grandmother had made for her hope chest twenty years ago. Twenty years ago—when she had still believed in white knights and happily-ever-after.
She sat there staring ... thinking ... trembling ... crying ... Funny how the cycle had become weirdly comforting after a while.
Steve hadn’t come home the night before. Sara had gone to bed after Detective Mendez had left. She had taken a sleeping pill and hadn’t stirred until the alarm had gone off at seven. When she opened her eyes, her husband was not in bed beside her—not that that was unusual.
Groggy from the pill, she dragged herself downstairs to put out breakfast for Wendy. There was no sign Steve had spent the night on the sofa, which he did more often than not lately—when he came home at all.
She had no idea where he went on the nights he didn’t come home. He usually claimed he had slept at the office, but Mendez had told her there had been no sign of Steve at his office that night.
Mendez had come by to check on her. He had been concerned to see the garage light on in the middle of the night. He had offered her sympathy and protection. Mendez, a relative stranger, had acted like a husband, while her husband had become nothing short of a stranger to her over this past year.
Wendy came downstairs for breakfast.
“Where’s Daddy?” she asked, pouring cereal in a bowl.
“I don’t know,” Sara said. “He didn’t come home last night.”
“Yes, he did. His car is in the driveway.”
But he wasn’t home. Wendy went through the house calling for him. Sara went into the garage to find no sign of him. When she went out to his car and saw blood on the driveway, she started to panic.
He wasn’t anywhere in the yard. He hadn’t fallen in the pool. He wasn’t dead in the street.
Sara called the sheriff’s office, then called another mother to take over car pool for the day. Distraught, Wendy had refused to go to school. She became convinced her father had been murdered.
A deputy had come to the house, looked at the car and the blood, and followed the same route through the yard and the garage and the house.
“Daddy’s dead, isn’t he?” Wendy said, crying, her arms wrapped tight around Sara’s waist. “He’s been kidnapped and killed! And now he’s dead!”
“No, sweetie,” Sara said. She wanted to say those things only happened on television, but she couldn’t. Wendy had seen a murder victim herself. Her best friend’s father was sitting in jail awaiting trial. One of her classmates had attacked her and stabbed another child.
“I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation,” Sara said. “I’ll call the office. Maybe Don knows where Daddy is.”
While the deputy was in his car on the radio, Sara called Don Quinn to ask if he had heard from Steve.
Yes, he had. He had been Steve’s one phone call from jail. Steve had been arrested for assaulting a sheriff’s detective.
“And it didn’t occur to you to call me and let me know what was going on?” Sara said.
“Steve asked me not to.”
“And you thought that was okay?” The tone and volume of her voice went up with her blood pressure. “To let me go out of my mind with worry. To upset Wendy to the point that she’s sick to her stomach. You didn’t see anything wrong with that?”
“I don’t know what to say, Sara. I thought Steve would call you himself.”
“You didn’t think that,” she said bitterly. “You didn’t think about Wendy or me. Just like he didn’t think about Wendy or me. The two of you can rot in hell together for all I care!”
She slammed the receiver down and burst into tears, beyond the end of her rope. Wendy bolted from the room and upstairs.
That was it, Sara realized as the tears subsided, the last straw. She was done.
She dried her eyes and went outside as the deputy came up the sidewalk looking uncomfortable.
Sara held a hand up. “I know. I just spoke to my husband’s partner.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the deputy said.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. Thank you for your time.”
The adrenaline drained down through her, taking her energy with it as she went back to the house. She felt like she was eighty years old as she climbed the stairs to go to her daughter’s room.
Wendy was busy putting her dolls into a garbage bag while tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Sweetheart, what are you doing?”
Wendy didn’t look up. “I’m giving them away.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re stupid,” she said angrily. “I’m too old to play with stupid toys for little kids.”
Sara’s heart broke all over again. Wendy was throwing away her childhood. She felt hurt and angry. No one seemed to be taking her feelings—the feelings of a child—into consideration. Maybe if she stopped being a child ...
“Don’t,” Sara said softly.
She knelt down by her daughter and took a baby doll gently from her hand. She remembered the Christmas she and Steve had given that doll to Wendy. She had been five and covered in chicken pox. Sara had put red dots all over the doll so Wendy wouldn’t feel so alone, sequestered away from her cousins for the holiday, missing out on all the fun. She and her new baby had chicken pox together, and Steve had played doctor and Sara had played nurse, the two of them devoted to their child, the three of them a wonderful family.
She looked down at Wendy and touched her face, and said, “Do you know how much I love you?”
They held each other and cried for a long time, letting go the emotions both of them had been trying to bottle up for too long. When the emotions had run themselves out, Sara took her daughter by the hand and led her over to the window seat.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“You and Daddy are getting divorced,” Wendy said flatly.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” Sara said. “This isn’t what I ever wanted for us.”
Wendy leaned against her as they sat on the window seat, pressing her head against Sara’s shoulder. “I wish things could be like they used to be.”
“Me too,” Sara whispered, stroking her daughter’s hair. “I wish that too. I would give anything for that. But that isn’t going to happen, and we can’t go on the way we are. This isn’t good for any of us.”
“This is so not fair!” Wendy cried. “You and Daddy are supposed to love each other forever!”
“I know,” Sara said, guilt and sadness weighing on her. “That’s how it should be.”
“I don’t understand why Daddy can’t just be happy with us. You’re beautiful and smart, and, and I—I t-try to be g-good—”
Sara held her daughter tight. “It’s not your fault, honey. You haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t know why Daddy can’t be happy. I don’t know.”
She had asked herself that question so many times, never really finding an answer. She had blamed herself. Steve had blamed her. According to him, she was too jealous and she didn’t trust him. But he had proven she couldn’t trust him. And how could she not be jealous when her husband spent most of his time with other women —either working for the women’s center or sleeping with a lover.
How many nights had she stared at the ceiling instead of sleeping, wondering what about her was so lacking? She had even asked him outright. He hadn’t had an answer.
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” she said, not sure if she was talking to herself or to Wendy. “Daddy loves you, baby. You know he does. No matter what happens between Daddy and me, you need to know that we both love you so much.”
“Then why isn’t he here?” Wendy asked bluntly.
She was a smart girl—too smart at times. Too observant, too spot-on in her assessment of the situation. She was so much more aware and sophisticated than Sara had been at her age.
She was asleep now—or at least Sara hoped so as she sat there in the corner of the couch, waiting for Steve to come home. She figured he would at some point because his Trans Am was still parked in the driveway with his golf clubs in the trunk.
He hadn’t bothered to call. No one had bothered to call. There had been no call from the sheriff’s office.
