Flirting With Forever (3 page)

“Do you have a wife?” I sputtered, still gripping the steering wheel.

“Get out of the car, Ma’am. Now.”

I stepped out onto the gravel and red clay shoulder. In a path of litter, a Wendy’s bag mocked me. Jim had crappy genes. He told everybody I kept him alive by force-feeding him organic dinners and banning him from fast food. From time to time, I’d find a bag in the trash; the carton that had held the fries looked like Jim had cleaned the mixture of salt and pepper and catsup off with his tongue.

In broad daylight, the policeman shone his flashlight in my eyes. The world whizzed by at seventy miles an hour, making my skirt billow up like a parachute. I pushed it down with both hands and stood resolute, but who was I kidding? I was driving under the influence, only it wasn’t alcohol, it was heartbreak.

“Stand on one leg,” he barked over the sound of the traffic.

“I have on heels and the ground isn’t level.”

He rolled his eyes. “Walk ten paces. That way.” He pointed away from the car. “Now turn and come back.” I did as I was told and wobbled a bit as my heels sank into the soft red clay.

“Count backwards from forty.”

I glared at him for using my age as a reference point, a reminder my life was half over. Maybe more than half. Way more.

“You missed twenty-five.”

“I did not.”

“You did.”

And no wonder, Jim had swept me off my feet three days after my twenty-fifth birthday. “Well, there’s a good reason.” He looked at my pupils again and mumbled something about saucers, but I wasn’t about to air my dirty laundry to this guy. “I told you, I’m not impaired.”

“Save it for your lawyer,” he said, producing handcuffs.

“Okay, okay, my husband left me. I’ve been crying, and yes, pupils do dilate when you cry.” Especially when you’ve been sobbing for nine weeks straight.

“How do you know?”

“I’m a writer. I know a lot of worthless facts and that’s one of them. Please, let me go.”

“You may not be drunk, but I’d bet my dog you’re high on something.”

My dog. Lilly might be dying this very minute. Alone. My chin quivered, the waterworks returned.

“My little dog, she’s fifteen and she’s dying.” I swiped at my tears, and looked into his eyes. “I know I’ve been a mess lately, but if you don’t let me go, she’s going to die alone.”

The twelve-year-old cop bit his lip and started writing in his ticket book. “You’re lucky I’ve made quota this month. I’m giving you a warning this time. I suggest you go home. Stay there until you’re okay again.”

I took the ticket out of his hand and promised him I would, but the truth was that could take years.

‡

L
illy closed her
eyes and pressed into my fingers for me to scratch harder. She was my baby, the best dog ever. When Jim and I first got her, we’d called her a Jack Russell Terrorist, and she lived up to that moniker until she was two when she mellowed as much as a Jack Russell can and claimed me as her person.

She stood up gingerly, circled a couple of times before melting back into her bed with her back to me, her signal for me to leave her alone so she could sleep.

The doorbell rang. My best friend, Marsha, was peering in the side light by the door, impeccably dressed, with a
gotcha
look on her face and for good reason. It had taken a lot of effort and a few miracles, but I’d managed to avoid her and her husband, Mike, since my husband left. I sat very still, like a deer, and hoped that she wouldn’t see me, but it was too late.

“Open this door, Tara.”

I loved Marsha. The last thing I wanted to do was lie to her, but I wasn’t ready to tell anyone, well besides my realtor, my agent, the Verizon lady and the stupid cop that my husband had abandoned me. Especially since Marsha and Mike were Jim’s friends first.

“Hey. You’re home from work early.”

“Hey, sweets. Haven’t seen you in a while.
I’ve
been out of town.” She invited herself in and walked toward the kitchen that overlooked my back yard and hers. “But where the hell have
you
been?”

Marsha Lemieux was our topnotch financial planner. She and her husband, Mike, were Jim and my closest friends. Since Jim left, I’d avoided their dinner and tennis invites. As close as Marsha and I were, she and Mike were Jim’s friends first, and I didn’t think I could handle any more rejection.

