LITMIR.BIZ

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don’t know.” He swore. “That you lighten up a bit, I guess. Be willing to experiment a little.”

      Breathing wasn’t easy. The tightness in Sara’s chest had grown into a physical pain. She felt inadequate—in so many ways.

      “Wild and crazy is not fun for me, Brent. It’s frightening.”

      He stood, too, pushing his chair back to the table. He rinsed his cup. Put it in the dishwasher, and then took her shoulders between his hands.

      “We’ll work this out, Sara,” he said, looking her straight in the eye. “I’ll end things with Chloe and we’ll go from there. Okay?”

      She almost nodded. Wanted to nod. Her instincts told her to nod.

      She asked a question instead.

      “Do you love me, Brent?”

      “Of course I do.” His gaze dropped to her lips.

      “Are you in love with me?”

      Letting go of her, he ran a hand through his inch-long hair—still the California blond it had always been. “I don’t even know what that means,” he said, obviously frustrated with her. “It’s a pretty phrase some woman made up, I’d guess. I’m a good provider, Sara. Our bills are paid on time. We live in a nice house in a fine neighborhood. We can afford to vacation where and when we want and eat out every night of the week if we choose to. I clean up after myself and am always here when I say I will be. I don’t know what else you want from me.”

      She wanted him to think she was enough just as she was. She wanted him to be trustworthy. To be loyal to her. She wanted him to be sufficiently in love with her that he couldn’t look at another woman.

      She wanted from him the things she gave to him.

      He grabbed her hand again and as she studied their interlocked fingers, her skin started to burn. Those fingers had touched her intimately. Been inside her.

      And inside other women, too.

      “I want a divorce.”

      WHILE BRENT PLAYED GOLF, Sara packed every suitcase they had, as well as a few moving boxes they’d kept in the garage, loaded as much as she could into the back of their dark blue Ford Expedition and rented a furnished apartment near OSU, just off High Street. She’d go back to New Albany on Sunday to get the rest of the stuff she’d packed. And see about finding a more permanent residence—probably in a little better area. She’d been complacent for most of her adult life, but suddenly she couldn’t move fast enough. Couldn’t even recognize herself.

      It was almost as though, if she slowed down, she’d fall.

      In her new place she hung her clothes and unpacked bathroom essentials. Leaving everything else, she went to the nearest mall to walk around, be among people, find enough diversion to keep her from sinking into hell beneath the weight of her thoughts.

      She thought about calling her father.

      Or going to work.

      Instead, she bought a beautiful teapot. It was fine bone china. Ivory with gold trim and exquisite little roses hand-painted across its belly.

      The teapot reminded her of happy women. Of birds and beauty and things that were more powerful than money or marriages or even death. It brought tears to her eyes.

      As soon as she had her purchase in hand, she left.

      BACK IN HER TEMPORARY HOME, Sara tried the teapot in several locations, on the ledge inside the front door, the only door, in the middle of the dented, half-sized stove; on the back of the toilet; and ended with it on her nightstand, so she’d see it first thing when she woke up in the morning.

      And then, at 8:42 p.m., according to the cell phone that was doubling as an alarm clock, she crawled into bed, pulled the cheap bedsheets up over her shoulders and cried until her ribs hurt so much she couldn’t move.

      A SCREAM FROM UPSTAIRS woke him. Mark listened, trying to determine if he needed to get up and help. Call an ambulance.

      “I don’t give a rat’s ass what your mama said, this is my house and I’ll damn well leave my shit on the floor and anything else I want to…”

      Mark pulled a down pillow over his head. The newlyweds who’d moved into the apartment above him were at it again.

      “Uncle Mark?”

      Hell. He’d forgotten he had Jordon with him for the weekend.

      “Yeah?” Sitting up, Mark flipped the switch he’d installed in the wall beside his cherry-wood headboard, to see his thirteen-year-old nephew, wearing basketball shorts and nothing else, standing in his bedroom doorway.

      “Shouldn’t you do something?” Jordon gestured to the ceiling. “Call someone?”

      He’d been playing surrogate dad to his sister’s kid since Jordon was two and her husband, a firefighter, had lost his life in a warehouse fire. Mark took Jordon camping, drove to Cleveland to go to ball games, taught him how to fish. He just never brought him home to Columbus with him.

      “They’ll stop soon enough,” he said now, wishing he’d done as Dana had suggested and stayed with Jordon in Cleveland while she went on an overnight trip with her new boyfriend on his cabin cruiser along the Ohio River.

      He’d been afraid having the boy around while she was getting ready—maybe asking questions—would make her change her mind about going. Ken, a widowed doctor she’d met at the club where she worked, was the first guy his sister had dated since her husband’s death.

      “You’re nothing but a pig and a jerk and I can’t believe I married you…”

      Jordon glanced up again, his brow furrowed. “He might hit her.”

      Possibly. But Mark didn’t think so. If this evening went true to form, Jordon was soon going to be hearing something else his sister didn’t want her adolescent son listening in on.

      “Don’t you touch me, you…”

      Yep, here it came. Mark jumped out of bed.

      “How about some ice cream?” he asked, pulling on shorts and a T-shirt over the briefs he slept in.

      “It’s almost midnight!”

      “So?” he said to the boy. “I know a shop that’s open until one from May ’til September. You saying you don’t have room for a banana split?”

      Jordon loved banana splits.

      “Sure!” His nephew said, just as the sounds overhead started to change. “I’ve always got room for that.”

      “Then get your rear next door and grab a shirt and some shoes.”

      Moving out to the tiny space that served as a living room, Mark raised his voice, ostensibly to be heard from the spare bedroom next to his, avoiding the sight of the wrought-iron bars on the windows—a necessity in this neighborhood—as he grabbed his keys.

      He had Jordon out of the apartment and onto the street before the going really got good upstairs. And he took the long way to the ice cream shop two blocks away. He figured he had at least an hour to kill.

      “WHY DO YOU LIVE in that place?” Jordon asked, when his boat-shaped dessert dish was completely empty, as Mark nursed a cup of decaffeinated coffee, regardless of the eighty-degree temperature outside.

      “I’m too lazy to move,” he answered the boy.

      “You, lazy? Give me a break.”

      “I’ve done a lot a work on the place,” Mark tried again, wondering how such short hair got so rumpled as he ran his hand through it. “What about that entertainment system? Can’t beat that, huh?”

      “’Cept the room’s so small you get kinda dizzy watching such a large screen.”

      Yeah, he hadn’t

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