Not Your Everyday Housewife

by Mary Campisi

  “Richard will be happy,” Shea murmured. “He won’t have to pay child support.”

  “I called him last night.”

  “You did? What did he say?”

  “I didn’t actually get to talk to him. I left a message on his cell phone.”

  “Oh. Well, he’s still going to be a father, just not with me.” Did he really want Tanya Madison’s baby or was he going to leave her, too?

  “Don’t think about him right now, okay? You’ve got to concentrate on getting strong and getting out of here. Tula Rae’s cooking up batches of greens and some other concoctions for you.”

  “Oh, boy.” Shea forced a small smile. “Thanks for the flowers. Black-eyed Susans are my favorite.”

  “I know, but they’re not from me.”

  “Derry?”

  “Marcus.”

  Shea’s gaze shot to the huge bouquet.

  “He heard about it from the neighbors. I guess it’s not every day that an ambulance comes racing to The Bird’s Nest. People probably thought it was Tula Rae, collapsing after her Salsa class.”

  “You told him?”

  Cyn nodded. “He was so concerned. He’s called four times, stopped by the hospital, too, but you were sleeping.”

  “I don’t want to see him.”

  “Why?”

  “I spilled my guts to him because I thought he was gay, and then I found out he wasn’t.”

  “I could’ve told you that the second I met him.” Cyn perched on the edge of the bed. “But you were so hell bent on it, Derry and I let you go.”

  “Well, you should have forced me to see.”

  “You wouldn’t have listened.”

  “I know. I never do listen, do I? Look at Richard.”

  Cyn cleared her throat, fidgeted on the bed.

  “He didn’t want a child, just kinky sex.” Shea pressed her fingers to her temples and pulled the skin toward her hairline. “God, what a fool I am.”

  “You loved him.”

  “And he used me.” She laid her hand against her belly, her gaze drifting back to the flowers. “I’m never going to let a man use me again.”

  ***

  “Are you okay, Sam?”

  “Cyn.”

  “You sound funny. Are you sick?”

  “No, I’m fine. I just woke up.”

  “It’s almost noon.”

  “I know.”

  “Oh. You sure there’s nothing else wrong?” She knew she was acting paranoid but with the money and Steve Miller between them, it was no wonder.

  “Like what?”

  “Nothing, I guess. It’s just, it’s hard to gauge you through a phone line.”

  “You’ll be here in a few days and then you’ll see for yourself.”

  “Actually, that’s why I’m calling. Shea had a miscarriage this morning and she’s still in the hospital. The doctor wants her to rest a few days before she travels.”

  His tone reeked of emptiness. “So, when will you be home?”

  “Sam, did you hear what I just said? Shea lost her baby.”

  “Tell her I’m sorry.”

  “I will.” She tried again, “I’ll be home as soon as I can. Four or five days at the latest.”

  “I hear Alec Rohan filed for divorce.”

  It was the casual knowing in his words that surprised her.

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “It’s amazing what you can find out when you start looking, Cyn.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She tried to keep her voice even. Had he found out about the money? Or worse, Steve Miller? Impossible, on both counts.

  “It doesn’t mean anything other than what I said. I travel a lot and I miss out on things.”

  Oh, he means the girls. “What are the girls doing today?”

  “The usual.”

  “Cheerleading and Brad.”

  “Exactly.”

  Amazing, they could dissect their children’s lives to the tiniest molecule of possibility, but were unable to consider even the broadest faulting in their own relationship. Are you really okay, Sam?

  “I’ll see you in four or five days,” he said.

  “Okay. I’ll call when I know more.”

  “Okay.”

  “Have a good night.” Is that all you have to say?

  “Thanks,” he said. “You, too.”

  “I love you, Sam.”

  “You, too.”

  ***

  Shea leaned forward in the wicker rocker and pulled another pair of underwear from the laundry basket. She folded the Victoria’s Secret second skin white into thirds and placed it on top of the others.

