Nearlyweds (11 page)

“I have no idea,” I whispered back. “But it better not be Nick.”

“Well, it
really
better not be David. Or, oh my God, what if it’s Renée?”

“Casey?” wailed a thin little voice on the other side of the door. “Are you home? Please be home, oh please, please, please.”

And then we heard a deep, resounding woof.

“Stella?” When I yanked open the door, Cash raced in, nearly knocking me over.

“Yeah, it’s me.” Stella trudged in behind the dog. Her face was smudged with flour and she smelled of charred meat.

“What happened?” Erin asked, staring at the pair of suitcases resting on the stoop.

“Marriage happened,” Stella snapped. “Wedded bliss. Happily ever after. What a crock.”

“You left Mark?”

“Hey, something smells good. Are you making pizza?”

Erin and I exchanged a look. “Lasagna,” I said. “And if you need a place to stay, you’re more than welcome to hole up here for a few days.”

“Thank you.” She heaved a mighty sigh. “I’ll start looking for an apartment tomorrow morning, but I don’t know how
many building managers will be working the weekend after Thanksgiving.”

“An apartment?” Erin repeated. “It’s that bad?”

Stella swallowed hard and nodded. “I can’t stay with him. And I can’t go back to New York—everyone will smirk and say they told me so.”

“Who would say that?” I asked.

“Everyone
would say that. Everyone’s been dying to say it ever since Mark and I announced our engagement. And I can’t afford rent in Manhattan; I’d have to live with my mother in Westchester County, and even if I could stand living with my mother and listening to her lecture me about the sanctity of marriage every single day, she has to sell the house anyway to pay my father’s legal team—”

“Whoa, okay, slow down. You can stay here as long as you need to,” I assured her. “There’s only one problem—I’m not allowed to have dogs in the apartment. I can sneak one in for a few hours every now and then, but the landlord will freak if he finds out Cash is staying here long-term.”

“I can take him,” Erin blurted out.

Stella narrowed her eyes. “But you said your mother-in-law had allergies.”

Erin’s grin was diabolical. “Oh well.”

Stella blinked. “I see I’m not the only one who had a horrible Thanksgiving.”

I stepped out to the porch to drag the suitcases in. “Make yourself comfortable. You want coffee? Cookies? Lasagna?”

“Lots of everything, please.” She rubbed her temples. “And do you have any wine?”

“We definitely need wine,” Erin agreed.

“One bottle of wine, coming right up.”

“Perfect.” Stella sighed. “We’ll drink a toast to the end of my marriage.”

I
t’s on, Renée,
I thought as Casey waved, then pulled her truck away from the curb in front of my house.
You want my husband? You want my guest room? You’ll have to fight me for it.

“Let’s go,” I whispered to the hulking black dog beside me. Cash and I crunched through the thin layer of black ice that coated the flagstone path leading up to the front door. Renée’s Cadillac was still monopolizing the driveway, but the house windows were dark—David and Mommy Dearest must have given up on me and gone to bed. “You got my back?”

Cash snuffled loudly in response, which sent me into paroxysms of giggles. After polishing off two bottles—maybe three; I’d lost track—of wine, along with most of the lasagna and an entire pumpkin pie, Casey, Stella and I had regained a
sense of humor about our Thanksgivings. We’d spent the evening parked in front of the TV, flipping between schmaltzy, soft-lit holiday specials and ESPN, where we had watched the recap of the Detroit Lions football game while Casey yelled obscenities until the neighbors downstairs started jabbing the ceiling with a broom handle. We had all turned off our cell phones, the better to elude the men who had somehow duped us into believing they were marriage material. Despite the inauspicious start to the day, I’d ended up having a marvelous time. So marvelous that Casey had to drive me home.

While I dredged the bottom of my purse for my house keys, I fantasized about my next husband. He would be tall and good looking, of course; smart as a whip with a compassionate spirit and a beguiling European accent. His name would be…Hugh, perhaps, and his parents would live overseas. Hugh would whisk me away to a penthouse overlooking a grassy park with cavernous walk-in closets and separate, his-and-her bathrooms. We would never stoop to petty quarrels over who mixed in the recyclables with the trash or how, despite repeated reminders, someone could forget to rinse his beard trimmings out of the sink every single morning.

Yes, life with Hugh would be grand. But before I could track him down and start my new life, I owed it to myself to make a last stand for my marriage. If I left David, it would be on my terms, not Renée’s.

The dog whined and pressed his nose into the crack between the door and the jamb as I tried unsuccessfully to connect the key with the lock.

“Shhh,” I admonished, swaying on my feet. “I’m going as fast as I can.”

Finally, I managed to jam the key into the dead bolt, but before I could twist it, the door burst open.

“Erin?” David’s silhouette was barely visible through the dark shadows in the entryway. “Where have you been?”

