PART I
ERIN
1
Erin hurled another armful of clothes out the front door. “Take your stupid shirts”—she paused to reload, scooping up another pile beside the doorway—“and your stupid pants, and get lost.” The pants followed the shirts out the door, collapsing on the lawn like a flock of fainting birds under the rapidly dimming sky.
It was lucky he’d left a few things behind after the divorce—they made great ammunition.
“Be reasonable, Erin,” said Mark, her ex-husband. “Can’t we discuss this like adults? I only came over because you continue to refuse to answer your phone, and having this conversation at church is not exactly a good idea.”
Erin turned back into the house, found a shoe, and hurled it over her shoulder without looking. It narrowly missed Mark and instead nailed the driver’s side door of his cherry red convertible. She found the matching shoe, turned around, aimed, and flung it end over end to join its mate.
“Watch it!”
“Oh, did I ding your midlife crisis-mobile? I’m sorry,” said Erin, without a shred of sincerity. She tucked her hair behind her ears and crossed her arms.
“I wish you wouldn’t make a scene,” said Mark.
“Really? I’d prefer you weren’t a cheating dog, but you get what you get, right?”
Mark rolled his eyes and leaned back against the car in the driveway. “Look, Erin, all I’m asking you to do is find someplace else to worship, okay? I know you’re only going to church to keep your mom off your back.”
He might have been right, but that didn’t mean he deserved reasonability in return. Erin glanced around, looking for more things to throw. She spied a stack of Mark’s exercise DVDs. She picked them up and flung them one at a time, like frisbees, into the yard. “I. Said. Get. Lost.”
An ancient Pomeranian shuffled to the doorway and peered out into the soft light of the setting sun.
Erin picked up the dog.
“How’s Nancy Drew?” said Mark, in a transparent attempt to defuse the situation.
“She’s great. She never liked you, anyway,” said Erin, scratching her behind the ears.
Mark looked upwards as if asking for strength. “Erin, I’m asking you. Can you please stop going to our church? Wouldn’t that make things easier for you?”
“Are you kidding?” said Erin, carefully setting Nancy Drew down on the tile floor of the entryway. “You don’t want to make things easier for me. You want to make it easier for you and Genevieve.”
“Genevieve has just as much right to be there as you do,” said Mark.
“Does she? Kind of uncomfortable to be reminded of your sin every single Sunday, isn’t it.”
“Now you’re just being difficult.” Mark threw his hands up.
“Maybe I like going to church with my ex-husband and the woman he cheated on me with. If it bothers you so much, why don’t you find a different church?” She stepped onto the covered porch and carefully shut the door behind her, to keep Nancy Drew from making an escape.
“Come on, Erin.”
“It’s ‘Come on, Erin,’ this and ‘Be reasonable, Erin,’ that when you want something, isn’t it?” Erin took a barefooted step forward.
Mark took a step back.
“You don’t have any claim on me. Not that you ever had any real say over what I do in the first place—but whatever I owed your sorry ass evaporated when you cheated on me and made a mockery of our wedding vows. I’ll go to church, or not, if I want to, for any reason or no reason at all. So you can take your stupid shirts and your ugly khaki pants and drive your ridiculous compensation car all the way to hell.” Erin pointed her finger at Mark. “May the Lord forsake you and the Devil take you!”
As she spoke, the last sliver of the sun disappeared behind the western horizon.
She whirled and went inside the house, slamming the door behind her and stomping away before remembering to turn back and lock it.
The bolt slammed home loudly, echoing in the sparsely furnished house.
