Once Around (5 page)

Molly smiled grimly.
If Gail was looking for an ally, she was out of luck.

"
I don't think they would have appreciated it," Gail said with an edge to her cultivated voice. "We don't call the police for every little thing in this neighborhood."

Molly stepped forward.
"Okay," she said, "that's enough for one day. I'd like you to leave now, Gail."

Gail
's patrician jaw dropped open in surprise. "You're throwing me out?"

"
No," said Molly patiently, "I'm asking you to leave. If you don't, then I'll throw you out."

"
You have a hell of a nerve," Gail said. "You haven't been the friendliest neighbor on the block. I only came over here to help you."

"
If you wanted to help me, you would've tried to stop Robert."

Gail looked over at Rafe Garrick
, as if trying to determine where he figured in the, scheme of things. Rafe looked back at Gail with a closed expression on his face. Molly was reasonably sure she was having an out-of-body experience. The whole day felt as though it belonged to somebody else.

"
Fine," said Gail, squaring her shoulders. "I have supper to make for my husband and children." She started for the front door, took a few steps, then stopped. "I hate to be the one to say this, but we're not at all happy with the way you've been keeping up your property since your husband left you. It's your business if you can't pay for your groceries. Just don't take the rest of us down with you. Maybe you don't care about things like property values, but we do."

"
I hate her," Molly said as she stood in the doorway and watched Gail saunter across the street.

"
That's like hating a copperhead," Rafe said. "She is what she is. Don't waste your time on it."

Robert would have
lectured her on controlling her temper, the dangers of stress and negative thinking. He would have had her apologizing for everything, from her red hair to her bad disposition.

"
I can't believe she knows about the supermarket. It's been less than an hour since it happened."

"
What happened at the supermarket?"

"
Let's just say it was a great opening act for what happened here."

He looked supremely uncomfortable.
"I'd better shove off," he said. "You've probably got things to do."

"
I'm sorry about the job," she said. "I'm sorry Robert treated you so unfairly."

"
So am I," he said. "I could've used the money."

She looked at him.
"Me, too."

She wasn
't sure if it was her words or the way she said them, but he met her eyes and started to laugh, and, to her great surprise, she found herself laughing right along with him.

"
We've got us a problem," he said as the sound of their laughter, faded. "You need the money back. I don't have it to give you."

He
'd give it to her if he could. She could see that in his eyes.

"
So keep it," she said with a toss of her head. "This is between you and Robert. You don't owe me anything." In fact, she kind of liked the fact that Robert was out a healthy sum.

"
You could use some lawn work."

"
Right now I don't care if the, weeds strangle this entire neighborhood."

''
Call me when you do," he said, "and I'll take care of it for you."

It was the right thing to say. Polite. Generous.
Sincere. But why would he want to mow her lawn? "I'll do that"

He hesitated for a moment on the top step. He looked as if he wanted to say something. She couldn
't imagine what. They were two strangers who'd just happened to share the worst day of her life. She could feel her defenses sliding back into place.

"
See you around," he said at last.

"
Yes," she said. "See you."

Polite talk. She
'd never see him again. Not in a million years.

She closed and locked the
door behind him, then set out to assess the damage.

The downstairs was as empty as an abandoned warehouse. All she had to do was follow the tra
il of footprints—big muddy boot marks and the slightly smaller, more precise markings of expensive Italian loafers—to see what they'd been up to. Maybe she should thank Robert for making her life easier. She should be able to zip through her housecleaning in a fraction of the time now.

She followed the footprints upstairs. Robert and his crew had been remarkably thorough. She had to admire their attention to detail. The bedroom had been picked clean. That set her back for a moment. She
could understand taking the armoire and the triple dresser and the nightstands, but the bed? Mattress, box spring, heavy oak frame—every single piece of it.

What kind of man would bring his marital bed with him to his next relationship? She tried not to think too hard about that question. She
'd loved him once. Maybe she'd even still loved him this morning when she woke up, when she
still believed he had her best interests at heart When she still believed he at least cared about their unborn child.

The den had been stripped of her books
, the computer, monitor, printer, office supplies of all description. He'd even taken the bulletin board that hung over the desk and the
Far Side
wall calendar, her favorite one, with the barhopping elephants and angry housecats on the prowl.

He left the guest room untouched. She supposed that shouldn
't surprise her. The guest room was their old life made visible. They'd emptied their entire apartment into the guest room when they moved. The cheap assemble-it-yourself Ikea knockoffs, the double bed from Dial-A-Mattress. Paperback books and photo albums from their wedding and those silly little stuffed animals he'd won at the Fireman's Fair three Augusts ago. No, Robert didn't want any of those things. He probably never had. He left them behind for Molly.

She moved down the hallway to the last bedroom
, the one near the octagonal window. Not much he could do to that room. The only thing in there was a lamp with a split shade and no bulb.

The lamp was gone. She couldn
't believe her eyes. He'd actually taken that miserable garage-sale reject and left the fractured shade on the floor near the window. The idea of fussy, style-conscious Robert living with that monstrosity struck her as so absurdly fitting that she started to laugh for the second time since she'd stepped into the nightmare. He deserved that lamp. He deserved every rotten thing that befell him and his blue-blooded lover. What kind of rotten son of a bitch would steal the mattress from under his pregnant wife?

