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The Other Wife
Shirley Jump
The last person she expected to see at her husband's funeral was his wife!But having learned her husband apparently bought his engagement rings in bulk, Penny Reynolds is shocked out of her well-ordered world. She can't bring herself to hate his "wife," Susan, or toss his amazing piano-playing dog (another surprise) out on his rump. Still, she can get answers as to why her hubby led his secret life. All it takes is a little persuading before she and Susan embark on the trip of a lifetime with Harvey the Wonder Dog in tow.As the two travel the show-dog circuit, Penny learns not just how to teach the dog to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner," but also how to let go. She finds her answers (some less welcome than others). But thanks to her ex's legacy and Harvey's "amazing" trainer, Penny's ready to run with whatever curveball life throws at her!
I wanted her to be some evil demon who’d stolen my husband with promises of chandelier sex and perfect baked Alaska.
But as I looked into her blue eyes—such a vibrant color compared to my own plain brown ones—I couldn’t hate her.
“I didn’t know,” she said, taking a step closer, lowering her voice. “Not until I read the obituary in the paper.”
I decided to believe her. If he’d fooled me for fifteen years, surely he could have fooled her, too. A hundred questions filled my mind, but before I could speak his mother was reaching for me. So I gave the other wife a slight, dismissive nod, and slipped back into the perfect portrait of what everyone expected of me.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw her walk away. We were members of the same club now, she and I.
I hoped like hell I wasn’t going to find anyone else with a membership before this day was over.
Shirley Jump
Bookseller’s Best Award winner Shirley Jump didn’t have the willpower to diet or the talent to master under-eye concealer, so she bowed out of a career in television and opted instead for a career where she could be paid to eat at her desk—writing. In the worlds Shirley gets to create and control, the children listen to their parents, the husbands always remember holidays and the housework is magically done by elves.
She sold her first book to Silhouette Books in 2001 and now writes stories about love, family and food—the three most important things in her life (order reversible, depending on the day)—using that English degree everyone said would be useless.
Though she’s thrilled to see her books in stores around the world, Shirley mostly writes because it gives her an excuse to avoid housework and helps feed her shoe habit.
To read excerpts or just find information on her latest title, visit her Web site at www.shirleyjump.com.
The Other Wife
Shirley Jump
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
From the Author
Dear Reader,
People always ask me if my stories are based on my real life. I can honestly say the bigamy part of this one is not, although the quest for change, for finding your place in the world, is a part of all of us. We grow up, but we may never grow away from things that hold us in place. Penny’s quest is one that resonates with me, and I hope it does with you, too.
I don’t own a Jack Russell terrier, and neither of my dogs can do anything more incredible than fetch the newspaper on snowy mornings, which isn’t such a bad trick when it’s hovering around zero. Max, Annie’s dog, is based on my real-life Max, who forgets he’s way too big to be a lapdog and is as incorrigible as a toddler.
I have loved reading the Harlequin NEXT line since it debuted and am thrilled and honored to be a part of it. This book was definitely a blast to write, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed dreaming up the story line.
Shirley
To my good friend Janet Dean, who has helped me make
every book better and supported me even when I thought
there was no way I could pull off a funny story about a
two-timing husband and his piano-playing dog.
Also, a big thanks to Joe Murphy and his adorable wonder dog, Katie, who has brought smiles to hundreds of people over the years.
Finally, as the owner of a shelter dog myself, a huge thank-you to all the hard workers and valuable volunteers at animal shelters across the country. Consider opening your heart and home to a rescue animal. Yours might not sing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but will undoubtedly bring some wondrous fun to your life.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 1
The last person I expected to see at my husband’s wake was his wife.
Yet, there she stood, to the right of his casket, wiping away her tears with a lacy white handkerchief, a fancy one with a tatted edge and an embroidered monogram, the kind your grandmother hands down to you because tissues aren’t as ladylike.
She was tall, this other wife, probably five foot eight, and wearing strappy black heels with little rhinestones marching across the toe. I wanted to grab her, shake her and tell her those stupid shoes were completely inappropriate for the funeral of the man I’d been married to for fifteen years. Go get yourself some pumps, I wanted to scream. Low-heeled, sensible, boring shoes.
I wasn’t mad at her. Exactly. I was madder than hell at the man lying on the top-grade satin in an elaborate, six-thousand-dollar cherry box, a peaceful expression on his cheating face.
Even in death, he looked ordinary and normal, the kind of guy you’d see on the street and think, oh, he’s got the American Dream in his hands. A slight paunch over his belly from too many years behind his desk, the bald spot he’d been trying to hide with creative combing, the wrinkles around his eyes from finding humor in everything from the newspaper to the cereal box.
