Season of Sisters (7 page)

He said it in the same tone as he might have had he asked,
You murdered the paper boy?

Maggie straightened her spine. "Yes, I did."

"What the hell for?"

"To make a point."

"What point?"

She gave her head a toss that sent her long blond hair whipping across her shoulder. "You should figure that out based on where I hid the fu—"

Shocked at herself, Maggie broke off abruptly. She never used the "F' word. Why had she almost used the "F' word? Her lack of control frightened her. But then, her lack of control was part of the problem, wasn't it? She swallowed hard, then finished more calmly. "On where I hid the stupid thing."

Temper snapped in his eyes. "You hid it in our bed."

"Actually, I hid it on
your side
of the bed. The side of the bed where you haven't been sleeping for the past month."

"Dammit, Maggie." He braced his hands on his hips and glared at her. "That's exactly the problem. It's not a month. I haven't slept in our bed since
Valentine's Day.
We haven't made love since Christmas! And you didn't even notice. You've hardly noticed a damned thing since Scott left for college in January."

"That's not true." Scott was the youngest of their four sons and while Maggie admitted she hadn't dealt well with the emptying of her nest, she hadn't been totally oblivious. "I noticed you started working late."

"Yeah, and why shouldn't I?" he fired back. "It's not like I have anything better to do in the evenings around home."

She blinked and reared back against the flowered sofa seat, taking it like a blow.
He's so
angry.

How could she not have known?

As silence stretched between them her light-headedness worsened. A nervous snicker bubbled up inside her, and before she quite knew what was happening, she was giggling. Hysterically. Her vision blurred, her stomach churned, and she began to gasp for air.

Mike cursed beneath his breath, stalked across the room, and firmly guided her head down between her knees. "Breathe. You're hyperventilating."

No, her heart was breaking.

After a few minutes, Maggie managed to regain control of herself, if not her life. She slumped back against the sofa and closed her eyes.

Mike stood against the wall looking almost as sick as she felt. Her gaze met his, and for a second, she saw in his brilliant blue eyes a pain so sharp and strong that it stabbed her heart.

What happened? How did we get here? What have I done to him?

Mike cleared his throat. "What about you? Did you write a letter?"

Maggie recalled the twenty-four-page manifesto she'd begun when she realized he'd left for work yesterday without so much as a "Good morning" and finished after getting his secretary's message last night. It had been the ugliest collection of thoughts put down on paper since her treatise about Marti Sue Reynolds, boyfriend stealer, in the seventh grade.

She'd torn it to pieces and flushed it.

"I wrote one. It's... I threw it out."

Mike sighed heavily. "I can't do this anymore, Maggie. It's tearing me apart. I've... um... found a place... to stay."

Maggie's stomach clinched. A place?

She went cold to the marrow of her bones.
Another woman?

No. Please Mike, no
.

She should ask. She didn't want to ask. She didn't want to know. She should say something. She should protest his leaving. She should beg. She should promise him anything he wanted.

But she couldn't manage it. She was numb inside and it took everything she had to force a single word through her constricted throat. "Where?"

She simply couldn't bear to ask who.

"Actually..." He dragged his hand along his jaw and she noticed for the first time he hadn't shaved. He dropped his chin to his chest, waited a beat, then looked up and boldly met her gaze. "I'll be at the lake for a little while, then I'm going to the Caribbean."

The Caribbean! She had a sudden vision of a twenty-something bimbo in a string bikini crooking her finger while casting Mike a come hither look. Feeling nauseous, Maggie rose and headed for the inner section of the rest room.

He stopped her with a sentence. "I bought a boat."

She blinked. "Excuse me?"

He drew himself up, squared his shoulders, and in a voice brimming with defiance said, "I bought a fifty-foot Viking and I'm taking her on a cruise. I have her moored up at Lake Texoma while I get her seaworthy. Then I'm shipping her to the coast and heading out. I need some time, Maggie. I need to settle some things in my mind. I'll be gone a couple of months, three at the most. If you want to contact a lawyer and make it a legal separation, I won't object. I think anything more involved than that should wait until I get back."

The door swished closed behind him.

Maggie closed her eyes and ached.