  Derry and Cyn were in the kitchen baking banana bread and corn muffins for tomorrow’s trip home. Tula Rae had thrown a chicken in the oven at 5:00 a.m., stuffed with cranberry-walnut dressing and rubbed in butter. She’d mixed the dough for focaccia bread and pulled the recipe for her famous Texas sheet cake. She’d even seeped the spiced tea she planned to send along with them.

  Shea sighed. With Tula Rae, it really was all about the food. She said if a person had twenty-two hours to live then that meant he still had three good meals in him. As long as the heart’s tickin’, I’m fixin’ the food.

  Shea would miss that crazy, odd woman. She’d miss Earl Gray, too, and his 1985 green Ford Bronco that grunted and chugged every time he pulled into the gravel drive, signaling his return home. And she’d miss the way the dew sprinkled the grass in the early morning hours before the sun shriveled the delicate patterns to nothingness. She’d even miss the Reggae music Tula Rae blared every afternoon while she cooked dinner.

  All in all, Shea would miss pretty much everything. Even Marcus Orelean.

  But, especially, her baby.

  She’d come to Ogunquit pregnant, but she was leaving with an empty uterus and a list of post-miscarriage instructions.

  They might all end up divorced. She and Derry were an almost certainty. Cyn was up for grabs. Some trip this had been. They’d escaped for a great do-over, and they were all headed for a great do-in.

  Shea was so busy immersing herself in the gloom of life’s pathetic tragedy that she didn’t hear the screen door open.

  “Shea? Tula Rae said you’d be out here.”

  She looked up into the startling blue eyes of Marcus Orelean. For a second, she just stared, mesmerized by the blueness of those eyes burning into her. “I wasn’t expecting you,” she stammered, acutely aware of the salsa drips smearing the left breast of her scrubs.

  He smiled and said gently, “Obviously.”

  Shea followed his gaze to the pile of underwear stacked neatly on the glass table in front of her. Good God! She swiped them up and shoved them to the bottom of the laundry basket. “It would’ve been nice if you’d called first,” she said, half-defensively, avoiding his gaze.

  “It would’ve been nice if you’d returned any of the twenty or more phone calls I made to you,” he said, sliding into the wicker rocker across from her.

  “Some people would take the hint.” She sounded like a witch, but he gave her no choice. Why did he want to see her anyway? What was the point?

  “I’m not just some people.” His voice was so soft, so compelling. “Look at me, Shea.”

  She couldn’t, so she kept her head bent.

  “Shea? We’ve got unfinished business. You know that, don’t you? That’s why you won’t look at me. That’s fine,” he went on in a conversational tone. “You can pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, but I’m not letting you leave without saying what I’ve come to say.”

  Her stomach twisted and churned so violently she thought she’d heave this morning’s bran muffin and eggs. “Marcus, don’t.”

  “I’m sorry about the baby, Shea. I know how much you wanted it. And I’m sorry, I guess, that you thought I was gay, because if you hadn’t, then you wouldn’t have been so honest with me.” He reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “I’m glad you told me what you did. About
everything. I just wish I’d been as honest with you from the beginning.”

  She jerked her head up. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re an incredible woman, Shea.” His thumb moved in small circles along her wrist sending shivers through her whole body. “Kind, generous, intelligent—”

  She cut him off with a nervous laugh. “That sounds like telling a girl she’s got a great personality.”

  “Sexy, alluring,” he continued, as though she hadn’t spoken, “tantalizing, intoxicating, provocative.”

  “You sound like you’re talking about a perfume,” she murmured, her eyes on his thumb as it eased along the inside of her arm, still stroking in small circles until all she could think about was the spot of skin where his flesh met hers.

  “Maybe you remind me of a perfume. You are intoxicating, you know.”

  “Stop it!” Shea yanked her hand away and glared at him. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I’m attracted to you,” he said simply.