Before I could answer, the dog muscled his way in and streaked down the hall.

“Cash!” I cried, as David flattened himself against the wall.

“What the hell was that?” David sounded panicked. “Did you find an
animal
out there?”

“Oh, relax, it’s just a dog.” I couldn’t keep the note of disgust out of my voice.
Hugh
would never freak out about a harmless domestic canine.

“Are you sure? It looked like a wolf!”

I shook my head and stepped into the house. “David. Come on. When’s the last time you saw a wolf prowling around our front yard? Besides, Cash is way too big to be a wolf. He’s a mix between a Great Dane and a Newfoundland, as far as we can tell, and he’s Stella Porter’s new pet.”

“Well, what is it doing in our house?” he demanded.

“I told her we’d dog-sit for a few days.”

“Why would you tell her that? You know my mom has al
lergies.” He paused, sniffing my breath. “Where have you been? Have you been drinking?”

“A little bit,” I conceded. “My call hours ended at five, so spare me the sanctimony. Did you and your mother have a nice dinner?”

“Help!” Renée started screaming upstairs. “David! Somebody!
Help!
”

“Oh my God, it’s mauling her!” David bolted across the living room, tripped over the rocking chair, then picked himself up and pounded up the stairs. A few seconds later, the screaming stopped as yellow lights flooded the landing.

I kicked off my boots and headed for the kitchen to slug back a big glass of water and some ibuprofen to head off tomorrow’s hangover.

Before I even made it to the cupboard next to the sink, the bloodcurdling screams started up again.

“No, no,
nooooo,
” Renée wailed. She didn’t sound like she’d been mauled. Rather, she sounded like she was about to maul someone else.

“Erin,” David called. “Would you come up here, please? Right now?”

“Of course, honey.” I fished one of the dog biscuits Stella had given me out of my pocket and padded upstairs to lure Cash out of Renée’s room.

“Right now.”
David sounded like he was two seconds away from a nervous breakdown.

“I’m coming,”
I snapped back.

“That isn’t a dog, it’s a demon!” Renée was screeching as I arrived at the doorway to the guest room. “A demon from hell that she conjured up to torment me. All I’ve ever done is love her! I’ve treated her like my own daughter and—” She broke off as I waved from the hall.

Cash trotted over and collapsed at my feet. “What seems to be the problem?” I asked.

David was holding his head in both hands. “The dog…”

I reached down to scratch behind Cash’s ears. “Did he startle you, Renée? I am so sorry.”

My mother-in-law looked unexpectedly old and frail in a flowered flannel nightgown. Her hair stuck out at odd angles, and her face, usually powdered and lipsticked to perfection, looked pale and vulnerable. “No, the dog did not
startle
me. He jumped into my bed and tried to kill me while I slept. And then he…he…”

“He what?” I struggled to swallow back a yawn.

She pointed imperiously toward the middle of her bed.

My eyes snapped open. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” David said.

Nestled in the folds of the blue-and-yellow plaid duvet was a steaming pile of dog feces.

“Well.” I dusted off my hands and started toward the bed. “Let’s get this out of your way. I’ll get you some fresh blankets.”

Renée’s face had taken on a purplish tint. “That is the most filthy, disgusting, vile thing I have ever seen in all my born days! This is why I always told you, David, dogs do not belong in the house. Didn’t I tell you?”

David looked at me. “Now what?”

I shrugged. “Now I wash the sheets and we go to bed. What else can we do?”

“You are taking that dog back to Stella’s tomorrow,” he declared.

“I can’t.”

His face was starting to get a little purple, too. “What do you mean, you can’t?”

“I can’t,” I repeated, bundling up the blankets and heading for the basement door, Cash right on my heels. “I’ll explain the whole thing later, but Stella needs us to take care of the dog for a few days.”

David followed me, leaving Renée to gnash her teeth upstairs. “Then fob it off on Casey. She’s so crazy about animals, let her take care of this unhousebroken beast!”

“Okay, firstly, Casey’s not allowed to have dogs in her apartment. Secondly, his name is Cash and he
is
housebroken. He just had a long day and he got a little too excited.”

“He shat in my mother’s bed!”

“And I’m sure he feels awful about that. Let’s talk about this in the morning, okay? It’s too late to do anything about it tonight and I’m dead on my feet.”

A series of loud, pointed sneezes punctuated the tension crackling between us.

“My mother is allergic,” he seethed.

“I’ll bring home some Zyrtec samples from the office,” I offered.

He glared at me.

“David,” Renée called. “David, I need you.”

“Go ahead.” I shooed him away. “I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

“This is not over,” he warned before stomping off to minister to the hapless victim.

