by Diane Darcy
Jeff smiled. "Well, if they want it now, they’ll want it after you’ve made improvements." He glanced at Sam's tuxedo. “Better watch those brownies. Or take up running like me." He patted his own lean stomach. Someone called Jeff’s name and he looked up, smiled and nodded. "Will you excuse me? Enjoy the party.” He strode off.
Sam closed his eyes and breathed deeply, willing his fists to unclench. Rewrite it? After all the time and effort he’d put into writing the book? When it was practically perfect?
Emily lightly touched his arm. "I’m sorry, Sam."
Sam looked into her eyes and saw the compassion there. Compassion he didn't want or need. Why hadn't he waited until school started to question Jeff? Now his wife thought he was a loser.
"Thanks," he said tersely. "Come on, let's get something to eat." He placed his hand on the small of her back and led her toward the buffet table.
She stopped. "Do you want to talk about it?"
He inhaled. "About what? The fact that I hate my job, my boss, my life? No, I don't." He ignored the way her face tightened and pushed against her slender back. "Come on.”
As they approached the table, a voice shouted out, "Ten more minutes!" In ten minutes the New Year started. Whoopee. Another year to slog through.
Carl and Cheryl were at the table filling plates and Sam willed his face to relax. No need to advertise the fact that his life was a disaster.
"Sam," Carl shouted against the growing noise. "What did he say?"
"I'll tell you later," Sam shouted back.
Regardless of the lateness of the hour the buffet still had plenty of food and Sam hadn't eaten anything. He piled food on his plate. Deliberately took two brownies. Screw Jeff. He made himself a turkey sandwich, grabbed a few pickles and a handful of chips. Then looked at the food and set the plate on the table with a disgusted shake of his head. He wasn't hungry. Even if he were, he shouldn't eat anything while wearing clothes three sizes too small.
What did Jeff mean, spice it up? How could he spice up a history text book? What was the big deal if it was like a lot of other books out there? That was a given. History was history and it didn't change. What did Jeff want, a corrupted version?
He lifted his head and immediately noticed Randall Barton. Talking, laughing, carefree and happy. Sam’s mouth twisted. No doubt Randall was happy. He was the boss’s Golden Boy. His work was always considered original. And he ran marathons every year. Same hobby as the boss. Tenure for him was just a matter of time.
Sam's mouth set. He needed this book published if he was to get tenure this year. Publish or perish, an academic fact of life. It had been too long since Sam had raked up any credits, and he didn’t have time to rewrite.
His eyes narrowed. Showing his manuscript to Jeff had been a courtesy, nothing more. Come January second, he’d send his book to the publisher. As is. If the board members were impressed with publication credits then he could certainly impress them without any help from Jeff.
He scanned the room, spotted Pete Saunders and remembered the resolution. To have everyone's respect and the body of an athlete. Yeah, right. Either you had respect or you didn't. And Sam didn't. Had Randall turned in the same manuscript, Jeff would have drooled all over it.
Emily placed her hand on his shoulder. "Just two minutes ‘til midnight. Have you made a New Year’s resolution?"
He turned. Her eyes were soft. Again. She always did have a thing for the underdog. For losers. A sure way to deflate her anger toward anyone was to point out what failures they were. Her expression said it all. Sam was a major loser. She'd been ice cold for weeks, and now she watched him with soft, caring eyes? He didn't want or need her pity.
He shrugged her hand off his shoulder as the crowd started the countdown. Fifty-nine! Fifty-eight! Fifty-seven!..."Yes, I made a few New Years’ resolutions. Did you?"
Anger chased across her features, as he knew it would. But even anger was better than pity. Fifty-one! Fifty! Forty-nine! Forty-eight!...The noise grew as more voices joined the chanting, the artist crowd getting even the stodgy professors and their spouses fired up and excited. He leaned down so she could talk into his ear and still she had to shout. "Yes, I've decided to take up art again!"
