Husband by Choice

Running around the vehicle like a madman in Converse high-tops and cartoon scrubs, he banged his knee on the way to the driver’s side, but didn’t slow down. Grabbing the handle, he practically yanked the door off its hinges and dived for the floor. He felt everywhere. Under the driver’s seat. The passenger seat. The backseats. He even checked the back hatch.

Everything was just as he’d left it when he’d pulled the van into the garage two weeks before.

Back in the house, he thought about dinner. Briefly. Checked that Caleb was still content on the floor and not asking to eat, and went back to check every room one more time.

Meri had been there. He wanted to breathe the same air. To take her breath inside him and keep her there. He needed her energy.

Hell, he needed her love.

He ran his fingers gently over the clean faucets and felt tears pushing at the backs of his eyes.

She must still love him. She wouldn’t have cleaned for him if she didn’t still love him.

Would she?

The knocking at the front door startled him. Feeling like an idiot, practically getting ready to cry over a bathroom faucet, he turned off the light and went to the front door.

“Am I on time?” Chantel came in, her ubiquitous duffel bag slung over her shoulder.

“Meri was here.” He spoke softly so Caleb wouldn’t hear him.

Chantel dropped her bag. “What? When?” Her happy expression was gone, but her frown wasn’t so much displeased as focused.

“Today,” he said, walking with her to the kitchen where he’d failed to get dinner started. “Sometime after I left and before I got home. She cleaned the bathrooms.”

“She dusted, too,” Chantel said, running her finger over the sideboard in the dining room just through the kitchen archway. “You could write your name in this thing last night.”

He hadn’t noticed.

“I think she wants to come home, Chantel. That’s why she was here. She needed to be here. Needs us. Maybe this is all coming to an end.”

She wasn’t smiling. “Then why didn’t she stay?”

“Because he’s still out there. And she’s not going to put us in danger.”

“Then why not leave you a note?”

“Maybe he was with her. Or watching her. You said Wayne saw a light on at his house.”

“We don’t know for sure it’s his house. And you really think he’s going to wait patiently while she cleans your house?”

He’d had the same thought, but... “You got a better explanation?” he asked, angry, and knowing that it wasn’t Chantel’s fault. She’d been a godsend to him. And to Meri, too.

When this was over, they were inviting Chantel for Christmas. And Thanksgiving. And...they’d go to Las Sendas and take her out to dinner. Or introduce her to a handsome resident at the hospital or...

“I think she probably came because she needed something.” Chantel’s voice was soft. Caring. “She didn’t have a chance to pack anything, Max. I’m guessing there was something here she wanted or needed. Maybe an important paper or something. Her passport....”

He shook his head. “She carries her passport in her purse.”

“So it wasn’t her passport.” Chantel opened a cupboard, pulled out the spaghetti sauce. Took spaghetti off the shelf in the pantry. Got a pot out of the bottom drawer of the stove, filled it with water, and put it on to boil. “Clearly she needed something. It’s also clear that she purposely came for it when she knew you and Caleb weren’t going to be here.”

He’d thought of that. But Meri wasn’t the type of woman who would come waltzing back into their lives until she was ready to stay. Obviously she still had some things to work out. But she was coming home.

She wouldn’t have let him know she was there, wouldn’t have cleaned, if she wasn’t coming home.

She loved him.

“Maybe she cleaned because she felt guilty for leaving you in the lurch like she did. Or maybe she didn’t want her son living in filth. Maybe this was her way of letting you know you need to hire a cleaning lady.”