I opened the patio door and unfurled the blanket, dumping Cash’s little indiscretion on the back lawn, then wadded the soiled linens into the washing machine. While I waited for the laundry to cycle through, I flopped down on the sofa and propped my head up against a throw pillow.

Four hours later, my cell phone rang, jerking me out of a sound sleep. I was still on the sofa, bleary-eyed and cotton-mouthed, but no longer buzzed. Though I was no longer technically on call, I picked up my phone, checked the Incoming Call number, and groaned.

“Hello?” I mumbled into the receiver.

“Oh, thank God,” said Kelly Fendt. “I was praying you’d be there. Listen, Dr. Maye, I know it’s late, but I have to see you. It’s an emergency.”

Cash greeted me at the door when I dragged myself home at six a.m. “Hey buddy, you still up?” I left my coat on the entryway floor and slogged upstairs to bed.

“Good morning,” I whispered to David, stripping down to my panties and slipping his soft Northeastern T-shirt over my head. “Good night.”

He lifted his head from the pillow and fumbled for the alarm clock. “Where’d you go?”

“Kelly Fendt,” I said, which was all the explanation he needed.

“Jeez, what was wrong with the kid this time?”

“Nothing. She was convinced his appendix was about to burst because he kept fussing and rolling onto his right side in his crib.”

David rubbed his eyes. “And?”

“And I told her to go to the ER in Pittsfield, but she started wailing and carrying on that the ER docs wouldn’t know her son’s quote-unquote, ‘history.’”

“Honey. Kelly Fendt is a lunatic. You know this. You’ve told me this many times.”

“I know, but she’s very convincing. So I met her at the office and did an exam, and when I told her it was probably just gas pains, she threatened to sue me for malpractice.”

His head plopped back down. “See? Lunatic.”

“She kept clutching my hand and begging me to help her, and I knew Dr. Lowell would have a conniption if I blew her off, so I went with her to the ER.”

“Seriously?”

“I had to, David. She was hyperventilating and shaking like a junkie.”

He looked appalled. “Okay. She may be a lunatic, but you’re worse for letting her manipulate you every time.”

“Yeah, yeah. So we went to the ER for a surgical evaluation. Just to cover everyone’s ass.”

“What was their diagnosis?”

“Gas pains.” I sighed. “Everything looked normal. The woman is a classic case of Munchausen’s. That poor kid is going to grow up to be an OCD, agoraphobic hypochondriac who’s never kissed anyone for fear of germs. Either that or a strung-out heavy metal guitarist who eats live reptiles onstage.” I peeled back the covers and crawled into bed. Cash followed suit, hopping into the middle of our queen-sized bed and sprawling out next to me.

David’s head popped back up. “Excuse me. Why is that dog in our bed?”

“I dunno.” I was half-asleep already. “Maybe Stella and her husband let him sleep there.”

“Well, we’ll have to untrain him.” David leapt out of bed, which proved to be a major tactical error—the dog stretched out his long legs and settled into the warm nest of David’s vacated blankets.

“Come on, dog.” David grabbed Cash’s collar and pulled. “The bed is for people only. Off you go.”

Cash gave him a disdainful look, closed his eyes, and exhaled loudly.

“Off! Off!” David pulled and pushed and waved his arms, but to no avail. Cash started snoring. “Get up and help me, Erin. Erin?”

“Shhh,” I said, pulling David’s pillow over my head. “I’m sleeping. We’ll deal with this later.”

“You’re just going to lie there and let a dog take my rightful place in our bed?”

But I was sinking gratefully into a tranquil haze where histrionic mothers and intrusive in-laws and incendiary piles of dog poop didn’t exist.

When I woke up at noon, the phone was ringing and Cash was still snuggled up beside me. I could smell the sharp tang of fresh coffee drifting up from the kitchen, and David was nowhere in sight. I rolled out of bed and opened my closet, scowling at the neatly hung rows of earth tones and pleats and sensible loafers. Nothing bright, nothing flashy, nothing remotely appealing. Where was the camouflage miniskirt when I needed it?

When I came downstairs to the kitchen, David and Renée were huddled around the newspaper, sipping coffee and grousing about the pothole in front of our house that the town council refused to fix until spring. They looked up disapprovingly as I swanned in wearing jeans and the only relic I could find from my bar-dancing days: a tight black sweater cut indecently low.

“Who was on the phone?” I asked, praying that Kelly Fendt hadn’t gotten hold of my home number.

Renée frowned as if she’d just swallowed a spoonful of sodden coffee grinds. “Just that pesky Henry Reynolds, wanting to know if I had a good Thanksgiving. I told him that my husband has been dead five years, my son barely spoke a word to me after I slaved all day in the kitchen, and my daughter-in-law stomped out before we even sat down, then came home drunk with a filthy animal that…well, how
could
I have a good Thanksgiving?”