Mrs. February

by Karen Cimms

  I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. I stared at the house for a moment, then looked at the officer.

  “Because I want to make sure that they’re home and safe. That’s all.”

  “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you left them.”

  “Look.” This joker was pissing me off. My first, most likely irrational, thought was that he must have a thing for Rain. It wouldn’t be the first time. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

  “You being parked on a public street in front of a house where you no longer live is very much my business. So move it along. The next time I find you parked outside like this, I just may run you in for vagrancy and harassment.”

  He had to be shitting me. “Vagrancy?”

  “Do you have a physical address?” There was a warning note in his voice.

  “Not technically.”

  “Then don’t be foolish, Mr. Holgate. I’m going to make note of this conversation at the station so that the rest of the department is aware of the situation.”

  Swell. An entire department knowing that my hot soon-to-be ex-wife was alone and available. Yep, that was going to help me sleep a whole lot better.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Late March

  Over the past three months, I found that if I worked hard and kept my mind and my body occupied, I could fall into bed at the end of the day exhausted, without giving Chase a second thought.

  All right. That was a lie. I thought about him constantly, no matter what I was doing. He was always there in the back of my mind, sometimes front and center. There wasn’t a night I didn’t fall asleep thinking about him or wake up not missing him. There was nothing left that smelled of him, and I found myself sniffing the kids’ laundry when they returned from a visit, hoping to capture something to hold on to, even if just for a little while.

  “Does he ever ask about me?” I asked Izzy one Sunday night after he dropped them off. “I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable or break any confidences you two might have. I’d just like to know.”

  Her eyes grew wide and sad, and I already knew the answer.

  “No.” She dragged the word out as long as possible. “But Zac talks about you a lot, and he listens. He doesn’t just shine him on, you know? Not make-believe listening—he really listens. I know that’s not what you asked, but it’s something, isn’t it?”

  Yeah. It was something. I nodded. Chase was a man who loved his son and wouldn’t hurt his feelings.

  Although he’d told me not to call or email him, I emailed him a couple more times. I apologized, begged, and swore to the heavens and back that I loved him more than I’d ever loved anyone and still did. He never responded. There wasn’t anything left to say. If he wasn’t even opening my email, what was the point? The most I saw of him was a silhouette inside his truck when he dropped the kids off or picked them up. A few times I tried standing in the doorway, but he never once looked my direction. Each time broke my heart all over again. There were so many days I was tempted to go down to the Sunoco station and demand that he talk to me, but I couldn’t humiliate myself like that. My best shot might be when they started working on the race car in a couple of weeks.

  I had become a pathetic shadow of myself, but I wasn’t giving up. My heart was his. There was no getting around it.

  On a Sunday evening in early March, Zac and Izzy burst through the front door.

  “Mom!” Zac yelled.

  “I’m right here,” I answered, coming in from the kitchen just in time to catch the tail end of Chase’s truck heading up the street. “Did you have a good time?” I made sure I was smiling when I asked.

  “Yeah! Guess what?”

  “What?”

  “Dad said he might take us to the race track this summer.”

  “We’ll see. Maybe if Aunt Diane is going, I guess it will be okay.”

  He wrinkled his little brow at me. Then a second later, he was asking me to “guess what” again.

  “What?”

  “Dad says he’s going to drive the race car this year.”

  “Maybe,” Izzy corrected him. “He said maybe.”

  Zac found this to be exciting news. I felt as if I’d been kicked.

  “And guess what?”

  “What?”

  “Some other team offered Dennis a spot, and Uncle Wally asked Dad if he’d drive again.”

  “That’s impossible.” All I could think about was the story Chase had told me about when he had crashed into a wall. He’d walked away with some minor cuts and bruises, but he said he wouldn’t drive again and was content to work in the pit.

  “Wouldn’t that be cool, Mom?” Zac ran down the hall to check on the goldfish Chase had bought him two weeks earlier. “Maybe he’ll let you come watch him race.” He finished with a loud vroom.

