“Are the kids going to be around today?” She’d once hoped to build a bond with Kendall and Krystal, but she was the Christmas aunt who bought cool presents and was otherwise forgotten. She’d have to pay more attention if she wanted that to change.
“With their dickhead father.” They’d wandered into the apparel part of the store. Mom added sparkly sneakers for both kids to the pile. That was something they could agree on—Dan was a dickhead, but only when Elsie wasn’t telling everyone he was the best husband in the world.
“How’s Dad?”
“His back is bad.” Given the bones he’d broken in the past on Mom, that seemed fair. “Are you planning on staying around to see him? He’s working a double.”
And after the double he’d drink because it was Saturday and he resented working Saturdays. Flick had no intention of sticking around to see that. “Do you need anything else?”
“Sheets. Towels. A new microwave. A milkshake-maker would be nice for the girls.”
They needed a second cart.
The bill came to thirteen hundred dollars.
Back at the house, they unpacked, installed the microwave and the milkshake-maker, and Mom made tea. Elsie didn’t come home.
“I’m tired. Going to lie down. Leave cash for the dentist,” Mom said when the tea was drunk. “You’ll come at Thanksgiving?”
Maybe it was time to check out of a scene that she didn’t fit into. “There are boots in the bag I brought. I thought you’d like them.”
“Always welcome your hand-me-downs.”
They’d never had the same size feet. Mom had to know Flick had bought the boots new for her. Do you think I should pay for getting out for the rest of my life? Do you think that’s right?
She didn’t say it. It made her feel mean and small and disagreeable, and with what leftover space she had inside, resentful. She’d done what she came to do. If she changed her address, her phone number, her bank account details, it would be like scorching the earth. There was no reason not to, except the guilt. She got lucky. She had choices. She got out. She was going to Washington to work so other people got the same chances.
She drove back to the city and dropped the rental off. It was late and all Flick wanted to do was shower and sleep and wake to a new day that wasn’t so inclined to make her feel like she took up too much space in the world at the expense of other people.
Chapter Seven
Tom didn’t have the same fine motor skills in his left hand. He prodded the largest splinter of wood wedged in his right bicep with a sewing needle from a Four Seasons’s hotel convenience kit. It had a piece of blue thread tied through it and that’s the only reason he hadn’t already lost his prized surgical instrument in the living room carpet.
He’d only managed to break the smallest of the splinters out of his arm. There were dozens more. He could leave them and they’d work their way to the surface eventually, but they could become infected no matter how much rubbing alcohol he dabbed them with. He didn’t want to chance that, but his only other option was to keep carving inexpert holes in himself or go to a clinic where a nurse would do a better job of it.
Showering didn’t help, but it washed away the rest of the soil and dirt that’d covered him, showed what was bruised and gashed from what was filth. Nothing needed stitching and the bruises weren’t overly sore to poke.
The whiskey helped, if only because it was the best part of a god-awful day.
If he’d been paying attention, he’d have known it’d rained heavily overnight, he’d have noticed that part of the track was saturated. He’d have watched where he put his feet or turned back, stayed away from the edge, taken a different trail.
Taking a tumble as the track broke up would’ve been acceptable if he’d had his thoughts directed against the conversation he needed to have about his promotion. Everyone knew it was coming and the waiting was destabilizing. Tom wanted a public acknowledgment he was taking over from Harry Hardiman, if only to settle the gossip. It was good business sense, but that didn’t make him insensitive about broaching it. If it looked like an inappropriate grab for power it would be more difficult to ward off any unpleasant backstabbing.
He’d wanted to plan that conversation while he hiked and emerge from the trail with his thoughts organized, contingencies planned, spend an hour or two in the office while no one was around working on a first-hundred-days program so he was ready and could demonstrate it.
Instead, not a single footfall came unaccompanied by thoughts of Flick. How she sounded, smelled, felt on his lips, in his lap and as she chased her orgasm on his hand.
That determined madness in her eyes, the way she shook with the effort, the pleasure, the softening of her features as she came down.
She was wild and beautiful and he’d been a fool for letting things get extreme. A fool for walking away from making her come all night. It’d be understandable if she left, because he’d treated her like she was the remains of a good meal gone bad and thrown out.
There were a dozen different ways he could’ve handled what happened last night that didn’t set him up as spectator, a holier-than-thou judge of her behavior. He’d detached himself like it’d meant nothing and he couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d shut down on him, lights out, music off.
He dropped the needle again and lost sight of it.
He could’ve broken a leg, his shoulder.
His neck.