It Happened on Maple Street

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  And then he remembered about the bastard who’d slept with his woman. Correction, his ex-woman.

  “I’m forty-three, Tim. If I don’t try to have a baby in the next year or so I’ll have lost any chance . . .”

  He’d wanted children. He’d told her so. She wouldn’t consider bringing a child into the world without marriage.

  “This guy, what’s-his-name-salesperson slime, he’s going to marry you and give you children?”

  “Yes.”

  Tim stood up again, blood boiling. “He’s a medical supply salesperson for Christ’s sake, Denise. He makes enough money to support you?”

  “No. I’ll have to work. But I don’t care. Money was never important to me. You know that. I loved you with everything I had, but it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. Now I am.”

  It was like there was an echo in the room. Emily’s voice come back to haunt him. You saved me from living my life as second best. Or some such thing.

  What was it with women? What did they want? To crawl inside of his skin and take root? Did they want his every thought? He gave Denise his home. His money. His love. And that wasn’t enough?

  “I think you should go,” he said quietly. Calmly.

  She dropped some keys on the table. Her key to his truck. To the RV. And her house keys. She’d been holding them in her clenched hand all that time.

  Without a word Tim pulled his keys out of the pocket of the work jacket he’d yet to shed, disengaged her car key, and handed it to her.

  He brushed her palm with his finger as she took it, and took pleasure in the way she pulled back, in the stark look in her eyes. He still had his touch. His ability to get to her. Maybe he was a bastard to let her know that, to let her see that he knew it, but he didn’t really give a rat’s ass one way or another at the moment.

  Her steps sounded loudly against the wood floor as she walked to the door. It opened. Quietly swished shut behind her. The click as it latched was like a gunshot in the room.

  She hit her mark.

  Only thing was, she’d missed his heart.

  And that’s when Tim understood what she’d been trying to tell him all along.

  Seventeen

  AN OLD HIGH-SCHOOL AND CHURCH FRIEND CAUGHT ME at a low moment during December of 2006. Chris and I, both consumed by our careers, hardly spoke anymore. I provided dinner. He ate. And we kissed each other on the cheek when we left the house in the morning.

  I owed Chris. He’d been a good provider, just as he’d said he’d be. He’d understood when I could no longer tolerate his touch—any touch—sexually speaking. He didn’t know about James. He just thought I was frigid. But he’d stood by me, hadn’t asked for a divorce.

  Still, I was lonely. All I’d ever wanted, besides publishing with Harlequin, was to love and be loved.

  I wasn’t sure Chris and I loved each other at all anymore.

  When I got the e-mail from Lois Schneider, my old church friend, asking me to attend my thirty-year high-school reunion, I actually thought about doing so. Maybe it wasn’t too late to form friendships. Maybe I could bond with the kids I’d hardly known.

  But when I realized I couldn’t remember five names from my graduating class, I came to my senses. Attending my high-school reunion would be a futile effort that would only reinforce my sense of isolation.

  Still, Lois persisted. I’d made something of myself. People would be interested. At least, she urged, sign up for Classmates.com so people from the class could see that I was there.

  Tara Taylor Quinn (I’d had my name legally changed to my pen name after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001) didn’t put personal information anywhere. It wasn’t safe. I’d had too many letters from lonely guys in prison to feel safe being exposed.

  My phone was unlisted. My address was a P.O. Box.

  And James was still out there, someplace. I didn’t want him to find me. Ever.

  But Tara Taylor Quinn also protected me. No one knew that Tara Gumser wrote books. I could sign up with Classmates.com under my maiden name and be as anonymous as ever.

  Lois had been a loyal friend to me all of our adult years. We weren’t close. Weren’t in touch all that often—particularly living a country apart. But she was the only person from my high-school days, my church youth-group days, who even acknowledged that I existed. She wrote to me every time I had a book out—telling me what she thought of it. Not always complimentary, but always honest.

