue out of the box, nearly toppling it in the process. He came skidding back, then dropped it gently in my hands, the thin paper barely dented from his tiny teeth.

I blinked, looked at the dog, then at Matt. “Did you just see that?”

He grinned, as if Harvey hadn’t done anything more exciting than sit up and beg for table scraps. “I told you, he’s empathetic.”

“He…he knew I was crying?”

“Harvey knows a lot more than you give him credit for.”

I glanced again at the Jack Russell terrier, sure this time that I did see sympathy in his wide, wise eyes. Tentative and slow, I reached out a hand and stroked the dog’s head. Soft, almost silky fur met my palm, not the wiry fur I’d expected. He scooted an inch, maybe two, closer, then pressed his head to my knee and let out a puppy-size sigh.

“How can you leave a face like that?” Matt said, grinning again.

Oh, damn. I couldn’t.

It was as if Dave himself were sitting there, looking up at me. The damned dog even had the same eye color as my late husband.

I let out a breath and, with it, the weight that had been sitting on my chest all night.

Whether I liked it or not, I needed this dog, and he needed me. We’d both lost Dave. I swiped my eyes, blew my nose, then gave up the idea of returning anytime soon to my happy place of organized cabinets and straight lines.

“Okay,” I said, to both Harvey and Matt. “What do you need me to do?”

thirteen

An hour later, it became clear that walking Harvey around the ring of the Dog-Gone-Good Show involved a lot more than just watching while Harvey did his thing, tossing him the occasional bit of kibble for his efforts. The whole thing was definitely a huge dog-and-pony show—

With me as the pony.

Apparently, a different routine was needed to impress the judges who had already seen Harvey in action. Matt promised Vinny would help me develop a new rotation of tricks before the next morning. “Harvey’s a little rusty,” he said, “and you’re new at this, so it might take you some time.”

“How much time?”

“You have eighteen hours until the show. I’d say that’s about enough.” Matt took my hand after we had returned to the Grand Resort Convention Center, where I was supposed to meet Vinny, and gave me a smile. “You’ll do fine, Penny. I have no worries.”

“I do. This kind of thing is so not my forte.” Harvey sat at my feet, patient and seemingly way more confident than I felt. “You don’t know me very well.”

“No, I don’t.” His gaze met mine, something unreadable in those emerald-colored depths. “Yet.”

Then he walked away, leaving me with another monkey wrench in my plan to get in, get out and not get involved. And yet, also with an odd surge of confidence that maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as I thought.

I’d always wanted to be capable of spontaneity, of that kind of relaxed, easy fun I saw other people having. Maybe this was my big shot at the normalcy I’d never really achieved.

I tried calling Susan from the lobby phone. No answer. Either she was at the nearest Payless Shoes or sleeping the sleep of Dracula.

“Yo.”

I turned around and saw a large man striding toward me, eating a burger as he walked, even though it was only eight o’clock in the morning and a loaded Big Mac wasn’t exactly a portable food.

He was short and squat and had a swinging, penguin walk that seemed to tip him precariously from side to side. He wore a T-shirt emblazoned with a huge red heart around the head of a terrier, faded jeans and worn, scuffed cowboy boots.

“Are you Vinny?”

He popped the last bite of burger into his mouth, seemed to swallow it as is, then threw out his arms with a flourish. “The one and only. Trainer extraordinaire. Isn’t that right, Harvey boy?” Harvey took the opportunity to leap upward, right as Vinny brought his arms together and caught the little dog, hauling him to his chest. “How’s my boy? You bein’ good? You eatin’ right? You’s a good boy, aren’t you?” Vinny snuggled his face into the dog’s fur.

It was an odd juxtaposition, the fat man cuddling the tiny dog, but it seemed to work, at least in this alternate universe I’d inhabited ever since Dave’s wake.

“He being good?” Vinny asked me, chuckling as Harvey made good use of his tongue against Vinny’s vast, bouncing cheek.

“He’s fine. A little…skittish in the car.”

Vinny roared with laughter. “Pissed on your seats, did he?”

I nodded.

“Dave should have told you. Harvey gets a little nervous in the car. Best off keeping him in his crate.”

“It wouldn’t fit in the Benz.”

Vinny roared again, making his belly jiggle like Jell-O on speed. “Harvey pissed in a Benz? That’s better than when he did it in the cab Letterman sent for us. Damn, he ticked that cabby off. The guy was cursing at us in two languages.” Vinny reached out and put a hand on my arm. “I have one thing to tell you. Plastic.”

“Plastic?”

“Yep. Hermetically seal your seats and Harvey can’t do much more than create a puddle. A few sheets of Bounty and wham, you’re on your way again.”

I thought of Dave’s car, the twin to mine, sitting in the garage. Someone had brought it home—the cops, his brother, I had no idea. Both sets of seats were coated in plastic, the kind you bought at the hardware store for paint jobs. A memory came back, clear as the sun, slamming into my chest.

“You know how I spill, Pen,” Dave had told me, smoothing the plastic over the leather, tucking it into the creases.

That had been three, no, four summers ago. Dave in the driveway, me outside with him, holding his glass of iced tea and watching him work. He’d put the plastic on, then asked me to help him wash the car.

I’d had enough of being outdoors and tried to back out of it, telling him I had stacks of files I’d brought home from work, waiting in the house for me to work on, but Dave had convinced me, with a sponge thrust to my chest and that irresistible dare in his eyes.

I’d grabbed the hose in retaliation, chased him around the car, both of us ending up in a wet soapy mess, and then, before I knew it, we were running into the house, up the stairs to the bedroom, where we’d spent the afternoon making love. The soap had dried on the car, leaving a white film over the paint, but Dave hadn’t cared.

Nothing had ever seemed to stress Dave, to worry him. I’d been the one to worry double, to cover for his “it’ll all work out” attitude. That afternoon, though, it had been like when we first met. Fun and spontaneous, completely out of my control.

Then the fax line had rung, work streaming in through the printer, and I’d slipped out of bed, even as Dave tried to convince me to stay, to chuck the responsibility for a day.

I shook my head, pushing the thoughts aside, along with the pained hitch in my heart. Would it be so bad to throw aside the old Penny, just for a day? To try on something new, in the anonymous safety of strangers?

“So, tell me what I’m supposed to do with this dog.” I forced a smile to my face.

Vinny chuckled. “It’s not what you do with the dog, it’s what the dog will do with you. First thing is to get him to listen.” Vinny put Harvey down on the floor, and instantly the terrier snapped to attention. He sat at Vinny’s feet, waiting patiently, his tail doing a soft swish-swish against the carpet.

“How did you get him to do that?” I asked. “Calm right down?”

“I’m the alpha dog,” he said. Vinny, I noticed, had straightened his posture. All of a sudden he went from being a schlumpy wannabe biker to someone who commanded attention, at least from the canine set. “Dogs,” he explained, “have a pack mentality. They need someone to be the leader. If you give off the air of being in charge, the dog will naturally respect you and wait for your cue.”

“What happens if there’s no alpha dog?”

Vinny chuckled. “Harvey runs roughshod over you.”

“That I’ve seen. I think I’m the beta dog. Or whatever the lowest dog on the totem pole is.”

“Not to worry. You can change that.” Vinny crossed the room, shut the doors of the small ballroom, blocking any prying eyes. Harvey didn’t budge from his spot on the floor. When Vinny returned, he glanced down at the dog, still patiently waiting for his command. “One thing you have to remember with dogs is to communicate. Dogs can’t read minds, so if you’re not communicating, he won’t know what to do. Okay. Let’s see what this boy can do.” He slung a backpack I hadn’t noticed off his shoulders, then withdrew three vinyl dog toys: a banana, a squeaky cat and an orange bone. He marked out several paces, then jumbled the toys into a rainbow-hued pile before returning to the dog. “Harvey, you ready?”

Harvey’s swish-swish increased in tempo and his ears perked.

“Go get the banana.”

As if he’d been zapped with a cattle prod, Harvey lunged forward, dashed across the room and went straight for the pile of toys. He nosed the top two out of the way, picked up the yellow faux fruit, then turned and trotted back, his prize proudly between his jaws. He held it until Vinny put down his hand to exchange the prize for a piece of kibble.

“How did he know which one was the banana?”

“Scent discrimination,” Vinny said, the multiple-syllable word slipping from his tongue as easily as Harvey had retrieved the banana. Apparently work mode brought out a different side of the trainer, too.

“Scent what?”

“All tricks start with basic obedience. Harvey first learns to fetch.”

“Like your ordinary cocker spaniel?”

“Exactly. Then we take it up a notch. Start by putting out only the banana and telling him to get the banana. A few times of that and he associates the word with the toy.”

“How does the scent thing work then? Is the banana scented?”

Vinny laughed. “Not like a fruit. Like a hot dog.” He reached in the backpack and pulled out a baggie holding a wiener marked “Banana.”

“You rubbed hot dog on it?”

“If you were a dog, which toy would you grab? The one that smelled like a Barbie doll or the one with hot dog cologne?”

“I’d go for the one with Chanel No.5 myself.”

Vinny laughed. “Good one.” He reached again into his bag, withdrew a beach ball and blew it up, then handed it to me. “You want to try a trick with him?”

I shook my head. “But I’m not alpha dog.”

“Just pretend you are,” Vinny said. “The dog will believe you.”

Could I do that? Pretend my way into the top-dog spot? I glanced at my left hand, at the wedding ring that I had yet to take off. Wasn’t that what I’d been doing all along, all my life really? Pretending everything was just fine?

I straightened my spine and gave Harvey a stern glance, one I’d seen often enough in my childhood to have it memorized. Harvey sat down and stilled, waiting for me. Wow. Maybe there was something to this Alpha Dog thing. “Okay, what do I do now?”

“Put that ball on the floor in front of him, then back up to the wall.”

I did as Vinny suggested, walking backward, keeping my eye on the dog. Except for the occasional glance at Vinny, he maintained his sentry position. “Now what?”

“Tell him to play s-o-c-c-e-r.”

I gave Vinny a dubious glance but went along with it. “Harvey, play soccer.”

Harvey leaped to his feet, bent his head down and pressed his nose to the ball. Working one step at a time, he nosed it to the left, then the right, following a straight path across the carpet, right up to my feet and then through my legs.

I stood there, stunned. Harvey had done it. I’d done it.

“Score!” Vinny shouted. “Now, give him a treat.”

Just as quickly, my elation deflated. “A treat? Uh, I don’t have any. I left his little bag of Beggin’ Strips in the car.”

“First rule of dog training,” Vinny said, crossing the room and dumping a few dog-food pebbles into my palm, “is to keep some kibble in your pocket. Always reward him.”

I put all but one of the treats into my jeans. Eww. Now my clothes would have that special eau de Purina. Try explaining that to the dry cleaner. Beneath me, Harvey danced around the ball, waiting for me to put out my hand. When I did, he snarf led up the single treat, leaving a streak of saliva across my skin.

My wet wipes never seemed so far away.

“He needs some practice,” Vinny said, “but I think he’ll do fine tomorrow. Still, I think his mood is a little off.”

To me, the terrier seemed his usual peppy self. Then again, what did I know about canine moods?

“Must be losing Dave,” Vinny said, bending down to tickle Harvey behind the ears. The dog submitted to his touch, then rolled onto his back, offering up his belly. “You miss him, don’t you, guy? Yeah, me, too.”

“Me, too,” I said, so softly I almost didn’t hear the words. An odd mixture of regret and anger settled in my stomach. As much as I missed him, and the life we’d had together, another part of me would have gladly shoved that banana down Dave’s throat.

“What do you know about Annie?” I asked, reminded that as much fun as it had been to play Pelé to Harvey, there was an extra-wife reality waiting to be dealt with. I had to pose the question sometime and thus far, no one seemed to know anything—or rather didn’t want to tell me anything. I hadn’t felt this sheltered from the truth since I’d been five. “Have you met her?”

“Nope. Never met any of Dave’s—” Vinny wisely cut off the sentence. “Uh, anyone else in Dave’s life, except for Matt, of course.”

“Then why did you call me Annie? And how did you know he married her?”

Vinny heaved a sigh and rose, leaving a disappointed Harvey on the gold-and-red carpet. “I don’t want to speak ill of Dave. He was a good guy. A real man’s man.”

“Meaning, he could juggle a few wives and still knock back a beer after he and Harvey ran through the dance program?”

Vinny didn’t flinch at the anger in my tone. He just kept standing there, calm as a summer lake.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve got a lot of issues with Dave right now and since he’s not here to beat up, I’m taking it out on you.”

“Understandable.” Vinny gave me a short, quick nod. “I don’t know much about Annie, just what Dave told me. And I kinda assumed they got married after Dave talked about it.”

“What did Dave tell you?”

Vinny reached into his pocket for a dog treat and tossed it down to Harvey, watching the dog chew before he spoke again. “You sure you want to know?”

No, I wasn’t sure. Regardless, I steeled myself for the worst and went back to pretending everything was just fine. “I have to. There’s an estate involved.”

Vinny waved a hand in dismissal. “Leave that shit to the lawyers.”

I couldn’t. I had to know, if only so that the next time I went home and curled up in the chair with that afghan, I wasn’t sitting there in total blindness. Moving on wasn’t an option, nor was thinking about myself, not until I’d cleared up the semi parked in front of my heart. “What do you know about her?” My voice cracked on the last word.

Vinny shuffled from foot to foot, the alpha gone from his stance. Clearly, he was one of those men who could handle a Doberman but not a woman who sounded like she was about to cry. “Mrs. Reynolds—”

“Penny, please. I already share that name with far too many people.”

“Penny, then.” He patted the front pocket of his shirt, then let out a curse. “Gave up smokes a month ago, but there are days…” His voice trailed off.

“What do you know about Annie?”

Vinny gave up on searching for an invisible cigarette and let out a curse. “Dave met her last year, at the UKC show in Ohio last February.”

“UKC?”

“United Kennel Club. Harvey here is a mutt, so he can’t participate in regular AKC stuff. Annie had a pointer mix she’d entered in the competition, his first time doing it. To see what he’d do, you know? Smart dog, but hyper as all hell. Dave, though, could get that thing to calm down. Dave had a way with dogs. Not just Harvey, but all dogs.”

“Dave was the alpha,” I said.

“Yeah, but in a gentle way. Like that Robert Redford guy in that movie with the horse. He was…” Vinny shook his head, chuckled a little at the memory of Dave. “He was good with dogs, but too soft to be a good trainer. He was always cuddling the damned dog instead of getting him to work.”

I looked down at Harvey, trying to imagine my husband holding him close, the brown-and-white body against his favorite blue button-down shirt.

The image refused to appear. Instead, the only one I saw was Dave in the casket, the blue button-down shirt making its final appearance on his stocky frame.

“Anyway, after the show, I guess Dave took Annie aside, showed her some of the ways he’d learned to work with Harvey.”

“You weren’t there?”

“Harvey ain’t my only client.”

“Of course.” I waited, my breath caught in my throat, wanting to hear what he said next.

And at the same time praying Vinny caught a sudden case of laryngitis.

“It worked out real well. Within a few hours, Dave had that dog fetching ’bout anything you told him to. He wasn’t so good at the obstacle-course thing. Had this fear of the A-frame.”

“And then? Where did it go from there? How did it go from dog tricks to a wedding ring?” My breath was lodged in my throat so tight, the anticipation of what I’d hear next knotting my stomach.

Vinny looked heavenward, as if wishing for a bolt of lightning to save him from an uncomfortable situation. “Dave was between gigs with Harvey, so he went out to Annie’s place for a day or two, showing her how to work with Max.”

I swallowed hard, the pieces clicking into place, the lies throwing off their robes like Playboy models.

My husband had been gone for eight days last spring. Straightening out a corporate insurance mess at some Cincinnati beauty products company. Or at least, that’s what he’d told me.

I thought of those daily calls home. How short and brief our conversations had been, marked by the distance that had grown between us during that year. A wall, put up when he’d raised the subject of a baby. Again.

An idea I’d vetoed. Again.

I closed my eyes, what-ifs careening around my brain, silver balls in a pinball game that was already at full tilt.

“What else?” I asked, my voice nearly a whisper.

Vinny grimaced the pained look of a man who’d rather be buying Kotex at the CVS. “There’s not much else.”

“What else?” The words gritted past my teeth.

Vinny drew in a breath, tossed another treat Harvey’s way, then shifted his weight to the other foot. “Annie was in a bad spot financially. Something happened, and I swear, Penny, I don’t know what, that made Dave rush on back there soon as he left her, telling me he was getting married. He even canceled a gig Harvey had in Denver.”

Dave’s words echoed in my head. “There’s more to this than I thought, Pen,” he’d said. “A couple more days and I’ll be home.”

“He never told me why he went back there or what all went on,” Vinny said. “All I know is that he had Matt cut her a check.”

A brick sat on my chest, adding to the ton already there. Before this was over, I’d be able to build a damned school. “How much money?”

Vinny shrugged. “Me and Dave, we didn’t talk dollars. Just Harvey.”

I closed my eyes, digested what I’d just heard, but it sat heavy in my stomach, like my Aunt Elsie’s tuna casserole. “When was the last time you talked to Dave?”

Vinny thought back. “October? November? I don’t remember. The fall’s pretty much a blur. I was, ah, getting treatment. For my little, ah, stage problem.”

The information about Annie was still sinking in, slamming against my already bruised heart like strong surf waves. I wanted to go home. “Are you over that problem?” I asked with a hopeful smile. Matt could have been wrong. There might not be any reason for me to take Harvey through his plastic banana routine. Besides, all this talk of Annie had erased my temporary fog of confidence. “You know Harvey the best. Can’t you do this show?”

“Are you kidding me?” Vinny’s face paled a couple shades. “If you knew what that Rin Tin Tin replacement did, you wouldn’t be asking me that question.” Vinny eyed me squarely. “Let’s just say he retrieved something that wasn’t a banana.”

I shook my head, confused, and glanced at the pile of rubber toys on the floor. “Did he grab the bone instead?”

“A bone…of sorts.” Vinny waved a hand over his belt area. His eyes squinted up in the agony only a man could experience. Sweat broke out on his brow.

“Oh. Oh, my God.” I had to force myself not to look at Vinny’s button fly. “Why would he do that?”

Vinny shook his head, the sweat multiplying. He swiped the back of his palm over his forehead. “Sometimes there are disadvantages to carrying dog food in your pocket.”

I glanced down at my jeans and then at Harvey. Thank God I didn’t have a banana hidden behind my fly.

“I can’t talk about it anymore.” Vinny threw up his hands, a red flush spreading from his temples to his throat, the beginning of hives raising on his skin. “I tried like hell in therapy but there are just some things a man shouldn’t have to endure. And that’s one of ’em.”

“Well, Harvey would never do that.” I gave Vinny a hopeful, work-with-me smile.

Vinny put up his hands, warding off the idea. “I can’t do it! The minute I get out there, with all those damned lights and the clapping and the dogs…” He shuddered, the hives now becoming mini facial mountains. “Flashback city. I think I got some of that post-trauma stuff.”

Harvey got to his feet, prancing excitedly around us, clearly trying to get the two humans back to playing fetch.

“Post-traumatic stress syndrome? From Rin Tin Tin’s replacement?”

He leaned forward, his eyes daring me to disagree. “You ever have a dog latch on to the wrong hot dog?”

“Uh…no.”

“Until you’ve walked in my jeans, lady, don’t try and get me up on that stage.”

“But—”

“You can do this,” Vinny said, grabbing my arm. “I’ve never been very good in front of people anyway. I only did it because Dave—”

He cut off the sentence as fast as he began it.

“Dave what?”

Vinny cursed again and shuffled his feet some more. “If Dave went on Letterman, people would know about it.”

“Yeah? So?”

“People…like you.”

“I see.” I turned away, ignoring the hot sting of tears. It had all been an elaborate scheme to keep the Wife without a Clue in the dark. “He went to an awful lot of work to keep his secret, didn’t he?”

“He was a good man, Penny. Would have given a homeless man the shirt off his back.”

“Or a needy woman the ring in his pocket.”

Vinny swallowed, silent.

“Bastard.” The word spewed from me in a fast flash of anger. Harvey dropped to the floor, head on his paws, cowering against Vinny.

Oh, damn. Once again, I’d lashed out at the wrong person, or in this case, the wrong mammal. Because Dave, damn him, had gone and died. Harvey watched me, his eyes wary. Remorse filled me. I dug in my pocket, then bent down and reached out to the dog. He hesitated a moment, then took the kibble. “Sorry, Harvey.”

That was enough for the dog. He got to his feet again, rising onto his hind legs and doing a little doggie pirouette. I rewarded him, then let out a breath. This dog was made for performing. Lived for it, even.

Right or wrong, Dave had had a plan for this dog. And just because my husband had been a jerk in gentleman’s clothing didn’t mean I had to cut off the dog from what he loved, too.

