Oh no, that was Tracy’s thought.
She tried distancing herself from it. “So, uh, how did it go at the store today?” she asked.
Bailey’s eyes were closed. “Byron was off on another of his searches for endless summer. Finn played Santa.”
“Finn?”
Bailey tensed but didn’t open her eyes. “I told you he was living next door for the holidays. I told you that I’d run into him.”
Bailey’s eyes popped open. Scowling, she skewered Tracy with her gaze. “You knew what kind of boy he was, Mom. You couldn’t miss that crazy hair, the earrings, those tattoos all over his hands. Why the
Tracy stared at her beautiful daughter. She’d made many mistakes with her, particularly during the ugly divorce. Some of that experience, she supposed, was responsible for creating the determined, you-won’t-knock- me-down attitude of her older child. But there were other parts of Bailey she’d been born with.
Things she’d been born to. From the moment that dangerous, sullen-looking teenage boy had shown up next door, her stubborn perfectionist was determined to bring him to heel. Perhaps, though, all the moves between Bailey and Finn had yet to be played out.
“Mom?” Bailey looked impatient for her answer.
Tracy thought about trying to explain it to her. But then she shrugged. Sometimes it was better to just get out of the way.
Her firstborn, naturally, wasn’t going to let it go. “Mom? Come on. Why did you let me date him?”
“Oh, sweetie.” Tracy sighed. “I didn’t think I had a choice.”
Bailey stayed silent for a moment. Then she closed her eyes again. “Funny, I said something like that to Finn.”
Definitely some moves left between them, Tracy decided. But then another thought congealed like a cold lump in her stomach. Maybe, maybe when it came to her and Dan, the moves were over.
The game all played out.
In 1939, Robert L. May created Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for a storybook given away by the Montgomery Ward department store. As a boy, May had been teased about his small size, so he developed a character with a physical quirk. May’s boss was concerned the shiny red nose might be associated with drunkenness, but after seeing sketches of the reindeer, the company was won over.
Chapter 9
Perhaps it was the highlights in her hair that brightened Tracy’s outlook. The new cut that fluffed around her face to end in soft wisps at her jawline. Or maybe it was the sunshine streaming through the downstairs window and the promise of another seventy-something-degree day. For whatever reason, she found herself with her hand on the front door. For the first time in weeks, she walked out into the sunlight. She even dressed up for the occasion, dumping the sweats and taking a pair of Bailey’s jeans from the pile of clean clothes on the dryer.
She was wearing a lot less gray hair and a dozen fewer pounds. The “divorce diet,” she supposed, recalling a phrase coined by one of her friends.
Outside, warmth bathed her face. She sucked in a deep breath and smelled heated green-the combination of the grass and the hibiscus hedge and the leaves from the jacaranda tree growing in the front corner of the yard. Her mother and father had been late-in-life parents, and she’d lived here since birth. It had always given her a sense of comfort and security, until Dan had left.
Last night she’d decided they were probably done, but maybe she could find peace again. Alone, in the house built by her parents, she could become one of those women who found contentment in work and a safety net in a caring circle of other single females.
Who needed a man? What were they good for?
Still savoring the warm air, she strolled to the mailbox nailed to a post at the bottom of the front walk, noticing someone had decorated it with a lush bow of red ribbon. Tracy ran her forefinger over its velvety surface. Even though the season was always hectic because of the store, she’d still managed little holiday touches like this once she and Dan married and the children were young.
But now with Bailey only an occasional visitor to her life and Harry’s hectic presence off to college, there was no reason to put forth the effort. She wasn’t someone’s mother anymore, she realized with a wrench.
Worse, she wasn’t sure who she was without that.
The metal mailbox was almost hot to touch, so she pried the door open with a fingernail, then pulled out the pile of envelopes stacked inside. She scanned the names on them.
Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Willis.
Mrs. Daniel Willis.
The couple was dissolved. That woman didn’t exist anymore.
A burn rose from her suddenly clenched stomach. Damn Dan! How could he take this away from her! How could he take
No, no. She slammed the mailbox shut, and the violent clang shut off the anger rising inside her. The new woman she wanted to be wasn’t going to
She was going to be a serene person, she decided. One of those types who floated over the highs and lows of life.
As she turned back to the house, a car coming down the street caught her eye. Her hand tightened on the mail, creasing the cable bill.
It was her footsteps that rushed in a panic up the front walk. Inside, she was a calm sea.
The calm sea didn’t make it through the entry before Dan was out of his car. “Tracy?”
She shut the door when he was on the sidewalk. Locked it as he mounted the porch steps.
Then, her heart clattering in her chest, she slid down against the painted wood, her legs no longer able to hold her steady. She rested her forehead on her upraised knees, fighting for breath.
It was still a struggle when she heard the scratch of a key in the lock. Her head jerked up, and she scrambled to her feet. She just managed to move away before the door hit her in the butt.
Then he was framed in the doorway. Her husband.
Her
“What the
“I have a key. My name’s on the deed. Why wouldn’t I enter my own home?” His dark hair was longer than she’d ever seen it. It swung over his brow like a boy’s-like Harry’s-and she could see the faint whiteness of the crows’ feet at the corners of his watchful eyes.
He
Anger rose like bile again, but Tracy managed to swallow it down as she turned her back and strode off toward the kitchen. “Get what you came for, and then leave,” she said over her shoulder.
God, she was good. That had sounded somewhat sane. Poised, even. As if she were in control of her emotions
