He looks into my eyes as if searching for something, but I do not have the first idea what he wants. I hear his words clearly enough. I just cannot absorb their meaning. My tense shoulders slump when he suddenly sighs again, because this one sounds scarily resigned.
"I'm going upstairs to get some things,” he says flatly. “Then I am going back to the Inn. But tomorrow I'm gonna start looking for a more permanent place to live."
For a long time after Joe departs with two fully packed suitcases and a box, I wander the house. By the time I end up in the master bedroom dusk has cast shadows across the floor. Minutes tick away as I stand in the middle of the room staring vacantly at the wall I had personally given a faux antique leather finish.
Then I shake myself free of the funk that has me in its grip, cross the room to the closet, and pull out the compound bow I bought to surprise Joe that night.
The night he first walked out.
I look at it gripped in my white-knuckled fist while a host of suppressed emotions clamor inside me. The red bow, faintly dusty but still festive, taunts me. Oh, God. My inclination is to rip and to rend and to shred the damn thing until it is nothing but a smear of red threads on the carpet.
Of course I do not. Mature women do not throw tantrums like spoiled children. I gently untie the ribbon and set it aside. Holding the compound bow by its smooth fiberglass grip, I raise it into the approved shooting stance.
Joe will be back. He has to be. I only learned to handle a bow in the first place because he has a passion for hunting with them. He will not forsake me now. Not after everything I have gone through for him.
I nock an arrow and struggle to pull the bow string back. The draw weight is geared for Joe's strength, of course, and I cannot get it to move more than obstinate fractions of an inch at a time. Stubbornly, I renew my efforts. Arms quivering, I am about to give up when I suddenly muscle it to a place where the cables kick in, making it draw back more easily. From there I pull the bow string back in a steady, smooth motion. I twist to take mock aim first at my reflection in the mirrored closet door, then at the framed wedding photo of me and Joe that sits on his highboy.
I have actually become uncommonly proficient on the compound bow. Wouldn't mama have been amazed? Too bad the old biddy up and died before I could prove to her I am good at something. As for Joe…well. Did he appreciate his wife's proficiency, even a little? Perhaps at one time. But he sure as hell does not seem to any more.
Well, never mind. He will be back. It is not as if he thinks I am stupid or anything. He is simply going through a midlife crisis, that is all this is. One hears all the time about men suddenly doing crazy stuff to prove to the world they are not getting old. I just have to be patient. I have to keep my mind occupied until he comes to his senses.
He will be back.
Stupid, unnatural girl. You just keep telling yourself stories. You never did have the brains God gave a peanut.
"Damn you, Mama. Shut…the hell…up!" Whipping around, I release the bowstring and watch dispassionately as the arrow shoots across the room to enter the wall with a resounding thunk. Plaster explodes and the arrow quivers where it buried itself a good two inches into the lath.
“Close but no cigar,” I mutter. Plaster dust, trickling in a lethargic stream from the hole in the wall, piles upon the framed photograph of Mama, and I turn away. Clearly I need to get back to regular practice; my arrow missed by a good inch. Because, face it.
With no cigar, close isn’t worth shit.
Thirteen
Jon-Michael lay on his back on the couch, staring up at the high ceiling and brooding. When it got him goddamn nowhere, he rolled off the couch and prowled barefoot around his loft apartment. Three times he passed by his office, an area set apart from the open space by a wall of stair-stepped glass bricks. After the fourth pass-by, he went in and dropped into his chair. Gripping the edge of the desk in both hands, he looked down at the piles of notes and sheets of graph paper cluttering the desk top. And blew out a long, weary breath of exasperation.
What the hell. Mildred Bayerman had been pressuring him with phone calls about it ever since the Fourth of July dance. He might as well draft a formal proposal of his ideas for expanding Olivet Manufacturing. At least then he could tell her he was working on it.
It turned out applying himself to the project felt good—even if he could not visualize giving an actual presentation to the board of directors. But searching for the most viable way to convince a group of technological dinosaurs of the need to enter the twenty-first century helped focus his mind on something other than Hayley Prescott for longer than five minutes running. And that was a welcome break.
He managed to lose himself in the intricacies of the presentation for well over an hour. Little by little, however, pieces of his Wednesday night, no, Thursday morning encounter with the maddening brunette began to intrude on his concentration. He tossed his pencil down in disgust and gathered his papers together. Wrestling them into a rough sort of order, he leaned back in his chair, knowing damn well he wouldn’t accomplish another thing today.
When she had first walked off and left him treading water in the cold, black, pre-dawn lake, all he had felt was a shitload of fury. He told himself she was nothing but a vicious cock-tease and any thoughts of love he had harbored were strictly borne of the moment, fathered by a surfeit of male-patterned horniness. If he were smart, he’d concluded, he would chalk it up to a date, or encounter, or sex or whatever gone wrong and write her off. Once and for all. Because who the hell needed the aggravation?
Once his sexual frustration had worn off, however, he’d conceded he was kidding himself. What was more, if he ever hoped to get back in Hayley’s good graces he would have to work for it, because no way the first move would originate with her.
He needed to do something. He had no idea what, but he had to come up with a way to make amends. And it had better be now, too, if he didn’t want her staring right through him as if he didn't exist the way she’d been doing damn near exclusively since she had first rolled into town.
Because while his anger had been fueled by surging testosterone and as quickly forgotten, Hayley’s was all too real. And unfortunately all too justified. Her fury was fed by the memory of an actual injustice. The true miracle here was that she had managed to act with any civility toward him at all.
He could hardly believe he had told her he loved her that long ago night by the lake.
At the same time part of him could envision it all too easily.
There had always been something about her that drew him like a fish to the lure. Something deeper than her killer smile or round butt. Perhaps it was her refusal to be impressed by his wealth or his charm. Or maybe it was her way of saying what she thought, instead of paying lip-service to what she thought he wanted to hear as so many had done. He wished he could remember the emotions of that night. If they were anything like last night—
Then, yeah, he could envision saying the words.
Problem was, he had failed to live up to his pretty declaration. Had not behaved like a man in love. He had acted like the eighteen-year-old self-indulgent rich-kid budding alcoholic he had been at the time.
It was a little late in the game to beat himself up over it, however. All this had happened a long time ago and he was a different person than he had been back then. Not to mention the Catch-22 aspect scratching in the back of his brain. Yes, he had thrown away the opportunity for something special that night.