Despite the circumstances, I had had fun. In the short time in the ballroom, I’d found something I hadn’t had in a long time. A side of myself I thought disappeared years ago.

Maybe I could do this. Change the course of my life, not go off in a whole other direction, but maybe dip down a side road or two, and by doing that, eliminate what had led to this mess. “What does it mean if Harvey wins this show?”

“He does Dave proud.” Vinny bent down again, stroking Harvey’s head. The tension in the dog’s shoulders eased. “Dave might have done a lot of things wrong, but he loved this dog.”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “It’s too bad he didn’t love me, too.”

fourteen

I had thought that working with Vinny and Harvey would make me even more confident but, once away from the ballroom, I began to feel the complete opposite. By the time we finished learning the new routine, I felt about as sure of myself as I had in middle school, about to reveal my lack of breasts in the girls’ locker room during gym.

Vinny had told me to try to be natural and loose. “Harvey can feel your stress. You gotta let it go. Breathe, baby, breathe.”

Hyperventilating probably wasn’t what he had in mind.

I strode through the lobby, narrowly avoiding a Chihuahua-schnauzer brawl, Harvey happily trotting along at my heels, pausing every now and then to glance up at me. Several people greeted Harvey, many calling him over to say hello, but the little dog stayed resolutely by my side, his quartet of legs moving at double speed to keep up with my stride.

I kind of liked having him with me. Harvey had become an odd comfort in this strange dog-show world.

The Grand Resort Hotel was overrun with dogs, their owners and the continued craziness of the registration fray. Chatter ran at a high volume, coupled with excited squeals of long-lost friends meeting up and barks of dogs establishing territory. There were women dressed to match their dogs, men walking beside dogs that seemed nearly as tall as small trees, children darting in and out among the canine confusion.

“How’d it go?”

I stopped at the sound of Matt’s voice, his deep baritone carrying a note above the barks, growls and whines. And that was just the noise of the owners.

Matt stood by the bank of lobby phones, the unstressed, casual opposite to me. He had changed into a soft blue sweater that set off his eyes and the dark brown of his hair. A powerful combination, if the stares of the women in the hotel lobby were any indication.

“It was…a learning experience,” I said. One I hadn’t exactly mastered.

Maybe I could, my mind whispered. After all, Georgia, Matt and Vinny all thought so. Three-to-one odds. Or maybe it was the opposite, considering I’d never gambled.

If I could somehow tap into that part of me they saw—the part that could master a dancing, singing, ball-playing dog routine—then maybe Harvey could put on a good show.

Either way, I refused to let a dog show get the better of me. Or worse, retreat into the same old Penny, who clearly had been lacking something.

“Vinny’s quite the character, isn’t he?”

“He gives Loony Tunes a whole new meaning.”

Matt laughed. “If you promise not to run off, I’d like to offer you some dinner. We can get out of this craziness.” He gestured toward the hectic lobby zoo.

“Susan—”

“Is with Jerry again. He’s so smitten, he’s even taking her to the mall.”

I laughed, the sound still foreign enough that I wondered for a second if it had come from me. Heck, the whole thing was foreign—me trotting out jokes, engaging in what might even be considered repartee. “Dinner sounds good.”

In fact, it sounded more than good. I hadn’t had a full meal in days, my stomach too tied up by the stress to tolerate more than a couple of bites of anything. Appetite roared to life in my stomach, not just for food, but for something resembling normalcy, or at least a step toward the normalcy other people had.

We fell into step together as we crossed the lobby. I glanced over at him. How long had it been since I’d gone out to dinner with a man? Months, at least. Dave had traveled so much that he never wanted to go out when he got home.

Was he taking the other women out, and thus, had nothing left when he finally returned to me?

I pushed those thoughts aside. It was dinner, with the dog’s agent. Matt wasn’t a boyfriend, or even a potential one. There was no reason to feel guilty, to second-guess a simple meal. Or to still feel as married as I’d felt last week, before I’d lost my husband.

Because in reality, I’d lost him a long time ago.

Instead of taking me to a restaurant, as I’d expected, Matt ordered a couple of sandwiches to go from Seaton’s Café inside the hotel, then led me outside and around the back of the building. Beside us, the Little Pigeon River ambled along, tucked into lush greenery and tall, budding trees. The water skipped over rocks, making its way, as water always does, around the stone impediments. We strolled along the path, eating our sandwiches, soaking up the end-of-the-day warmth.

It was wonderful. I inhaled, breathing in the scents of nature, the freedom that seemed to carry along the air.

Harvey trotted along at our feet, content to sniff his new surroundings and nab the occasional bit of sandwich meat tossed his way. He looped in and out of us, stretching his leash, clearly excited about being outdoors. A squirrel darted up a tree and Harvey lunged for the rodent, natural dog instincts kicking into high gear. I tugged gently on the leash. “No squirrels, Harv. Not tonight.”

He’d already started after a twig, clearly not upset about the no-hunting policy.

Matt and I paused by the stream, watching tiny fish weave their way around rocks. The water was the color of weakened tea, its quiet movement nearly as soothing as a good cup of chamomile. Harvey barked at one of the fish but danced away from the water’s edge.

Suddenly, I didn’t want to spoil the day, the easy mood between myself and Matt, with talk about Dave. “Tell me how Harvey came to be. Tell me everything.” Then a smile slipped across my lips. “Leave out the bad parts.”

Had I just made a joke? The woman who had the deadpan abilities of a table? Matt’s little chuckle verified that I did, indeed, have a sense of humor.

“You’re a woman of contradictions,” Matt said. “When I first met you, I never expected you to be funny.”

“I’m not normally.”

We’d finished our sandwiches and tossed the wrappings into a wastebasket along the path. “I find that hard to believe,” Matt said, his gaze sweeping over me with an intensity I hadn’t felt from a man in a long time.

“Oh, get to know me better and you’ll see. I’m happier with an adding machine than a one-liner.”

He laughed again. “See, like that.”

“Tell me about Harvey,” I said again, suddenly uncomfortable with the attentions of another man. “If I’m going to pull off this Milk-Bone circus tomorrow, I need all the ammunition I can get. And if there’s some part of Harvey’s psyche—assuming a dog that weighs about the same as a big stack of hardcovers has one—that could help, then I should know about it.”

Vinny’s words came back to me. If Harvey won, he’d make Dave proud. I shouldn’t care about making my bigamist husband proud.

But I did. Because as much as I wanted to dump the blame for this entire mess squarely into Dave’s coffin, a tiny part of me whispered that it took two to tango, and two to crumple a marriage.

Matt picked up a rock and skipped it across the water. It bounced twice, then sank. Harvey let out a yip of approval. “I met Dave seven years ago, at a convention.”

“A dog convention?”

“No, an insurance one.”

“You sold insurance?”

Matt chuckled. “Yeah, for about five minutes. I’m a lot better with canines than I am with death amortization tables.” He shook his head. “Sorry. I don’t normally stick my foot in my mouth this soon into a date.” He paled a bit. “Not that this is a date, just—”

“It’s okay. Really.” And it was, I realized. The shock was starting to ease, a tail wag at a time. And to me, this wasn’t a date, just an…information scavenger hunt, with the dog along for chaperone. Although, considering how distracted Harvey was by the environment, we could have run off to Vegas and the dog would have never noticed a thing.

What if it had been a real date, though? Would I have been interested in Matt? I slid a glance his way and immediately felt a surge of attraction in my gut.

I shook it off and got back to the dog. “Did he have Harvey then?”

“Yes and no.” Matt smiled, waited while another couple strolled by us, their hands linked and their conversation the easy one of long-marrieds, then went on. “Harvey kind of showed up outside of Dave’s motel room. Scared, hungry, thin as a pencil and looking more like a rag doll than a dog.”

“He didn’t belong to anyone?”

“Not that Dave could find. He ran an ad in the paper, called the local vets. Pulled out all the stops to try to find Harvey’s owner, but no one came forward.” Harvey turned toward us, perked an ear up at the mention of his name, then went back to his vigorous sniffing campaign.

“What city were you in?”

He looked surprised at the question but answered it all the same. “Minneapolis. Why?”

“I’m trying to piece it together with what I know.” I flipped through the mental files of my life and found that one, standing out as if it had been stuck in a red folder instead of manila, marked with Turning Point in big, bold letters. “It was 2000,” I said. “I remember that conference.”

“You were there?”

“No. Dave asked me to go. Mall of America had opened a few years earlier and he thought I’d like to go, to see it and shop. But I turned him down, probably because I had quarterly returns to prepare or something else that seemed more important at the time.”

We both knew what that refusal had meant. It had been the start of Dave’s turn away from our ordinary life. I couldn’t play the what-if game, not now.

I needed to unravel more of these dangling threads. Maybe then, I could knit them back into something that made sense.

“What did he do with the dog?” I asked. “After the conference?”

Matt looked surprised that I wouldn’t know. We started to walk again, Harvey happily in the lead. “He didn’t bring him home? I guess I always assumed that’s what Dave did.”

I shook my head. “He asked me about getting a dog, around that same time. And I said…”

“No,” Matt finished when I couldn’t, when the word choked in my throat, realizing how many blocks I’d put up to my husband’s dreams. “It’s okay, Penny. Not everyone is a dog person and you have a right to say you didn’t want a pet. People do it in America every day.” He smiled, but I couldn’t bring myself to echo the gesture. “You don’t seriously think that because you said no when Dave suggested you two get a dog that you made him go out and find another wife?”

“Let’s just say I didn’t help the situation.” I bit my lip and turned to look at the street outside the hotel, watching a multihued ribbon of traffic stop for a light. Matt laid his hand over mine, holding Harvey’s leash, and me.

Matthew Shay was a man who touched people, who connected with them. No wonder he hadn’t enjoyed the world of insurance, a business where you had to remember details and calculate the probability of someone dying, as well as the financial toll wreaked by someone’s grandma getting hit by a bus.

“You didn’t cause him to do that, Penny,” Matt said softly. “Men leave their marriages all the time, some of them for very stupid reasons.”

I didn’t look at him until the light had turned green, the cars slipping through the intersection.

“Most of them don’t go out and find the replacement before they’ve dumped the first one. And worse, hold on to a marriage that clearly wasn’t working. At least on his end.”

But how well had it been working on my end?

“You’re a wonderful woman, Penny.” Matt squeezed my hand. The touch of his palm was both comforting and oddly sensual. I hadn’t been touched by another man in fifteen years, and a quick blast of guilt cooled the sensation. Dave was gone, but he was still alive in my heart, despite everything.

“I’ve known Dave for years,” Matt said, “and I’m sure the last thing he wanted to do was hurt you.”

“Well, he did.” If I bit my lip any harder, I’d never need lipstick again.

“Hey, don’t cry,” Matt said, still holding my hand. “You’ll scare the fish.”

“I think Harvey already did that.” I turned to look at him and felt a smile curve across my face. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For taking my mind off of things. For reminding me that I’m not some evil harpy who drove my husband to cheat. For reminding me…” My voice trailed off.

“What?”

I swallowed, watching the way the breeze toyed lightly with Matt’s hair. “For reminding me I’ve got more qualities than just my ability to create a spreadsheet.”

This time, he laughed. “Anytime. I’d be glad to list your qualities. Just not on a spreadsheet.” He shook his head, feigning horror. “That brings back bad insurance nightmares.”

Despite the tears threatening at my eyes, I laughed. I caught his gaze. Something serious and heavy hovered in those deep green eyes. I slipped my hand out from under his, pretending to be suddenly interested in Harvey’s foraging for food along the grassy edge.

“Do you want to change the subject?” He cleared his throat, as if he’d sensed it, too. “Away from Harvey and all that?”

I plucked a green leaf off a low-hanging branch and shredded it, watching the pieces flutter to the ground, confetti for my path. “No, I want to know it all. Actually, that’s technically a lie. I don’t want to know it, I need to know it. There’s an estate and money and—”

“And a heart that needs closure?”

I had to blink several times before I could speak. “Practicing psychology in your spare time?”

“No. I just know how it feels to be betrayed. All you want to do is figure out why.”

“So I can avoid repeating history later.”

“Yeah.” Matt fell silent for a moment and I wanted to ask him about what had happened to him, about what was now clouding his eyes, but I didn’t.

My own problems were a big enough mountain. Besides, I wasn’t here to get to know the dog’s agent or to start something with the man—regardless of that flicker of attraction I’d felt—I was here to master a dog show and get some answers. Maybe later…

There’d be time for a man like Matt.

“So, did Harvey do tricks when Dave found him?” I said. “Or did Dave teach him that later?”

“Harvey came with a few. The tissue thing? He did that. He could jump over things, and through a Hula-Hoop. And, he’d retrieve about anything you asked him to. He has quite the understanding of words. But the counting, the singing—”

“He sings?” Harvey turned toward me, a twig in his mouth, as proud of himself as the first caveman to discover fire.

“Uh-huh. Better than me.” Matt grinned again, traces of the earlier emotion gone. “All that, Dave and Vinny taught him, over the years. Harvey took to it, like the proverbial duck.”

“How did you come into the picture?”

“Well, I didn’t stay in insurance for very long. I’m not the kind of guy who likes being stuck in an office all day, filling out paperwork. By the end of the convention, I knew insurance wasn’t the field for me. All those men in one room, getting excited about policy riders and risk management.” Matt mocked a yawn.

I laughed. “They are like that, aren’t they? Trust me, accountants are exactly the same.”

“So that’s the secret to you then. Throw out a few tax returns and next thing I know, you’re doing the limbo?”

“Not exactly. But I do like when things add up.”

“And what happens when something doesn’t?”

“I keep gnawing away at it until it does.”

“This, you know, might never add up. Not entirely.”

“Yeah, I know.” I looked out over the water and drew in a breath. “It’s got the people factor, the one thing that doesn’t fit nicely into Excel.”

“You’ll figure it out, Penny,” he said, the confidence in his tone inspiring a little in me, too.

I didn’t want to like him, to be attracted to him, but I was. He was the first man in years who had seen something in me other than my ability to calculate numbers.

“Thanks,” I said, and meant it. “Anyway, I interrupted your story.”

He nodded, sensing my shift back to business. “When I got back home to New York, I had lunch with a friend of mine who’s a book agent. I was looking for a job like that, where you weren’t stuck in a cubicle and every day represented something new. Books didn’t excite me, but it got me to thinking about Harvey, about the possibilities with the dog. So I hooked up with Dave again.”

The sun was nearly gone, leaving little flecks of gold reflecting off the water. We pivoted to turn back, both unconsciously picking up the pace a little. The temperature had dropped and I wished suddenly that I had brought along a jacket.

Nevertheless, for my first dinner out with a man in a long time, it had been fun—if I discounted the conversation subject. Matt was an enjoyable person to be around, and someone who had made hot sandwiches and a meandering walk seem like a five-star restaurant.

And, he’d done something else I hadn’t expected or sought—made me feel wanted. Like a woman, not just a wife or an employee or a dog owner. A real, honest-to-goodness woman who attracted him.

That was heady stuff, and I put it on the backburner for now.

“Why did Dave hire you as Harvey’s agent? You had no experience.” How could Dave have hired someone who had opted for this career on what amounted to a whim? If it had been me, I would have put Matt through the job interview from hell, complete with personality tests and a fully vetted résumé.

Dave had operated on feelings, I operated on facts.

Yeah, and look where that had gotten me. Completely oblivious to the facts of my life.

Matt shrugged, a boyish grin on his face. “Dave thought I could be something, so he gave me a shot. We hunted up a trainer and before you knew it, Harvey was in business. In the beginning, he was doing bit things here and there, appearances at nursing homes, a few commercials and a couple times he doubled for dogs on other shows. Then he was in a movie and that was his first big national break.”

“Did Dave make good money at this?”

Matt nodded. “After a while. It took time to build up Harvey’s name and reputation. But once Dave made it his full-time job, the dog’s career took off.”

I stumbled. “Full-time job?”

Regret washed over Matt’s features. Clearly, he realized he’d let slip another detail, that again, I didn’t know. How many secrets was I going to uncover? How far would this go before I could finally feel I knew what I needed to know, to go back to my life? Or would it keep unfolding for years, a continued pile of Band-Aids stacked one on another, trying to mask a massive betrayal?

“But, I thought he still worked at Reliable Insurance. I saw his car there all the time.”

“He, ah, kept an office in the same building as the insurance company where he used to work,” Matt said.

“So I wouldn’t put it together.”

“Yeah.”

“Wow.” The sandwich I’d eaten earlier now sat like a heavy rock in my stomach. “Guess that cements my status as Clueless Wife of the Year. I had no idea, because he still got together with those guys. I went to the office Christmas party with Dave last year, for God’s sake.”

“Dave was the kind of guy who kept his friends. You know how he was. Everybody liked him.”

“Especially the women.”

A wry grin crossed Matt’s face. “I didn’t know about the other wife, Penny. I really didn’t.”

“He never mentioned he was married?”

“Oh, he did. When I first met him. He talked about you.”

Me. Maybe there had been a time when, for Dave, I had been enough. That he had been happy in our marriage, that I hadn’t imagined all of those days out of some desperate attempt to hold on to a fictional world. “What did he say?” I wanted to slap myself for grasping at that straw.

“He loved you, Penny, that I could tell.” Matt cleared his throat, the male part of him seeming uncomfortable with this whole discussion of emotions, particularly those in another man’s heart. “I don’t think he intended for it to become what it did. Remember, he kept it all from me, too. It wasn’t just you. I never met Susan or this Annie you asked about. I only heard about you.”

“But you heard something about Annie. I know you did. I saw it in your face when I asked you in the lobby. And you wrote her a check. What for?”

Matt’s attention went to the road, as if watching the cars zooming by would provide some clue to how he was supposed to proceed. “With Annie, you’re going to have to meet her yourself. I don’t know—and that’s the truth—what her relationship with Dave was, but there was something there, I’ll acknowledge that. Dave only mentioned her once, when he needed that check expedited to her address. I didn’t ask questions. I was Harvey’s agent, not Dave’s counselor.”

He was telling the truth, of that I had no doubt. I thought of my list, sitting squarely in the front pocket of my purse. I hadn’t crossed off a single thing yet. Every question I asked seemed to lead to even more of the same.

I left it in my purse. The list could wait.

I nodded. “Thank you for being honest.”

“I don’t know much else,” he said, his tone apologetic, as if he wished he could just hand me everything Dave had kept to himself and be done with it. “I don’t know where Harvey stayed in between performances, either. I never asked, because Dave seemed to have it all under control. All I did was set up the gigs, process the contracts and the money.”

The money. The practical side of me sprang to life. The last thing I needed in probate court was another surprise. “How much money?”

We paused at the last juncture of the path, Harvey panting a bit with all the excitement of his outdoor adventure. “Last year, Harvey made just under a half a million dollars.”

I nearly choked instead of inhaling. “One dog can make that much?”

“He keeps pretty busy. Does movie work, commercials and print ads. You probably saw him in that dog food one?”

I shook my head. “I had no idea Dave made that much.”

“He didn’t keep it all. He made donations to shelters all over the country. I guess he didn’t want to see any other dogs end up on the streets like Harvey had.”

A bittersweet smile crossed my face. “That’s Dave. The bleeding heart with his wallet open.”

Matt ran a hand through his hair, displacing the dark brown waves. “I don’t know if you’ve thought about the future or not, but Harvey does have a pretty full schedule ahead of him. I haven’t canceled or confirmed anything. I didn’t know what you’d want to do.”

I remembered the tour outlined in Dave’s notebook. Six cities, starting in June. An Oprah appearance just before that. I was okay with doing the dog show, as some sort of karma payback for whatever side of the marriage fault line was mine, but after that, I was done. And in a weird way, I wanted to prove I could do it. That I could be something other than a wife so boring, my husband had started up an extracurricular life.

“I can’t throw my life aside to go travel the country with a dog, Matt. I’m only here for this one event, to get Harvey through the Dog-Gone-Good Show. While I’m here, I wanted to find out what else my husband was doing behind my back.”

“I’m not asking you to take Dave’s place. I understand this is hard for you. I just want you to think about it for a couple days. Maybe, if you want, you can designate someone else to be Harvey’s guardian, and then the show can go on, so to speak.”

Give Harvey to someone else. Let another person tour the country with the dog, taking all ringside performances off my shoulders. It was the solution I’d been seeking, yet a part of me resisted the idea.

What was I thinking? That Harvey and I would become the canine and human equivalent of Barnum & Bailey? I shook off the thought.

“That’s a great idea, Matt. Can you find someone else?”

A flicker of what looked like disappointment ran through his eyes. “Sure. I’ll get on it first thing.” Then he led the way up the path back to the hotel’s convention center.

Thinking about giving Harvey up hit me with an odd sensation, as if I was packing off a piece of myself. A piece I’d just discovered, between the trip down here and the conversations with Matt.

