LITMIR.BIZ

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ever happen on it was completely choked with police cars. People walking to work had stopped and were milling about.

      Kade, shouldering through them, caught bits of conversation.

      “What happened?”

      “No idea, but from the police presence, it must be bad.”

      “A murder, maybe?” The speaker could not hide the little treble of excitement at having his morning walk to work interrupted in such a thrilling fashion.

      Kade shot him a dark look and shoved his way, with even more urgency, to the front of the milling crowd, scanning the addresses on the cottagey houses and businesses until he found the right one. He moved toward it.

      “Sir?” A uniformed man was suddenly in front of him, blocking his path. “You can’t go any farther.”

      Kade ignored him, and found a hand on his arm.

      Kade shook off the hand impatiently. “I’m looking for my wife.” Technically, that was true. For a little while longer anyway.

      “Kade,” Jessica had said last night over the phone, “we need to discuss the divorce.” He hadn’t seen her for more than a year. She’d given him the address on this street, and he’d walked over from his downtown condo, annoyed at what his reluctance about meeting her was saying about him.

      All this was certainly way too complicated to try to explain to the fresh-faced young policeman blocking his way.

      “Her name is Jessica Brennan.” Kade saw, immediately, in the young policeman’s face that somehow all these police cars had something to do with her.

      No, something in him screamed silently, a wolf howl of pure pain, no.

      It was exactly the same silent scream he had stifled inside himself when he’d heard the word divorce. What did it mean, he’d asked himself as he hung up his phone, that she wanted the divorce finalized?

      Last night, lying awake, Kade had convinced himself that it could only be good for both of them to move on.

      But from his reaction to this, to the fact all these police cars had something to do with her, he knew the lie he had told himself—that he didn’t care—was monstrous in proportion.

      “She’s okay, I think. There’s been a break-in. I understand she was injured, but it’s non-life-threatening.”

      Jessica injured in a break-in? Kade barely registered the non-life-threatening part. He felt a surge of helpless fury.

      “She’s okay,” the young cop repeated. “Go that way.”

      It was upsetting to Kade that his momentary panic and rage had shown in his face, made him an open book to the cop, who had read his distress and tried to reassure.

      He took a second to school himself so that he would not be as transparent to Jessica. He looked up the walk he was being directed to. Twin white lilacs in full and fragrant bloom guarded each side of a trellised gate. The house beyond the gate was the house Jessica had always wanted.

      It was a cute character cottage, pale green, like the fresh colors of spring all around it. But it wasn’t her home. A sign hung over the shadowed shelter of an inviting porch.

      Baby Boomer, and in smaller letters, Your Place for All Things Baby.

      Jessica had given him only the house number. She hadn’t said a word about that.

      And he knew exactly why. Because, for a moment, that familiar anger was there, overriding even the knife of panic that had begun to ease when the young cop had said she was okay. Hell’s bells, did she never give up?

      Or was the anger because the house, her new business and that phone call last night were evidence that she was ready to move on?

      It was not as if, Kade told himself sternly, he wasn’t ready to move on. In fact, he already had. He was just completely satisfied with the way things were. His company, Oilfield Supplies, had reached dizzying heights over the past year. Without the complication of a troubled relationship, he had been able to focus his attention intensely on business. The payoffs had been huge. He was a man who enjoyed success. Divorce did not fit with his picture of himself.

       Divorce.

      It was going to force him to face his own failure instead of ignore it. Or maybe not. Maybe these days you just signed a piece of paper and it was done. Over.

      Could something like that ever be over? Not really. He knew that from trying to bury himself in work for the past year.

      If it was over, why did he still wear his ring? He had talked himself into believing it was to protect himself from the interest of the many women he encountered. Not personally. He had no personal life. But professionally he met beautiful, sophisticated, interested women every day. He did not need those kinds of complications.

      He was aware, suddenly, he did not want Jessica to see he was still wearing that ring that bound him to her, so he took it off and slipped it in his pocket.

      Taking a deep, fortifying breath, a warrior needing the opponent—when had Jessica become the opponent?—not to know he had a single doubt or fear, Kade took the wide steps, freshly painted the color of rich dairy cream, two at a time.

      In startling and violent contrast to the sweet charm of the house, the glass had been smashed out of the squares of paned glass in the door. The door hung open, the catch that should have held it closed dangling uselessly.

      Inside that door Kade skidded to a halt, aware of glass crackling under his feet. His eyes adjusted to the dimness as he burst out of the bright morning light. He had entered into a world more terrifying to him than an inhabited bear den.

      The space was terrifying because of what was in it. It was the world he and Jessica had tried so hard to have and could not. It was a world of softness and light and dreamy hopes.

      The stacks of tiny baby things made other memories crowd around Kade, of crying, and arguing, and a desperate sense of having come up against something he could not make right. Ever.

      He sucked in another warrior’s breath. There was a cluster of people across the room. He caught a glimpse of wheat-colored hair at the center of it and forced himself not to bolt over there.

      He would not let her see what this—her injury, this building full of baby things—did to him.

      Unfortunately, if he was not quite ready to see her, he had to take a moment to gather himself, and that forced him to look around.

      The interior dividing walls within the house had been torn down to make one large room. What remained for walls were painted a shade of pale green one muted tone removed from that of the exterior of the house. The large space was connected by the expanse of old hardwood, rich with patina, and yet rugs and bookcases had been used to artfully divide the open area into four spaces.

      Each was unique, and each so obviously represented a nursery.

      One was a fantasy in pink: the crib was all done in pink flowered bedding, with pink-striped sheets and a fluffy pink elephant sprawled at the center. A polka-dot pink dress that looked like doll clothes was laid out on a change table. The letters g-i-r-l were suspended by invisible threads from the ceiling. A rocking chair, with pillows that matched the bedding, sat at right angles to the crib.

      The next space was a composition in shades of pale blue. The crib and its bedding, again, were the main focus, but the eye was drawn to the vignette of boyish things that surrounded it. There were toy trains and tractors and trucks displayed on the shelves of a bookcase. Miniature overalls and an equally miniature ball cap hung on an antique coatrack beside it. A pair of impossibly small work boots hung from their laces off the same rack.

      Next was one all done in lacy white, like a wedding dress, a basket on the floor overflowing with white stuffies: lambs and polar bears and little white dogs. The final display had two cribs, implying twins, and a shade of yellow as pale as baby duck down repeated

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