“I’m sorry. I’ve just been so busy. How are you doing?” I asked.

“Fabulous. Signed a big client this morning, rewarded myself with a mani and pedi and thought I’d track you down since you haven’t returned my calls. What’s up with that?”

“I’m sorry. Like I said, I’ve just been busy and I—.” God I hated lying. But was it really such a stretch when I spent every waking moment trying to figure out where Jim was and praying for him to come home?

“I got the check this morning you wrote on your investment account.”

My face burned bright. Marsha and her husband managed half of Jim’s and my nest egg, the other half was tied up in two houses we bought before the bottom fell out of the real estate market.

“Yes. Sorry I haven’t returned your calls. I know I’m supposed to let you know before I write one of those checks, but thanks for taking care of it for me.”

I was barely able to pay last month’s fifteen thousand dollar mortgage tab. While my books were doing well, I wouldn’t receive my first royalty check for a while. When there were no direct deposits from Jim’s company this month, I waited until the last day of the grace period and wrote a check from our joint investment account to cover the mortgages and hoped Marsha wouldn’t ask any questions.

“I stopped at the little wine shop you like and was buying a case of prosecco for a brunch you didn’t RSVP to. At first I thought it was because you were
busy
—with the book and that was why I haven’t heard from you. But then it hit me, Jim hasn’t returned Mike’s calls, he’s missed the tee time he and Mike have had for forever. He’s gone, isn’t he?”

She cried with me as I tried to explain what had happened.

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

“I will be. The beach house is on the market, I put this house on the market yesterday. Sold my romance series for a lot of money, more than I ever dreamed. I won’t be getting a check from my publisher for a couple of months, but I know I’ll be able to meet my financial obligations soon and have some to set aside.”

“Tara, I’m not worried about the money, I’m worried about you.”

“God, Marsha, this is so embarrassing, but I’d really appreciate it if you would liquidate just enough assets to take care of my expenses the next two months.”

“Tara, I’m so sorry, but I can’t. Jim closed out your accounts.”

“Our investments? All of them?”

“I was out of town at a ten-day conference when Mike got a call from Jim saying he wanted to liquidate everything. He didn’t say why; it’s not our business to ask. Mike said he emailed Jim the forms and he sent them back a few minutes later signed and executed along with a bank account number.

“Mike wired the funds and didn’t mention it to me until I got home last night. I let him have it, and I’m still furious with him. He swore he’d called and left messages for you to find out what was going on, but he never heard back from you.”

Oh, God, I’d deleted Mike’s messages because I thought he was trying to invite us to something, and I didn’t want to explain to him there was no us.

“How could he do that without my signature?”

“It’s a joint account, honey. Unless the owners of the account specify differently, it’s legal for one party close it without the other party’s signature. When Mike didn’t hear back from you, Jim called and wanted to know what the hold up was.”

“No. This can’t be. I have two huge mortgages and Lilly.” I ran to the computer in my office and pulled up our bank accounts. Everything was gone. “You have to get it back, Marsha. Now.”

She put her hands on my shoulders. “I can’t, sweetie, I’m so sorry. But you’re doing the right thing, trying to get a buyer for the albatross at the beach and the house here too. Your book is selling like crazy; you’re going to be okay.”

I knew I’d have money coming in, lots of it. But temporarily I was screwed; Jim had taken everything but had left me with one credit card and $347 in my business account that he didn’t have access to.

“Honey, if Jim’s been gone this long, I doubt he’s coming back, and if he did would you want him?”

From the get-go, Jim and I never fought. If we did it was usually over something silly like choosing paint colors, so we didn’t have a lot of making up experience. Did I want to make up? Was that even possible? I’d spent so much time pining for my husband, I hadn’t even thought about what it might be like for him to come home. Would he be penitent? Would he expect me to be? Would he still be angry?