So much for my life spreadsheet.

fifteen

I headed down the makeshift hall that led to the performance area for the Dog-Gone-Good Show, Harvey at my heels, his little body a tightly wound spring of anticipation. I stood there, waiting while the AV people attached a mike and battery pack to my jacket, and wondered if it was too late to back out.

I’d called Georgia an hour before, panicky and ready to run. “You’ll be fine, Penny. Think of it as giving the valedictorian speech back in high school.”

“Only using a dog instead of three-by-five cards?”

Georgia laughed. “Yeah.”

My high-school delivery had been made to humans, not canines. And I hadn’t been expected to make my speech, then roll over and play dead. “I don’t know, Georgia. This is more your kind of thing than mine.”

“How do you know? You’ve never really done anything that took you out of your bubble.”

“I took a road trip with my husband’s second wife. I’m holding a dog who can play soccer.”

“And I bet you also have a list in your back pocket, with a whole schedule planned out for Harvey’s day in the sun.”

“It’s in my sleeve, for your information, not my pocket. Besides, I have to have an outline. He has this complicated routine and—”

Georgia sighed. “Penny, let go of the lists. Let go of the pier, jump in the water.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Live a little on the edge, or maybe let Harvey take the lead and see where that gets you. It won’t kill you to do something totally improvised, you know.”

“I’ve done that before. It didn’t work out so well.”

“One mistake doesn’t have to turn you into Control Cathy.” Georgia sighed. “I love you, Penny, but you’re about as spontaneous as a pickle.”

It was time to go. I’d said goodbye to Georgia and a few minutes later, found myself herded down the temporary hall, then left to wait among the Airedales and shelties. Nervous canine and human energy filled the space.

I could do this. And I wasn’t the only one who thought so. I sucked in some confidence, then straightened. And prayed.

The program started, the announcer brought out the first competitor, and a shushed quiet fell over the group, broken only by the outside sounds of the announcer and the occasional burst of applause from the audience. Beside me, one man prayed, another woman popped one Tic Tac after another as if they were candy and a second woman incessantly rubbed the furry fuchsia hair of a troll doll between two fingers.

And then, along came Cee-Cee.

The poufy poodle and her pushover owner crowded into the waiting area, taking up more than their fair share of space. “It’ll be okay, Cee-Cee,” her owner soothed. The poodle danced in place, whining and shaking, which made her pink tutu shimmy, like a dog stripper. “Shh, shh, baby.”

That only served to wind Cee-Cee up more. The dog wheeled around, straining against its leash, poking its pointy manicured nails into everyone within stepping distance. I scooped Harvey off the floor, yanking him out of hyper pink-bowed puffball range.

Vinny had given me a mini tuxedo for Harvey to wear, which made him slippery in my arms. I’d thought the dog would resist, but he submitted to the little suit jacket and tie, obviously familiar with costuming. Harvey wriggled against me, nearly as worked up as the other dogs. Clearly, he sensed what was about to happen and was looking forward to it.

At least one of us was filled with anticipation instead of the overwhelming need to flee. I tamped it down. Doing this, I knew, would be good for me. Might even be…liberating.

After all, hadn’t I married Dave, seeking to find that side of myself? Then I’d gone and stuffed it in the cedar hope chest with my wedding dress.

“And now, Harvey the Wonder Dog!” the announcer called, with all the drama of Rod Roddy.

Tension double-knotted my stomach, tempered with a flush of excitement. It was too late to back out now. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Vinny standing against the wall, red faced and breathing heavily. Pink lotion dotted the eruptions on his face. He flashed me a wavery smile that spelled clear relief he wasn’t the one going out among the dogs and people.

I could do this, I repeated in my head, over and over again. Then I moved forward, Harvey trotting along, right in step with me. A couple of Vinny’s helpers had set up Harvey’s course in the few minutes between dog acts. I glanced around, seeking a friendly face.

Third row up sat Susan, next to Jerry. She sent me a little wave, Jerry gave me a thumbs-up. Behind them, Matt simply nodded, a confident smile on his face. For some reason, that simple gesture inspired an internal burst of can-do spirit.

I made a simple, quick hand movement that Vinny had taught me when we had run through Harvey’s routine yesterday, working in the ballroom in two separate sessions, to give Harvey a breather in between.

Harvey saw the signal and took a seat at my feet. “Harvey, are you ready?” The mike on my lapel broadcast the statement to the audience. I put my hands up and out, Harvey’s response cue.

He shook his head no. The audience roared with laughter.

“Don’t you want to work?” Hands up and out again. Harvey repeated the no.

“Do you want to play instead?” This time, I moved one of my hands up and down, just a flicker of movement, but Harvey’s attentive eyes saw it. He responded with an emphatic nod. Now the crowd was really laughing.

Wow. This was actually working. I, Penny Reynolds, Accountant of the Year two years running, was standing in a ring with a dog and putting on a show. I conjured up my inner Julia Roberts and moved on.

“Too bad, Harvey,” I went on, “because we have work to do. Are you ready?”

I made the movement again, but timed it to delay the response a moment, as if he were thinking about it. He gave a yes again, eliciting more laughter and applause as Harvey got to his feet and came along with me.

We reached the first station set up for his routine. I picked up the first prop, a copy of Walt Whitman poems, something that seemed apropos of Dave and all his years of self-exploration.

Harvey stood at my feet, waiting for his cue. “You’re all dressed up. Do you have a party to go to?”

At my signal, he did his yes.

“Then it’s time for a little training in the social graces. Get ready.” He plopped his bottom on the carpet, then waited while I balanced the book on his head. “Show me your good posture.” A quick flick of my index finger upward, and Harvey carefully raised his little body up, balancing on his hind legs, keeping the book in place. The audience clapped and whistled.

Who knew I could become Greta Garbo with a Jack Russell terrier as my co-star? Every time he listened to me, and did what he was supposed to, I was stunned.

I slipped Harvey a piece of kibble, then moved on to the next stop, painfully aware of the hundreds of eyes watching us. No wonder Vinny got stage fright. Between the heavy, silent anticipation and the pressure of so many spectators, it was enough to give me hives.

A lump of nerves formed in my throat. I swallowed, but that only moved the lump to my gut. I refused to feel the nerves. I could do this. And I would. “Okay, Harv, here we go,” I whispered to him, then stood to address the audience. “Great job with your social graces. But I hear that Chihuahua you like over there—” I pointed in the direction of a dog waiting in the wings for her turn to go, adding a flourish to my movements “—wants more than a date. She needs a hero.”

With a dramatic whoosh, I yanked a red cape off a small chair, then held it in front of me. “Let’s see how you are in the defensive arts. Time to bullfight.”

At the last word, Harvey backed up, scraping his rear paws against the carpet, à la the fiercest bull in Pamplona. He lowered his head nearly to the carpet, swinging it left, then right. He scraped his paws again, let out a snort, then charged forward, running through the red fabric, just as I jerked it away.

The crowd hooted and clapped. Laughter rang from the walls.

I smiled, elation soaring inside me. This was the Penny I’d always wanted to be—a woman confident in her own skin. In that moment, I knew a part of me had been changed forever—

And in a damned good way this time.

Harvey spun, retook his bull position and repeated the trick. When I gave him his treat, I noticed a gleam in his eye. The dog was eating this up.

We moved on to the banana trick, then to his obstacle course. He clambered up the A-Frame, across a skinny beam, down a set of steps and then across a zigzagged board in record time, stopping at the end to pounce on a springboard that sent a ball up a pole. It bounced against a bell at the top, ringing like a carnival game.

He caught his dog-food reward midair, leading me nearly as much as I was leading him. His eyes were bright with excitement, clearly in his groove. I felt that way, too, more than I ever had in the office.

We headed to the musical station, where one of Vinny’s helpers pressed the button on a CD player, sending music through the room.

“If you want to impress the girls, Harvey, you need to learn how to dance. How about a cha-cha?”

Harvey rose on his hind legs and spun around, dancing on his back feet, pawing at the air with his front feet. He dropped down as the chorus began and raised his little snout, releasing his own soulful version. I sneaked a peek at my card outlining his routine, then returned my attention to the dog. “Great job, Harvey.” I tossed him another nibble, then flicked my finger to get him to move to the next trick.

He didn’t move even though the CD had ended. Instead, he started singing again after eating his dog snack. I tried it again, hoping he’d get the hint.

Nothing but a badly warbled “Star-Spangled Banner.”

“Harvey, let’s play along,” I told him, the verbal cue that was supposed to get him to move on to the toy piano.

Harvey kept up his singing.

“Harvey, let’s play along,” I repeated. Nervous tension twisted my intestines. It had been going so well. What was going wrong?

Harvey dropped down, looking at me expectantly. I gestured toward the toy piano. “Play along, Harvey.”

He leaped up onto his hind legs and did the spin again, pawing at air, letting out little yips as he did.

Oh, hell. It was all going wrong now. I slipped my note card all the way out of my sleeve, then realized the notes for this trick were on the back. Curse me and my wordiness. I flipped it over. “Piano—Play Mozart,” I’d written.

I’d given him the wrong command. I glanced over at the trio of judges, their faces set in frowns, all traces of humor long gone. Apparently Harvey’s singing was only amusing for the first twenty seconds.

“Harvey,” I said, mentally praying that he would pay attention, get a clue, rescue this situation, “playing along doesn’t mean playing to the crowd, you big ham.”

He lowered his head between his paws, doing contrite better than the best Oscar winner.

I’d been talking to the dog, forgetting that my comments would be broadcast to the audience. Their eruption of laughter told me they saw this snafu as a joke. Even the judges stifled a grin. Harvey’s cutup reputation had saved us. And, so had my own spontaneity. Who knew I had a spontaneous side at all? “Harvey, show that little Chihuahua how you can play Mozart.”

He let out a bark, then hurried over to the piano, plunking out a tune with his tiny nose. On the sidelines, Vinny’s helper added a concert CD for accompaniment. With his tux and serious nose playing, Harvey was a hit.

When he finished, I gave him two treats, for saving our butts, then signaled for the next trick. “Time for you to get some rest, Harv. That way, you’ll be fresh for your date tonight. Let’s take a nap.” He raced forward to a tiny bedroom scene, pulled the dresser drawer open, yanked out a dog-bone-decorated nightshirt and delivered it to me. I slid the shirt over his tuxedo, then sent him off to climb into the tiny bed.

“Get some shut-eye,” I told him.

He leaned over and turned off the push-button nightstand light with his paw, then feigned sleep. The audience hooted with laughter and I saw a twitch of what could have been a smile on Harvey’s face. With every trick, Harvey’s enjoyment had increased exponentially with the audience’s response.

He was a ham, but an adorable one.

For me, it felt as if I had hit my stride, if that was even possible in a situation so outside my normal frame of reference. I’d found a balance between being prepared and having to improvise. In an odd way, it was liberating.

Even fun.

Harvey’s entertaining spirit had become a part of me. As scary as it was to change, even a little, I drew it in, and shot the dog a smile.

Harvey reached the end of his new routine, where he was supposed to engage in a gunfight with me. It was the part that had me most worried, not because I thought I might do any harm to the dog with the unloaded toy pistol, but because it was so new to Harvey, he’d stumbled a bit in practice with Vinny.

I slipped a cowboy hat onto his head, telling him quietly to keep it on. The dog glowered at me from under the brim, hating the head appendage. Vinny had warned me, but I hoped Harvey would at least cooperate for a short skit.

“Oh-oh, Harvey. Seems that Chihuahua has another suitor.” I gestured again toward the miniature dog, now flanked by a poodle. “What are you going to do to be her hero?”

The last word keyed Harvey to retrieve a small wooden box from the table, drag it over to me, then sit down and let out a woof. I picked it up, opened the lid, then lowered it to Harvey’s level. “Choose your weapon.”

He fished one out with his mouth, then sat back again, a little woof escaping past the plastic handle. The audience chuckled. I bit back my own laughter. The dog that had seemed to be my nemesis had started to grow on me.

I pulled the second one out and put the box to the side. “Gunfight at the OK Corral? Are you sure?” I did the finger flick again and he nodded his head, even more emphatically than before.

The people surrounding us cheered and clapped. I couldn’t have been more proud if it had been Georgia sitting there on her haunches.

“Okay, a duel it is.” I spun around, waited until Harvey had backed his little body up against my heels. “Five paces,” I said.

I marked off five steps, slow and easy, hoping like heck that Harvey was doing the same behind me. “Draw!” I said, in my best Clint Eastwood, before spinning around and aiming at Harvey.

He’d spun around and had his head tilted so the gun in his mouth was aimed in my direction. I waited for the popping sound, another technical detail added by Vinny’s helper, but heard instead only two long, drawn out syllables of disaster.

“Cee-Cee!”

The poodle had broken free from her owner and was racing through the room, careening off the spectators, the obstacles. I glanced over at Vinny’s helper, hoping the guy would tackle the overzealous poodle, but he was busy fumbling with the CD player, unaware of the pandemonium heading toward us. Just as he depressed the player’s button, Harvey spun toward Cee-Cee, cocked his head. The boom of a gunshot exploded from the sound system.

Cee-Cee, startled by the sound, skidded to a stop.

“Down!” I said to Cee-Cee, low and even, affecting as much alpha male as one widowed woman could muster.

The poodle wavered, then slid her front paws forward and lowered her white puffball frame to the ground. Harvey trotted over, and then, in typical Harvey drama, put one paw on Cee-Cee’s back, as if he’d just nabbed himself a hell of a big white bear.

Applause boomed from the crowd as Cee-Cee’s red-faced owner marched over, attached a rhinestone-studded leash to her matching pink collar, then dragged her recalcitrant pooch offstage.

We’d done it. I looked down at the dog, stunned the routine had all come together and even better, been capped off by Cee-Cee’s wayward entry. Pride swelled in my heart, for the dog, for me and even, yes, for Dave. I had no doubt my husband was watching and laughing.

For the first time since I’d stood before that casket, my grief began to ease, opening a window into a new existence.

“Take a bow, Harvey,” I said, waving toward the crowd. Keeping his hindquarters up, Harvey put his front paws on the floor, then touched his nose to the carpet. Then he rose, pressed his body next to mine and did the same thing.

Something hitched in my throat. Harvey was a true star, all the wonder dog he’d been made out to be—

And yet, he didn’t mind sharing the limelight, with me, the one person who hadn’t wanted him around.

He’d captured the hearts of every single person in the room. And now, finally, he had mine, too. I’d never expected to like, much less love, the dog.

I flicked off the portable microphone attached to my pants, then leaned down and ruffled Harvey’s head. “You did a good job, boy. And thank you for giving Cee-Cee exactly what she deserved. You and me, boy, we make a good team.” I blew on my finger like it was a gun. At my feet, Harvey let out a woof of agreement.

sixteen

The applause for Harvey’s performance and first-place finish, as well as winner of Best Dog Overall, thundered through the room, echoing off the convention center’s walls. A Miniature Pinscher in the corner began to tremble, the noise clearly too much for his pixie-size ears.

Harvey looked up from his position beside my shoes, his brown eyes wide and intent on my face, expectant. I bent over, gave him a quick stroke on the head, then stood again, holding his trophy and blue ribbon tight. “Good boy. Good job.”

Harvey kept staring, his tail still, his body rigid. I repeated my praise. Still, that tiny face remained fixed on mine, waiting for something. What, I had no idea.

I praised him again, the soaring feeling of completing something I’d never thought I could do still rising within me.

“Hey, Harvey! Good job!” Matt came up and joined me as Harvey and I exited the ballroom, making room for the other award winners to take the stage for Best in Show, Best Costume and Best Attitude.

Cee-Cee’s owner stood to the side, glaring at me. Clearly she blamed Cee-Cee’s traumatic ordeal in the ring on Harvey. The poodle had been so shaken up by the bogus shooting, she’d thrown up on her owner’s feet.

I couldn’t say I blamed the dog.

“Vinny watched on the closed-captioned TV in the other room,” Susan said, coming up to join us. She was still trailed by the infatuated Jerry, though Susan hadn’t done much more than glance in the poor guy’s direction. “He said Harvey did his best performance ever and to tell you congrats. After the crowd dies down, I think Vinny will stop breathing into a paper bag and come out and tell you himself.”

“It was phenomenal,” Matt agreed, a bemused smile on his face. “I had no idea you were such an actress.”

I felt my face flush at his praise. “Oh, no, I’m—”

“It’s a compliment, Penny. Don’t bounce it back like we’re volleying for serve.” He bent down, ruffled Harvey’s head, then stood again. “You both were amazing.”

Still, I fidgeted. When was the last time I’d been complimented on anything besides the accuracy of my numbers? The odd feeling of pride that had blossomed on the stage now bloomed in my chest.

“Dave would have loved this,” I said softly, tenderness curling around my memories of my husband. Dave would have been the first out with the “attaboys” and the call for a celebration. I looked at the glistening trophy, a golden dog sitting atop an A-frame obstacle, and for the first time since my life had been turned inside out, I wished my husband were still here.

My focus went to Harvey. He still stood at my feet, ignoring all the praise and pats on the head. He simply watched me, silent and unreadable. I reached into my pocket, found a lone dog treat and held out my palm for him to take it.

He ignored the treat and instead turned away, his attention going over his shoulder, sweeping the ballroom. His ears perked up for a second, then drooped. He let out a sigh and hung his head.

“I think he’s sad,” Susan said.

“He’s a dog, he doesn’t get sad.” And yet, I wondered if maybe he was. In the past two days, I’d grown closer to that dog than I’d ever thought possible. Melancholy seemed to be hanging on his little shoulders. Maybe it was post-show letdown or some such thing.

The winners were announced a final time as the show wrapped up. Someone in the audience shouted a “Yeah, Harvey!” The dog’s ears stood at attention again and he pranced in a circle, scanning the audience. But after a moment, his head sank again onto his chest. He dropped down and crumpled onto the floor.

“Do you think he’s looking for Dave?” Susan asked.

“He’s probably confused,” I said, though what I knew about dogs would fit in a matchbook. “Every time he’s performed here, Dave has been here to greet him at the end of the show. Maybe he’s expecting Dave to show up.”

I knew how he felt. Every step of this journey, I’d kept feeling Dave would be just around the corner, laughing at the prank he’d pulled. I’d see him walk into the room, his familiar smile and confident stride hitting me like it used to years ago, when I’d fallen so hard for him I’d committed the second biggest spontaneous act of my life—

Eloping.

Harvey, I knew, missed Dave. Harvey hadn’t been at the funeral or the wake. He’d never seen Dave again after being dropped at Susan’s house. He had no idea what had happened.

Oh, damn. How did you tell a dog that his owner was dead?

“Let me get him out of this mess,” I said to Matt and Susan. “I’ll meet you guys out front. Maybe he needs to go out or something.” I wove my way through the crowd, trying to reach the exit of the convention hall.

“Excuse me! What are you doing with Dave Reynolds’s dog?”

I spun around at the sound of a woman’s voice behind me. Tall and thin, her long brown, straight hair was a near match for that of the Irish setter at her feet. Before I could answer her, she was striding up to me. “Where’s Dave? He never misses one of Harvey’s shows.”

“He passed away,” I said, the words getting a little easier each time I said them, but still feeling like barbed wire as they left my throat.

She put a hand over her chest. “Oh, my! I thought I heard LouAnn Rawlins say that, but I didn’t believe her. That woman is nothing but a gossip. Still, what a shock. He was such a great guy. We all loved him and Harvey. He’s been a fixture here for years.” The woman arched a brow. “But why are you working with the dog? Are you one of Vinny’s helpers?”

“No. I’m Dave’s widow.” Or rather, the president of the Dave Reynolds Widow Club, but I kept that to myself.

“Oh, dear, I’m so sorry.” The hand to the chest again. “What an awful tragedy. He was so young. What happened?”

“Heart attack.” The woman launched into another round of sympathetic sounds. I slipped on my polite face, the one I’d learned to perfect when teachers had asked me how things were at home or I made up some story for the guidance counselor about why our mother hadn’t attended the meeting about Georgia’s shaky grades.

“Were you a friend of Dave’s?” I asked her.

“Oh, everyone was. He was one of the nicest guys I ever met.”

I gave Harvey a little pat, but he didn’t respond with more than a flicker of his tail. “Yes, Dave was quite charming,” I replied, still polite.

“Well, at least you put one rumor to rest. People have been wondering about you.”

“Rumor?”

The woman waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, some people have been speculating that Dave finally sold Harvey.”

I looked down at the dog, who was still just sitting beside me, silent and as enthusiastic as a sock. “Sell him? Why would Dave do that?”

The woman shrugged, watching as her dog tried to initiate the canine waltz of sniffing. Harvey ignored him. “It was just something he kicked around once, a couple months ago at one of the other shows. He seemed real determined to do it. Even asked a couple of us if we were interested in taking on the Harvey franchise. But none of us thought he was serious. Dave loved that dog.”

“Was he having troubles with Harvey?”