* * *

When Holly turned thirteen, her father began a new family tradition for Saturday afternoons. Sometime around noon, he would fire up the engine of his fifty-seven Chevy convertible named the White Swan and back it out of the garage. While he spent the next half hour doing guy stuff under the hood, Holly filled a cooler with sandwiches, drinks, and snacks. Then they'd load up the picnic fixings and the dog and go for a Sunday drive—on Saturday afternoon, which was all part of the fun.

They took their drives in every kind of weather, bundling up in blankets when necessary, lowering the rag top to let the wind blow whenever conditions allowed. They never had an itinerary, just followed their noses, as her dad liked to say. Sometimes they stayed in town, cruising through residential areas, stopping for their picnics in parks or schoolyard playgrounds. Usually, though, they left the city and explored the dozens of narrow farm roads that crisscrossed north-central Texas. Holly remembered one Sunday drive in particular when her dad only made right turns. It took them forever to get back home, but that didn't matter. Their drives always lasted at least two hours and they often didn't come home before dark.

Holly loved their Saturday-Sunday drives, and she wanted desperately to believe her father did, too. That's why she always pretended to fall asleep during the last ten minutes of the trip. If her eyes were closed, she wouldn't see the tears that slipped from his eyes and slid silently down his cheeks each time they made their way back home.

She always knew he was missing her mother at those times, but it wasn't until she was older that she made the connection between the drives and the "naps" her parents had taken in their bedroom every Saturday afternoon. It was the first time Holly had cried just for her dad, and not for herself.

To this day, her dad never spent Saturday afternoons at home. If he'd found someone else with whom to "nap," he'd kept it private from Holly, and she bet it never happened on Saturday afternoons. Because thirteen years after her mother's death, he still took his Sunday drives in the White Swan, now renamed the Gray Swan due to mileage in excess of two hundred thousand. Holly joined him whenever her schedule allowed. Once a month, at least. And every time, every single time, as he turned The Swan onto his street, a tear or two would slip down his cheek. Holly's dad had never gotten over losing her mother.

It was a lesson Holly took to heart.

It was a lesson that broke her heart.

Because Justin was so much like her dad.

Justin.

She gunned the engine of her three-year-old Mustang, taking the blind curve faster than she should. She was driving on a farm road leading north out of Weatherford. After the emotional upheaval of the afternoon, she hadn't wanted to face an empty, lonely apartment, so she'd decided to take a Saturday-Sunday drive of her own.

She'd invited her new friends Grace and Maggie to come along, which was a sure sign of just how off-kilter she truly was.

As a rule, it took Holly time to warm up to people, and usually she got along better with men than with women. She was comfortable around guys. They weren't as nosy as her girlfriends. They weren't as complicated. They weren't as mean. As long as everyone kept sex out of the mix, they proved to be more loyal than the women she'd counted as friends.

So what wild hare had possessed her to ask Grace and Maggie to join her? Was it simply a case of her not wanting to be alone? Maybe she felt some cosmic connection to them because they'd inadvertently become part of one of the worst experiences of her life.

Then there was the question of why they'd come along. Maggie, she could understand. Her day hadn't been any better than Holly's. Grace was another matter. Her life wasn't out of control. Her man hadn't left her crying. He'd kissed her and gone away whistling. But why would Grace want to spend her time with two women? In her place, Holly would have run screaming in the opposite direction.

Maybe it had something to do with security. Any woman who'd managed to stay married to the same man for fifty years probably felt pretty good about herself. Holly figured she certainly would.

Whatever the reason, the two women were with her now. Grace sat in the front passenger seat. Maggie rode in back. She hadn't joined the get-to-know-you chitchat Grace and Holly exchanged as they'd left downtown, but when they breezed past the city limits sign on I-20 West, Maggie started to mutter.

"He bought a boat. A yacht. To cruise the Caribbean without me. Didn't even ask me to run away with him. Just up and leaves me." She paused, then grumbled, "I'll show him a legal separation."

"That's probably not a bad idea," Holly cautioned, glancing in the rearview mirror toward Maggie. "It's better that you protect yourself financially."

Maggie wrinkled her nose. "Oh, Mike wouldn't take advantage of me that way. No, he'll just run over me with twin screws."

"Twin screws?" Grace asked.

"Boat propellers," Holly said.