He moved back to gaze into her face, lifting a brow. Forty-two! Forty-one! Forty!..."I thought you'd given up that nonsense." He glanced around. "Do you want to end up like these flakes?"
The noise continued to swirl around them as her features tightened, contorted. Fury blazed in her eyes. Then slowly, very slowly, her expression changed, leaving only sadness behind. Leaving Sam unsettled. She leaned closer. "What about you? What are your New Year’s resolutions?" Twenty-nine! Twenty-eight! Twenty-seven!...
He bent his head to inform her his resolution was to get his wife to buy him a new tuxedo but was distracted by her sadness. They were in a room full of people, they were communicating by shouting and she was really looking at him. Seeing him. Acting as if his answer truly mattered to her. His stomach clenched. The least he could give was honesty. He studied her a moment longer, then leaned down. Nine! Eight! Seven!..."I want everyone to respect me and I want the body of an athlete."
Wanting to see her face, Sam started to pull back. He needed to see if she understood, if she grasped how important this actually was to him. But before he had the chance, someone slapped his back. Hard.
Sam stumbled and turned his head. Pete Saunders was there, impaling him with those piercing black eyes. Gazes locked. Sam’s brows pulled together and he tried to turn away. Couldn’t. Needed air. His heart thumped in his chest. Blood pounded in his ears, drowning out noise from the crowd. Pete’s fingers tightened, gripped his shoulder in a hold so tight Sam couldn't have broken it if he'd tried.
He sensed Emily's confusion. Tried to wrench his gaze from Pete’s. Tried to reassure her. Couldn’t move. Three! Two! One!...The crowd exploded. Horns blasted, streamers flew, confetti fluttered, and laugher erupted. But even the noise didn’t stop Sam from clearly hearing Pete's deep, rasping voice, speaking as if directly to his soul. "Happy New Year, Sam Pierson." Then, almost silence but for his heartbeat. Thump thump. Thump thump. Thump thump.
Pete smiled. A smile of such affinity, compassion, and love, that Sam’s eyes widened. His face relaxed, his mouth parted, started to turn up, to smile back, really smile, when his chest clenched in pain.
Excerpt from The Bad Mothers Club (a Bad Mothers mystery, Book #1) by Heather Horrocks
Good mothers are understanding. Bad mothers are misunderstood.
When Denver stay-at-home mom Becky Montgomery (44) caught her husband of twenty years in their bed with another woman a year ago, she never dreamed her three children would blame her for the resulting divorce. Feeling like maternal failures, she and two friends--feisty PI Sam (55) and No-One’s-Accused-Me-Of-Being-Mother Teresa (33)--form the Bad Mothers Club in order to deal with their various child-related heartaches more positively. When her soon-to-be ex-husband, Jack, is accused of murdering Becky’s first date, the Bad Mothers set out to prove his innocence, but only for the sake of her children. These Bad Mothers have faced everything from terrible twos and sleep deprivation to rebellious teens and heartbreak--they’re not about to let a mere murderer stop them from winning the Worst Mother of the Month award.
Chapter One
If I thought spending five depressing hours buying all black school clothes for my youngest daughter was the worst part of my day, I was wrong. I parked in my driveway to find Kramer sitting on my front porch.
Normally Kramer would be the bright spot in my day, and I’d be delighted that he’d once again chosen my place over Jack’s, but today I was too emotionally drained to handle the inevitable upheaval caused by his arrival. I especially didn’t want to see Jack today. Plus my living room was full of stuff that I was in the process of boxing up and giving to the thrift store. Uncluttering my life.
“Seinfeld is back!” Delighted, my daughter Gina was a black blur as she raced up to the door and scoop
ed him into her arms.
I followed, trudging slowly toward the place I used to love coming home to. A two-story brick home with flower beds lining the walk and the fence. It used to be a haven.
Unlocking the door, I stepped from Denver’s August heat wave into my cool entryway.
With a sigh, I scratched him behind the ears. “Didn’t you listen to what any of those high-powered attorneys said, Kramer? You’ve got to remember you don’t live here any more.”
