Wrong Side of Forty

by DeLeon, Jana

  She looked in the mirror and sighed. At one time, she’d had awesome boobs. The kind of boobs that other women wanted and surgeons worked hard to create. But one morning when she was thirty-eight, she’d gone into the bathroom and found that they’d fallen and couldn’t get up. It was the beginning of the end—that dreaded day when gravity came to visit and refused to leave.

  She grabbed them with both hands and lifted them back into place, then shifted them from side to side, trying to remember what they looked like in sweaters before Gravity Day had come calling.

  What the hell.

  “I order you to stay perky like you were in my twenties,” she said out loud then climbed into the shower.

  Maybe she could lift boobs. And maybe if she was really specific about what she wanted, the magic would understand. Despite a bitch of a day, the puffiness and dark circles under Halcyon’s eyes had disappeared altogether by that evening. She’d made Marina rub every square inch of her face and scalp before she left and had threatened to demand a foot rub since she hadn’t had time for a pedicure that week. Marina had politely declined. She loved her sister but massaging someone’s sweaty feet was one of those lines she wasn’t interested in crossing. Her professional interest was solely on the other end of the body.

  She looked down at her feet and frowned. They could use a pedicure. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had one, but that was typical. Pre-Crotchapocalypse, Marina had been so busy with everyone and everything else that she had stopped making time for herself. And no one had even seemed to notice. Or care. She supposed that’s what happened to most women with families, but from her new perspective, she could see the imbalance.

  But really, who was to blame? Not Avery. Her daughter was self-involved, but most teens were and besides, she’d been trained to believe that Mom took care of everything, mainly because Mom always had. Harold could share some of the blame but then, his mother had been one of the old-school, non-career women who canned vegetables, made homemade bread, and stitched her own hideous place mats. Harold had been raised to believe the mom took care of everything as well.

  So that left her, and that was a hard pill to swallow. Why hadn’t she ever advocated for herself? Why had she let her family take her for granted? And they did take her for granted. Because in all the years of giving and doing and sacrificing, not once could she remember anyone telling her thank you. Once, recently, she’d complained about the weight of her responsibilities to Harold and how no one seemed to appreciate them. He’d made some nasty comment about her wanting credit for things she was supposed to do.

  If he were standing in front of her right now, she’d kick him right in that rash.

  Every day at work, Marina received money for styling hair because that’s what she was supposed to do, but a customer never left her chair without thanking her for her work. Why should family be an exception? Was it really so hard to occasionally utter two words?

  It was too late to demand respect from Harold. He’d clearly crapped the bed on that one. But at some point, she needed to work on her relationship with Avery. Her daughter was hyperintelligent and funny and a genuinely good person, but she was also headstrong and tended toward selfish a lot of the time. Marina hoped as she got older their relationship would mature into something more like what she and Halcyon had, but that was a lot of years off.

  The water started to shift from steaming hot to mildly warm and Marina took that as her cue to get out. She toweled off and pulled on a clean tank and boy shorts and strolled into the kitchen to rummage for dinner. She still hadn’t had a chance to make a real grocery store run, so her options mostly consisted of cheese, lunch meat, bread, Goldfish, a bottle of wine, sodas, and her secret chocolate stash. Since Halcyon had given her a toaster oven she didn’t use, she opted for grilled cheese with wine and chocolate. She popped the bread and cheese into the oven and poured a glass of wine, then went to the back door to let Snooze out since he was whining.

  “Do not get in the bayou,” she said as he headed off the porch. “You don’t want a bath and I don’t want another one.”

  He gave her a long-suffering look, then headed down the steps and into the yard-slash-field of weeds. Another thing on the long list of items she needed to address. She had no intention of sodding the yard, but mowing around the house would cut down on bugs and the snake potential. The snake potential was a real fear. Marina hated snakes.

  She headed back into the kitchen to check on the grilled cheese and that’s when Snooze started to bark. Loudly. And this wasn’t his I-found-something-interesting sound. This was his I-found-something-I-don’t-like sound. Marina grabbed a flashlight and the pistol Halcyon had lent her out of a kitchen drawer and headed outside.

  At the edge of the back porch, she stopped to figure out what direction she needed to go. Sound carried over water and sometimes it was hard to pinpoint exactly where it was coming from. Snooze barked again, sounding more agitated than before, and she shifted to the left, locking her gaze on the row of cypress trees that lined one side of the property. She shone the flashlight in that direction, but it didn’t reach far enough for her to see anything. When she was unpacking, she’d put her rubber boots on the porch, so she pulled them on and headed into the yard.

  The weeds rubbed the bare skin on her legs and made her itch. If this turned out to be a rabbit or a raccoon, she was going to cut off that dog’s treats for a week. She hadn’t even unpacked everything and had no idea if she had calamine lotion. And since the drugstore closed hours ago, she was looking at a long night of scratching.

  She crept toward the cypress trees, following Snooze’s wailing. The brush was thick and with a thunderstorm building overhead, the moon was hidden completely. The only light was the thin beam from her flashlight, and it wasn’t enough to see a very large patch. At the edge of the trees, she called for Snooze and he let off three shrill barks. She frowned and chambered a round, then inched into the woods, pistol in firing position.