  I’d always liked her. She was one of the few kids back in the late seventies who’d had the courage to walk by the convictions of her own beliefs. A kindred soul, I’d always thought. Only back then, Lois had had the courage to walk boldly while I’d hidden behind the covers of my Harlequin romances.

  I signed up for Classmates.com.

  And that very same day was served divorce papers. I didn’t blame Chris. Our lives were empty. But still . . . in December? Without talking to me first?

  Maybe there was something we could do. We were family. That stood for a lot.

  And yet, what was there that we hadn’t already tried? Except the counseling that he’d opted not to participate in?

  “Can’t we at least talk about this?” I asked him that night when he got home from work. I handed him the Cognac I’d poured for him when I’d heard the garage door go up, signaling his arrival. I had the papers I’d been served in my left hand.

  He sipped, and looked at me over the rim of his glass.

  “You know as well as I do that this is no way to live.”

  “But . . .”

  “Look, it’s going to be painless for both of us,” he said. “We agree to a sixty/forty split—I’m giving you the sixty in lieu of spousal support— you sign the papers you were served today, and in thirty days it’s done.”

  “What about the house?”

  “I’m buying you out of it. It’s all in the papers.” He spoke as though I were a child, assuming I hadn’t read the papers.

  He was right, of course. I’d been too shocked. Too hurt. And I’d had pages to write. I was on deadline. I had the second book of a suspense trilogy I was doing for MIRA books due in February, and two weeks later, also in February, I had a book due to Harlequin Superromance— the launch book for a five-author continuity series.

  Chris knew about both projects. Or he should have. I’d been talking about little else for weeks. His timing couldn’t have been worse.

  That night, with the door to my bedroom suite shut tight, I drew a bubble bath in my garden tub, poured a glass of wine from the carafe I’d carried up with me, lit a candle, turned on some soft classical music, laid back in the hot water, and cried.

  The next day, I called a lawyer friend. She advised me not to sign the papers until she’d had a chance to go over them. I’d read them. They were more than fair.

  Still, was this the right decision? I’d married “for better or worse, in sickness and health, ’til death do you part.”

  Chris couldn’t do anything more without my signature. Unless he wanted to sue me for divorce.

  I needed time to think.

  Was there more I could do to make Chris happier? What would a divorce do to my mother? And what family would Chris have without mine? His parents were both gone. His siblings, two sisters and a brother, called about once a year. Maybe.

  Was this the only way? Had we really passed the point of no return?

  I had my answer on January 21, 2007, when I came home to find a woman in bed with Chris. It was Sunday afternoon. I’d said I was going to be out with an unpublished writer I was mentoring. She’d had a family crisis and couldn’t make our meeting.

  I’d come home to work. And was intending to let Chris know I was there.

  “What the hell are you doing, you stupid bitch?” Chris jumped up when I opened his bedroom door to see his naked butt moving on top of a female body.

  Standing there naked, with a hard-on protruding out in front of him, he didn’t even attempt decency as he came toward me. “
Get out,” he growled out the words, shoving me, as he slammed the door in my face.

  I stumbled across the upstairs foyer to my suite and started packing.

  All of the clothes from my dresser were in the two suitcases I’d had in my walk-in closet by the time I heard Chris’s door open twenty minutes later. A minute after that the front door closed, and then a car started up down at the street. Must have been the Mustang I’d passed as I’d pulled in our driveway. It had been parked on the side of the road in front of our house, and I’d surmised that it belonged to someone visiting next door.

  “What the hell do you think you were doing barging in like that?”

  I swung around, my heart pounding as the door to my bedroom flew open and slammed so hard that the knob left an indentation in the drywall behind it.

  “I . . .”

  “You stupid bitch . . .” Chris was wearing jeans and nothing else.

  He’d called me that only once before. Half an hour earlier.

  I was not a stupid bitch.

