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Marney
I did end up back at the mini mansion, but only because I had nowhere else to go, and Claude’s father informed me I had seven days to clean out my things before they would all be taken to the landfill when the house went on the market. I didn’t ask why our lack of getting married should result in Claude selling the house he’d been so crazy about. I had wanted something smaller, something we didn’t need staff to take care of. I’d thought his dad was the one who liked me all right, but he also told me to stop texting Claude because it was upsetting him.
Poor guy.
I refrained from pointing out that it upset me to be humiliated in front of everyone I knew and several hundred people I didn’t. I needed the week to try to get my act together and figure out what to do. The “worthy” charity did not return donations. I asked. So I didn’t even have the questionable luxury of living in a vehicle. Or enough money to live anywhere else. With the week drawing to a close, I opened one of the last boxes I’d packed when I moved in here and found my old Girl Scout camping gear, including a pup tent. “Home sweet home,” I muttered.
Having assessed my belongings, I was faced not just with where I would live but what to do with them. Living simply was important to me, so I had far fewer things than most people I knew, but they were still more than I could carry on my back through the city. I was either going to have to rent a storage locker and carry them through the city a couple of boxes at a time or get rid of nearly everything I owned.
Sitting here in this huge, echoing house, my stack of boxes looked so small and insignificant and I wanted to scream. He could have it all—heaven knew the house wasn’t in my name—but I wanted my photo albums and my late mother’s jewelry case and my grandma’s teapot and my clothes. It was so unfair!
I stood up again to look through the dresser drawers where I had actually put some things away. I did not want to feel like his next woman, one approved by his mother, might find a pair of my Walmart undies when putting away her “worthy” panties. A mower starting up outside the window caught my attention as I was reaching for the last drawer, the second one, and I opened the one above it. It was Claude’s version of a junk drawer, filled with seasonal cards he’d received, pens, odds and ends of mail, and anything else that probably belonged in his desk in the study downstairs but ended up on top of the dresser only to be swept into the drawer so the maid could dust. Or because he thought it looked messy more likely.
I started to close it, but a card caught in the drawer, and I had to work it loose before I could continue. About to toss it on top of the others, I stopped when a note fell out on the floor. Who even wrote notes and tucked them in cards anymore? It seemed such an intimate thing, something you’d only do for a family member or a very close friend or…
Bending, I scooped up the sheet of paper, folded in half, and sat down on the bed to read it.
Darling…when will you be mine? My throat swelled closed at that opening line. The handwriting was not a woman’s. It was too bold, and as I read on, the words blurred together under traitorous tears. But they were not of sadness. As the writer went on about what a wonderful time they’d had out on Claude’s boat one weekend in July. A weekend when he said he was going fishing with his best friend. Which, of course, he had. I knew who the signer would be before I got to the end of the letter. Carl. His buddy since childhood. Married to a woman for the past five years. He had two children. The letter I read was between two men who were not ready to accept something so important about themselves.
Damn. The tears that finally spilled onto the sheet of stationary were for the two of them. How long had they been in love? Had Carl known when he married Maria? I could accept that they were both bisexual but not that they were deceiving those around them. If Carl wanted him so much, in today’s culture, why hadn’t he proposed?
And why had Claude proposed to me? How screwed up was this whole thing? My faint inkling that I’d gotten lucky when the marriage fell through became a surety. He’d always been kind to me, tender in bed, and he’d defied his mother in small ways where I was concerned. I’d thought the very fact he was marrying me was a defiance, but in fact it was not that.
No wonder his mother didn’t get him to leave me sooner. No wonder she’d put so much time and money into showing all her friends that her son was getting married. I might not have been her first choice, but neither was I her last. And she hadn’t convinced him to leave me. Probably his father had liked me.
Carl was her last choice. She could not accept her son for who he was.
And he’d almost let her get away with it.
Picking up my phone from the nightstand, I typed another message, this one of a whole different nature. The others had been angry or sad or demanding.
This one was two words. I understand.
And to this one, he responded. The phone rang. At the same time, I got a notification from the Mail-Order Matings app.
I’d forgotten about it after signing it up in the depths of despair. Now…did I answer the phone and talk to my past or click on the notification and talk to my future?
Chapter Eight
Nacho
“There’s ten more,” I groaned, heading down the hall while Riggs walked the other way. “I forgot to turn the damned thing off, and it was beeping until two a.m. when I turned my phone off.”
My exuberance for the app and the possibility of finding a mate through this venue had quickly gone down the tubes. I stomped toward the back door and threw it open and exhaled as deeply as possible. I only had a pair of pajama pants on, but my bear welcomed the biting morning cold as it washed over my skin. The whipping winter gave me the adrenaline and wakeup a cup of coffee never could.
“There aren’t ten more,” Riggs said, coming out of the cabin and walking toward the pond only a few miles away. Our bears were big fans of the cold plunge.
“I saw them last night,” I replied, following him. My bear could use a dip as well.
“There’s twenty-three more.” I heard his feet crushing the thick snow breath our feet. To my heightened hearing, every step was a million shards of glass crunching. I loved it. It sounded like home to me.
We shucked our pajama pants and shifted near the edge of the pond. There was only a thin layer of ice along the sides, but we easily broke it with our front claws before plunging in.
We swam and played until the sun came fully up.
Over breakfast, we looked through those who had viewed our profiles and some who had sent us messages, but neither of our bears called out any signs for one of them.
Still, I had hope somehow. Maybe it had blossomed in the night, or perhaps it was the rush of the morning swim, but I had an idea.