  Snooze’s barks grew louder—more insistent—and she could tell he wasn’t far away. She moved faster now, worried that the old hound had come across an alligator. Snooze was no match for an angry gator. Even on land they could really move. She burst into a clearing, gun leveled and ready to fire. Snooze stood at the far edge of the clearing, barking at a thick set of brush. As soon as she moved forward, the brush shook as if something large had moved it and then she heard the sound of retreating steps.

  She commanded Snooze to stay put, but in keeping with everyone else in her family, he completely ignored her and launched into the brush in pursuit. Yelling at him to stop, Marina bolted through the brush, tripped over a tree root, and slammed into the ground.

  “I’m going to kill you, Snooze!” she yelled as she rubbed her angry back.

  Thunder boomed overhead and it started to rain. Actually, it was more of a monsoon as only Louisiana can produce in the blink of an eye. The hard Louisiana mud beneath her got wet and slick within seconds, and between her back and the growing mudhole, she struggled to push herself up. When she finally got into a somewhat upright position, a spotlight hit her right in the face and she threw up her arm to block the light, almost falling again.

  “Don’t move!” a man’s voice commanded, and just like magic, the rain stopped.

  “I’m hardly going anywhere now that I’m blind,” Marina said. “Either shoot me or get that light out of my face.”

  He chuckled and the light dropped down to the ground, illuminating the area surrounding the mudhole.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I thought you were someone else.”

  She looked up and saw a man with longish dark brown hair and green eyes smiling at her. A man she was certain she’d never seen before. She glanced down and realized he had a gun holstered at his side and her pulse jumped. Twice in one week was at least once too many times to think you were going to be serial killed. Her pistol was somewhere on the ground, but there was no way she’d be able to grab it and shoot
him before he could shoot her. And with her back now protesting loudly, there was no way she was going to outrun him either.

  “Who did you think I was?” she asked. Maybe if he’d been looking to serial kill someone else, he’d just continue on his merry way. And she could grab her purse and relocate out of Last Chance as soon as she could find her keys.

  “An alligator poacher, but clearly I was wrong.”

  Relief flooded through her. He wasn’t a serial killer. And since she wasn’t a poacher, this would end well. Except for the backache and all the mud.

  “Why can’t I be an alligator poacher?” she asked. “I have a gun…somewhere. And a hunting dog, also somewhere.”

  “Both of those present a compelling argument, but in my experience, poachers wear pants.”

  For the love of everything holy!

  She pulled at her tank, hoping to get it past anything that could get her arrested, but that only exposed her bustline to the point that things got sketchier.

  He grinned at her and a blush ran up her neck and onto her face. Damn it. He was sexy as hell.

  “I would tell you not to worry about it because I’ve seen everything,” he said, “but I have to admit, this one is a first.”

  “And hopefully a last—at least where I’m concerned. And just who the hell are you and why are you lurking around my property?”

  “Sorry, I should have introduced myself. I’m Luke Abshire, the new game warden.”

  He extended his hand and Marina stared at it for a couple seconds before placing her muddy hand in his. He didn’t seem to mind.

  “Marina Trahan,” she said. “I live in a cabin just the other side of the tree line.”

  “I thought that place was empty.”

  “It was until yesterday.”

  “That explains my confusion. I saw lights on and thought maybe the poacher was squatting there. Then I heard the dog and thought I’d caught him.”

  Marina frowned. “Wait. So the dog wasn’t barking at you?”

  He shook his head. “I never saw the dog. He sounds like a doozy though. Bloodhound?”

  “Yes. And he doesn’t signal like that unless something is wrong. Hence why I ran out half dressed.”

  He bent over and lifted her pistol out of the mud. “But fully armed.”

  She took the gun and spun around as something rustled in the brush to her right. A second later, Snooze came trotting out. He walked up to Luke and the game warden crouched down and let the hound smell his hand before lifting it to scratch his ears. Snooze closed his eyes, enjoying the petting for a bit, then licked him and went to sit next to Marina.

  “That pitiful look is not going to get you out of a bath,” Marina said as she stared at Snooze.

  Snooze sighed and flopped down in the mud.

  Luke chuckled. “It’s like he understood everything you said.”

  “Yes, well. We’re going to go home and have that bath now. I would say it was nice meeting you but that would be a lie. So I’ll just go with it was interesting meeting you. Good luck catching your poacher.”

  “Thanks,” he said and pulled a card from his back pocket to hand to her. “If you or your dog see someone lurking around, give me a call. I’d really like to catch this guy.”

  “No problem. Good night.”

  Marina tromped back through the marsh to her cabin, muttering the entire way. Why did Snooze pick tonight to be ambitious? Why did a poacher have to pick her property? Why didn’t someone come up with a solution to menopause so she could wear more clothes to sleep in? Why did the game warden have to be good-looking?

  Once inside, she herded the reluctant hound into the bathroom and hauled him one half at a time into the tub. Then she climbed in with him and began dousing him with shampoo.