  I looked at Izzy. “Exactly what did he say?”

  “Just that he was thinking about it. He’s the only one on the crew who’s done it before, and he said it might want to try it again.”

  My heart was pounding. Riding that motorcycle was bad enough, but driving around in circles at a hundred and fifty miles an hour? That was a different story.

  It was time to pay Chase Holgate a visit, whether he liked it or not.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I was replacing the universals on a 1999 Ford F-150 when Dylan hollered.

  “You can’t go back there!”

  “Fuck off, Dylan.”

  I hadn’t heard from Rain in over a month. I knew if I told the kids I was thinking about driving the race car, they’d go right back and tell her, especially Zac, but I expected she’d either call or email me again. When I didn’t hear from her last night, I figured she didn’t care or Zac had forgotten to tell her. Judging by the sound of her voice, she cared.

  “I mean it, Rain.”

  At the clack of heels, I turned my head to see a pair of leopard-print stilettos and two beautiful ankles, one of which bore two intertwined hearts inked on the top of her foot. I’m glad I was giving her money to go out and get new tattoos. Especially sexy as fuck tattoos.

  “Stop!” Dylan yelled. “My insurance doesn’t cover you being back here.”

  “Bite me,” she snarled.

  “I’ll bite you,” Scott offered.

  Her foot tapped furiously. “Chase Holgate. You come out from under there this instant.”

  “I’m busy,” I said. “I can’t talk to you right now. It’ll have to wait.”

  “The hell it will.”

  There was a sharp pain above my knee, and I lurched, nailing my head into the pickup’s drive shaft. She’d driven the pointy toe of her shoe right into my thigh.

  “Damn it.”

  Then before I could stop her, she bent down and grabbed the loose fabric of my work pants and yanked me and the creeper out from under the truck.

  I blinked up at her. It was as if not one day had passed, let alone four months. Other than being noticeably thinner, she was every bit as beautiful. I had to swallow to keep from speaking, afraid of what might have shot out of my mouth at that moment.

  “Rain.” Dylan issued another warning, but she ignored him.

  I sat up, bent my knees in front of me, and leaned back against the door of the pickup, trying to let her think she was wasting my time. All the while, my heart beat a rapid tempo against my rib cage.

  “If you think you’re driving that race car, you’ve got another think coming. You want to be rid of me? Fine. But you are and forever will be a father, and you are not risking your life and destroying your children’s because you’ve suddenly developed a death wish.”

  The station was silent other than the chime of the gas pumps outside. Everyone was transfixed, watching me get chewed out. As if suddenly realizing that herself, she squatted before me and lowered her voice.

  “I got a call from another photographer last week. They’re offering me five thousand for the cover and centerfold.” She leaned so close I could taste the
mint on her breath. “If you get behind that wheel, I’m taking it, and any other jobs that come my way. I’ll pose upside down, spread-eagled, and leather-chokered and cuffed to Jared Leto’s wrist. It’s nothing but dollars to me.”

  I dropped my eyes to break her gaze, and they fell to her breasts, which were heaving as if she were running out of air. I took a breath, then forced my eyes back up to meet the fire in her own ice-blue ones.

  She stood, staring down at me. “If you want to race, it’ll be over my naked body.” Then she opened her purse and tugged out a thick manila envelope, which she dropped into my lap.

  “Congratulations, Chase. You are now a free man.”

  Turning in a swirl of skirt and legs, she stormed out of the garage.

  “Hey, Rain,” Scott called after her. “How about letting me race over that naked body of yours?”

  The edges of my vision went black. Dylan warned him, and I was about to do the same, when Rain marched back, grabbed Scott by the collar, and kissed him hard on the mouth. When she let go, she glared at me again.

  And then she was gone. I didn’t move until I no longer heard the clack of her heels against the pavement.