  “You stayed there and finished,” I said, though I had no idea why. It’s not like I cared anymore. It’s not like I really thought Chris had been celibate for ten years. But he’d been discreet. He’d never brought his sexual exploits to our home. Because he respected me.

  Or so I’d thought.

  “Of course I finished,” his voice raised a couple of octaves as he approached me. I backed up a step. “Jenny drove all the way over here from Santa Fe. And we were right in the middle of things.”

  Right, and God knew, Chris wouldn’t stop once he’d started. He just hurried up and finished. Or rather, I knew. A long-ago memory surfaced. And then faded.

  “Did you pay her?”

  “That’s none of your goddamned business.”

  His pupils were pinpoints of anger. And I was the one who’d walked in on my spouse, in our home, while he was having sex with someone else. The dichotomy struck a note someplace that preserved me.

  “You are the most selfish, insensitive woman I have ever met.” He took another step forward. “What in the hell is the matter with you?”

  I didn’t know. But I agreed with him. Something was definitely wrong with me. I drove men to hate me.

  “Why are you trying so hard to hurt me?” He screamed. “Just because you’re an unhappy person, you have to drag me down with you? You have to make me miserable, too? You can’t even let me have an hour’s worth of pleasure?”

  He advanced another step. I backed up again.

  And met the wall.

  “I’m done with you, do you hear me?” He was yelling so loudly I was afraid the neighbors across the street would hear. “I don’t even want to be friends with you. I don’t ever want to have to see your face or hear your voice again, do you understand? You make me sick.” I nodded, hoping my acquiescence would calm him.

  I knew for certain that if I spoke, it would just incite him further.

  “I never thought it was possible to hate a person. But I hate you. Do you get that?” His chest jutting forward, he came right up to me, his fists clenched and down at his sides.

  I nodded again.

  “You’re nothing, Tara. Nothing. You’ll never be anything. I pity any man who ever comes into your life. You don’t know how to be a woman. You don’t know how to love. You’re worthless. You couldn’t even do a simple thing like get pregnant. I can’t believe I wasted twenty-two years of my life with you.”

  He was up against me. Holding me to the wall. I raised my hands up, ready to cover my face, only then noticing the little angel figurine I held. One from the collection on my nightstand.

  Chris had never hit me. I didn’t really think he would now. But I was scared.

  He grabbed the angel, cutting my finger with the force of his yank. I heard the helpless little figure shatter against the wall to my right. I didn’t look at it. I couldn’t.

  Chris did, though. And the sight did something to him. Still clearly angry, he stepped back, turned, and strode from the room, closing the door softly behind him.

  I sank to a shaking puddle on the floor, sobbing. Wondering how my life had become such a confusing mess when all I’d ever wanted was to love and be loved. And be a good person.

  My tears finally subsided. All I felt was an exhausted numbness. I started to move mechanically. I had my alter ego, Tara Taylor Quinn, now. As I stood there in my bedroom, facing the rest of my life, she was there, taking over where Tara Gumser could not. She put one foot in front of the other. She opened drawers and made choices.

  I finished packing what I could gather up that night. With Chris sitting in his chair in front of a football game, I carried everything out to my car, one step at a time, drove to a hotel out by the highway, and checked into a room.

  I had no plan. No sense of what I was going to do, other than to take a couple of aspirin and go to sleep.

  I’d left my signed divorce papers in the middle of Chris’s unmade bed.

  Tim hated Sunday nights. They were too quiet, especially now that he was the only person in the house. That third Sunday in January of 2007 was one of the worst. He’d run into an old friend at the department store in town that afternoon—and heard that Denise was having a son.

  It was frigid outside. He was restless and lonely and avoiding regrets. Why he went to the attic, he had no idea, or at least he wasn’t owning up to it. He knew the box he wanted. It was rectangular. Tin. Locked. And had multiple BB holes through it.