Of course
, she knew the answer: the one she'd married, that's who. The one she'd pledged to love and honor and stand with shoulder-to-shoulder through every dark moment life threw their way. She'd never figured Robert would turn out to be her darkest moment.

She picked up the shade
then put it down on the windowsill. One of Gail's children was Rollerblading in front of her house. Even the woman's children were perfect. Their clothes never wrinkled. They never fell off their bikes and skinned their knees. They probably liked homework and broccoli.

But Molly had to admit that her sharp-tongued neighbor was right. She hadn
't given property values a second thought. What had seemed like an old man's innocent stubble a few hours ago now looked like an indictment of her worth as neighbor and homeowner. Each dandelion probably reduced her property value by five hundred dollars. Maybe even a thousand. If she had to sell the house at some point, every thousand mattered.

She pushed the thought from her mind. She
'd lost her husband, her credit cards, her furniture, and a good chunk of her pride. If she lost the roof over her head, she might as well give up the ghost. A part of her wanted to call Robert on the phone and beg him to come back home. Another part of her wanted to grab the handgun they'd kept locked in the bedroom closet and shoot him dead. And then there was the part that wanted to run home to her parents and let Mommy and Daddy make everything right again.

What a joke that was. Her parents had been divorced for years now. Besides
, they would push her back to Robert even if he didn't want her. They'd remind her that she probably couldn't do any better, that it was a big cold world out there, and girls without great gifts of beauty and talent should be grateful for whatever they managed to get in this world.

"
He's a lawyer," her mother would say. "He has a future. That's nothing to sneeze at."

"
You've got security," her father would state in his basso profundo voice. "Everything else comes second. Make allowances for him, Molly. He'll come back again." Men made mistakes. Women forgave them. That was the way of the world.

But this was more than making a mistake. Robert had found true love—whatever that was—and he couldn
't wait to leave his wife and unborn child behind in order to claim it. Besides, a man who planned to come back didn't take the mattress and box spring and feather bed and nightstands and lamps and area rugs.

If she
'd needed proof that he didn't love her anymore, she had it in the echoing emptiness of her dream house.

Maybe i
t was time she called a lawyer.

Chapter Three

Rafe grabbed a Whopper
, fries, and a chocolate shake at the Burger King drive-thru on Route 206 then headed for home. The radio was set to an oldies station that broadcast out of Philly. He steered with one hand and managed his supper with the other while Smokey Robinson sang about shopping around.

Smart guy
, that Smokey. Maybe if Molly Chamberlain had shopped around she wouldn't have ended up with a low-life bastard like the man she'd married. The guy was slick, Rafe had to grant him that. "Your references are good," the guy had said over the phone. "I want the best for my wife."

They met the next day
at the diner on Route 1 and agreed on the price. "No contract to sign?" Chamberlain had asked, amusement evident in his well-educated voice.

"
I work on handshakes," Rafe said.

The bastard laughed.
"Then a handshake it is."

A handshake meant
something back where Rafe came from. It was a man's bond. Looked like things were different in Princeton. Chamberlain walked out on the deal the same way he walked out on his wife.

Nobody was about to nominate Rafe for sainthood
, but there was no way in hell he would have walked out on the woman who carried his child. Hell, Karen had to push him out the door when the end finally came down. She'd had to lay out his shortcomings in black and white and blood red before he let her take Sarah and move on to a better life than the one he could provide. A bigger house. A newer car. A fatter bank account. All the things that mattered to her.

"
It's better if you don't see Sarah," Karen had said the day she left him for another, better man. "She's only a baby. Why confuse her? It's not as if she'll remember you."

The sad thing was that he bought it. He let her walk out the door with his baby daughter. He told himself that the kid didn
't need any complications, that old Jeff or George or whatever the hell his name was would be ten times the father he could ever be.

He even believed it for a while. By the time he got smart and started looki
ng for his daughter, it was too late. Sarah had disappeared behind Karen's chain of marriages and name changes, and Rafe's limited resources hadn't been able to keep pace.

Karen wanted more than the endless Montana winters they
'd both grown up with. She wanted more than life on, a failing piece of land in the middle of nowhere. She said she wanted, more for their daughter. Montana winters were as harsh and unforgiving as the land. Karen was a young, vibrant woman who yearned for bright lights and excitement and fun. And he let her go.

So what makes you better than that Chamberlain bastard?

That was an easy one.

Nothing.

Chamberlain walked out on his wife and kid. Rafe had let himself be pushed out. And maybe, if he was being honest with himself, there was a part of him that had been glad to go. He was tired of the fighting, tired of sleeping on the couch every, night because his wife didn't want him in her bed. She curled herself around the baby and shut him out as if he'd never existed. After a while, he wasn't sure he did.

He didn
't miss Karen. He missed the idea of her. He missed knowing there was someone who gave a damn if he lived or died. Not that Karen had ever cared, but he'd been able to convince himself that she did, and for a while that was enough.