“Oh, no. Those two got along like butter and toast. I got the feeling there was something…” Her voice trailed off and an uncomfortable stiffness filled her features.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Dave died so suddenly that I was left with a lot of unanswered questions. If there’s something you can tell me to fill in the blanks, I’d appreciate it.”

The woman took my arm and drew me over to one of the long seats that lined the exterior walls of the hotel. Her dog lay at her feet and let out a yawn. Harvey kept looking behind him, watching the people come out of the room.

“I got the feeling,” the woman said, “and I could be totally wrong about this, but it seemed Dave wanted to change his life somehow. Like he wasn’t happy with what was going on. It was the first time I ever saw him stressed. He said he was buying a new house and I don’t know, maybe that meant some kind of change that he wanted to be ready for?” A weak grin crossed the woman’s face, as if she’d just realized she might have told me too much. “Or maybe he was afraid Harvey would chew up the woodwork.”

We had bought the house December fifteenth. I’d meant to get the Christmas decorations up that weekend, something I’d skipped doing for far too many years because I’d been too busy. Then a client called me on Saturday morning, needing help to clean up an end-of-the-year accounting mess. When I finally came home from work that weekend night, Dave had been there, a complete surprise, because he’d left the day before for what was supposed to be a three-day trip.

The tree was decorated, Bing Crosby was crooning “White Christmas” on the stereo, a fire was lit in the fireplace, candles were burning around the room, even my favorite cinnamon potpourri was simmering in a pan on the stove. He’d done it all, creating the one thing he knew would melt my heart because I’d never had one as a child—a traditional, homey Christmas.

He’d told me over a glass of wine by the fireplace, one of the coziest moments we’d had in months, that he was going to cut back on his travel because he really wanted us to make a stab at having a family. Softened by the tender gesture of the Christmas tree and the melody of “Silent Night” in the background, I’d finally agreed.

“Was this around the middle of December?” I asked the woman.

She thought a bit. “Yeah. December seventeenth, actually. I remember because of Her Highland Warrior here.” She gestured toward the dog with an embarrassed grin. “What can I say? I’m a romance novel fan. Anyway, my dog took his first ribbon in agility. Harvey, of course, was the favorite for first place in overall talent, but Dave had left before the competition on Sunday morning. We figured it was all a phase and he’d be back. We all expected to see him here.” The woman looked over at me, at the ring on my finger and my grip on the dog’s leash, then laid a hand over mine. “I really am sorry. Did you guys have any children?”

I shook my head. “No.”

But it had been in the plans. I’d finally relented, thinking that maybe that was what I needed to do to keep my husband home at night, that if I had a baby, with Dave at my side, I’d get over my resistance to being a parent.

I’d also thought a baby might restore the spark that seemed to have gone out between us, maybe even restore the zing that had deserted me, compounded by a husband who had grown more distant each year, physically and emotionally. But I’d had the feeling, even as we bought the house and made plans for a fence and a nursery, that something was slipping out of my fingers and if I didn’t grab it back, it would be gone forever. When I had agreed to the idea of a baby, that feeling of loss had passed temporarily and for a while, things between us had been almost like old times.

Almost.

Working with Harvey in the ring had given me a reprieve from my self-blame. Maybe, with Dave, it had been less about a baby and more about me finding my true self.

Either way, I wasn’t going to go back to being exactly the way I had been before. For once, that thought didn’t terrify me.

“Anyway,” the woman said, “we’re all glad to see Harvey staying in Dave’s family. He’s such a part of the dog community.” She bent down and patted the dog, who showed about as much response as a fence post. “We love ya, Harv.”

With a final sympathetic touch to my shoulder, the woman rose, wished me well, then went off, with Her Highland Warrior trotting along at her side, clearly not affected by his romance novel nomenclature.

I rose and crossed to the windows, just as the show ended and people streamed out of the hall’s doors.

Had Dave been about to give it all up, for me? Or did he have other plans in mind? And when I’d delayed the promise I’d made him, again and again, had that been what drove him back into Susan’s arms?

Or was I trying to create shapes out of clouds that were thin and wispy? Trying to frame a picture of a marriage that was still too blurry around the edges to discern any details?

“What do you think, Harvey?” I asked, bending down to the dog. “You have any opinions on what the heck Dave was thinking?”

Poor Harvey’s face was as droopy as a limp piece of celery. Maybe he already knew Dave had died. Maybe he’d understood my conversation with the woman.

I unclipped his leash, thinking if I held him, this heavy sadness would lighten. But the second the silver clip slipped out of the circular connection, Harvey bolted, his nails scrabbling against the carpet for purchase, propelling him forward, a tiny furry rocket. He sniffed the air, a canine pinball pinging off the walls, down the hall, back again, searching.

“Harvey!” I cried, taking off after him. The new high heels I’d bought for the show slid against the carpet, catching my step.

The thick crowd of chattering contestants and their pets separated me from the terrier, whose wily body slipped easily under and between the canine and human legs. He was out of sight before I could make my way to the outside perimeter of the people mass. I pushed by a man in a dark suit, still calling Harvey’s name, then stopped short.

In the far corner of the room, a door to the outside had been left open. Maybe to release some of the heat in the convention hall. Or maybe left propped open by a security guard sneaking a smoke break. Bright sunshine streamed in across the crimson carpet, blazing a golden path to freedom.

“Harvey!” The word fell on deaf dog ears.

Harvey was gone.

seventeen

I bent under shrubbery and crawled behind the Dumpsters of the Grand Resort Hotel, ignoring the stench of yesterday’s dinner remains, searching for a dog my husband had dumped on me in the afterlife and who had become a weird part of me, of my family. As I did, I could practically hear Patsy Cline singing in my ear, ramping up her chorus.

I was crazy; this whole thing was crazy.

But damn it all, I still loved the man. He’d loved the dog, and other than Susan and Annie, Harvey was the last living tie to Dave. I had no intention of keeping Susan or making a living memorial out of Annie.

But Harvey…

Despite everything, the silly terrier had wormed his way into my heart and suddenly, I wanted him back, wanted to tell him I was proud of him. To thank him for helping me find another side of myself, a side I hadn’t even known existed. I wasn’t about to run off to Hollywood for a new career, but I was going to live differently when I got home.

And most of all, I wanted to tell Harvey that Dave, if bigamists made it into heaven, was proud, too.

I slithered out from behind a rhododendron, then stopped in the middle of the full, busy parking lot, shaded my eyes and scanned the surrounding area. Congested with shops and hotels, cars and people, it made finding Harvey impossible.

I worried that someone would kidnap him. My heart sank in my chest, tight with panic. Harvey was nowhere to be found.

“Dave,” I said to the blue expanse of sky, “why couldn’t you have gotten a German shepherd? A malamute? Anything bigger than a bread box.”

All I got for an answer was a horn beeping at my butt. I wheeled around and faced an elderly woman with a white-knuckled grip on her Mazda’s steering wheel, glaring at me and muttering things I was sure I didn’t want to hear out of a grandmother’s mouth.

I stepped to the side and Grandma zipped by me with a whoosh of smoggy air. I choked and coughed, my eyes watering.

Matt’s words came back to me, the story of how Harvey had happened into Dave’s life. Had the dog been triggered to run away the first time because his owner had died? Or because his first owner had been the dysfunctional kind who forgot to feed Harvey and saw him more as ornamentation than pet?

Or had Harvey run away that time, and this time, because he’d been paired with a completely inept dog-show stand-in?

I’d been able to run through Harvey’s routine, get him to do his tricks, but clearly, I had yet to find a way to connect with him. To make him want to come when I called, not just do it for the Beggin’ Strips.

Susan hurried across the parking lot toward me in a little skip step, the kind made possible by three-inch heels. “Did you find him?”

“No. He’s so small. He could be anywhere.” Guilt washed over me. “What if someone took him?”

“You know Harvey. He’s smart. He’d never leave with someone else. Besides, I think he’s looking for Dave.” Susan drew up beside me, crossing her arms over her ample chest. “What do we do now?”

I wheeled around and faced her. “I don’t know, Susan,” I said, frustrated more with myself and my inability to find the dog than with her. “I don’t know how a dog thinks. I thought I did, but I was wrong.” Right then, I was through with being in charge, with trying to reassemble a jigsaw puzzle that got messier by the minute. “You make the plan, Susan. Apparently, you knew my husband better than I did.”

I stalked off, anger exploding in my chest like a cheap fireworks display. I blew past Matt, ignoring the question in his eyes, kept walking beyond Vinny, the gathered crowd of speculating attendees, ignoring them all. I headed into the hotel and straight for the bar, the only solution I could think of right now.

“A rum and Coke. Don’t bother with the Coke.”

The bartender arched a brow but didn’t say anything. He did as I asked, pouring some Captain Morgan into a squat tumbler of ice, then floating a twist of lime on the top.

I took a gulp, squinted against the burn of alcohol. I took another drink, squinted a little less. A third, and no squint at all.

I sank onto a stool and sipped at the remaining rum. A sense of peace stole over me, yet, even as it did, I knew it was temporary, brought on by the artificial blanket of alcohol.

That’s what I got for leaving my afghan at home.

“There you are.” Susan slipped onto the stool beside me and ordered the Coke that was missing from my drink.

I sighed. “Sorry for taking all that out on you. We both lost in this deal.”

Susan waved a hand. “Forget it. You’re entitled to a little meltdown.”

I gave her a weak smile. “A little Dog-Gone-Good frustration.”

She smiled back. “Yeah.”

“To Dave,” I said, raising the glass and clinking it against hers. “And to the mess he left behind.”

“Yeah.” She knocked back some Coke, slid it over to the bartender and asked him to add some rum. “Seems like a good idea right now.”

We drank, neither of us saying anything for a while. “We need to find Harvey,” Susan said.

“I agree.” A sigh slipped past my lips. “But unless you have dog ESP, I can’t even begin to think of where he went.”

Susan shrugged. “Why not think like a dog?”

I rolled my eyes. “Now you’re starting to sound like my sister.”

“I’m serious. If you were Harvey, where would you go?”

“I don’t know, Susan,” I said, draining the last of the rum from the glass, and signaling to the bartender to get me another. “The pound? A PetSmart store? I have no idea. I’ve never owned a dog, I’m not a dog, I can’t think like one.”

“So you’re just going to give up?”

I spun on the stool to face her. “Right now, Susan, I am not up to handling this. Why can’t you crawl around in the shrubbery and find him?”

“Because…I just can’t. I’m not like you, Penny.” She ran a finger along the rim of her glass, not meeting my eyes. “I can’t just go out there and take over.”

“Why not? I did it. You think I really wanted to leave my couch and trek halfway down the Eastern seaboard with my dead husband’s secret wife and his stage dog? I did it because I knew if I didn’t, I’d never know the truth. A truth which, quite frankly, sucks.”

“You can handle things like that. I can’t.”

“But you’re sitting right beside me. You went on this trip with me. If I can do this, then so can you,” I said, softer now.

“Yeah, but I did it with you. Those are the operative words.” She took a sip of her drink, toyed with the lime twist. “I’m not the kind of woman who takes the bull by the horns. Heck, I don’t even come anywhere near the bull.”

“Are you kidding me?” I looked at her, still all neat and pretty in a knee-length black cotton dress, despite the long day. She looked as if she had just stepped off the cover of Vogue, not as if she’d been arguing with her husband’s primary wife. “You seem so…well-adjusted to this whole thing. Here I am, a blubbering mess half the time and you’re all sunny-side up.”

Susan shrugged and stirred her drink, watching the lime bob among the ice. “It’s an act.”

“Well then you deserve an Oscar.” I took a big sip of my second drink. It went down smooth and easy, too easy.

Susan sipped, silent for a long while. She sighed, then ran her hand across the surface of the bar before she spoke again. “It’s all fake.”

“What is? The bar? Heck, I’m no carpenter, but even I can tell it’s not real wood.”

“No, I meant me.”

I glanced at her. A beautiful, perfect-featured blonde who could have easily modeled or been Miss USA. The kind of woman other women hated on principle because she’d been gifted with all the things everyone else spent a lifetime Sweatin’ to the Oldies to achieve. “Looks pretty real to me.”

Susan let out a little laugh, the sound jerking from her with a bitter note. She reached into her purse and pulled out a picture. “That’s me, six years ago.”

I glanced at the photo, a worn wallet-size picture of a couple. The denim-clad guy was bearded and scruffy, a bandanna wrapped around his temples. Thankfully, he was not my husband.

If Susan hadn’t told me she was the woman in the picture, I never would have believed it. Three hundred pounds hung off her frame, made worse by a shapeless denim dress and a pair of Birkenstocks. Glasses hid her blue eyes, and dark brown curly hair obscured most of her face. She wore no makeup and lacked her usual perky smile.

“This is you?”

“Yeah.” Susan took the photo back and tucked it into her wallet, hiding it behind a Visa. “Before I had my procedure.”

“Procedure?”

“Stomach stapling.” Susan brightened. “It changed my life.”

My own stomach turned over at the thought of someone messing with my internal organs with office supplies. “That’s how you lost all the weight?”

“With that, and with a little help from my neighborhood plastic surgeon.” She leaned closer and gave her chest a pat. “Like I said, it’s all fake.”

I couldn’t help but look at her perky fauxness. “Did Dave know?”

Susan swallowed and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “He paid for it.”

“He paid for plastic surgery?” The same man who thought we could make our old refrigerator last another year? Who’d told me the only good fences were made out of real wood, not vinyl? Who had insisted we buy organic produce to compensate for his Big Mac addiction?

“He did it for me. So I could feel good about myself,” Susan said, now turning an earnest gaze on me. “You don’t know what I was like back then. I had all the self-confidence of a flea. I dropped out of high school because of my weight, because of the way kids teased me. I never went to college. I never did anything until I met Dave.”

A part of me wondered if my husband had been building the perfect wife, but as I looked into Susan’s eyes and thought of the man I knew, I realized he would have done exactly what she’d said. Handed over the cash for whatever would make her happy.

“He encouraged you to do all this?”

“He gave me the belief that I could do it. Dave fell in love with me when I was still heavy. I couldn’t believe anyone could love me like that, I mean really love me. Fat or skinny, he didn’t care. He saw the real Susan underneath and because of that, it gave me the courage to go for what I’d always wanted. What is it they say on those commercials? To make the outside match my inside. He did something for me, Penny. He didn’t just write the check.” Susan reached over and took my hand. “He was a good man.”

I had to look away, to study the dusty velvet image of a bunch of dogs playing poker. I remembered that same picture hanging in our basement when I’d been a kid, dangling from a wire on a nail. My dad and his buddies played poker down there every Friday night because my mother couldn’t stand the smell of their smoke, the sound of their laughter. Inevitably, she would claim a headache and head off to bed, leaving my father to both police his daughters and his hand.

Until finally, one day, he’d had enough. My father walked out and never looked back. That night, my mother put the poker dogs picture into the trash, as if she were putting him there, too. She never mentioned the man’s name again.

“Did doing all that change you?” I asked, wanting, I guessed, the secret to unlocking the rest of Penny, too.

“It changed how I look. It changed how I acted when I went out in public. I stopped being a wallf lower. Got my GED, signed up for college. It’s just a community college, but it’s something. A goal. I’m still going, working on my degree in psychology, but at least I’m moving forward with my life, instead of just watching it from the sidelines.”

The words stung, sending a flare of jealousy through me. Why hadn’t Dave done that with me?

I raised my glass toward her again. “Then maybe we should toast Dave the saint.” The words were bitter, tinged by the alcohol.

“He wasn’t a saint, Penny. But I do owe him a lot.”

“So go on out there and find his dog,” I said, staring into the murky brown rum. I gulped down the last bit, tossed a bill on the bar, then left.

Let Susan pick up the pieces for a while. I was going to find a good blanket and disappear.

eighteen

I took a cab back to my hotel room, crawled into the uncomfortable, still unmade bed and slept until the rum wore off. When I awoke, it was late afternoon. The sinking sun sliced a sharp edge of orange through the curtains.

Straight into my hungover, regretful face.

Susan hadn’t returned to the room. Nor had Harvey found me. Apparently no miracles had occurred in the two hours I’d been asleep.

As tempting as it was to close my eyes again, I swung my feet over the side of the bed, took my second shower of the day and got dressed in jeans and comfortable shoes.

Without the alcohol to numb my feelings, guilt crowded onto my shoulders like a flock of birds straining a telephone line. I’d been mean to Susan, and she’d been nothing but nice to me.

Not to mention, I’d lost the dog. I didn’t want to care about a terrier I hadn’t asked for, but damn it all, I did. Somewhere between the Massachusetts state border and the Dog-Gone-Good Show, I’d started seeing him as a part of the Reynolds family.

A part of me. And now he was gone.

Oh, hell.

My car, I realized, was back at the conference site. I took another cab back to the Grand Resort Hotel, stopped inside for a huge cup of coffee, then got in the Mercedes. As I put the car in Reverse, I leaned over the backseat to watch for pedestrians—

And spied Harvey’s little denim personalized backpack. All this time, it had sat there, forgotten and never opened.

I grabbed the strap and hauled it up front with me. The zipper stuck a little, then gave way, spilling an assortment of vinyl toys onto my lap, one fuzzy stuffed bunny that looked well loved by a canine, and finally a silver dog whistle.

Jackpot.

I got out of the car, the stuffed bunny under one arm, the whistle in my other hand. Every few feet, I blew on the silent whistle.

In my haste to find Harvey, I completely forgot that I was at a dog show. Before I could say toot-toot, I had become the Pied Piper of Dogdom.

From all corners of the conference site, dogs broke away from their masters, dashing to my side, tails wagging. An Airedale brushed up against me, then a Great Dane, crowded in by two collies and a trio of poodles.

I was surrounded by every breed and type of dog—except the one I wanted.

“What the hell are you doing?” an elderly man charged up, clipping a leather leash onto the Airedale. He wagged a finger at the slim silver piece in my hand. “You can’t just blow that thing around here. It’s dangerous, for God’s sake.”

“Sorry. I’m looking for my dog.”

“You lost Harvey?” a woman corralling the poodles said. “How could you?”

“He ran away.” Even as I said the words, I realized how it sounded. Like I’d been a bad parent and Harvey had headed for greener pastures.

The gaping mouths and narrowed eyes around me echoed that sentiment. As a dog owner, I was a failure.

Gee, add that to my wife score and I’d won zero and lost two.

Then, I spied a familiar streak of brown and white slipping under a parked VW Bug. “Harvey!” I broke out of the parking-lot pound and dashed over to the dog, waving the stuffed rabbit, calling his name.

He hesitated for a second, then sprang off his back two paws and galloped toward me. I scooped him up, not realizing until I held his tiny, trembling body against my chest how much I had missed him.

Tears burned behind my eyes. Oh, this silly dog. Who’d have ever thought I’d grow to care about him? Miss him when he left? Stand in a parking lot surrounded by the animal kingdom, blowing on a whistle to find him?

Harvey snuggled against me, working the rabbit out from my grasp. As soon as he had the stuffed toy firmly in his mouth, he sank into my arms, content. I bent down and nuzzled against him.

“You found him.”

I turned around at the sound of Matt’s voice. “Yeah. I don’t think he went that far.” I worked the emotion out of my voice.

“He gets a little stressed by the end of one of these things, which is probably why he went looking for Dave. I’m glad you gave him BooBoo.”

“BooBoo?”

Matt gestured toward the stuffed pink bunny. “That’s his security blanket.”

I felt terrible for never opening the bag, never realizing that the dog was more human and had deeper emotional needs than I’d thought. A security blanket, of all things. But with this dog, it made perfect sense.

“I had no idea.” I stroked a hand over the dog. The bunny wasn’t Dave, but it was all I could give the dog right now. “I understand missing your security blanket. Sorry, Harv.”

Matt cocked his head and grinned. “Am I detecting tender feelings for the dog?”

“Maybe.” I put my face near the terrier’s and received a rough-tongued lick on my cheek. He smelled of shampoo, dog food and in an odd way, Dave, too. “Okay, yeah.”

He chuckled. “Harvey does have a tendency to grow on you.”

I leaned closer to Matt. “He captured my heart when he shot Cee-Cee.”

Matt threw back his head and laughed. “That was good, wasn’t it?”

“I think I’m going to incorporate it into his routine.” The words promised a future, beyond this show. “I meant, with Vinny.”

“Yeah, I get that.” He grinned at me. “You were awesome out there, you know. I never knew you had such theatrical ability.”

“Thank you,” I said, making a half bow. “I’ll be here all day, if you want an encore.”

“I might just take you up on that,” he said. Those words also implied a future. I was glad when he changed the subject and when that intensity left his expression. “Well, now that you’ve taken the dog world by storm and made Harvey king, once again, of the Dog-Gone-Good Show, what’s next on your agenda?”