  “No, you can’t be. Look at me. Really look. Do you see these wrinkles?” She pointed to the crow’s feet on the sides of her eyes. “And these?” She jabbed a finger at the long creases between her brows. “Wrinkles. I probably need a face lift. And liposuction.” She smacked her thighs. “And a tummy tuck.” Her fingers pinched the rolls of flesh surrounding her middle. “I’m a forty-one-year old woman who just lost a baby and my husband is having a child with his girlfriend.” She willed the tears to stay away, but they spilled onto her cheeks and slipped to her chin. “I’m empty,” she whispered, bowing her head. “There’s nothing left inside.”

  “You’re grieving.” His soothing words washed over her. “I’ll wait, Shea, as long as I have to.”

  “You’re wasting your time,” she sniffed.

  “I don’t think so.” He smoothed a tangle of hair from her face. “I’ve never met anybody like you, Shea Donovan, and I want to be a part of your life. I just want to know that when you’re ready to open up again, you’ll give us a chance.”

  “I’m too old for you.”

  “You’re perfect,” he said, brushing a tear from her cheek.

  “You could have anybody.”

  “I want you.” He tilted her chin up so she had to look at him. Those blue eyes pierced her with an intensity that made her want to believe his words. “Only you, Shea Donovan,” he whispered, leaning in to place a chaste kiss on her lips.

  Shea jumped when the cordless phone rang on the table beside her. “Excuse me,” she murmured, turning away to reach for the phone. Marcus eased back to give her room but kept his hand clasped around hers.

  “Hello?” Shea said, grateful for the distraction. Marcus Orelean was too overwhelming, his presence too powerful. She kept hearing his words beating softly into her heart.

  “Shea.” Richard’s deep voice filled the line. “Thank God you’re all right. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you since I found out. Ahh, baby, I’m so sorry. When are you coming home?”

  Chapter 22

  Derry was not going to be the one to make first contact. Let him do it, the bastard. He was the one who couldn’t wait to serve her papers. What was the emergency? Maybe he’d scored on one of those cologne-drenched nights and now all he wanted was his freedom.

  Derry blinked hard and shoved her suitcase toward the edge of the bed. In the morning, they’d be heading back home, and still there’d been no word from him. Twelve days, and nothing.

  Vivien saw to it that Charlie called every night at 7:45 p.m., just before bed and Good Night Moon. But Alec had been mysteriously absent, from the phone line and the conversation.

  “Shit,” Derry swore under her breath as she gathered up her dirty underwear and stuffed them in a plastic bag. She couldn’t wait to inform her future ex-husband that her legal representative, Morton Flenstein had assured her she’d receive significant chunks of Alec’s pension, and his retirement, and his investments, and his properties, and the business at Rohan, McGill, and Associates. Dipping into all those nice little gains, too. She’d make him wish he’d never sent those goddamn papers.

  She didn’t want his money or the other assets. She had enough of her own. But that wasn’t the point. Derry wanted to make him think of her every time he looked at a bank statement or an investment return. She wanted her name seeping into his blood, oozing out of his brain, until he felt as if he’d go mad.

  But most of all, she wanted partial custody of Charlie.

  She yanked the rest of her clothes off plastic hangers and hurled everything at the Louis Vuitton suitcase—silk shirts, cashmere sweaters, jeans, Jimmy Choo pumps. Hangers and all, the items flew toward the bed, some thudding on the floor, some bouncing off the patchwork quilt.

  Damn him!

  Derry ignored the timid knock on the door and flung a shoe in the direction of the suitcase, watched as it skidded along the headboard and crashed into the suitcase.

  “Derry?”

  It was Cyn. “I’m busy.” Alec Rohan would rue the day he signed those papers. Derry jerked a pair of jeans off a hanger.

  “You’ve got a phone call.”

  “Christ. Tell that reporter my answer is the same as before. No interview. If he wants a story on Steve Miller he’ll have to read the police blotter.”

  “It’s not the reporter.”

  Derry flung open the door. “Who is it?”

  One look at Cyn’s face told her. She grabbed the phone as if it were a weapon and she could beat the person on the other end of the line. “What?”

