Flirting With Forever (2 page)

I poured myself a glass of wine, ate my shrimp and green curry before it got cold, and fell asleep on the couch watching an old movie. When I woke up, the house was cold and dark. There was a sick hollow feeling in my stomach; I wrote it off to the spicy food, but deep down, I knew my husband gone.

‡

“H
ave you heard
from him?” Kit asked.

I shook my head and looked away from her because I didn’t want to cry again. It had been a month since I signed the listing agreement to put the beach house up for sale. The market was slow, but that would hopefully change with the warmer spring weather, what hadn’t changed was Jim was officially gone for two months, no phone calls, no nothing.

Well, that wasn’t true. After he’d been gone for forty-eight hours, I was sick with worry, thinking of all the horrible things that might have happened to him—car accident, amnesia, kidnapping. Anything to keep from acknowledging the fact that my husband was so angry with me, he’d left. I’d tried to file a missing person’s report, hoping the police could find my husband for me, and they did. Sort of.

The detective had asked me a million questions and said he’d file the report. But before he left, he got a call from his boss, who was also one of Jim’s long time golfing buddies. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I’ll tell her.” And then he did tell me that my husband wasn’t missing, he had just left me.

“He’ll come back,” Kit said, “you know he will.”

“I used to think so, but now I’m not so sure.”

Kit was my rare bird—the illusive literary agent I’d searched high and low for and snared with my first and only attempt at writing nonfiction. She was flying through Charlotte on her way to some writers’ conference today and had a two-hour layover. We’d planned this brunch months ago, but it had a very different tone than we’d initially intended.

For having known her only for a year, I knew lot about Kit. She hated wearing shoes and people who can’t commit. She loved to laugh, and her idea of nirvana was closing a massive sale while simultaneously having her feet massaged. But the most distinctive characteristic about Kit was that she was the nicest “all business” on the planet.

At the café near the airport, the way she picked at her lunch made it apparent she’d come for the coffee. She looked down at the brown stuff she loved to swirl around in her cup, like the right words for my situation were floating around in there somewhere. The crease in her brow almost made me smile. I was sure she was calling on every ounce of her estrogen-fortified wisdom to help me feel better.

“Look, I know it’s not a good time to mention this, Tara. I’d never tell your publisher about Jim; but the book and the workbook are still soaring and the publisher keeps bugging me about setting up dates for a tour.”

Book tour. I’d dreamed about hearing those two words connected to my name my entire adult life; every writer does. I felt like a giddy kid when Kit briefed me on the possibility after she sold the novel to Penguin, who had crunched the numbers and deemed my work worthy of publication. But things had changed since then. I’d gotten a very small advance for my book and the companion workbook, but they’d turned out to be one of those breakout titles authors dream of having.

The books I’d written almost on a whim had debuted at number five and six on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list and were now at the top two spots. Since that happy day, my publisher had married its rival, and my husband of fifteen years was gone.

“No.” It was amazing how emphatic I sounded when every sinew of hope and dream connected to my writing screamed in opposition. “I can’t plan anything right now.”

She nodded, reverently accepting my answer—for about ten seconds, pulled a thick manila file out of her briefcase, and plopped it onto the table in front of me. “Your book is actually helping marriages, Tara. Go ahead and look in the file. There are newspaper articles from all over the country; there’s even a Dear Abby series for God’s sake.” She paused, which was my cue to come to my senses and express my undying gratitude. When I didn’t, she took a different tactic.

“I didn’t want to say anything until it’s a done deal, but it’s a done deal. They’re hot for your fiction now. They’re offering $1.2 million to bundle all twenty-six romances into four boxed sets and sandwiching them in really cool displays between the book and the workbook.”

“Nobody wanted to publish those romances. Even you turned me down when I was looking for an agent.” I’d been embarrassed Kit hadn’t loved my fiction enough to sign me as a client, but I was grateful she’d snapped me up when The Perfect Marriage came across her desk.

“Look, forget about everything except your book. Jim chose to never read a single word you wrote for what, ten years? What does that say about him?”

“Fifteen years.”

“You poured your heart and soul into all those romances, Tara, and then your book and what does Jim do? He waited until you were at the top of the bestseller lists for a month before he picked up a copy to see what you’ve been thinking all these years; he got his feelings hurt and he left.”

I nodded. I could feel my insides throbbing hard. The last thing I wanted to do was to start crying again and not be able to stop for hours.

“A writing career was your dream, Tara, not Jim’s, not mine. It’s still your dream. Maybe knowing what Jim knows now will eventually bring him back. But in the meantime, you owe it to yourself to see this through.”

“I’ve called his cell a thousand times; he won’t take my calls,” I said, stabbing at the redial number on my cellphone on the underside of the table.

“All the more reason for you to do the tour. After a twenty-city tour, both of you will have a new perspective on things.”

“But how can I do a tour when the book is the reason my husband left? Don’t you think that will come up at some point?”

“It’s all in how we sell it.”

I began digging through my bottomless hobo bag for my wallet, but Kit waved off my attempt to buy lunch. She tossed her credit card onto the table and pushed the pregnant file toward me. “Just promise me you’ll look through this and think about the tour.”

On the way back to the airport, she talked about how pretty the forsythia and red bud trees were, about how there should be a law requiring all writers’ conferences must be held at really nice hotels with good food or, even better, a good spa. Before she got out of the car at the terminal, she asked me about Lilly, my elderly Jack Russell, who had one foot in doggie heaven.

“She’s not good. The vet says she doesn’t have long.”

“And then you’ll be alone in that big house? No way. Travel a little bit. Talk to the people who are actually touched by your work.”