“Mother, his name is Seinfeld.”
Mother? Since when had my sixteen-year-old daughter started calling me Mother? It sounded so foreign. So detached. So extremely self-righteous. And the prim tone seemed more than a little strange coming from a confused teenage girl dressed entirely in goth black.
“Dad named him Seinfeld cuz he’s so funny,” she explained as if I’d lived in a bubble for the past five years since we got the cat. A cat who valued a forty-four-year-old woman, unlike some husbands.
“But he keeps coming back through our door just like Kramer.” I went for flippant as I reached out to stroke the cat’s soft brown-and-white fur. “Complete with crazy stand-on-end hair.”
“Seinfeld,” she repeated firmly, as though that ended all argument, forever. Lowering the cat to the floor, she raised an eyebrow and continued her insistent argument. “We should call him the name Dad wants. He paid for him, fair and square.”
“Yes, he did.” I turned my head to hide my smile. Jack had made a huge concession in our not-quite-finalized divorce papers: I could have the antique sideboard I loved, the one that had belonged to his grandmother, in exchange for him keeping his cat.
The sideboard seemed to like it at my house. Unfortunately for Jack, Kramer did, too.
I shook my head. “If he’s Dad’s cat, then why does he keep coming over here all the time?”
“Because you feed him tuna.”
Note to self: Buy more tuna.
I studied the cat. “I guess I could let him starve, if you think that would be better.”
“Ha, ha, you’re so funny, Mom.” Gina rolled her eyes and threw out her next words like a gauntlet. “I’m going to call Dad and tell him to come get Seinfeld.”
***
Dear sweet Gina, who’d gone goth about the same instant her father had moved out of the house ten months earlier, who I’d spent the last five hours helping choose school clothes in her favorite colors--black, ebony, dark gray, and shadow--so her clothes would match her fingernails and lipstick. It made me sad just to look at her, especially since I knew the depth of emotional confusion she was attempting to conceal under her absence-of-all-colors shield.
Gently, I left her verbal gauntlet on the floor, and offered an alternative, trying to mollify her by using her father’s preferred name for Kramer. “Why don’t we drop Seinfeld off at your father’s condo on our way to register for school tomorrow morning?”
That solution would be perfect, because at ten in the morning neither Jack nor Jill would be home.
I know, I know. Jack and Jill. The names alone are almost too cute for words. Together, they make me gag, with or without their names. Sometimes I just call them Jerk and Jill. Never in front of my children, of course; just to my best friend, Teresa Curtis. And with a story involving Jack and Jill, which part do I play, exactly? Mother Freaking Goose?
“No, Mom.” Gina shook her head. “I want to see Dad tonight.”
Starting to shake my head, I looked into her eyes and tried hard not to let her obvious hurt sway me.
She picked up the phone. “Do you have a problem with me calling him?”
“Now?”
Was she kidding? The last thing I wanted was my soon-to-be-ex dropping by while the house and my hair were such a mess.
The closer the divorce had come to being final--and we were at about three weeks and counting now--the more I regretted the loss of the marriage. Not Jack as he’d become so much as Jack as he used to be. I missed my intact family, the memories, the good times, the hopes and dreams.
I wished we could at least stay together until the kids were grown. I’d like to go back to when my family sat around my kitchen table for dinner, when my children weren’t upset with me for how things turned out, before my youngest daughter had decided black was a lifestyle.
And the more I dealt with both the impending freight train of a divorce and my still confused feelings about getting left at the last station, the more I found myself uncluttering my house, racing through rooms like a mad woman intent on tossing memories. The ties that bind no longer bound me, but remnants remained in every room, and I was determined to eradicate them.Unfortunately, some of those released-but-not-yet-tossed memories lay piled around the living room, the same room Jack would see in fifteen minutes or so, the amount of time it would take him to drive from the fancy condo he shared with his mistress to the house he used to share with me.
Could I toss everything back in the guest room in fifteen minutes? I didn’t want to. I had spent hours going through this stuff, and now it would likely get all jumbled up again. One step forward, two steps back.