  “I take it you got the papers?”

  Even with hatred thrumming through her body, Alec’s voice still affected her. And that only made her angrier. “The U.S. Postal service sucks but it did its job.”

  “I have something to tell you,” he said. “I debated waiting until you got ho—” He stopped himself and said, “…back, but I decided it might be best to prepare you.”

  “Prepare me? For what?” She lifted a silk tank top off the bed and let it slip through her fingers. Alec always said her skin felt softer than silk…

  “Sit down, okay?” His tone sounded almost gentle.

  It was a set-up. She could sniff one from anywhere, even hundreds of miles away slipping out of her future ex-husband’s beautiful mouth. “Have you cleaned out the house yet? Changed bank accounts? Blazed the bed?”

  “Can you just settle down for one minute? This is important.”

  “You’re seeing somebody, aren’t you? One of those cute little interns, I’ll bet, and now you want a quickie divorce.”

  “Stop it.”

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” The thought of Alec’s hands on another woman made her queasy. “That’s what you’ve been doing these past six weeks.” She let out a high-pitched laugh and said, “Alec Rohan, soon to be most eligible bachelor in Northern Virginia.”

  “Can’t you, just for once, listen?”

  If he were banging some young thing and wanted his freedom, he could think again. Morton Flenstein said divorce was like watching a B movie, you could almost always guess the outcome, but you never knew how much unnecessary bullshit the director was going to force you to stomach. And since Derry was the director here, Alec might be in for a whole lot of bullshit.

  “There’s no woman,” he said, filling the gaps of silence on the other end of the line.

  “And I should believe you.”

  “There’s. No. Woman.”

  She took a deep breath, clearing her lungs. There was no woman. But then an even worse possibility flooded her brain. “Oh, my God, it’s Charlie, isn’t it? You’re going to keep him from me.” She gulped for air. “You can’t do that. You can’t take him away!” she screamed into the phone.

  “Can’t we just be civil? Can’t you ever just forget the drama for half a second?”

  “I’ll fight you for him, Alec. He might not have come from my egg, but he’s my son, too.” The reality of losing Charlie jabbed her like a quick right ho
ok. “I’ll fight you,” she said again, clutching the throbbing in her left temple.

  “This is not about Charlie, Derry.” There was a second’s hesitation before he said, “This is about your sister.”

  “That’s low, Alec.”

  “Just listen, okay? There’s a woman sitting in the living room who says she’s your sister.”

  “Right.”

  “I saw the documentation she brought with her, hospital of birth, mother’s name, father unlisted, adoptive parents were Thomas and Teresita O’Neil from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It looks pretty convincing.”

  The pain of her childhood seeped through her, pulling her back to the days with her adoptive parents. How many years had she dreamed someone would find her who shared her DNA? They’d snatch her up and carry her away from the people who’d adopted her but couldn’t love her. All she’d ever wanted was to belong, but no one had come and now she didn’t dare dredge up hope again.

  Denial always served the best defense.

  “She’s not my sister.”

  “I think you should meet her,” Alec said.

  “She’s not my sister,” Derry said again, this time louder, needing to squelch the flutter of doubt in her brain.

  “She has your eyes. And your hair.”

  “Stop it, Alec.” The flutter grew stronger, pulsed into full beats. Denial was failing so Derry opted for offense. “Why would this woman try to contact me now, anyway, after all these years? She wants something from me, probably a way to piece together her mother’s life before she had her.”

  “I don’t think so,” Alec said quietly.

  “Why do you always give everybody the benefit of the doubt? You know people just try to screw each other. And this woman, whoever she is and wherever she came from, is no different.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “Really?” Now, he was starting to annoy her. “You don’t think she’s come to gape at the product of her mother’s indiscretions, a mother who I’m guessing is living and thriving in upscale suburbia with a white picket fence and a cluster of Seven Sister rose bushes?”

  “She said your mother died three years ago.”

  Derry hadn’t known one sentence could hurt so much.