"I don't ordinarily use foul language, but I am compelled to say that the man is a sorry boat-buying bastard." Maggie flicked open her compact and reapplied her lipstick with angry slashes. "I can't believe he's doing this. How dare he even think of doing this to me?"

She slammed her compact closed. "I'll tell you this much, ladies. I've cried my last tear over Mike He-Can-Cruise-to-Pluto-for-All-I-Care Prescott. He can swab his deck and polish his brass from now until kingdom come. I have better things to do. More important things to do."

She fell silent for two mile markers, then said, "Good heavens. What am I going to do?"

Holly handed back the box of tissues she kept under her seat, then exited off the interstate onto one of the farm roads leading north through the rolling countryside.

Grace adjusted her seat belt and twisted around to look at Maggie. "I have a friend—one of my doctors, in fact—who always responds to that particular question by asking, 'What do you want to do?'"

"Oh, I know what I want to do," Maggie said with a sad laugh. "I want to keep doing what I've been doing for the past twenty years, but that's not possible. My children are grown and gone, and my husband's running off to St. Somewhere. I don't know who or what I am anymore, but right now, I'm tired of worrying about it. Let's talk about something else. Holly? Any ideas? Do you want to talk about Justin?"

"Absolutely not. I want something cheery to think about."

"I know what we can do," Grace said. "It's something we did when I was a Girl Scout leader with my daughter. How about we all pretend we're Maria in
The Sound of Music
and sing about our favorite things? We'll get to know each other better that way."

Yuck. Holly grimaced. The generation gap rears its ugly head.

"I don't sing," Maggie said, sounding as hesitant as Holly.

Grace shook her head. "I don't mean we really sing. Just tell us about your personal 'Raindrops on roses.'"

"Oh. Well. Okay." Maggie stared out the window in thought for a moment. "I like bubble baths. Bubble baths, little yappy dogs, and sparkling jewelry. Holly, your turn."

All right, maybe this wasn't so lame, after all. Cheesy, but not overly lame. "Hmm... I'm gonna say
National Geographic
magazine. Shaper hair spray. Peregrine falcons."

"Aren't they extinct?" Grace asked.

"No. In fact, they were removed from the endangered species list in 1999. I saw one once during a trip to Canada. It was simply majestic."

"That sounds lovely," Maggie said.

Holly slowed as she approached an unfamiliar intersection. She decided to take a right. "Okay, Grace. What are your 'Whiskers on kittens'?"

"Grandbabies. Soup recipes." She paused, and a grin hovered around her lips as she added, "Black lace panties."

"Ooh-la-la," Maggie drawled.

"Way to go, Grace," Holly added.

The activity continued for another five miles or so. Maggie had just included Hot Cherry Kiss nail polish among her favorite things when she smiled with delight and said, "Oh, look at that, girls. Look at the mama horse and her baby."

In a pasture off to their right, a spindly-legged foal gamboled around a calmly grazing mare. Holly pulled the car off the road and parked along the shoulder so the three women could watch the young horse at play against the crimson and gold backdrop of a springtime sunset.

Holly thumbed buttons and the windows rolled down, allowing the scents and sounds of the peaceful rural countryside to wash over them. Killing the ignition, she took what felt like her first completely easy breath since Justin turned her world upside down.

Maggie laughed softly. "Why, it's a picture postcard, isn't it? A carpet of bluebonnets. Magnolias in bloom. A beautiful sunset. All that's missing is a cowboy leaning on the split-rail fence."

"A cowboy wearing chaps," Grace agreed.

"And nothing else," Holly added.

All three women burst into a laugh that intensified when Grace added, "Except for a hat. He needs to wear a hat, too."

"But on his head," Maggie clarified. "Don't want to spoil the scenery. Now that would make a right fine postcard."

Her tone more animated than it had been all day, she relayed a story about the nude postcards she'd run across during a trip to New Orleans for a baseball tournament some years back. "It was just a regular little grocery store. I thought nothing about taking the boys in for candy and a Coke. Then, I heard my youngest boy Scott say, 'God Almighty, it's the sausage section.' 'Course, I immediately went over to chastise him about his blasphemous language and there they were—an entire rack of naked men postcards. Double-stamp size, if you get my drift. My face turned the color of Big Red soda pop, and that was before my boy John discovered the wind-up penises on feet and set one to jumping all over the counter. I thought I'd just die."