Bad Seed

My chef prepared beef wellington along with a slew of vegetables. We ate until we couldn’t eat any longer and I talked with Brooke about what this would mean for my company. I was reminded of how easy it was to talk with her, something that was so very hard to find. She seemed so genuinely interested and soon two hours had gone by while I talked her through all the new additions to my company’s technology.

I missed having someone interested in things that interested me.

After I put the kids to bed, I found Brooke with a glass of wine in her hand. She was standing out on the porch, her arms wrapped around her body. I poured myself a glass and stepped out behind her, feeling her body heat radiating against my chest like it had the first night we’d met all those years ago.

“How’s it coming with that writer’s block?” I asked.

“I’m halfway there,” she said. “Got enough wine in my system to make me do things I might regret later on.”

“Oh, come on. You never regretted a damn thing you did in college.”

“No, you’re right. In the end, I enjoyed our time together,” she grinned. “I wish I could say the same about the last few months,” she said quietly, her face falling just a bit

“What happened?”

I watched her shoulders heave with a sigh before she threw the last of her wine back.

“He cheated. Lied. Stole from me.”

“What?” I asked.

“Yeah. It was a whole fiasco. He was charming and romantic, attentive to me when we were together. Morgan was the one that found him in a restaurant with another woman. Had she not taken pictures, I probably wouldn’t have believed her.”

“No man should treat a woman like that.”

“At least he showed up,” she said, color popping into her cheeks.

I bit down on the inside of my cheek and didn’t respond as her eyes rose to meet mine.

“Sorry, that was uncalled for.”

“Nice to see you haven’t lost your spark,” I said.

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t apologize. I deserve it,” I said. “And don’t worry, karma kicked me in the balls for you.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“My payback for doing what I did to you was the woman I married,” I said.

I watched her nod her head as she drew in a deep breath.

“I saw the wedding announcement in the paper. You two looked happy.”

“We were petrified. Pregnant by accident and scrambling for what to do,” I said.

“Where is she now?”

“Oddly enough, she’s with her boyfriend and of all the places on the entire earth, she’s right here on the island,” I said with a sigh.

“Wait. She’s here?”

“Probably jetting off somewhere else now if I’m lucky,” I said.

“What happened with you two? The wedding announcement painted you guys to be so in love.”

“That’s what they’re supposed to do. Sarah was a nice enough girl, but she didn’t want kids. Her birth control failed and she got pregnant. She wanted to terminate, and I begged her not to. Told her I’d marry her and make her as comfortable as I could if she didn’t. And she tried, but it just wasn’t for her. I woke up one morning when the twins were around ten months old and she was gone.”