I drew in a breath, pushing away the triumph of today. I couldn’t run from the truth forever. And I knew, deep in my heart, I had to hear it all before I could go back home. No matter how much it hurt or how much worse it could get.

Matt was right. I’d survived a hell of a lot already. A lot more than I would have ever thought I could. Surely, after coaxing a terrier to play a piano and then engaging in a gunfight with a wayward poodle, facing the next obstacle would be a walk through the daisies.

“I’m going to go see Annie,” I said, the resolve finally cemented. “But I’m keeping Harvey armed with his little toy pistol. You never know when a dog like Cee-Cee is going to disrupt the whole plan.”

nineteen

We left Pigeon Forge, Harvey in a brand-new crate on my plastic-coated backseat. I’d left the door of the crate open, per Vinny’s advice, in case the dog felt like being sociable.

Susan sat beside me, uncharacteristically silent. The green rectangle of a highway sign blaring an upcoming exit for I–81 North loomed over the car, then disappeared.

One way, home. The other way, Annie.

Susan grasped the silver-buckled purse in her lap, her grip as tight as mine had been on the steering wheel a couple days earlier. It seemed like the trip down from Newton was a year ago, not a few days.

“I can’t do this, Penny,” Susan said. “You have to go it alone.”

I eased onto the shoulder, stopped the car and shut it off, then unbuckled and turned in the seat to face her. This didn’t sound like the kind of conversation I should have while trying to drive to Cleveland. Behind us, Harvey perched his paws on the front seat, watching the exchange. “What do you mean, go it alone?”

“I mean I’m done. I can’t pretend anymore. And I sure as heck can’t meet Annie and her little Mother Goose family.” She blew steam onto the window, then traced a circle in it, avoiding looking at me and at Harvey.

“I don’t want to meet her, either, but I think we have to. We still don’t know if Dave married her or—”

“I don’t want to know.”

The firm finality of Susan’s words surprised me. “Why? When we started out you were all gung ho. Even said this was fun.”

Ten points for me for not scoffing after I said the word.

“It was. With you. We’re kind of the same. But Annie…”

I laughed. “You and I are about as alike as Mutt and Jeff.”

Susan let out a chuckle, then sobered and finally turned to face me. “We’re both damned good at pretending, aren’t we?”

“I’m not pretending anything.”

“Uh-huh. And my breasts are real, too.”

“Seriously, Susan. I’m not…” My voice trailed off. I was pretending, at least with everyone I met. I’d been acting all along, at the wake, the funeral, on the road trip with Susan, pretending everything was fine, that this would all work out. “Okay, maybe I am,” I said finally. “But that doesn’t mean that I want to stop this. Or turn around. After everything, I’d rather deal with truth than with what-ifs.”

Susan ignored my statement. She unclipped then reclipped the clasp on her purse. “Have you thought about why Dave sought out another woman? Because I sure have. Since I found out about Annie, I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”

“He was a nymphomaniac.” Lord knows he hadn’t been all that busy in our marital bed in the past two years, but he had surely been busy with Susan. Any man in his right mind would have.

“No, he definitely wasn’t that.” She laughed. “I know why he wasn’t happy with me. I know why I wasn’t enough. But still, I never imagined he’d find someone else.” Her voice had gotten smaller, each syllable laced with pain.

I sat in the car, silent, listening to the traffic whiz by, sounding like loud zippers being opened again and again.

“It was the baby,” Susan said after a long while. “That’s what drove him away.”

My body froze, veins turning to ice, spine as immovable as Mount Everest. I worked my mouth around the letters, trying three times before I could get the word out. “Baby?”

“I didn’t want one. I—” Susan sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and pivoted away from me.

My hand reached out and covered hers. An odd sisterhood, formed by circumstance. No one else in the world understood what each of us felt. Just Susan and me.

And, in the course of this trip, she had become a friend.

“Because of your career?” I asked. “That’s why I told him no. I was too busy at work, making my way up the ladder.”

“Trust me, my career as a waitress was never anything big. Dave bought me that house and paid for me to go to college. He thought I could be something. Something more.” She shook her head. “Anyway, it wasn’t because of my job. It was because of this.” She swept a hand over her perfect hourglass frame. “I didn’t want to undo all that I had worked so hard to create. I was terrified that if I got pregnant, I’d go back to being that other woman, the one society looked at as nothing more than a gigantic, lazy loser.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t have—”

“I had an abortion,” she said, nearly spitting the words out, as if she were yanking out a splinter. “I chose my body, Penny. I chose these—” she smacked at her chest with her free hand, so hard I expected her to wince “—over my husband. Over the man who had changed my life. Given me a life, really.”

“Did Dave find out?”

She nodded, and the pain in her face made me want to take her in my arms, as if I were the mother and she the child, as I had done so many times for Georgia over the years of our childhood. Instead, I went on holding Susan’s hand. “I told him, just before he left for that trip to Ohio. We’d fought about it again that day.” She paused. “The day he died.”

The jigsaw puzzle assembled itself over our heads. Dave, wanting a baby so badly he’d married another woman, only to be rebuffed again. Neither of us spoke for a long time. Harvey put his two front paws on the headrest and nuzzled my cheek. I gave him an absentminded pat.

“I didn’t want a baby, either,” I admitted. Susan was the first person I’d ever told the truth to. Always, with Dave, with Georgia, I’d put up the career block, instead of the truth. “It wasn’t my job, though that was the excuse I gave Dave, and me. I guess it was easier than saying I was afraid to have a child, because you know Dave, he would have tried to talk me into it.” I inhaled, waited as a line of school buses passed us. “I didn’t want a dog or a cat or a baby or anything that would upset the perfect order of my life. I worked too hard to escape chaos to want to invite it back into my world again.”

“Do you think that’s why he kept looking? Because he wanted a child?” Susan’s eyes filled with tears. “Is that why he married Annie?”

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice cracking into the same range as Susan’s. “But it sure looks that way.”

“I can’t go there,” Susan repeated, shaking her head now, firming her resolve. “I can’t see her, with Dave’s baby, knowing I did this. Knowing I wanted my hips and my breasts more than a child. I don’t want to know the truth, Penny. I can’t handle it.”

“Susan—”

“Don’t you understand? I am not like you. I would never have gone to your house and asked you to come down here, to go meet Matt and Vinny and Annie. I didn’t even want Dave’s dog. I dumped him on you and ran away. Until you showed up on my porch, I was doing a damned good job of avoiding the whole thing. It’s amazing what a lot of time in a mall can do for your psyche.”

She let out a little laugh after the words, but the joke rang hollow and empty.

“But, Susan, don’t you want to—”

“No, Penny, I don’t. At first, this was a big adventure. It seemed like it might be fun. Even…therapeutic. But it hasn’t been.” She paused. A semi whipped past us so fast it shook the car. Harvey let out a little yip, of either complaint or worry, I wasn’t sure. “All I’ve done in the last few days is think about Dave and about what went wrong in our marriage. And what I did to make it happen.”

I sat back against the car door, surprised to hear my own thoughts echoed back. “You never showed it, never said a word.”

A wry smile crossed Susan’s face. “Like I said, it’s all fake.”

“Oh, Susan. You’re not fake. You’re one of the realest people I’ve ever met.”

Her eyes filled with tears and she reached across the front seat, drawing me into a hug. This wasn’t like the hugs other women had given me in the funeral home, those reserved sympathy hugs that stayed behind a certain line of decorum. This was a full-out, thank-you-for-being-my-friend embrace. My arms went around her and I clutched her back just as tightly.

What an odd alliance we had formed. Never had I thought when I saw her and her rhinestone-studded shoes at my husband’s wake that I would actually grow to like Susan Reynolds. I definitely hadn’t thought I’d end up hugging her on the side of a highway in Tennessee.

If I’d been Walt Disney, I couldn’t have written a more fantastical ending to this story.

Susan drew back, swiped at her eyes, smearing her perfect makeup. “I’m going home to Rhode Island, Penny, and I’m going to pretend none of this ever happened. It’s what I do best.”

“That’s not healthy, Susan. You have to deal with this eventually.” So would I, but I left my own emotional issues out of the conversation. Seemed we had enough angst in the car already.

“No, I don’t. Because the only way I know to deal with life and the crap it throws at me is with a box of Krispy Kremes. I won’t go back to being that woman. Not even for Dave. Or you.”

twenty

Georgia kept me company the whole way to Ohio, burning up my cell minutes with a speakerphone conversation that kept me distracted enough that I could forget the purpose of my trip. “Are you sure you don’t want me to fly down there and meet you?” my sister said, her voice oddly disjointed from the cell connection. “I could be there in a few hours.”

“No, thanks. I need to do this by myself.” I was finally back on the road, after dropping Susan at the Knoxville airport and buying her a ticket home. We’d hugged and cried like college roommates, and I’d promised to call her when I got back to Newton.

A part of me was glad Susan was gone. What I’d said to Georgia was true—I did need to do this by myself. It was kind of like growing up all over again. I’d started doing that at the Dog-Gone-Good Show, both with Harvey and with Matt.

Now there was a course I could teach: Learning how to be an adult widow in fifteen easy steps.

“You don’t have to carry the whole world on your shoulders, Penny,” Georgia said, her voice crackling a little as I drove under an overpass.

“I’m not.”

“Bullshit. You’ve been doing it since you were five.” On the other end, ice clinked into a glass, followed by the sound of running water. “You became mom and dad and everything in between.”

“Dad was gone, Georgia. And Mom…”

“Zoned out.”

A moment of silence hummed across the line. “Yeah.”

“You know, that might have something to do with all of this. Maybe it’s part of why you didn’t see what was going on with Dave.”

“I didn’t see it because he kept it a secret.” I refused to become one of those talk-show counseling patients who blamed every adult mistake on my parents being screwed up. I made my own choices, not all of them good, it seemed.

“Nothing’s ever a secret, not really. There were signs, Penny. You just chose to ignore them.” Georgia’s voice was soft with concern, not recrimination. She knew me best, out of everyone in my life, and loved me best, out of everyone in my life.

Nevertheless, it felt odd, after so many years of being the voice of wisdom to Georgia to be hearing the same back from her. Little sisters, it seemed, did indeed grow up. And turn the tables.

“I—” I cut off the denial before it vocalized. I thought back to all the long trips, the weekends when he was suddenly unavailable or he didn’t answer his cell phone. Always, Dave had had an excuse. If I’d wanted to, I could have pressed the issue. I just hadn’t wanted to, because doing so would have meant inviting Mr. Chaos over for afternoon tea. He was never a very good guest. “I guess I did.”

“And don’t you think at least part of that is because of what happened when we were kids?”

“Oh, come on, Georgia, this isn’t an episode of Oprah. It’s real life. I didn’t see what Dave was doing because I wanted my marriage to work.”

“And the fact that we were abandoned at three and five by a father who went out for a gallon of milk and never came back had nothing at all to do with that?”

I didn’t answer her. Silence filled the space between us.

“All I’m saying is you might want to consider the past as part of your present.”

“History repeating itself and all that? Well, my husband did come back. Explain that one.”

“He loved you.”

I snorted. A Mazda passed me, the driver hitting at least ninety in the fast lane.

“If it wasn’t love that kept him coming back, what was it?” Georgia asked.

“It couldn’t be love. You don’t do this to the people you love.”

“Maybe Dave was the kind who loved too much.”

I groaned, then moved into the center lane, avoiding a semi rolling up the on-ramp, the driver chatting on his cell, distracted enough that I wasn’t going to put the Benz in his path. “Now you’re really starting to sound like a self-help book.”

Georgia laughed. “That’s why they exist. To give me good one-liners. Listen, I could be totally wrong. Just think about it, that’s all I’m saying. Give Georgia’s words of wisdom a chance.”

“I will.”

“And when you meet Annie…”

“Yeah?” I prompted when my sister paused.

“Give her the benefit of the doubt. I doubt she’s the evil Witch of the West who absconded with your man. Susan, remember, was just as stunned by this as you were. Apparently cool shoes don’t make you smarter.”

I chuckled. “She did have some nice shoes. And she wasn’t a bad person.”

“Oh, damn, Penny. I gotta go. My Reiki appointment is in ten minutes. Now I’ll have to rush right over there.”

“Isn’t the point of Reiki to teach you to be calm?”

“No, the point is for me to visit with the cute instructor and watch his butt whenever he’s walking around the room. It’s a hell of a vantage point, you know, sitting on the floor on pillows.”

I laughed and disconnected the call, then put on my blinker and eased into the lane leading to the next exit, which promised food, gas and a hotel. My stomach rumbled, reminding me that it had been six hours since I’d eaten anything. Not that I expected to find anything remotely healthy at a place labeled Trucker’s Oasis, but it was better than passing out at the wheel from starvation.

A red Honda eased in behind me, and followed me all the way off the ramp and into the parking lot of the fast-food restaurant I’d chosen. I swung into a space, then saw the Honda take the space to my right.

Not that unusual for another car to take the space beside me or for two drivers to simultaneously select this restaurant out of the four on the strip, but still…unnerving. I sat in the Benz, clutching my keys, trying to think of what I’d learned in that self-defense class I’d taken with Georgia three years ago. Nothing came to mind. That one, too, had had a cute instructor.

A knock on my window made me jump. I turned, ready to scream for help, when I noticed a familiar face through the window. “Matt?”

Joy fluttered through me, chased by a renewal of the attraction I’d felt for him. They were heady feelings, almost too big to handle.

He grinned and I lowered the window. “I thought you might want some company.” His gaze connected with mine, and his green eyes softened, touching a tender vein in me. “You know, to meet Annie.”

Not my favorite topic of conversation, not with Matt at least. Every time I was around him, my thoughts scattered down other paths.

“I’m fine on my own. Really.” I got out, locked the car, leaving the windows down a bit for Harvey, then turned to go into the fast-food restaurant. “Chicken nuggets.”

“What?” Matt said, falling into step beside me, unsolicited. But not turned away, either. To be honest, I was glad for the company.

“I have to get Harvey some chicken nuggets. He really likes them. And then…” I drew in a breath, my attention going to the busy highway, cars whipping by at NASCAR speed.

“You don’t really want to meet Annie, do you?” He stepped in front of me to open and then hold the door as I passed through.

“I’m not thinking about what I want.” I shivered a bit. Should have worn my jacket, but after all that time in the car, I’d gotten hot and forgotten the spring air was sometimes still nearly winter temperature. “Because I can’t have what I want.”

Matt took my arm and drew me into an alcove beside a lottery-ticket dispenser. A little hand-lettered and misspelled sign said a ten-thousand-dollar winner had been sold here last week, followed by a full row of exclamation points. “What do you want?”

“My life back. Exactly the way it was.” But did I? After the dog show, the sandwiches by the river?

“Living in blissful ignorance?”

“Hey, that’s not fair.”

“It’s true, Penny. Until Dave died, you had no idea what else was going on. Now you know some of it at least.” He studied me. “Do you really want to go back to the status quo?”

“I can’t. My husband is dead, remember? Besides, what do you care?” I lashed out, not wanting to have this discussion, not beside a bunch of scratch-off tickets and a Coke display. Not wanting to have it at all, in fact. “If it’s Harvey you’re worried about, don’t worry. He’ll keep on being your cash cow.”

Matt took a step back, his face paling, looking as if I’d hit him. “I don’t care if Harvey ever makes another dime. What I care about is you.”

“Me?” I scoffed, but inside parts of me were tingling, both with awareness and a little fear. This was new territory, this interest from a man other than my husband, and I still wasn’t sure which way to navigate. “You barely know me.”

“I know you deserve more than a life built on lies.”

I threw up my hands and walked away from him, pretending to be wildly interested in the potato chip selection. “I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to date anyone or think about another life. All I want right now is to get to Cleveland and get this over with.”

Matt shrugged. “Okay.”

“Okay what?” I grabbed a bag of Doritos off the shelf, then put them back. I jerked another bag up, my vision too blurred to see the brand. “You’re not making the decision for me.”

“I meant, okay, I’ll go along with whatever you want.” He reached out toward my arm, turning me back to face him. Gently, he took the chips out of my hand and replaced them on the wire shelf. “But I don’t think this is something you should do alone. You’ve just lost your husband, found out about an entire secret existence he had, and whether you think so or not, you are still emotionally vulnerable. You need someone in your corner, Penny, before you go to Annie’s house.”

His words touched that vulnerable spot in me again. I softened, catching his gaze. “And why should that someone be you?”

He reached up, as if he was going to touch my face, then lowered his hand, changing his mind. Disappointment hit me square in the chest. “I care about you and if the circumstances were different, I’d be asking you out on a date, maybe dinner, in a restaurant this time,” he said, grinning, “and afterward, to a movie or drinks and dancing in a little bar with pool tables and a live singer who can do a really good Barry White. I’d be doing that, instead of asking if I can tag along while you meet a woman who might be your husband’s third wife.”

“Asking me to…dinner? Dancing? Drinks?” I stared at him, so taken aback the words weren’t registering. This wasn’t just playing around the issue of him being interested, this was out and out flirting.

Matt took a step forward, his eyes locking with mine, leaving no doubt that he meant every word he spoke. “In case you haven’t noticed, you are a beautiful, intelligent and spirited woman. Any man in his right mind would want you.”

I turned away, staring at the glass-walled rainbow of soda selections, anything but him. Right now, there was enough on my plate without adding in feelings for Matt. But they lodged there, all the same, wanting both to pull him closer and push him away. “Well, the circumstances aren’t different. And one man in his right mind didn’t want me.”

“Don’t,” he said, ignoring a trio of people who headed down the aisle and split like a wave around us. Matt put a finger under my chin and turned my face back toward his. “Don’t let what Dave did ruin you. Don’t let it keep you from ever caring about another man again. I liked Dave, don’t get me wrong, but if he was here right now, I’d slug him for what he’s done to you.”

My mouth opened. Closed. Opened again, but no sounds came out.

“And if you weren’t a grieving widow,” Matt went on, his voice and his gaze intense and true, “I’d kiss you. Because I happen to think you are more than enough woman for one man. Anyone who’d do what Dave did to his marriage, to you, has to be crazy.”

“You…you want to kiss me?” I stared at him, dumbfounded. When was the last time a man had wanted to kiss me?

And when was the last time Dave had done more than given me the perfunctory goodbye buss on the cheek? Want curled inside me, taking up residence in a place that had been empty for a long time. Want, not just for a kiss, but for Matt.

“Yeah.” The word had a gruff, hungry element and it set my breath on edge.

“Okay,” I said, drawing in a little oxygen before moving a half step closer to him, wanting this, wanting him, wanting something for myself for now. “Kiss me.”

Matt met my gaze for one long, heated second, then reached up with both his hands, cupping the tender skin along the nape of my neck, drawing my mouth closer to his. He lowered his lips to mine, drifting along them at first, then, when I parted them, he deepened his kiss, playing jazz against a mouth that had, for far too long, been listening to soft rock.

Guilt washed over me, then just as quickly washed away. Dave was gone, and had been gone, technically, for a really long time. I was under no obligation to remain true to a man who hadn’t been true to me.

I wrapped my arms around Matt, the foreign feel of another man’s body beneath my palms sending an odd curling sensation through my gut. Muscles rippled beneath my touch, flexing as he moved to take me closer into his embrace. When my pelvis bumped against his, want exploded in my brain as fast and furious as a bomb.

I pulled back, out of his arms, out of the sticky situation I’d just invited into my life, suddenly aware of the dozens of people making their way in and out of the convenience store, walking around and past us as if our public display of affection were merely another offering in the store’s vast snack selection.

“I’m not going to say that shouldn’t have happened,” Matt said, heat burning in his deep green eyes, “because as much as I know I should, I don’t feel at all guilty about kissing you.”

“Neither do I.” The realization flooded me with a new set of emotions, a confusing jumble of guilt that I was still married, or should at least still feel married, and a curious blend of desire.

“You are an incredible woman,” Matt said, brushing a lock of hair off my face and, in that one tender gesture, making me want to cry. “And when you’re ready, and if you want, I’d like to pursue this path. See where it goes.” He grinned, lightening the mood. “Take you out for some karaoke and see if you can sing like Mariah.”

I swallowed. The thought of the future, of anything beyond this day and this minute, still seemed to loom over me, too big a thing to grasp.

“Let’s get some chicken nuggets, Matt,” I said. “We’ll start there.”

twenty-one

“Did you warn her that we were coming?” Matt asked a half hour later. We’d eaten our food in the dining area, sitting under a fake ski-lodge roof, the odd decor part of some winter-wonderland theme the restaurant had adopted. We’d chatted about the dog show, the weather, nothing. It was an oddly comforting conversation, a preview of what normal could become. Down the road.

I signaled to take the exit that led to Annie’s house. “I wimped out. Left a vague message on her voice mail telling her I was a friend of Dave’s and that I had a question about Harvey. I said I hoped she wouldn’t mind my stopping by this afternoon.”

Matt turned toward me. “What if meeting Annie doesn’t fill in the rest of the blanks?”