  As my vision cleared, I caught Scott strutting across the bay. The half-inch drive ratchet left my hands before I even realized what I was doing. It skittered across the floor into Scott’s bony ankle. I was up off the creeper in seconds and had him backed up against the workbench before Dylan grabbed me from behind, lifting my arms away from Scott’s throat.

  “Knock it off!” he yelled. “What the hell’s gotten into you? It’s over, Chase. She signed the divorce papers. Just let her go.”

  Scott was still howling about his ankle. Dylan told him to go home and ice it, probably because he’d thought I’d be less likely to kill him if he wasn’t here. Then he sent me into the office to cool off.

  Only I didn’t want to cool off. I wanted to hurt somebody.

  Chapter Thirty

  After leaving the Sunoco station, I’d been so upset, I jumped into my car and began driving. The thought of going home and walking through the door, knowing Chase would never live there again was unbearable. It didn’t feel real. It felt as if there had been some horrific mistake and someone would show up any second wearing thick, nerdy classes and a lab coat, carrying a clipboard, and explaining that there had been an error and it needed to be corrected. Someone else was supposed to be ending their marriage. Not us.

  I’d been driving for more than an hour when I found myself turning up Diane’s long rutted driveway. I pulled alongside her car and navigated over the gravel drive, careful not to twist my ankle, and climbed up onto the wide wooden porch and rang the bell.

  “Hey, honey. Wha—”

  “I’m divorced.”

  She pushed the screen door open and stepped outside, a look of shock on her face.

  “What?”

  The door banged closed behind her. I dropped onto a wooden porch rocker, buried my head in my hands, and groaned. “I signed the divorce papers.”

  A rooster crowed from behind the barn, and somewhere down the road a lawnmower cranked to life. The floorboard creaked as Diane sat in the rocker beside me.

  “Why? Did you change your mind?”

  “No.” My voice was barely a squeak.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Neither did I. The best I could come up with was that I’d acted in haste and anger.

  “Zac came home the other night and told me that Dennis was leaving to race with someone else, and that Chase would start racing again. I just lost it.” I twisted my rings around my finger, feeling like an imposter. “I was so freaked out about him driving that damn race car. So I threatened him.”

  She gasped quietly. “What do you mean ‘threatened’?”

  “It was stupid. I told him if he raced, then I would pose naked.”

  “Rain!”

  “I know.” I cocked my head so I could see her. “Then I gave him what he wanted. His freedom.”

  “Wally hasn’t said anything about Dennis racing with somebody else. I’m sure he would’ve told me.”

  “What am I going to do?” I wailed.

  “Do you want to be divorced?”

  “No! Not at all. I was still hoping to figure out some way to get him back.” I started to cry. “Now I’ve blown it.”

  “Not necessarily.” She reached across the arms of the mint-green rockers and grabbed my hand. “You yourself said he’d come to his senses. That could still happen.”

  “Why? Because my signing the divorce papers was a vote of confidence for us to move forward?”

  “I don’t know.” She sighed. “What a mess. What are you going to do?”

  I stared out over the lawn. The grass was beginning to turn green. Bright yellow daffodils and dark red tulips bobbed their heavy heads from where they were planted around the huge old oak in the front yard. The heady scent of hyacinths filled the air. Spring had returned and with her, the world was waking up, coming back to life.

  How ironic that inside I was shriveled and brown, certain that even the slightest breeze, the tiniest jostle, would cause me to crumble and scatter into a million directions.

  “Rain? I asked what you’re going to do?”

  Two robins swooped from the oak tree, down into the yard and up again. Swiftly, gracefully, the one chasing the other.

  “Do?” I asked, my eyes focused on the birds in their ages-old mating dance. “I have no idea.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I jumped into my truck and drove straight to the liquor store and picked up a case of Heineken and two bottles of Jack Daniels. Then I went back to my almost empty three-bedroom apartment, locked the door, cranked up the Bose, and took the phone off the hook.