“Tara, stop thinking about Jim, and think about yourself for a change, look at this as a new beginning. A license to thrive. Maybe it’ll take your mind off of what the bastard did to you. In the meantime, I already floated you a couple months expenses to get you by.”

“No, Marsha. That’s too much money. I can’t.”

“Honey, you don’t have a choice. You can’t get a home equity loan without Jim to co-sign, and I know you don’t have a big fat trust fund out there or I would have already invested it for you.”

“What will Mike say about the loan?”

Mike and Marsha had been business partners for thirty-five years and married for thirty. They were the kind of couple who, when you saw them, you were struck by how much they adored each other. They worked hard, played harder, but when it came to money, they were deadly serious.

“It’s from my personal account. I trust my husband, but I’ve seen this happen to too many women not to protect myself. And next time, you’ll know better.”

“I can guarantee there won’t be a next time, but this is a lot of money.”

“Friends do what they can, and I can do this for you. I love you, Tara.” She wrapped her arms around me. “You’re going to be okay. No, you’re going to be great.”

After Marsha left,
I sat back down on the floor beside my dog and scratched the sweet spot she hadn’t been able to reach in years. My cellphone rang. Lilly looked up at me with sad brown eyes and let out a pitiful sigh before she did the circle dance again and faced the wall. Her signal for me to answer the call and leave her be. I dug the phone out of my pocket and headed down to the dock. If I was paying for this beautiful place, or borrowing money from my best friend to pay for it, I might as well enjoy it.

“Hey,” my publicist, Erin said. “What are you doing? And before you say, I have you on speakerphone.”

“Sitting on the dock. Enjoying the sun. How about you?”

“I just got off the phone with Kit. She said you shot down the tour.”

“I did.”

“Tara, you can’t turn this down, it’s going to be huge. Besides, I started planning this weeks ago.”

“No surprise there.”

Erin was much younger than me, but we happened to be from the same tiny Lowcountry town. Although she could probably find anything she wanted in New York, she appreciated the care packages I sent her from time to time with Charleston red rice mix, benne wafers for her sweet tooth, and Jack’s Cosmic Dog’s legendary sweet potato mustard. We’d hit it off from the beginning, but we weren’t close enough for me to tell her about Jim.

To hear her talk, you’d never guess she was from the South, but whenever she talked to me, she let down her southern drawl.

“Well, bless your heart for about five minutes and get off your ass. Come on, Tara, we’ll have a blast. Not to mention what it will do for your sales. And packaging your romances in a side-by-side display with the book is genius, like when stores put the battery displays with the Fifty Shades books.”

“When would the tour start?”

“The book’s so hot, I can get you in soon, like two weeks.”

Maybe Marsha was right. My husband was gone, but I had the beginnings of a successful career. What did I have to lose? “Okay.”

“Yay.” Erin’s drawl made the word sound like seventeen syllables.

“Oh, lucky you. You’ll have to move heaven and earth to get her in,” I heard a man say in the background. “And where in the hell did the southern accent come from?”

“Shut up, Jake,” Erin sounded like a New Yorker again.

“Who’s that with you, Erin?”

“Jake’s a fellow publicist and sometimes friend, when he’s not being an ass.”

“Hi, Tara, don’t listen to Erin, she really loves me.” He laughed. “And no offense about the heaven and earth thing.”

“None taken, Jake.”

“Get out of here, Randall. Go annoy the hell out of someone else.”

“Bye Tara. You and Erin have fun.” That laugh again.

“Okay he’s gone. So, you’re saying yes to the tour? Wow, that was really easy.”

“I’ll explain over a glass of wine when I see you.” She ran down the cities and the tour events. It sounded exciting. Maybe this would be good for me.

“I’ve got us set to kick off on the Today Show, The View, and maybe a couple of other shows, but there is one thing I’m going to give you a heads up about. Janzen Industries, a huge event company who handles big celebrity tours wants a piece of this.” I smiled. Lilly would get a kick out of her mommy being called a celebrity. “They’re booking you in the same cities I have us booked in, in small venues.”