  Opening the box he saw two things that put a smile on his face: the pink yarn Tara had left on his class ring, and the glass-horse earrings that she’d left in his bedroom on Maple Street almost thirty years before. He wondered what she was doing. Where she was living. Hell, she could still be in Huber Heights, less than an hour away.

  He had time. A computer. And in the past few years the Internet had made it possible to find just about anyone.

  After a couple of hours of an exhausting searching that led absolutely nowhere, he thought of Classmates.com. He knew Tara had gone to Wayne High School. And that she’d graduated in 1977. He typed in her maiden name, expecting another dead-end.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said out loud. He couldn’t believe it. Tara Gumser. The name was right there. She’d registered with Classmates.com. Which meant that she was out there somewhere. Or that she had been somewhat recently.

  He could even send her a message.

  If he registered with Classmates.com. So he would. A little thing like filling in a few blanks wasn’t going to slow him down. He was on a mission now.

  He’d hurt two women because he hadn’t been able to let go of Tara enough to love another fully. And he’d never told Tara how he felt about her. He had to rectify that.

  He registered. He was in. And he started typing.

  January 21, 2007

  Wow! I can’t believe I actually found you . . .

  On Sunday night I slept like a baby. I had no idea where my life was going, but I’d reached a place of total honesty that brought a measure of peace. Of total acceptance. And when I woke up Monday morning, I lay in the bed, completely alone, and realized something: I was who I was. And, overall, I liked me. I knew my heart, my intentions. I knew that I really cared about other people and wanted to make a positive difference in the world. I knew that I gave my all. I tried my best—always. I meant well. Deep inside, away from the things I’d done and the things that had happened to me, I was still the young woman who’d driven to Wright State University in the fall of 1977 with conviction in her heart.

  I was a good person. I really believed that.

  It didn’t matter anymore if anyone else did.

  At least, it didn’t matter then.

  I realized, as I lay in the bed that next morning, staring at the generic painting of a colorful garden on the wall across from the bed, that I’d been moving toward this point for a long time. And in the end, it had only taken hours to get here.

  Chris hadn’t been happy with me. But I h
adn’t been happy with him, either.

  My happiness mattered.

  I waited for the guilt to descend, to spread over me, consume me. You’re the most selfish individual I’ve ever known. Chris’s words played in my brain.

  I don’t know whether it was the hotel, or if I’d really come through a thirty-year storm into the sunlight, but I seemed to have landed in a guilt-free zone.

  You’re an incredible, giving, caring woman, Tara. Your readers relate to you because you get life. You get what matters. You’re loyal and honest. And a great friend.

  Words from one of my writer friends came to visit me as I lay there. And I knew she’d be proud of me if she could see me right then.

  I thought about calling her. But knew now wasn’t the time. I wasn’t calling my mother, either. This moment was for me. I had to get through it on my own.

  I wasn’t quite as needy and helpless as I’d believed for so long. With TTQ’s help I’d somehow become the strong, capable woman who’d first walked into geology class. One who’d had experience that had brought understanding. And, I hoped, compassion.

  And if I wasn’t, I could be. I would be.

  Chris might be right. Maybe I was just selfish beyond belief. James had said I do things to men. I bring out the worst in them. Maybe they were both right.

  And maybe not.

  Maybe I had something to offer the world that neither one of them saw. I used to believe that I had plenty to offer. I used to be excited about the idea of contributing to the betterment of the world.

  I was up, showered, and back in my car by seven. I had work to do. A book to finish. But as I drove, I thought about the past ten years of living virtually on my own. Emotionally isolated.

  And I thought about what I knew about myself. My bottom-line goal. I wanted to love and be loved.

  That hadn’t changed. But I added a caveat that morning. I’d rather live alone than live with someone who didn’t love me. To live with someone I couldn’t love with all of my heart.

  Like I’d loved Tim.

  Slowing, I pulled into an alcove on the side of the mountain community where Chris and I had settled on the outskirts of Albuquerque.