It Happened on Maple Street

That hadn’t changed. But I added a caveat that morning. I’d rather live alone than live with someone who didn’t love me. To live with someone I couldn’t love with all of my heart.

Like I’d loved Tim.

Slowing, I pulled into an alcove on the side of the mountain community where Chris and I had settled on the outskirts of Albuquerque.

Tears flooded my eyes as I saw myself, my life, from the outside in. In a sense, James and Chris were both right. I’d let them both down. Because I hadn’t been able to love either one of them as I’d loved Tim.

I’d given them everything I had. But it hadn’t been enough because I hadn’t been able to give them my whole heart.

I wondered if either one of them had ever known that.

Maybe, if James hadn’t done what he’d done . . .

No. Closing my mind to all thoughts of James—as I’d been doing since that last night I’d seen him—I reached the house Chris and I shared, forgoing the front door for the side gate and out to the separately keyed office that had been our deciding factor on purchasing the house several years before.

And thoughts of James protruded again. Had his actions that night on the country road ruined me for everyone who would come after, just as he’d said? But not in the way he’d said? Not morally, but emotionally? And physically?

Just as I was incapable of feeling sexual desire, was I also incapable of loving completely?

Unlocking the door, I stepped inside, taking in the solid oak desk, the love seat with Raggedy Ann quilts and pillows and dolls that faced me every day as I wrote, to the wall of shelves and drawers that held my supplies. In the back, through another door, was a very small but perfectly fine lavatory.

The office was exactly the same as I’d left it the day before. Papers strewn across my desk. The chair pushed back.

It seemed more open. Like there was more air in the room.

My marriage had ended years before. I knew that. I didn’t want to let go, to admit defeat. I didn’t want to be a failure.

I didn’t want to be someone who let my husband down.

I didn’t want to believe that trying hard, giving everything I had, just wasn’t enough.

And I didn’t want to waste another minute trying to be something I was not. Trying to compensate for my past. I’d spent twenty-seven years of my life trying to be enough, and here I was, forty-seven years old and all alone. And what I suddenly understood was that I was enough. Why a prostitute in my ex-husband’s bed had brought it all home to me I didn’t know, but I didn’t really care, either. I was who I was. And that was okay.

What wasn’t okay was being dead alive.

Eighteen

TIM GOT UP AT HIS NORMAL TIME, MADE COFFEE, grabbed a bowl of cereal, and turned on the TV for some sitcom rerun company before hitting the shower. It was another cold January day. Monday. A good day because it was a new one. He’d made it through a not-good Sunday. One of those rare days in a guy’s life that asked more questions than it answered. Questions for which there were no answers.

He was ready to tackle the world by the time he was in his truck and heading out to the plant. If life was missing something, he’d find it. He was a wild spirit. A man who had to be able to get up and go. Before long he was going to quit his job and head out to see what the world had to offer. Maybe he’d drive a semi.

Or get his real estate license, buy cheap homes, fix them up, and sell them for a profit.

There was only opportunity ahead.

A brief thought of the night before intruded. Would the message he’d left on Classmates.com ever find Tara, or would it be lost in cyberspace forever? She was someone he’d known and loved. Sad to think that he might never hear from or see her again.

Still, life was changing and he was going to change right along with it. That decision made, he sipped from his coffee, upped the volume on the radio, turned at the next corner, and took a different route to work.

I sat in my chair just like I did every morning. I clicked on my media player, choosing Grady Soine’s Beautiful album, with which I started every single workday.

And I opened my e-mail program. I’d go through the messages so they wouldn’t be calling out to me, and then close the program and give myself over to writing for the rest of the day. I had a system. It worked for me.

I saw the name and thought it was one of those eye tricks. The kind that showed you a puddle of water ahead when you were lost in the desert. My stomach was tumbling, my heart pounding, and I looked again.

Tim Barney.

In the subject column. Couldn’t be the same Tim Barney. I took myself in hand as I stared at the name. Tim was a common name. Barney probably was, too, though I hadn’t personally run across it ever again in my life.