I wanted desperately to tell Gina not to call. But at the need I saw in her eyes, I tamped down my resentment at her father and his betrayal. If my daughter’s happiness depended on seeing her father tonight, who was I to dim the expectant light in her eyes?
I suppressed a sigh and forced a smile. “No problem, honey. Go ahead and call him.”
***
I could hear the murmur of Gina’s voice, muffled as it seeped its way from the kitchen, as she spoke with her father. I looked at the mess, and began once again to run around like a mad woman, plucking up the clothes destined for the thrift store from the coffee table and the two bags of bagged paper trash against the wall that needed to go out to the curb.
I raced everything back to the spare bedroom, which had become my biggest clutter pit--it was the next room I’d work on, honest!--over the past year. A year when, yes, I’d admit it, I’d been lonely and somewhat depressed over losing the man I’d loved and been married to for twenty-three years. That was enough time to give birth to three children and, coincidentally, was also the same amount of time needed for my body to sag. The upside was I’d gained a great place to stash a pencil. What great perks (as it were) to growing older.
Gina walked into the living room, slipping her cell phone into her pocket. “When Dad comes to get Seinfeld, talk to him, Mom, okay?”
I straightened up, wary. “What about?”
“Tell him you’re sorry and you want us to be a family again.”
“Oh, baby.” I exhaled deeply. “It doesn’t matter how much we want things to be different, it’s over between your father and me.”
Gina’s lips thinned the way they did when she got upset. “Why can’t you even try to be nice? Why do you have to be so mean? You’ve ruined everything.”
Stunned at her words, I said, “Your father did something I just can’t get over. It was a huge shock. He made a choice that changed everything.”
Catching your husband in bed -- your bed -- with another woman tends to sour a marriage relationship.
“And what if I do something you don’t like, Mom?” Her voice was angry, but at the same time her chin quivered with emotion. “Will you throw me away, too?”
“Of course not.” I eyed the feather duster, but I couldn’t continue cleaning while Gina was so upset, even if the minutes until Jack arrived were ticking away. I put my hand on her arm to comfort her.
She pulled away from my touch. “Emily’s family stayed together after her father had an affair.”
“That’s because Emily’s father didn’t leave her mother for a much younger woman.”
Gina shouted, “No, that’s because her mother didn’t kick the crap out of her dad.”
“He was in bed with another woman!” I happen to hate confrontation, but there have been times in my life when I have become extraordinarily angry and done things I regretted for a long, long time. T
he day I found Jack and Jill having sex in my bed was one of those times.
Fortunately for me, Jack’s guilty conscience — what else could it have been? — had kept him from filing charges against me, even though the hunky police officer who’d responded to Jill’s 911 call had advised him to do so. I’ll admit I went a little nutso that day. But don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same. You might have stopped before you broke your own hand in beating up your husband, though.
Unfortunately, all three of my children now blamed me for the resulting divorce, even though my husband had had the affair. My son Greg is the most sympathetic to me, though I know he’s still upset. My oldest daughter Laura has been cool to me this past year.
Gina had harbored the most anger. “So are you going to try to get him back or not?”
“Gina, honey, he doesn’t want me back.”
“He would if you’d just be nice.”
“It’s not that simple.” How could I possibly word this — for the ten-thousandth time — so that she understood?
“So you won’t try and win him back from Jill?”
“I’ll be nice to hm, but I’m afraid it won’t be enough. You don’t understand. He’s moved on.”
“I do understand. You just don’t care what I want.” She picked up Kramer and stormed to the hall, then turned back to face me. “You’re the worst mother ever.”
Ouch. That hurt.
Before I could respond, Gina yelled, “If you’re not going to get back together with Dad, then I want to go live with him this year for school.”
With school only a few weeks away, I panicked. I didn’t want to lose my youngest daughter, who was already struggling to find herself in a sea of goth black clothes and attitude. I couldn’t toss her into Jack and Jill’s den of iniquity.