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CHAPTER THREE
FLORA
I’ve been in my childhood house for three days.
Three long days of missing Aunt Zee and avoiding Everett. I’ve been holing up in my room and raiding the kitchen when he’s out getting construction supplies or in the shower. I’ve been catching glimpses of him that burn my eyes. I’ve been hearing the pleasant rumble of his voice next door, or downstairs.
It’s been three long, long, interminable days.
On the fourth morning, I wake up and feel half a second of peace before I remember: Aunt Zee’s dead.
And Everett is just next door.
Everett.
My husband.
I mean, technically speaking he’s still my husband. I can have my lawyer draw up all the divorce papers I want, but until he signs them, we’re still married.
I mean, speaking super technically, I could have filed for a contested divorce at any time. We’ve been living apart for long enough.
But he hasn’t signed, and I haven’t pushed the issue.
I’m not…I’m not sure why.
I pour coffee—freshly made, I guess by Everett because I didn’t make it and I don’t believe in helpful brownies who cobble your shoes at night or prepare hot beverages—into Aunt Zee’s favorite mug, which is black and says, “Sweet old lady? Try battle-tested warrior queen.”
The coffee is just the way I like it, strong but not strong enough to take the enamel off your teeth.
Everett walks in the back door with a bag of doughnuts from the Dogwood Bakery, so freshly made that the aroma steals through the air and makes both my mouth and my eyes water. I turn away from him to hide my sudden emotion.
“Raspberry jelly doughnuts,” Everett says. “I couldn’t resist.”
I make myself turn to face him again. “You never used to like these. You only got them for me.”
He simply sets the bag on the kitchen counter and gives me a sweet, affectionate smile. “They grew on me. Have one.” He nods at the bag, then dusts his hands off and goes back outside. I step to the window to peek out, and get an eyeful of his butt in those faded, well-worn jeans as he bends to pick up a stack of wood moulding.
Okay, so maybe I do know why I haven’t pushed the divorce issue.
I missed him.
Not the husband who wanted a little wifey back home, cranking out children instead of code. But him, my friend, the person who always had my back when I was up to my neck in student projects. The one who would run me a bath when I was tired, and bring me jelly doughnuts when we had a spare dollar or two, and who kissed me so warmly. Who looked so damn good in his jeans.
Who spend his nights touching me in ways that made me weak with passion.
Dammit, I think furiously. Aunt Zee, you conniving old biddy. You knew I wouldn’t be able to resist thinking about the sweet times.
I don’t normally talk to dead people. But this is Aunt Zee, and I wouldn’t be surprised if her ghost were to hang around the house, making sure that everything was done to suit her. I might as well tell her what I think about it.
And out of nowhere, I hear her voice, crackly with the two cigarettes she allowed herself every day: I just want you to be happy, darlin’.
“Everett doesn’t make me happy,” I say out loud, suddenly furious all over again that my anchor, my closest relative, has set me up like this. Set me up for failure, because either I give in on what I want and do what Ev wants, or we live apart.
It’s not what I want, but that’s my choice: be myself, or be Everett’s wife.
I can’t help peeking out the window again, to get a better look at that glorious ass of his, and it is definitely glorious. So are his long legs, his strong lean back, his broad shoulders…hell, Everett Hayes is glorious all over, from his silky brown hair down to his toes in beat-up work boots.
Every year, on our anniversary, he sends me a bouquet. Daisies and pale pink roses, exactly like I carried for our courthouse wedding. There’s always a letter with them.
