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It took a few seconds for him to be coaxed into his mother’s outstretched arms, and even then, he refused to let go of the stuffies in case this was some sort of trick.
“What you did wasn’t good,” Chloe told her children, careful to keep her voice soft and steady. “You made a big mess, you wasted all that toothpaste, you created a lot of work for Mommy…”
“You were screaming,” her son said, not ready to forgive her.
“I know. I was very angry.”
“Are you still angry?” Sasha asked.
“No.”
“Are you happy?”
“That’s pushing it,” Chloe said, tears falling down her cheeks.
“Don’t cry, Mommy,” Sasha said, using her hair as a tissue to wipe the tears away. “Be happy. We’ll clean everything up.”
“No. That’s okay. I’ll do it,” Chloe said. “Just please…don’t do it again. You have to take care of your things, you have to respect them…”That word again,she thought.
“Like we have to respect our penises,” Sasha agreed solemnly.
Dear God,Chloe thought.
“You don’t have a penis,” Josh told his sister, rolling his hazel eyes toward the ceiling. “You have a regina.”
Help me,Chloe prayed. “It’s avagina,” she said, gently extricating herself from her children and struggling to her feet. “Now, while I go throw these stuffies into the washing machine, I need you to get out of your dirty clothes and into your pajamas. And I need you to brush your teeth. Assuming there’s any toothpaste left. Can you do that for me?”
“You promise you’re not going to throw the stuffies out?” Josh asked, still not convinced.
“You promise you’re not going to do this ever again?” Chloe asked in return, unconsciously lifting her hand to her cheek.
“I promise it’ll never happen again,”she heard Matt say.
Both children nodded.
“Okay,” Chloe said, banishing Matt’s voice from her brain. “I promise, too. Now get moving. I’ll be back in five minutes.”
The children disappeared into their respective rooms as Chloe finished picking up the toys. She carried them to the combination washer-dryer in the small, rectangular laundry room beside the master bedroom, and tossed as many as would fit into the bin. The rest would have to wait, she thought, dropping the remainder to the floor, along with her T-shirt, then walking into her bedroom and pulling a lightweight gray sweatshirt over her head.
She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror over the chest of drawers opposite the queen-size bed. “You look awful,” she said to the woman in the glass. Her hair was a mess, dozens of stray hairs having come loose from her ponytail, and her face was devoid of makeup and streaked with tears, her eyes threatening more. “And this stupid sweatshirt,” she said, pulling at its sides. “No wonder your husband cheats on you. Maybe if you wore makeup and dressed up once in a while…”
“Stop this,”she heard Paige admonish, as she had admonished herself earlier.“Stop this right now.”
“I need a drink,” she said, marching down the stairs into the kitchen, and reaching into the fridge for the bottle of wine she and Matt had shared at dinner the night before.
No, a drink is the last thing I need,she decided, returning the bottle of white wine to the shelf and closing the fridge door. Alcohol was her mother’s way of dealing with unpleasantness, not realizing that it succeeded only in making her equally unpleasant. Or maybe she just didn’t care.
Chloe shook thoughts of her mother out of her head. She had no time for unnecessary distractions. Her mother wasn’t the problem right now. Her husband was. And it was important that she be sober when Matt came home. She needed to be calm and coolheaded, not give him a reason to lash out.
Not that he needed a reason.
She looked at her watch. Almost seven o’clock. Matt would be home soon, tired from showing houses all day, complaining about the capriciousness of buyers, the stubbornness of sellers. He’d gobble down the dinner she’d made earlier—meat loaf, his favorite—then retreat to his laptop, ostensibly to go over his paperwork, to prepare for the next day.
At least that’s what he’d tell her, but who knew for sure? It was just as likely he’d be checking his various dating sites to see which women had responded favorably to his picture and expressed interest in getting to know him personally. How many times had he sat there swiping to the right, right there in front of her nose?
Was that part of the thrill?
The phone rang.