  “I don’t have the energy or enough hot water to do this two times,” she said as he gave her a woeful stare. “Next time, don’t go chasing poachers. And especially not if it’s going to rain. I’m going to have to mop the floors again. And my grilled cheese is cold. And what’s with licking that game warden? You never do that.”

  Snooze let out a single bark.

  “Don’t tell me yes. You know that’s not true.”

  He barked again.

  “What? Are you trying to tell me you liked him?”

  Another bark.

  “You’re just Mr. Congeniality lately.”

  He shook his entire body, flinging shampoo all over her and the walls.

  “Or do you just not like Harold?”

  Single bark.

  She directed the shower onto his back and began rinsing the shampoo off of him.

  “That makes two of us.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  In her eighteen years on earth, no one had ever accused Avery Trahan of being extra. In fact, some had questioned whether she had feelings at all. But Avery never paid them any mind. Nothing could shift her from her focus. She was going to graduate premed with honors, then be accepted to the medical school of her choice, then become a surgeon. She’d spent three years working as a vet assistant and one day when the surgical tech had gotten into a car accident, the vet had asked Avery to help out on an emergency surgery.

  Avery had been fascinated with medicine—surgery specifically—ever since. But she had no desire to practice on animals. She loved them too much and knew she’d never be able to develop the detachment necessary to focus 100 percent on the job. People, on the other hand, often ranked low on her list of things she loved, and almost never occupied a spot higher than dogs.

  Now was definitely no exception.

  When she’d first gotten off the phone with her mom, she’d sat shell-shocked for so long that her roommate asked her what was wrong. No way was Avery repeating the horrific drama to the person she was going to be sharing close space with for the next four years. At least, not until she was certain it was true.

  Not that she thought her mom was lying. Her mom never lied except about things that didn’t matter, like Santa and telling someone they looked nice when they looked awful. So at best, someone had convinced her mom that this nightmare had happened. At worst, it was all true and her dad had officially become that gross, creepy old man.

  As soon as her roommate left for the swimming pool, Avery had called her bestie from high school. She’d gone off to college in California, but her mother was one of the town’s biggest gossips. If anyone could verify what had happened it would be Simone. Unfortunately, her phone call with Simone hadn’t gone the way she’d hoped it would. Her bestie had not only verified that what her mom told Avery was true but that her mom had actually caught them in her own house. Her own bed.

  Which left absolutely zero chance that it was a lie.

  Her entire life, Avery had considered her parents average, boring people and her own life less than fascinating. And there were times she’d desperately wished for something interesting to happen. But this wasn’t what she’d had in mind at all. This was horrifying and embarrassing, and she’d never been this upset before. Not ever.

  How could her dad do this to her mom? To her?

  And those two questions were exactly why she was barreling down the highway to Last Chance, hoping to talk some sense into her dad. Because no way could the nerdy guy who loved spreadsheets more than life blow up their family over that thot. Something was wrong. Maybe he was on drugs or having a nervous breakdown. Either way, she was going to get to the bottom of things and stop this train wreck before it got worse.

  She exited the highway and made the drive into Last Chance at twice the posted speed limit. If she got stopped, she’d tell them it was an emergency. Everyone at the sheriff’s department knew her family and Avery was certain the gossip had made the rounds. They would understand.

  It was barely 8:00 a.m. when she drove down her block and spotted Chastity’s bright red convertible in their driveway. Rage and shame coursed through her. It was bad enough to have a romp with the town ho, but being so blatant about it was beyond gross. She p
ulled into the driveway, making sure she didn’t block Chastity’s car since she’d be leaving, and let herself into the house, slamming the front door as she entered. The last thing she wanted was to see anyone naked.

  She heard footsteps hurrying down the hallway and a couple seconds later, her dad came into the living room, looking around frantically for the source of the noise. When his gaze landed on her, he let out a breath.

  “Avery,” he said. “I thought you were someone else.”

  “You mean Mom? The woman who lived here for a million years until you threw her out? That someone else? The one who cleaned and decorated and repaired everything in this broken piece of crap that you refused to sell or even update because Grandmother might roll over in her grave?”

  His face flushed with anger. “I will not have you talking to me that way. Your mother chose to leave.”

  Avery stared at him, dumbfounded. How did that even make sense? The entire drive to Last Chance, she’d hoped that everyone had been wrong. That some sort of shared psychosis was what was really going on. She’d seen it in a movie once. It was totally possible. At least, that’s what she’d wanted to believe. When she’d seen Chastity’s car in the driveway, all hope had fled on that end of things, but she couldn’t believe her dad was standing there all indignant, insisting that this was her mom’s fault. What the hell was wrong with him?

  “Seriously?” Avery said. “Mom caught you in bed with that whore. The same one whose car is parked in the driveway right now. And you’re actually going to claim that leaving was her choice? Everyone says Grandma Letitia is crazy but I think they’ve got the wrong person locked up.”

  “I will not listen to this. Your mother and I are getting a divorce. I’m not happy with her and I refuse to live the rest of my life that way. Chastity is part of my life now and you just have to deal with it.”