  I was lonely and miserable. I missed my family. My life. My wife.

  No. Not my wife. Not anymore.

  I stalked the length of the living room. White walls, nondescript carpet, a sofa, a table, a television. Cold. Empty. Just like me.

  I tore open a cupboard in the kitchen. Three glasses. Three plates. I was pitiful. I snatched a glass off the shelf and started with the Jack. Three fingers, neat. I picked the manila envelope up off the coffee table and slid the papers out. Maybe she hadn’t signed them. Maybe she’d just been trying to get to me. I turned to the last page: “Rain Holgate,” in big loopy letters. Only this time, there was no heart over the i . No, this time she was serious.

  It was serious business when the jackass you were married to demanded a divorce.

  The laptop was still on the table where I’d left it last night. I’d waited past midnight for an email from her, but nothing. This time, I’d planned to answer her. Maybe start a dialogue. See where we stood. My life was changing, and not in a good way. Not in the way I wanted it to change. I wasn’t in control anymore, yet hadn’t I been the one who’d set all this into motion?

  Why the hell didn’t I just demand we go to a marriage counselor?

  Because she was cheating, that’s why. Because I was second best, that’s why. Because she’d never wanted to marry me in the first place, that’s why.

  I finished half the bottle of Jack, then got up and searched for something to eat. While the leftover spaghetti heated in the microwave, I turned my cell phone back on and sent Dylan a text: Not sure when I’ll be back. Give me a couple days. Then I turned it off again. He was going to be pissed, but I didn’t care. My work ethic, like everything else about me, had landed in the toilet.

  I grabbed a beer to drink with my dinner, then another when I’d finished that one. Sometime after that, I went back to the JD until I finally passed out.

  The next two days were pretty foggy. I’d wake, drink, and then struggle to remember what I’d done. At one point I almost started opening Rain’s emails, but I had enough sense to stop myself. Hearing what she had to say might have sent me up onto the roof. My complete lack of self-control culminated in the early morning hours of the second day in the form of a two-wor
d email: I’m sorry.

  Her answer was in my inbox waiting for me when I ran out of alcohol a day later and woke with a record-breaking hangover.

  So am I.

  That was that, then. The great love of my life was over. I’d pushed her away and kept her away to protect my heart, but I’d failed. She haunted my dreams as well as my waking moments. Everything reminded me of Rain. At least a hundred times a day, I found myself wanting to tell her something. My hands sought her in my sleep. I saw her face everywhere I looked. She was under my skin, and if I didn’t find a way to get her out, I wouldn’t survive.

  My pants lay in a heap on the floor near the couch. I picked them up and dug out my wallet. Inside was a picture of Rain, Izzy, and Zac—one of my favorites. The same picture hung in our living room—Rain’s living room now—but I’d had a wallet-sized copy made so I could keep it with me always.

  I ran my fingers over her face. My eyes burned, and the pain in my head coiled into a tight knot. If there had been a drop of alcohol left in the house, I would have used it to try to dull the pain.

  It was time to move on. If I couldn’t, I would be in serious trouble. I couldn’t spend any more time thinking about what should have been. She’d made her choice a long time ago, and clearly, it wasn’t me.

  I dragged myself off the couch and poured a bowl of cereal, then forced myself to eat it. I turned on my phone. There was an irate response from Dylan, as well as several voicemails. I deleted them all.

  There was a message from Izzy from Friday, asking where I was. It was already Saturday. I called her right away and apologized. Lying made me feel worse, but I told her I’d been sick and then arranged to come get them the next weekend instead, plus dinner Monday night.

  Then I took a shower, and when my head no longer felt like it was filled with cotton batting, I picked up my cell phone and my wallet. This time, I pulled out a slip of paper with a number scrawled across it and dialed. There was only one way to move forward, and it wasn’t by drinking myself to death.

  It rang twice, and when a voice picked up on the other end, I cleared my throat.