“It has to.” Behind me, Harvey was busy devouring his treat. Chicken crumbs scattered all over the plastic, but I refrained from reaching for the wet wipes.

When Harvey was done, he clambered over the seat and plopped his butt between us. He looked from one to the other, tail wagging, clearly overjoyed at the additional traveling companion.

“What if it doesn’t?” Matt asked again.

“Then I—” Do what? There was no Plan B. I couldn’t go back to the status quo, because that didn’t exist, and besides, I’d kind of dramatically changed the status quo back there among the Ruffles.

I also couldn’t go back to pretending none of this had happened, because it had. I couldn’t go back to having that naive belief in my marriage, because all that had been shattered the minute Susan showed up at the wake.

I looked down at Harvey, now sitting on my lap as I drove, watching the world go by with an excited, panting fascination. And most of all, I couldn’t give Harvey away to some stranger, because the silly dog had grown on me.

I drew in a breath, held it tight in my chest, listening to the thud of my heart. “I don’t know where to go from here. And that scares me. I’ve never been the kind of person who was good with spontaneity. I like to know the ending before I start at the beginning, if that makes sense. I like to have all the variables laid out, so I can plan ways to avoid them.”

“Well, that idea was shot to hell this week,” Matt said. “Nothing like a dog show and a crazy poodle to upset an apple cart.”

I laughed a little, then went on, sobering to the reality facing me with each passing mile. “I know I have to go back and find the will, which I bet he kept at his office, because my sister couldn’t find it in the house. But I’m not ready to do any of that yet. There’s undoubtedly going to be consequences from the estate, and I’ll need to deal with those. But before I can get to those, I need to meet Annie, to rule out that last variable. Then, I think I can finally make a plan.” Just the thought of the word gave me comfort and undid a tiny bit of the tension in my stomach.

Matt chuckled. “I don’t know about all that planning and variables thing. If you ask me, you aren’t the same Penny I met three days ago. I don’t think you’re going to be able to go back home and lay out this little map for the future. I mean, you had a gunfight with a terrier and a psycho poodle in front of several hundred people. Does that sound like a woman who runs her days by a checklist?”

We approached the next turn on the laid-out route from MapQuest. “Annie’s house isn’t much farther,” I said, ignoring his comment for now.

As much as I’d been excited by the turn of events at the dog show, and the way it brought out a spontaneity gene I hadn’t even known I had, I was also scared by it. If I wasn’t the Penny I used to be, then who was I? And how on earth would I find my way back to normal if I changed too much?

The rest of the turns came quickly one upon the other, shifting the conversation into direction giving, with Matt reading the MapQuest route and me following it. We passed down neat, well-tended streets in a middle-class neighborhood of Cleveland. Middle America, clear in its perfect lawns and bikes haphazardly left in smooth, grass-edged driveways. Two more rights, and then we left the manicured lawns and headed into a part of town that was more run-down, less middle-class perfection. I could practically see the income levels dropping as each block passed.

“Take a right here,” Matt said.

“Into the trailer park?” I asked. “I thought Annie had five kids. How can she fit them all into one of these things?” I gestured toward a single trailer at the head of the park. The mobile homes were jammed in together like piano keys.

As I drove and took in one run-down aluminum, portable home after another, I refused to feel sympathy for another of Dave’s wives. Heck, I’d already made one a friend. I didn’t need another. Next thing I’d know, this whole fiasco would be a Goldie Hawn movie with her and her extra wife buddies singing show tunes as they walked off into the sunset.

The trailer at 2121 Winterberry Lane was a double-wide fronted by a bed of purple crocuses surrounding a small white wrought-iron bench. It had a fresh coat of paint or siding or whatever they did to spruce up the outside of one of these. A new wooden porch led us up to the front door, the wood still holding that fresh-cut smell. Dave had to have paid someone to do this, because he had all the woodworking skills of a monkey.

I held Harvey tight to my chest, my free hand raised to knock. Matt stood beside me, a six-foot dose of moral support.

Inside I could hear the sound of children, their happy voices ringing with laughter, echoed by the barking of a dog. Harvey perked up in my arms, yipping, as if he, too, were joining in.

Traitor.

Susan’s words came back to me. What if Dave’s baby was in Annie’s arms, right on the other side of the flimsy door? What would I do? Say?

Before I could change my mind, I knocked. It was a good two minutes and a second knock before anyone came to the door.

“Hi, Harvey!” A three-year-old girl stood at the door, her curly brown hair a jumbled riot framing her face and curious brown eyes staring out of a jelly-smeared face. It took her a second to register that there were people holding the dog. “Hi. I’m Holly.”

“Hi, Holly,” I said, offering up what I hoped looked like a nonthreatening smile as she reached forward and petted Harvey, clearly familiar with him, and he with her. He turned his head and licked her palm, eliciting a giggle. “Is your mother home?”

“Oh, jeez, Holly, how many times do I have to tell you not to open the door to—” A petite dark-haired woman stepped in front of the little girl. Her mouth stopped midsentence and dropped open. “It’s you.”

The last thing I had expected was for Annie to recognize me. “You know who I am?”

She nodded slowly. “Uh, Holly, why don’t you and your sister go make a card for Grandma?”

“I wanna see Harvey. And we made Gramma a card yesterday.” The word came out more like yed-er-day.

“Well, she’d love another. You know how bored she gets in the hospital. You can see Harvey later.” Annie shooed the little girl away, then grabbed a coat that must have been hanging by the door and slipped outside, leaving her front door ajar. “Let’s sit at the picnic table and talk. Away from the zoo.”

“Your kids will be okay?”

“Trust me. They’ll find me if someone gets hurt or takes a toy from someone else. Kids are better than bloodhounds at tracking down a mother.” As she walked down her stairs and a few feet across the yard, she gave Harvey a greeting pat.

We slipped onto opposite sides of the picnic table. I studied Annie for a second. She was short, maybe only five foot two, and had spiky dark-brown hair. She wore no makeup, a well-worn button-down denim shirt and black leggings. She looked about as much Dave’s type as Susan had.

I introduced Matt, then handed him Harvey’s leash. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” he finished, leaving me with a smile before taking the dog on a walk.

“I’m Penny,” I said. “But I guess you already know that?”

Annie nodded. “I wondered when you’d find out about me.”

“I didn’t. It was…sprung on me. After Dave died.”

Annie gasped. “He died?”

“A week ago on Thursday.” It was now Saturday afternoon. I’d been a widow for nine days. It felt like nine years.

“Was it his heart? I was always telling him he needed to watch that.”

I bit back a renewed sense of jealousy and swallowed one more bit of evidence that I had been completely oblivious to what had been happening with my husband. I’d never worried one bit about his heart. He worked in insurance, for Pete’s sake. Probably one of the least stressful jobs on the planet.

Only, it appeared, if you actually worked in insurance instead of working with a performing dog and a trio of wives. “Yeah, it was a heart attack.”

Tears filled her eyes. She bit her lip and looked away, her knuckles whitening with her tightened grip on the wooden table. I felt like hell. Why was I the one to deliver this news? Why couldn’t that friend from the dog show have called her? Or someone else in this supposedly tight-knit community of canine fans have done it?

“I guess that’s why Betty called me twice,” Annie said with a sigh. She shook herself, as if pushing the emotions to the side, to deal with after the kids went to bed. “I’ve been busy with the kids. One of them had strep and then the dog ate a wheel off a Tonka truck, so I’ve been cleaning up puke all week instead of answering the phone.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to say to that.

She laced her hands together, then laid them flat on the table, studying her short, cropped, plain nails for a second. The triplet to my ring glistened in the sun, but on Annie’s right hand instead of her left. I didn’t bother asking her what jokes Dave had told during the wedding or whether there was a black Benz parked in her carport.

Those were answers I already had.

“I suppose you’re wondering how I knew about you,” she said. “And why we were involved.”

“It has crossed my mind.”

“My mother is sick. Has been for a long time. She’s got heart disease, which is why I rode Dave about all those damned burgers.”

I swallowed hard. I’d never said a word about his fondness for fast food. Chalk one more up for the worst-wife award. “I don’t understand what that has to do with Dave and me and—” I spit the word out “—you.”

“And Susan,” she added.

“You knew about Susan?”

Annie nodded. “I knew it all. I’m smarter than the trailer makes me look.”

“I never thought—”

“You don’t have to. Anyone who sees me, a single mom with five kids, living in a trailer park, thinks one of two things—white trash or welfare tramp. Heck, I’m a walking government statistic.” Annie shook her head. “I’m not here to burden you with my story. Let’s just say I made a few bad choices in men and they always left me to pick up the tab.”

Annie was a gruffer woman than either Susan or I. Dave couldn’t have picked three more different women if he drew our names out of a bride lottery.

“I had a feeling from the beginning with Dave, that he had a wife. But I ignored it.” Annie flicked a piece of wood off the picnic table and onto the ground. “Because I was being selfish and I needed him.”

Those words sat hard in my stomach, adding to the enormous pile of digested words and secrets already there. Any more of this and I was going to need liposuction. “Because he took care of you?”

Annie let out a little laugh. “Dave? No. He wasn’t here long enough to do anything worthwhile. I think he changed a lightbulb once. He played with the kids. Oh, boy, did he love those kids, but he didn’t help me.”

“Then what did you need him for?” I didn’t add any polite apology about butting into her personal life. I figured with Annie, that kind of social dance wasn’t necessary. Besides, Dave was my husband and I had a right to know.

Annie drew in a breath, then met my gaze head-on. “Money.”

“You didn’t marry him for love?”

She scoffed. “No. And he knew I wasn’t involved with him for love. I mean, I liked him, but I wasn’t in love with him. Besides, Dave wasn’t looking for love, either. He told me he already had that.”

I didn’t ask her to fill in the blank of the sentence with a name. Some things, I didn’t want to know. Matt had called it blissful ignorance, but when it came to whether my husband had loved me, I preferred to keep on thinking that he had.

“My mother is sick, like I said,” Annie went on. “She owns this dress shop, which is where I work. Third generation, a pretty good operation and the pride and joy of my mother’s life. But between helping her in the hospital and running the shop, things started getting a little hairy. Business was down, and I’m not exactly management material, as you can tell by the wild animals back in the house.” She laughed a little and gestured toward the continued sound of play coming from the trailer. A little boy peeked his face out from behind a curtain, then disappeared for a second before doing it again. “I wasn’t making enough money to hire someone in, and I was losing the business. If I’d done that, it would have killed my mother. She started there when she was a little girl, working with my grandmother.

“Anyway,” Annie went on, “it was all kinda crashing down on me at once. The mortgage payments for that palace—” again she gestured toward the trailer, where the little boy was still playing peekaboo “—the lease for the shop, the stress of trying to come up with something to make it all work, and then covering the part of my mother’s bills that insurance didn’t pay.”

I put all this together in the mental file I’d been keeping, adding it to what I already knew. “Then why did you do the UKC dog show?”

Annie chuckled. “I’m one of those people who gets a hair up her butt about something and then takes off on a tangent. Last year, it was making a star out of Max. Lord knows the damned dog costs enough, between the dog food and the vet. He might as well earn his keep.”

“Did the kids go with you?” I had yet to ask whether one of the five was Dave’s. I was working my way up to that question.

“Are you kidding me? Bring them with me? Try taking ’em to a Kroger and see how much fun they have with the canned goods.” She laughed, the kind of laughter of someone who knew a world no one else in the room did. “No, I left them home. My best friend Carol offered to take the kids, to give me a weekend away. She’s got four of her own, so she’s already a little insane. I wasn’t going to miss an opportunity for some time alone. It’s been a hell of a year.” Annie ran a hand through her hair and as she pushed back the brown locks, I could see the tension around her eyes, etched into the dark circles. The sympathy I’d refused to feel bobbed to the surface of my heart all the same. “The kids had taught Max some tricks. They got their hands on some book one time and had him doing all kinds of things. I thought maybe he was good enough to earn some prize money.” She shrugged. “It seemed a safer bet than Vegas.”

“But Max wasn’t all that cooperative and Dave stepped in to help you,” I said, filling in with what Vinny had told me.

She nodded. “I should have sent my oldest. She can get that dog to stand on his head, for God’s sake. The dog wouldn’t obey me at all at the show.” She rolled her eyes and glanced again at the trailer, where for now, all had become quiet. I heard the strains of a children’s television show. “I don’t know why I thought the dog would listen to me. Hell, the kids don’t.”

Once again, I was struck by how different Annie was from what I’d expected. Coarse around the edges, frank and direct, she wouldn’t have been in the top one hundred of women I would have pictured Dave going for.

“Anyway, Dave saw me struggling with that moose and he helped me, even offered a few private lessons. Not because he wanted me,” Annie hastened to add, “but because he liked Max. I guess he saw him as a challenge or something. And Harvey and Max got along really well, too.”

Somehow, that was easier to take than Dave falling madly in love and using the dog as a ploy to get closer to Annie. It fit the husband I had known, a man who was always off helping people, even when that helpfulness gene cut into our vacations or made him late for work or a dinner party we were supposed to attend. For once, some of the pieces were aligning with what I had believed to be true. “When did you marry Dave?”

Annie drew in a breath, then reached into the pocket of her sweatshirt and pulled out a package of light cigarettes. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

I shook my head.

“I know,” she said, as she lit the cigarette, then took a drag. “I have no business lecturing anyone about heart disease when I’ve got one of these in my mouth. To tell you the truth, they’re my excuse for a few minutes of peace. I can go outside on the porch, have one of these and then feel ready to face two more hours in there.”

I glanced again at the trailer, which had started up again, the pacifying effects of the TV done with the show. An older boy, maybe about eleven, popped his head out the door. “Mom, will you please tell Carly to get out of my room?”

“Carly, get out of his room,” Annie shouted back at the trailer. “Did it work?”

“No. She’s still in there. She’s trying on my shirts, Mom. She’s calling my clothes her costume gallery or something dumb like that. Can we just put her up for adoption?”

Annie heaved a sigh, then rose. “Can you wait a sec? I have to go do some crowd control.”

I nodded, then waited as she ground out the cigarette, went inside, apparently resolved the situation, then came back out.

“I have a mutiny on my hands here,” Annie said. “Do you want to come in for some coffee? My yard time’s over.”

We headed into the trailer, Annie ushering me into a seat in the small kitchen at the front. The messy, congested trailer was a mirror of the pandemonium I’d seen at the Dog-Gone-Good Show, only taken up a notch and involving small children. Max the dog was running between the kids as they alternately wrestled, leaped off the sofa and had a play knife fight with weapons made of cardboard.

None of them looked like my husband. None of them looked young enough to be his, given the timeline with Annie. Relief edged around my senses.

Annie disappeared down a hall and must have dispensed some justice, because a preteen girl in too-tight jeans came stomping into the living room. “Why do mothers exist?” she asked of no one in particular, throwing up her hands and letting out a huff.

Annie came out behind her. “To drive their kids crazy.” She laughed, then placed a kiss on the girl’s head, a kiss that was brushed off, but not before I saw a quick smile take over Annie’s daughter’s face.

“Okay,” Annie said on an exhausted breath as she entered the kitchen. “Coffee. And lots of it.” She headed over to the counter and began filling a coffeepot with ground beans.

“Who are you?” The little girl who’d answered the door stood in front of me, her hands clasped over her belly, which jutted out beneath a striped shirt that she’d probably outgrown a year ago.

“I’m…” I paused. This was a little more complex than I wanted to get into with a kid who still watched Mr. Rogers. “I’m, ah…”

“She’s a friend of Dave’s,” Annie intercepted. “Remember? The nice man who got Max to sit?”

“Oh. Okay. I’m Holly,” she told me a second time, then darted off to play with some dolls that were piled up at the end of the sofa.

Dave was known as the nice man who’d trained Max? Not Annie’s husband?

“She’s the informant. The other kids always send her in because she’s the cutest and the youngest.” Annie grinned, then sat in the opposite chair while the coffeepot perked behind her. “Now, what else do you want to know?”

Holly was the youngest. She couldn’t be Dave’s, which meant he and Annie had never had a child together. Two emotions hit me at once—relief and regret. Relief that Annie hadn’t been the one to supply what Susan and I had not, and regret that the Dave Reynolds line had ended with him lying naked in a hotel room.

I lowered my voice, particularly with Holly only a few feet away. “Why did you marry him?”

Or rather, why had he married her? But that question tread a little too close on the side of rudeness, so I kept it to myself.

Annie chuckled. “Right to the point, huh? Well, I was in a mess and Dave offered a way out.”

“A way out?”

“Business in trouble, five mouths to feed—though the way my kids eat, there are days it seems like ten—and then my mother, needing a place to go once her surgery was done. Rehab is not cheap and those insurance wackos hate to pay for it. As if rehab doesn’t help prevent costs down the road.” Annie waved a hand. “Don’t get me started on the faults of the insurance industry. Honestly, there were days when Dave and I could have one hell of a rousing argument about the deficiencies of the health-care industry.”

I waited, not saying anything, still not seeing how any of this added up to her wearing that ring on her finger.

“So anyway, Dave said if we got married, it might make things easier on me. Besides the money, he said it would give the kids a name, get the child-welfare people off my back to produce the various sperm donors’ vital stats.” Annie leaned forward, lowering her voice. “And that’s what most of those jerks were, you know. Sperm donors and nothing else. Because that was the only useful damned thing any of them left me.”

“He married you to give the kids a name?” For a second, I thought it was such an odd reason, but then realized Dave—the man who had given our neighbor Tim the lawn mower because Tim’s broke the day he lost his job, the man who had sponsored some kid in Ethiopia even as I warned him it was probably a scam—would have done exactly that.

“My kids, I’d do anything for them,” Annie said, a softness coming into her eyes. “I know I seem like the worst mom in the world, but try living with these five and see how chipper you are. Still, they’re mine and I love them. A couple of ’em have one last name, the others all have mine. I did have one ex-husband,” Annie said, the word clearly sour on her tongue. She shook her head, then went on, clearly just as much of a talker as Susan. “Anyway, once we got to talking and Dave heard the whole story of my crappy life, he offered to help me get the business back on track. Pump in some money, help cover the costs for my mother. But most of all, he was there when I went in to deal with those insurance jerks because they were really fighting that rehab thing. He went to bat for me and my mother, really did. Got coverage for twice as many months as I was asking for. And he pumped in enough money to save the family business. Real Disney ending on that one. Things are booming at the shop and my mom should be back to work this summer.”

“And not to mention, Dave trained Max for you.”

“Yeah, he did. That dog is a regular performer now. A couple times a year, I bring him to those shows and he does good. Not nearly as well as Harvey, but he’s got some talent chops on him.”

I considered this new information. It all made sense now. The check, the way everyone who knew about Annie seemed to be protective of her. She had been a woman in dire straits and my husband, whom I could either love or damn and right now I was doing both, had stepped in to play the white knight. “Wait. Why doesn’t Holly know who Dave is?”

“Because I’m not the heartless witch I look like.” Annie patted at her pocket for her cigarettes, then changed her mind. She rose, poured us each a cup of coffee and returned to the table. “I never married him.”

My mug was halfway to my mouth but I never took the sip. “You…you never married him?”

“No. I mean, we were going to. Had a date and a witness and the paperwork all done for the courthouse, but at the last minute, I backed out.”

“Because you found out about me?”

“No. I didn’t know about you and Susan when Dave proposed.” Annie reached across for my hand and met my eyes. “That’s the God’s honest truth, Penny.”

I believed her. If there was one thing Annie was, it was honest. There was no pretension, no fancy shoes and boob jobs hiding her true self from the world. She was the kind of woman who thrust it all out there and basically told you to take it or leave it. “What made you back out?”

She sighed. “Dave would have made it all easy. One I do and all my problems would be solved. He is…” She paused, then corrected herself. “He was the kind of guy a lot of women would sacrifice their right arm to meet. Compassionate, funny, giving. Would bend over backward to make sure you were happy. But…that was the whole problem.” Annie’s attention went to the window. “He wasn’t enough of a jerk.”

“You couldn’t take advantage of him.” My esteem for Annie went up a few notches. Damn it, now I was beginning to like her, too. My husband, I supposed, had had good taste in people.

Annie swallowed and her eyes misted. “No, I couldn’t. The Catholic guilt would have killed me. But I kept the ring—” at that, she twirled the diamond on her right hand around “—because I kept hoping. You know, that some fairy tale would happen and we’d both fall madly in love. Then we could run off into the sunset while I left the kids with a sitter.”

“How did you find out he was already married?”

“I put the pieces together. He didn’t live here, didn’t have a home anywhere nearby. Vinny called once and mentioned something about Dave just getting back from Rhode Island when he’d told me he was going to Colorado. I told you, I’ve been with a lot of liars.” Annie shrugged. “I just knew. So I confronted him and he told me, even showed me a picture of you. I think he needed to tell someone. He’d been keeping it from everybody. You, Susan, Matt, Vinny. I’m not even sure Harvey knew.”