I got out of the car and hugged her. “Bye,” I said, letting go of her and preparing myself for one last assault on my desire to lay low. But Kit knew she had planted the seed and did the smartest thing she could do before she passed through the automatic doors into the airport. “Lunch was good; we should do this more often.”

About ten miles from home, my cellphone. I glanced down at the caller ID and nearly ran off the road before pulling off the Interstate onto the shoulder.

“Jim?”

There was a long silence on the other end. I could hear breathing. Tears welled up and spilled down my cheeks. My stomach pulsed in time with my runaway heart. I took in a huge breath and tried to collect myself.

“Jim—Honey, I’m so sorry.”

“Who the hell is this?” His accent was thick and Hispanic. The shock snapped my head back.

“Who is this? This is my husband’s phone. Where’s my husband? What have you done with him?”

“Who am I? I’m the person you keep calling all the time, and I don’t know where your husband is, but I’m sick of your calling. This is my phone now. You got that?”

“How did you get it? What have you done to Jim?”

“I haven’t done nothing to nobody, but you? But you? You called at 3:30 in the damn morning, woke me up. All the time, day, night, you don’t care. I tried ignoring you, so now I’m calling
your
ass to tell you to stop calling this phone. Goodbye.”

“Wait.” I closed my eyes and tried hard to sound nice, agreeable, anything to know where Jim was. “Okay—okay, just please tell me where you found the phone.”

“Some old dude gave it to me. A gringo. He was driving a nice Lexus, the one that parks itself. I was waiting to use the pay phone and he just gave it to me.” He paused for a minute. His tone softened a little. “Hey, are you crying?”

“No.” I swallowed hard and wiped my hand across my eyes. “Where are you?”

“I’m in Texas.”

“What town?”

“Look, just don’t call anymore. You got that?”

“The man who gave you the phone, what did he look like?”

“I don’t know, lady. Old, white. Look, I gotta go.”

The line went dead. I sobbed and couldn’t stop. All I could think about was Jim was gone, and probably headed to one of the places in Mexico I’d told him I’d always wanted to go. Cities like Cancun that advertise quick getaways and make three days of fun and romance sound attainable for $399 per person.

I dialed 611 and waited for the recorded message to end so I could talk to a real person. “Thank you for calling Verizon. Please listen carefully because our instructions have changed.” I tearfully punched the buttons to answer the automated questions. There were nine prompts, but not one of them said, if your husband has left you, press six. Out of desperation, I pressed zero and after a few seconds an annoyingly cheery person assured me she was devoted to meeting all my needs.

“Thank you for calling Verizon, Ms. Jordan. How can I help you?”

My first instinct was to say I was beyond help. “My husband’s phone—Isn’t there some way to track it? Some sort of guidance system or something?” I gripped the steering wheel hard, trying to disguise my tears and the howl aching to escape my lips.

“If your husband’s phone is lost or stolen, he can go into any authorized Verizon store and get a new one.” There was a long pause. She was probably reading a note the last person I spoke to left on our account.
Woman desperately seeking runaway husband, will use all methods of trickery to break privacy laws to find him.

“I’m sorry. Look, my husband Jim is—gone. He gave the phone to someone—That’s what the guy who has the phone said. I’m just trying to find where my husband was. Maybe I can figure out where he’s going. Find him.” And then what?

“Ma’am,” her cheery tone was replaced by a low empathetic whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“You have kids?”

“Just Lilly—our dog.”

“You’re lucky.”

Was I really? I thought I’d gotten over the humiliation of having bad eggs, but the truth is you never do. The dull ache in my gut from five years of infertility was always there, from trying and trying until sex was clinical and painful. Jim said he didn’t care, but I knew he wanted kids. I wanted a child so badly, I wanted to adopt, but Jim didn’t. He wanted our own kids. He wanted what I couldn’t give him.

“It’s worse when you have kids,” the woman said. “The little ones don’t understand any better than the big ones do. But understanding doesn’t matter. I know why he left, and I still can’t accept it.”

Through the mesh of voices in the call center, I could feel her pain, less fresh than mine, but just as raw.

“I’m sorry.”

“It gets better; at least that’s what everybody says.” She blew her nose. “Look, I’m sorry, but I have to ask this. Are you a danger to yourself?”

“No. I just want him back.”

She let me cry while she clicked away at her computer. “I turned his phone off. I have to; it’s company policy,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry. Are you going to be okay?”

“Yes.” I was a bad liar.

“Bastard.” She said it under her breath and snarfed. Both of us were crying now but over different men. “I’m sorry, I have to go. Thank you for calling—Thanks.”

Between total emotional exhaustion and the gentle rocking every time a truck or car whizzed by, I collapsed forward with my forehead on the steering wheel. A soft knocking sound somewhere in my subconscious was suddenly a pounding on my window. I swiped the back of my hand across my mouth and sat up.

“Are you okay, ma’am?”

The cop’s hat was way too big for his buzz cut head. Even if he didn’t look old enough to shave, his face was deadly serious as his eyes searched my car looking for a liquor bottle or some kind of telltale evidence of whatever drug someone slumped over in their car on the shoulder of the Interstate might use. His nostrils flared in and out; he wanted me to talk so he could smell my coffee breath.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

I must have slurred a little or swallowed my last word because he stepped away from my door. “Step out of the car, ma’am.” He sounded like his hair was on fire.

“What?” I looked at him and put both hands on the steering wheel. “I’m not impaired, and I’m not getting out of this car.”

“Get out of the car now, Ma’am.”

I looked up at him and broke down again. It was clear I wasn’t the first tearful woman he’d entertained alongside the road. He opened my car door and stepped back.