Just your typical forty-year-old man—a forty-year-old whom I had loved and thought would be sitting beside me on the porch, complaining about the neighbors’ landscaping habits and debating a move to Florida, long into our old age. A man who could make me laugh on a dime, who’d thought nothing of surprising me with flowers, just because. He’d been a typical man in a hundred different ways—and so had our marriage.
Sure, a little dull at times, marked by trips to the dry cleaner on Tuesday and scrambled eggs every Sunday morning. But it had been a marriage, a partnership.
Or not, considering the two-wives-at-one-time thing, something I’d discovered last night in a picture of his double wedded bliss, stuffed behind the AmEx in his wallet.
Forty-eight hours ago, my life had been normal. While I was picking out a roast for dinner that night, paramedics had been rushing him into the hospital. Someone found my number on his cell phone because I, being the practical one, had seen some commercial about setting up an I.C.E. list, in case of emergency, and inputted my cell number. Dave, the spontaneous one, had laughed at me, but kept the number there.
The voice on the other end told me he’d had a heart attack. I’d rushed to Mass General, then stayed by his bedside fretting, pacing, shouting at the doctors to do something. But there wasn’t anything they could do.
The Big Macs and Dave’s habit of burning the candle on all ends had caught up with him.
Either that or the weight of his conscience had squished an aortic valve. In my less-charitable moments, I wanted to think it was the latter.
“Penny,” someone said, laying a hand on my arm.
Kim Grant, my next-door neighbor, who had baked cupcakes to welcome Dave and me to the neighborhood last month, stood before me in the receiving line with a look of true sympathy on her face. A flash of guilt ran through me. I still hadn’t returned her Tupperware container.
I hoped she wasn’t in any rush for her plastic.
“Hi, Kim. Thanks for coming.” The words flowed automatically, the same ones I’d said already a hundred times today, feeling sometimes that I was the one giving out comfort instead of receiving it.
Yet, even as I stood in Kim’s embrace, in my peripheral vision, I was always aware of her, standing at the edge, blending in with the other mourners, as well as someone could blend when dressed like Marilyn Monroe. The insurance company my husband had worked for was large, and nearly a hundred people from the offices were there. I doubted anyone noticed her.
How many of them, I wondered, knew about her? Did anyone? Or did everyone?
Had I been the only one left out of the secret? The poor, silly wife, sitting at home with a pot roast waiting on the table, completely oblivious to the train wreck that had derailed her marriage.
I still didn’t know her name, where she lived, or how long she’d been married to him. All I knew was that she’d been with my husband, in the Biblical sense, that day. Dave, the man who preferred T-shirts over sweatshirts and cotton blend over straight cotton, had been rushed into the E.R. naked. I knew he’d left the house dressed that day—I was the one who’d finished pressing his shirt while he hopped into the shower.
I thought of that shirt, remembering how I’d run my hand over the flat fabric while it was still warm, pleased with the neat creases, then, later, the kiss Dave had given me as a thanks. The way he’d smelled of steam and starch and Stetson.
“That’s the way we found him in the Marriott, ma’am,” one of the paramedics told me, shrugging, as if it were completely ordinary to bring in a naked guy on a gurney.
“The Marriott?” I’d asked—twice—trying to get my head around that. Had it been a meeting gone wrong? A robbery? And then, the worst had hit me. “Was he—” I paused, my entire marriage flashing before my eyes like a jerky home movie, with edits I couldn’t see, moments left on the cutting-room floor “—with anyone?”
“The, ah, bellhop said he checked in with his wife.” The paramedic had looked at me hopefully. I didn’t answer, letting the silence push him to add more. “She wasn’t there, though. Apparently already left because they were, ah, done.”
Done. I didn’t have to ask what Dave had done. The nudity was a pretty good clue.
“I’m so sorry, Penny.” Kim’s voice drew me back to the present. “Dave was such a great guy.”
I used to think that. Had even bragged about him to my friends when we met, about how I got the last great guy on earth.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one.
She crossed my line of vision again, as she read the tags on the flowers to the right of the casket. I maintained my position in the receiving line, stoic and reserved, the portrait of the grieving widow.
Lillian, Dave’s mother, stood beside me, tears flowing nonstop, shoulders shaking a little as she cried. Still, Lillian Reynolds maintained a level of reserve, as always the gracious former debutante who’d married a lawyer. She didn’t know about the second wife and I wasn’t going to announce it between “ashes to ashes” and “dust to dust.”
Maybe, I thought, if I never spoke the words, I could pretend it had never happened, that this other wife was a figment of my imagination.
“It was so sudden,” Kim said, shaking her head as she looked at Dave.