“I had no idea,” I said softly, embarrassed to admit it but somehow needing to tell her. “I never put any pieces together.”

“Honey, you were the one Prince Charming married first. You think Snow White ever wondered if there was something going on outside the castle, after all that man did to be with her?”

I laughed a little. “No, probably not.”

“Besides, you don’t look the type to date losers from hell. You have to have personal experience with those kind of guys to develop the nose.” She spread her hands, indicating herself. “Dave wasn’t a loser, I don’t mean that. But he was a guy who was…confused. The thing he liked most about me, he said, was my family. Loved the kids. Maybe he was looking for that, I don’t know. We never got that far.”

I nodded, thanked her for the coffee, then rose. “Thank you, Annie.”

She reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze. “One day, I asked him who it was he loved and he said it was you. I don’t know what drove him to complicate things like this.”

I knew that answer. I swallowed, then met her gaze. “I wasn’t that good of a wife. I wouldn’t have children, I wouldn’t let him bring home a dog.”

“Don’t keep blaming yourself. If Dave really wanted all those things, he would have worked on it with the woman he already had.” She paused, her focus going to some far-off place. Tears shone in her eyes, grief bubbling up to the surface. An instant later, Annie had swiped it away. “Some men, they keep grabbing for the new toy because it’s easier than trying to fix the one they already have.”

twenty-two

My goodbye with Annie was far less emotional than it had been with Susan. She was holding one kid on a hip, while yelling at another who had started coloring on Max’s head with a Sharpie marker.

Annie had been right—June Cleaver she was not.

“You take care,” Annie said, embracing me with one arm. “Carly, quit that! Oh, wait, Penny. I have something for you.” She ducked back into the trailer and returned a moment later with a box. “Carly, you draw glasses on that dog and you’ll never watch TV again!” She leaned forward and handed the box to me. “Dave left this behind, last time he was here. He always had it with him when he traveled. I never looked inside it, though. Figured if he wanted me to know, he’d tell me.” A bittersweet smile crossed her face. “Guess it’s true that all the good ones are gone, huh?” She sighed and studied me for a long second while the kid on her hip tugged at her hair. “Anyway, you have a safe trip. It’s time for the warden to go back to work.”

I met Matt outside, where he’d been waiting at the picnic table, having left Annie and I alone to talk the whole time. Harvey was at his feet, tired but playing a little with Holly, who had climbed into the dirt under the table to play with the dog. Annie called for Holly from inside the trailer, her voice reaching decibels I hadn’t thought possible for humans.

As Holly went back inside, with one last sad look at Harvey, I sat down beside Matt, suddenly just as tired as the terrier.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“Not so bad. I think I’m at the end of Dave’s wives. Or, I hope I am.” I ran a hand over the box, wondering what it held. More answers?

Or more questions?

I already had enough of those to host a Dave version of Jeopardy!

“You ready to go?”

I nodded. “It’s time to go home. Try to put my life back together. Figure out the assets, the division of the estate.” I inhaled, then let it go. “In other words, move forward.”

“You’ve done a lot of that already.”

I glanced over at him and thought of the kiss back in the convenience store. “Yeah, I have.” I grinned. “And I have the dog trophy to prove it.”

He laughed, then loaded us all into the car, taking the wheel and giving me some time to nap. The miles between Annie’s and where we’d left Matt’s car passed quickly, almost too quickly I had started to like Matt, to like him in a way I hadn’t liked anyone in a long time. That both scared and excited me.

I figured it was one of the things I could put on a shelf and deal with later. After I’d had some time alone to think, to discover who Penny Reynolds was—

Without Dave, but now with a dancing, singing Jack Russell terrier.

We reached his rental car and parked a couple of spaces away. Both of us got out of the Benz and stood beside the red Honda in the awkward silence that came at the end of a date. Only this wasn’t a date and I wasn’t expecting a goodnight kiss.

Was I?

Right now, after the week and a half I’d had, I had no idea what I wanted. I don’t think I was even capable of ordering an ice cream at Dairy Queen.

“You going to be okay?” he asked me. “It’s a long drive back to Massachusetts. If you want, I can drive your car and you can take my plane ticket, change the New York to Boston.”

I thought of the Penny I had been before this journey. I’d avoided conferences because they upset my schedule. I’d planned every trip I ever took, even if it was just to the grocery store, to make the best use of my time and to take the least stressful route. Everything in my life had been scheduled and regimented because if I kept it all on a tight leash, I felt I could fend off some unpredictable disaster.

It turned out, of course, that I hadn’t been controlling a damned thing.

Now, I was living more or less by the seat of my pants. I glanced over at my car, where two maps I’d printed the day before sat on the dash. Each from Internet sites that provided turn-by-turn guidance and exact distances and times for my journey back up to the East Coast, the main one and the backup, should something happen to the first copy. I might be loosening up, but I had no intentions of getting lost.

“I’ll be fine,” I told Matt, and as I said the words, I finally felt as if they might be true. I no longer had the urge to curl up under the afghan and shut out the world for a month, a year. “I’ll get a motel or something along the way, rather than try to drive it straight through.”

“Good.” Matt stood there, his keys in his hand, looking as if he wanted to say something more. His gaze connected with mine and a surge of attraction rose inside me. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay, Penny? I mean, emotionally.”

I scanned the traffic rushing by us, the deep green of new spring grass along the side of the road, the bright blue April sky punctuated by a burst of orange sun. The world had gone on despite my husband dying and the surprise of his near-triple bigamy. And so, too, would I. “Yeah, I’ll be okay.”

He gave me one quick kiss, a noncommittal, nonrushing-things kiss. I appreciated that from him, as well as the way he cupped my cheek at the end, studied my eyes, and gave me the grin that had become as familiar as Harvey.

It took me a day and a half to get back home. As promised, I spent the night in a Motel 6 along the way, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep that felt more restorative than a bottle of One A Day.

I spent the drive back with Harvey nearly glued to my side, his little BooBoo the only thing that separated us. I knew why—he was missing Dave and clinging to me helped fill that void.

And keeping my hand on his little head as I drove through miles and miles of unfamiliar land did the same for me.

All those hours alone in the car allowed me to do the one thing I had yet to do—grieve. Memories of Dave flooded my mind, tumbling one on top of the other, like a bunch of children all seeking to be the favorite.

All the bad ones came first, released by the remains of the betrayal still simmering inside me, but then as I drove, a calmness descended onto my shoulders. The bad memories yielded to the good ones:

The day he surprised me with the Benz, wrapping the entire car in a festive balloon-decorated paper. The first Christmas we celebrated, when Dave had brought home a tree so big we had to move the sofa out of our tiny apartment living room to make room for its massive green circumference. The day we bought the house, when he insisted on carrying me across the threshold, then nearly dropped me when he tripped.

There were dozens of memories, small, big, all of them part of the fabric of our marriage. I played them back on my mental movie screen, searching for where the threads had unraveled.

But I was tired, emotionally, physically, in every way, and connecting the dots seemed too big a job right now. Tomorrow would be time enough to find those loose ends and hopefully tie them back together.

Georgia was waiting when I got home, sitting on my porch in the dark, wrapped in an old tattered quilt I kept in the wooden chest beside the swing.

“Georgia!” I said, getting out of the car, Harvey and his little bunny in one arm, my overnight bag dangling from the opposite hand. “You didn’t have to wait for me to get home. It’s so late.”

She hurried down the driveway, wrapping me and Harvey in a hug. “Of course I did. I’m your sister.”

I hugged her tight, tighter than I ever had before, drawing comfort, a sense of home, of place, from the sister who had oftentimes been more like a daughter than a sibling. The scent of berries and clean cotton rose off her skin, sweet and soft. “It’s good to see you.”

She pulled back and studied me. “You’ve changed.”

I smiled. “For the better, I hope.”

Georgia nodded. “Much better. You seem stronger, more independent.” She grinned. “More spontaneous.”

Weariness descended over me. “I’m not feeling very spontaneous right now, not after all that time on the road.”

Georgia took my overnight bag out of my hands, then waved me toward the walk. “Then let’s hurry and get you inside. You’ll feel much better with a glass of wine in your hands.”

A few minutes later, the two of us were sitting on the sofa, my shoes kicked off and forgotten by the front door, a mess I would have never let stood before. In light of the past few days and all the changes I’d been through, though, making sure my shoes were neatly lined up in the hall closet didn’t seem quite so important.

“So, what was Annie like?” Georgia asked.

“Nice, but a little rough around the edges. I liked her. Very much.” I took a sip of the white wine Georgia had brought over, a blend that wasn’t too sweet or too dry. For a second I could believe Georgia was compromising her tastes with mine. Then I caught a glimpse of the cartoony apples dancing around the label. It seemed Georgia’s method of picking libations wasn’t so bad after all. “I liked Susan, too. Both of them were women I wouldn’t mind having as neighbors. Even friends.”

Georgia shook her head. “Who would have thought that when this whole thing began?”

“Not me. Definitely not me.” I absentmindedly patted Harvey, who had curled up beside me on the cushion, his little body directed toward the crackling fire I had lit a few moments before. “It’s like…Oh, this is going to sound silly.”

“You sound silly?” Georgia said, sitting back with a bemused expression on her face. “Please indulge me, big sister.”

“It’s like Dave was Goldilocks and we—me, Susan and Annie—were the three bears. One was too pretty, one too tough and one was—” I cut off the words. I hadn’t been just right. If I had been, he wouldn’t have looked at the other bears.

There went my fairy-tale theory. Good thing I wasn’t writing for the Brothers Grimm.

“One was just right, but Dave was too busy looking for more that he couldn’t see how perfect you were.” Georgia took a sip, then placed the goblet on the end table. “After meeting them, why do you think he wanted to marry Susan and Annie?”

“I think…” I dug for the truth that had occurred to me on the long, solitary, memory-filled drive home. “I think Dave needed to be needed. If there was one thing Susan and Annie gave him, it was that.”

“And you, superwoman of the year, did not?”

“No. I was all self-reliant and smart. Or so I thought. Looking back, I see that I wasn’t nearly as strong as I’d imagined. This whole trip terrified me.”

“Yeah, but you made it. That’s strength.”

I sipped at my wine, waiting for the smooth drink to make its journey down my throat. “I hid all my worries from Dave because I thought he needed me to be strong.”

“The perfect wife, huh?”

“Something like that.” A burst of laughter escaped me. “How far from the truth was that? Here I thought I had it all in the palm of my hand, and really, I was just being blind.”

“What else happened?” Georgia rose to get another glass of wine, then returned to the sofa. “Because I get the sneaking suspicion you did more than meet the other women and take Harvey through his routine.”

“Oh, yeah.” I toyed with my wineglass, running a finger along the rim. “I kissed Matt, for one.”

“The dog’s agent?” Georgia slapped my knee. “You kissed him?”

“Actually,” I admitted, heat filling my cheeks at the memory, “I asked him to kiss me. In a convenience store, next to the snack foods.”

Georgia placed the back of her palm on my forehead. “No fever. Okay, what have you done with my sister?”

“I took your advice, that’s all, and I let go of the pier for a little while.”

“Good for you!” Georgia squealed. “So tell me, is something going to happen with him?”

“Maybe.” It was too hard a question to answer right now. “If it does, it’ll be down the road. I need time to be just Penny. To see where and who I am. And how I’m going to live this new life.” I drew in a breath, let it out. On the mantel, Dave’s picture looked back at me, the right-hand twin to mine. Three years ago, we’d had them done, as Christmas presents to each other. I’d stood behind the photographer as she snapped Dave’s, which had made him look at me instead of the lens. In that portrait, I saw love in his eyes. “Plus, Dave wasn’t the villain here. It takes two to ruin a marriage.”

Georgia’s brows knit together in confusion. Leave it to my sister to see me as the hero. “You? What do you think you did?”

I laughed. “Gee, take a look around the house and I think it’s pretty clear. I was too rigid, too set in my ways and too resistant to anything that came close to looking like change.”

“Like the idea of having a baby with Dave.” Georgia’s voice was soft with understanding.

I nodded, willing away the tears that sprang to my eyes. “Yeah, like that.”

A long silence passed and my sister, the only one who knew the whole story of the Penny who lurked behind the lists and organized shelves, studied my face, reading my thoughts as easily as a novel. “You didn’t want to be a mother ever again, did you?”

“I couldn’t make that mistake a second time.” The words lodged thick in my throat.

“Aw, Pen, it wasn’t a mistake. It was an accident. And you did nothing wrong.” Georgia looked at me and took one of my hands in both of hers. “You were so good with me, all those years, I can’t imagine that if you were given a second chance, you wouldn’t have been, or even still be, a great mother to your own kids.”

“Georgia, I can barely take care of this dog!” Harvey started at the sharp notes in my voice and I ran a hand down his back to soothe him. “Besides, I was never mother material. Look what happened with—” I couldn’t finish that sentence. Heck, I’d left it unfinished for nearly twenty years.

Georgia grabbed both of my arms and forced me to look at her, seeming stronger than my little sister had ever been. “It was not your fault, Penny. Things happen. Things go wrong every day.”

I broke away from her and stood, facing the fire, pretending I needed to warm my hands. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“When are you going to?” Georgia said, rising to stand beside me. “You have to someday.”

“Do you want to know why my baby died?” I said, wheeling on her, unable to hold back the emotions that had waited in some secret corner of my mind for two decades. Undealt with, untalked about, because I had stuffed them away as quickly as they had popped up. “Because I thought I could still do it all. Take care of you, run on the track team, be top in my class. And act as if I hadn’t just screwed up my entire life in one night in the back of Roger Bass’s Chevy LeMans.”

“Everyone has a night in the back of a LeMans, Penny. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“I lost control. I stepped away from the plan.” I shook my head, not wanting to remember those days when I’d abandoned responsibilities for a guy with a leather jacket and a nice car. “It was God’s way of punishing me.”

“It was not! You can’t think that.”

But I did and had for years. I’d always believed it was some karmic revenge for my cockiness, my rash decision to lose my virginity. To break away from all that responsibility and pressure.

“Georgia, I was supposed to be the responsible one, the one in charge, the one you were supposed to be able to rely on.”

“You know who was supposed to do all those things, Penny?” Georgia said, dipping her face to meet mine, so that I couldn’t run away from the subject. “Who was supposed to warn us about getting in the back of a LeMans? Who was supposed to tell us to use birth control and wear clean underwear and never wipe snot on our sleeves? Our mother. And she didn’t. She left you to raise me, and whatever mistakes you think you made, were nothing. Look at me, I turned out okay. As far as I’m concerned, you did the best damned job you could. Do not blame yourself for what happened.”

I made a very unladylike sound. “I got pregnant and I lost the baby. I never even carried it to term. How can I not blame myself?” I turned away. “I couldn’t even do that right. I had to keep on going, pretending everything was okay, that losing a baby at five months was no big deal.”

“You were sixteen, Penny. You were allowed to make mistakes.”

I shook my head, and when I did, I realized tears had been streaming down my face. They’d been there all these years, but I’d ignored them, just as I’d ignored everything in my life, my marriage, that had started slipping out of my control. “No, I wasn’t. I had you. I had—”

“Don’t you dare say responsibilities,” Georgia cut in. “Because you also had a responsibility to live your own life. You have never done that, Pen. You have worked to take care of everyone else—me, Mom, Dave. To keep this house perfect, your job perfect, your life perfect. And at what price?”

“If I keep it under control, no one gets hurt.” But even as the words I’d told myself nearly my entire life left my mouth, I knew I was lying. I had done my damnedest to control every aspect of my days, from the neat paths I vacuumed into the living-room carpet to the way I folded T-shirts, to the rigid hours I kept at work. And in the end, it turned out nothing had been perfect except for the freakin’ carpet.

Georgia came around me, her big blue eyes soft with concern. “Did you ever tell Dave about the baby?”

I shook my head.

“Maybe,” Georgia began, laying a soft hand on my arm. “Maybe if you’d opened up to him…” She didn’t finish the sentence, didn’t blame me.

But I sure did.

“Dave wanted kids,” I told her, realizing now where the road had diverged. I’d made wrong choices, and so had Dave. If I’d told him then…where would we be now? Divorced? A happy little family? Or something in between? “He wanted them with me and when I didn’t agree, he went to Susan. But she had her own reasons for saying no. And then, he found Annie, who had more than enough kids to go around. Is that where I failed him?”

“No,” Georgia said, placing a hand on mine. “That’s where he failed you. If kids was a deal breaker, then he should have had the balls, pardon my French, to divorce you instead of doing what he did.”

“Yeah, he should have,” I agreed as we took our seats. On that point, I had no argument. It would have hurt, but a divorce five years ago would have had a lot less human fallout than what Dave had done. “I should have spoken up more. Questioned him. Seen the signs instead of being blind.” I drew in a breath, let it go, feeling lighter than I had in years. “Either way, I know the truth now and, hey,” I said, forcing a tone of lightness into a situation that had been gloomy for far too long, “Harvey and I got a trophy out of it.”

Georgia leaned back against the sofa, surprise in her features. “Wow. You really have changed.”

“Not too much.” I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the list I’d made days ago in the hotel. Like all my lists, it had neat little check marks beside accomplished tasks, and a few more added rows for new tasks.

Georgia laughed. “Now I know you’re my sister and not some pod twin.”

“There is one more thing,” I said. “And if you could stay while I look at it, I’d appreciate it.”

“Sis, I’m here for the duration. I brought my toothbrush, my pj’s and a jug of wine. I figured I’d take care of you for once.”

The tears rose to my eyes again, but this time from gratitude and love. “I could use some of that.” I leaned forward and gave Georgia a quick hug. “You’re the best.”

She hugged me back, her embrace strong and secure, holding me up as much as I had held her up over the years. Odd, really, how this whole bizarre set of circumstances had brought me closer to my sister. It had done something nothing else in our lives had ever accomplished—equalized us. It wasn’t that Georgia had grown up or I had gotten younger. We’d simply found common ground in supporting each other.

I rose, crossed to my bag and retrieved the box Annie had given me. I’d tried a dozen times on the way home to go through it alone, but every time, I’d hesitated, not quite sure I wanted to see what was in there.

“A box? How mysterious,” Georgia said when I laid it on the sofa between us.

I took a deep breath, then turned the latch of the heavy fireproof box and opened the lid. At the top was a letter, in an envelope marked Penny, in Dave’s tight handwriting.

I gasped. Clearly, he had known that, someday, I would find out. And he had done the one thing I’d never thought Dave was capable of doing.

Prepared for the future.

For now, I put the letter aside unread, then dug farther into the box. There were some insurance papers for Harvey. “He insured the dog,” I said, laughing. “Now that I expect out of Dave.”

“What else?”

“Not much,” I said, shuffling through an old collar of Harvey’s, a contract signed years ago with Matt, some business cards for a lawyer and a vet, the former I figured would lead to the will, the latter would give me a distemper shot if I needed it after the will was read.

“There’s a set of keys,” I said, picking them up and holding them to the light. I didn’t recognize them. “House keys, but not to this house.”

“Oh,” Georgia said. “Oh.”

Dread sank inside me. “Do you think it means there’s another one?” My heart leaped into my throat. I couldn’t do this again. I couldn’t find numbers four and five and go on indefinitely through an entire country of Mrs. Reynoldses.

“It could mean something else,” Georgia said. But her face scrunched up in doubt.

“Like what? That he has a vacation home in Hawaii? A condo in Canada?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe.”

“Or that he has a whole other life with another family, somewhere else in the country?”

“Dave had a lot of energy, Pen, but I don’t think he had enough to keep four wives happy.”

I clutched the keys in my hand and felt the hard metal dig into my palm. After all I had been through, I was a changed person but not a glutton for punishment. I had no desire to make another road trip to hear another woman sing Dave’s praises. “I hope you’re right.”

“Read the letter,” she said, nudging it toward me. “Maybe that’ll help.”

Dear Penny,

If you’ve made it to Annie’s, then you know it all. I’m sorry, Penny. I never meant to hurt you.

When I married you, I thought…Well, I thought we’d become Dick and Jane. You did, I didn’t. I always felt like I was playing a really long game of charades.

I started with the dog, and never intended to go any further than that. Then Harvey’s career took off, and before I knew it, I was living a lie that dwarfed them all. I couldn’t share it with you, so I looked for someone I could tell.

Vinny once told me the key to working with a dog is communication, both the spoken and the unspoken kind. I should have talked more, said more, and most of all, told you before all this got out of hand.

Please live your life, Penny. Don’t retreat to your office and those damned numbers. Love someone, Pen. And if he asks you about bringing home a dog or a cat, or hell, a bald eagle, think about it.

In case you doubted it, you were always the first for me. The woman who captured my heart from the very beginning. You were all I dreamed of—and more than I could deserve.

Love,

Dave

“Well,” Georgia said when I was done, “do you think that says he has a fourth wife waiting in the wings?”

“No.” I clutched the letter to my chest, taking comfort in his words, in the message from the Dave I used to know.

And love.

I couldn’t hate him, as much as I wanted to. I didn’t love him as I had before all of this—the betrayals had colored my feelings forever—but I understood him a little better.

The phone rang, and I rose to answer it, leaving the letter on the sofa. “Hello?”

“Penny!” Lillian, my mother-in-law, nearly shouted into the phone. “I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Aren’t you answering your cell phone anymore?”

“I’m sorry, Lillian. I just got home and I must have forgotten all about my phone. I turned it off when I was away.” I had never told Lillian where I went and wasn’t about to just drop it out there. “And then I never remembered to turn it back on.” If there was ever a sign that I had changed, that was it.

“That isn’t like you at all.”

I laughed. “I know.”

“I hate to ask this, because I know you’ve just gotten home but…” Lillian paused. “I need to see you.”

“Now? I was planning on coming down for Christmas, Lillian.”

“It can’t wait that long. I’m…” She paused again. “I’m really worried about Dave’s estate.”

“If it’s money you need—”

“No, I don’t need money.” On the other end, she let out a nervous gust. I had never heard prim, perfect Lillian stressed or overwrought, not even during the funeral. She’d cried, yes, but throughout it all, she’d still been her proper self. “There’s something I need to ask you about. Something…extra that Dave had.”

“You know about Susan?”

“Who’s Susan?”

The confusion in Lillian’s voice was real. She hadn’t known about the other wives, which in a weird way, made me feel better, because it meant I hadn’t been the only woman in Dave’s life left out of the secret.

Nevertheless, this wasn’t the kind of information to tell Lillian over the phone. I needed time to break it to her gently, hopefully with nothing fragile nearby. She’d loved Dave, with a fierceness that bordered on overprotective. Telling her that her son had wives scattered around the country wasn’t going to go well.

I promised Lillian I’d leave on the first flight tomorrow, then said goodbye and returned to the living room. “Well, Harvey,” I said, “looks like our journey’s not over yet. You ready for another road trip?”

Harvey sprang to life, dancing on the sofa and pirouetting on my cushions.

I took that as a yes.

twenty-three

Two weeks to the day after my husband died, I got off a plane at the Orlando International Airport, rented a car and drove to my mother-in-law’s house, Harvey at my side. He pranced around the interior of the rental car, clearly glad to be out of the Port-a-Puppy bag I’d used on the plane.

Every few miles, I stopped and let him out on the grassy roadside. The rental car, after all, wasn’t lined with plastic and I wasn’t taking any chances.

I pulled up to Lillian’s house, a small town house in a retirement community that sported a golf course, swimming pool and community center where regular bingo nights were held.

The place also came with several good catches, Lillian had once said, if a lady didn’t mind dating a guy over the age of seventy-five who might or might not have all his own teeth.

It had been eight years since I’d been to Lillian’s house. Dave and I had been meaning to come down here and visit her, but I was always busy with tax season and by the time April 15 passed, the urge to flee the Massachusetts cold had passed. She came up every Christmas, and Dave had gone to her house quite often over the years, but I’d never seemed to find a good time to make the trip.

With the warm Florida sunshine on my face and shoulders, plus a forty-degree leap in temperature from the state I’d just left, I couldn’t imagine now what could have been more important, or more relaxing, than this.

Lillian answered the door on the first knock. Her eyes widened in joy, and at first, I thought she was looking at me, then noticed her focus had dropped about a foot lower, the smile on her face not for me, but for—

Harvey.

“Oh, Harvey! You’re here! And you’re safe!” She reached forward, taking the dog out of my arms, holding him close to her chest, nearly smothering him with affection. “I was so worried about you, baby.”

I stared at my mother-in-law, coddling and cooing to my husband’s secret, money-making dog. “You knew about Harvey?”

Remorse shaded Lillian’s light green eyes. She nodded. “Dave made me promise not to tell you. Then, after he passed away, there didn’t seem to be an easy way to mention it. I thought if you came down here, I could break the news of the dog gently, and together we could figure out where Harvey was.”

“Susan brought him to me after the funeral. I’ve had him ever since.” A wry smile crossed my lips. “I couldn’t find an easy way to tell you because I didn’t know you knew.”

It all seemed like a badly written Abbott and Costello script.

Lillian’s perfectly penciled brows knit together in confusion. “You keep mentioning a Susan. Did she work with Dave?”

I didn’t want to stand here on Lillian’s azalea-filled porch and tell her that her son was a bigamist. I didn’t want to ever tell her but knew someday it would come out and I didn’t want Lillian to be as sideswiped by the information as I had been. “There were some things I couldn’t tell you over the phone, either. Let’s go inside and talk.”

She nodded, as if she’d anticipated I’d be coming down here with more than a plane ticket. “I have something to show you first, Penny.” She waved me inside, then lowered Harvey to the floor.

As I walked into Lillian’s neat, contemporary town house, past the living room and down the hall that led to the two bedrooms, I prayed I wasn’t about to pull open door number one and see a shrine set up to Dave’s wives. Or some secret love nest behind door number two that Dave had created for in-between dog gigs.

When Lillian opened the door on the right and stepped back, Harvey bounded straight into the room. My gaze swept over the space, but it took a good five seconds to register that what I was seeing wasn’t a shrine to Dave or his bigamy—

But to Harvey.

The dog’s name curved in huge blue block letters across the far wall, arching over a white silk-covered doggie bed loaded with colorful pillows, all sporting cartoon drawings of Jack Russell terriers at play. A massive wicker basket overflowing with dog toys sat in one corner, in the other, a mini-reclining chair, decked out in navy dog-resistant fabric and embroidered with Harvey’s name on the headrest.

Shelves held more toys and what appeared to be a lifetime supply of rawhide bones and Beggin’ Strips. A pair of ceramic food and water bowls sat on a bone-shaped plastic mat, again decorated with Harvey’s name and a smattering of brightly colored paw prints.

The closet door was ajar, revealing a puppy-size wardrobe twice the size of my own. Inside, every costume imaginable, from cowboy to clown, hung off satin hangers. Matching hats filled the top shelf, the pile so big they’d started to teeter over the edge.

“This is all Harvey’s?”

Lillian nodded. “A lot of it was gifts from admiring fans. Harvey’s not a diva, or whatever it is that a male star is called. He’s never even been a real picky dog. Some pet company sent that bed to Dave for Harvey, hoping they could get a photo of him on it, but Harvey—” she laughed a little “—that dog had a mind of his own and he wouldn’t sleep on that silly thing for a year.”

Harvey darted around the room, sniffing his things, pulling out this toy, then discarding it for that one. He leaped at the shelves, but lacked about four feet of height to reach the prized Beggin’ Strips.

“But how…Why…” I couldn’t even voice the questions tumbling around in my head. Shock and hurt that Lillian too had been involved—and helped keep this secret from me—rendered me nearly mute.

“Let’s leave Harvey to his things and go on out to the lanai.” She gave my hand a gentle pat. “I know you have questions. It’s high time I answered them.”

I followed my mother-in-law out to the sunroom, waiting while she returned to the kitchen to grab a jug of iced tea out of the refrigerator and a pair of tall thin glasses from the cabinet. She filled them with ice, then put the whole ensemble on a porcelain tray, adding sugar and long, skinny spoons.

So like Lillian—in the midst of major upheaval, she was still a damned good hostess.

We sat in opposite wicker chairs, the Florida sun warming the yellow-and-blue room and giving it a bright, happy feel. I waited, sipping at my tea, knowing Lillian would tell me what she had to say in her own time.

And also delaying the inevitable of telling her what I knew.

“How much do you know?” she asked.

“Everything but this,” I said, then remembered the keys in my pocket. “I think.”

twenty-four

“You know about Matt and Vinny and the tour?” Lillian said, clearly not the only surprised one in the room.

I nodded. “I just came from the Dog-Gone-Good Show. Harvey won Best Dog Overall, as well as the talent portion.”

A smile stole across Lillian’s normally still features. “That’s good. Dave would have liked that.”

“You were the one who kept Harvey between shows?” It all made sense now. Neither Susan nor Annie had housed Harvey. I’d just assumed he stayed with either Matt or Vinny or at some fancy-dancy dog boarding house when he wasn’t with Dave. I hadn’t even considered that Lillian was involved.

“Dave came to me, after you said no to the idea of a dog.” She shook a sugar packet, the granules settling into the base, before she tore off the top. “I’m not blaming you, Penny. If Harvey had been a cat or a cockatoo, I would have said no, too. I’ve just always loved dogs, especially Jack Russells because I had one when I was a little girl. For me, deciding to take in Harvey was easy.” She stirred some sugar into her glass. Ice cubes clinked together, a quiet melody underlying Lillian’s words. “After Dave’s father died, I was lonely. Really lonely. Harvey, bless his little heart, helped fill that gap. He gave me something to do, something to look forward to every day.”

The chronology fell into place. Dave had found the dog, about a month after his father passed away, and at the same time as I’d been promoted, thus making me busier and less available if Dave had needed to talk. And much less open to the idea of a pet.

“I should have been there for Dave,” I said, understanding now, after going through the shock of losing someone, how much the death of his father must have hurt, and how little I had listened in those days, thinking he was just fine. He was a guy; he didn’t break down and cry. He went to work, more than ever before. I’d thought by making sure he had everything packed, by printing out his itinerary and by keeping everything smoothly running in the house, I was doing what helped Dave. I’d been so busy doing “the right thing,” that I’d never even noticed the chasm opening up between us. “He needed me, but I didn’t even see it. He never broke down, never had an off day.”

“Oh, you know Dave, sweetie. That man would have had a smile on his face if he was sinking on the Titanic.” She patted my knee. “He wasn’t much for sharing his feelings, even when he was little. If he needed you, he should have spoken up.”

“I was his wife. I should have known.”

“Bullshit,” Lillian said, surprising me with the curse out of her perfectly made-up mouth. “Whoever said that is an idiot. I was married for forty years to Larry Reynolds and I didn’t know much more than the way he took his steak. Most men are impossible to read. They keep everything inside, like they’re saving it for a rainy day.”

I smoothed the condensation off my glass and then inhaled a deep breath. I had to tell her sometime. “Lillian, it was more than that. Dave married someone else.”

She paled and grew very still. “Married someone else? When? Before you?”

“Five years ago. While he was still married to me. That’s who Susan is. His other wife.”

Lillian’s mouth formed a perfect, open O. The facts came together in her mind, as they had in mine, and I saw her fit missing pieces into her own mental puzzle. “That explains a lot.”

“I’ve met Susan and you would like her. You also would have liked Annie, who was Dave’s…friend, I guess. He never married her.” I left off the rest of the details with the Annie story. Lillian didn’t need to know it all. I thought again of the keys and where they fit into this picture.

“My son was juggling three women? This from the kid who couldn’t keep up with the track team at practice?”

I laughed, more heartily than I had in weeks. “I guess so. If it helps, though, I think he did it for more or less unselfish reasons.”

Lillian sighed and put her glass down. She watched a blue jay flutter against a feeder hanging off a wrought-iron shepherd’s hook in the yard, spilling as much seed as it ate. “When Dave was young, I was so busy, wrapped up in helping Larry get his law practice off the ground, then Kevin came along and he was so colicky…” She ran a hand over her face. “Dave and his father, they just didn’t get along, oil and water, those two. Their personalities clashed from the first bottle Larry tried to give to Dave.” She shook her head, eyes filled with bittersweet memories. “Dave had his issues, too, Penny,” she went on. “He tried to get close to his dad, Lord knows he did, by helping him wherever he could, but for some reason, it never worked. Larry was a hard man to live with, God rest his soul, and I think Dave might have grown up needing that reassurance that he was loved. I’m not exactly a warm and fuzzy mother. I was always good at the baking-cookies and holding-birthday-parties part, but the cuddling over a story, that was never my strong suit. There always seemed to be another dish to wash or someone asking me to find a lost glove. Dave, I think, got kind of lost in the shuffle.” Lillian leaned forward and touched my knee. “You were good for him in many ways because you kept him on track, made him accountable. You know Dave. He’d run off on a tangent here or there, and forget to pay his bills or register the car.”

“But I didn’t give him what he needed emotionally.”

“And I bet he didn’t tell you what he needed either, did he?”

I shook my head.

Lillian’s gaze grew misty and she turned away, staring at a misshapen ceramic ashtray Dave had made in art class when he’d been a little boy. “Dave talked to me all the time about how much he wanted children.”

“I didn’t give him that, either.” I swallowed back the ache in my throat.

“Dave may have been a great father, but he wanted kids for all the wrong reasons. I think he thought they’d fill up the holes inside him.” She stirred her drink again but didn’t sip it. “I told him, over and over, that a child required love to be given, that they weren’t there to feed you the love. I don’t think he ever understood that.”

“Maybe that’s why Dave kept looking for a woman who could do everything. Give him children, love his dog and be able to read his thoughts.”

“Instead of realizing no one person can be everything to another.” Lillian smiled. “I loved my son and I always will, but he wasn’t perfect.”

I watched the bright blue bird return to the feeder, dart in and grab a sunflower seed. “Neither was I.”

“You didn’t go find another husband, though.”

“Yeah, there is that.” I drank some tea, then put the glass down. Lillian immediately refilled it, the action coming so quick I knew it was more instinct than intrusion. “But I’m okay with the wife thing now. It doesn’t mean I won’t go home and throw darts at his picture someday.”

Lillian laughed. “I may be his mother but I’m also a woman, too, and I wouldn’t blame you one bit if you did that.”

Then I told Lillian what Susan had told me, how Dave had helped her. I did the same with Annie’s story. I filtered it through the protective lens of a daughter-in-law who truly did like her mother-in-law and didn’t want to see Lillian any more hurt than she already was by the loss of her eldest child.

We laughed, we cried, and we mourned the man both of us had loved, in very different ways. At the end, I handed over the keys I’d found in Dave’s box, knowing now that they were to Lillian’s house. She thanked me, then stared at the keys for a long moment, finally seeing in the glint of metal, I thought, that her son was gone.

Then Lillian steeled herself, leaned over and hugged me tight. “I want you to take Harvey home with you.”

“But, Lillian, he’s been yours for years.”

“He’s already closer to you.” We looked down at the floor and noticed Harvey, at my feet, with a pile of toys he had dragged into the sunroom while we were talking. He’d mounded them beside my shoes, as if giving me a mountain of vinyl squeaky gifts. “And besides, I think that right now, the two of you need each other. To heal. He’ll give you something to do, Penny, in the days ahead. A reason to get up in the morning. Because there are going to be days when this will hit you as hard as a brick wall and you’re going to need a reason to move forward.”

“What are you going to do?”

She smiled and looked out over the grassy space behind the sunroom. “I’ve been thinking about getting one of those Chihuahuas. Spoil the heck out of her, dressing her up in raincoats and tutus. I’m an old lady, I’m expected to have a dog like that. And, it’ll be fun to see if I can teach an old dog new tricks.”

“You mean a young dog.”

“No,” Lillian said, laughing. “I meant this old dog. Change is good and it’s about time I had one.”

I left my mother-in-law later that afternoon, promising to return again in a few months so that she and Harvey could see each other. Walking away from Lillian’s house seemed to close one more chapter. There might always be, I realized, a few loose threads in Dave’s life. You couldn’t tear apart the fabric of a life and not leave a few things unconnected. But I had enough of them tied together that I could stop searching and start concentrating on me.

“If this Chihuahua works out,” I whispered to Harvey as we left, “you better practice your bullfighting. I have a feeling you won’t be the only dog in the retirement community going after her heart.”

Harvey let out a bark that said he was up to the challenge.

twenty-five

I sat in the living room of the house I’d once shared with my husband, staring at his picture on the mantel, sipping a glass of wine. A fire roared in the fireplace, that day’s newspaper lay in a disarrayed pile on the floor, spun out of control by Harvey’s frantic feet. Half of me wanted to stack the papers again, to lay them on the coffee table in a pristine pile in alphabetical section order, but I had learned that life was too short to be stacking the newspaper and vacuuming straight lines into my carpet.

I was alone, except for Harvey, and had been for several weeks. At first, it had been harder than I expected to be alone. My husband had traveled all the time, I’d thought I was used to solitary life. But with the knowledge that he wasn’t going to walk through the door, that he wasn’t going to be the one to plant the mums, I had to find a new existence. So I planted my own mums, hired a neighborhood kid to mow the lawn and repainted my bedroom yellow.

I’d spent a lot of time going over the past in those first couple weeks, before I finally realized I couldn’t change it so there wasn’t much sense in rehashing it.

On the notepad on my lap—I may have changed, but I hadn’t gotten rid of my lists—I scribbled the words Life List. I wrote a numeral one and then added a single item: Move forward.

That was enough for now.

When I was done, I raised my glass toward my husband’s picture, still sitting on the mantel and, thus far, unmarred by darts. “Thank you, Dave, for sending me on a journey that changed my life.”

He smiled back at me, the same perpetual smile that Olan Mills had captured a few years back.

“And thank you for the dog. About him, you were right. The other wives, not such a good idea.”

Dave kept on smiling.

I would love him, maybe for the rest of my life, but I doubted I would ever truly understand what had driven my husband to keep all these secrets from me instead of simply having a conversation and trying to mend the broken toy he already had, as Annie had said.

Now it was time to put all this behind me. I glanced again at the list.

Move forward.

I picked up the phone and dialed a number I had memorized from the first time I saw it inside the box. Matt picked up on the first ring. “Hi,” I said, not sure yet what I wanted to say. Writing move forward was a lot easier than actually doing it.

“Hi,” he said back, delighted surprise raising his tone a few notes. “How are you?”

“Much better. Doing okay all by myself, which surprises me. I even fixed the faucet last week.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“I was thinking,” I began, fingering the notebook beside me, the same one that Dave had left with Harvey’s things. I ran my nail down the itinerary of the six-city tour. One thing that was good about being a workaholic, I had enough vacation built up to take a month, maybe two, off from work. “I’d like to take a trip. To Denver, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, San Diego. Maybe a couple other places, too.”

I could practically hear Matt grinning as he recognized the list of cities. “Planning on taking a certain dog along?”

“I’ll have to. I haven’t mastered the picking-out-the-banana trick yet. Harvey’s still the king at that.”

Matt laughed. “Do you want some company?”

“Yes,” I said. “That would be nice.”

“Good.” The huskiness of that one word sent a remix of the music he’d played in his kiss zipping through my veins. “Then I’ll meet you in Denver on the twelfth.”

Matt and I talked a little while longer, then we said goodbye and hung up.

Anticipation rose inside me, a feeling I hadn’t had in years. Would something come of the relationship between me and Matt? It was still too soon to tell and too soon for me to want anyone else in my life on anything other than a part-time basis. Two months after losing my husband, I was still working through being alone.

I’d divided the estate evenly between the four of us, because I’d figured that was what Dave would have wanted—for Susan, Annie and his mother to be taken care of as well as me. There was plenty to divide. Matt had been right—Harvey was a cash cow. There’d been enough for Susan to finish her education, for Annie to buy a house and pay off the medical bills. I’d even sent a little to Norm and Rita, and their new baby boy, whom they had named Harvey. Poor kid. His photo sat to the left of Dave’s on the mantel. Norm had traded his singing ambitions for a job as a mechanic, but with the check I planned on sending them for their wedding gift, I hoped Norm would have enough money to afford a few days off for the upcoming American Idol tryouts. Who knew? Maybe I’d have two performers in my life.

Vinny still suffered the occasional flashback, but had told me he was planning on taking a Pekingese onstage next week. I asked him about the dog treats and he’d rattled something over the phone. “Plastic, baby, that’s the solution. Put the dog treats in this thing and it protects my banana, if you know what I mean.”

I’d had a letter from Susan last week, telling me about her budding relationship with Jerry, another from Annie today, saying that Max was on his way to being a star, if she could just get him to stop eating the Legos.

Someday, I’d stop by and see them again, but for now, I was working on the “Just Penny” campaign.

If you asked me, it was going quite well.

“Harvey,” I said, to the dog who was never far from my side and who had, as Lillian had promised, given me a reason to get up on the days when I’d rather have stayed in bed. “You up to another road trip?”

The dog did his frantic circle dance, spinning the newspaper across the room, then dashed away, returning a moment later with a clump of silver and gold in his mouth. “My keys,” I said, laughing. “Are you a little anxious to go?”

He barked, then turned around and disappeared again. When he came back with a box of plastic wrap in his mouth, I knew Harvey was ready to move forward.

And so was I.

ISBN: 978-1-4268-4975-6

AROUND THE BEND

Copyright © 2010 by Harlequin Books S.A.

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AROUND THE BEND
Copyright © 2010 by Shirley Kawa-Jump

THE OTHER WIFE
Copyright © 2006 by Shirley Kawa-Jump

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