As Kim continued speaking words I didn’t hear, I glanced at my husband, lying there in his good blue suit, the one with the silver pinstripe that we’d picked out at JCPenney last Christmas, and for a second, felt a pang of grief so sharp I wanted to collapse. He was gone. Forever. For five seconds, I didn’t care about the bigamy, didn’t care what else he had hidden from me, I just wanted my husband back.
I wanted my life back, damn it. Rewind the clock, stop the tape, just get me out of this lily-scented twilight zone.
I wanted to be able to wake up, knowing that today would be the same as yesterday, that the numbered boxes on the wall calendar in the kitchen would follow one another with the reliable sameness of ironed shirts and scrambled eggs.
Insanely, I stared at his chest, willing it to rise and fall. It didn’t.
So I stood there in Perkins & Sons Funeral Home, wearing a black suit I’d had to borrow from my sister because I was in no condition to shop, and trying not to picture my husband having a heart attack while he was on top of another woman, probably using the same well-practiced missionary moves he’d used on me last Saturday.
The Marriott, I’d found out, after pumping the paramedic a little more, was in downtown Newton. A convenient location. But for whom? For him? For her? The hotel was only three miles from our house. Close enough that he could have stopped by for a little afternoon delight with me. Also close enough that had I gone to my usual Thursday manicure instead of going to a last-minute client meeting, I would have passed right by the hotel parking lot and maybe seen the “Insurance: The Investment for Those You Love” bumper sticker on his Benz.
For a guy who worked in risk management, he’d clearly liked to live on the edge.
I stepped back from the casket, from the cloying fragrance of the enormous white bouquet sent by the company, pressing a tissue to my eyes, willing my own tears to stop. I was mad at him, mad at myself, mad at the world. And yet, another part of me just wanted to curl up in the corner.
Kim finished whatever it was she had to say to me, so I smiled politely and thanked her for coming. She released me and moved to stand in front of Dave, dropping to the kneeler and making the sign of the cross over her chest.
I had a few uncharitable thoughts about God just then, ones that I was sure were going to get me sent to hell, so I turned away from my husband to do what needed to be done.
Face the other wife.
She skipped signing the guest book and had stopped at the casket, her hands gripping the velvet-covered rail, tears flooding her eyes. Now that she was closer, I could see that she wasn’t Marilyn Monroe—she was a mess, all wrinkled and jumbled. The perfectionist in me wanted to get out the iron and the starch, maybe a lint roller, too, and straighten her out before sending her back out the door.
She was pretty, I’d give her that. Buxom and blond, the typical other woman. Except, I was a blonde, too. Just not so well endowed.
Had it been that simple? He’d needed some 36Ds to keep him company so he’d married another woman? My 34Bs weren’t enough? I could have gotten a Miracle Bra, for God’s sake.
Her diamond ring, the same shape as mine—apparently Dave hadn’t been inventive enough to get something other than a marquise cut when he proposed a second time—sparkled in the muted light. Her mascara ran in dirty little rivers along her cheeks, and for a moment, I felt sorry for her. Had she known about me before today?
Had she loved him?
And would it really make a difference to me if she had?
She stepped back from the casket, but hesitated, clearly wondering if she should do the receiving line. Always the polite girl I had learned to be, I stepped forward, reached for her hand. “I’m sorry,” I said, before she could turn away or, worse, say it first.
Her eyes widened with surprise. “Me, too,” she said softly. “I really am.”
I wanted her to be some evil demon who’d stolen my husband with promises of chandelier sex and perfect Baked Alaska. But as I looked into her blue eyes—such a vibrant color compared to my own plain brown ones—I couldn’t hate her. But damn it, I wanted to. It would have made the whole thing a lot more convenient.
“I didn’t know,” she said, taking a step closer, lowering her voice. “Not until I read the obituary in the paper.”
I decided to believe her. If he’d fooled me for fifteen years, surely he could have fooled her, too. A hundred questions filled my mind. But then his mother was reaching for me, wanting to introduce me to some distant cousin I’d never see again, so I gave the other wife a slight, dismissive nod, and slipped back into the perfect portrait of what everyone expected of me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her walk away, those crazy shoes sparkling in the muted light of the funeral parlor. We were members of the same club now, she and I.
I hoped like hell I wasn’t going to find anyone else with a membership before this day was over.
CHAPTER 2
Somehow, I got through the wake without smearing Dave’s good name or shrieking like a lunatic. My sister Georgia, Dave’s brother Kevin, and Dave’s mom were all there, keeping me company in the line beside the casket. That was it for family. My parents had died when I was seventeen, my grandparents shortly thereafter. Dave’s father had passed away seven years ago from a heart attack, leaving Lillian to begin retirement as a widow.
I went home the night of the wake and cleaned a house that didn’t need cleaning, organized closets that were already perfect and went through every pen in the house, scribbling the tips across an old magazine, looking for duds.
For something to do, to keep me from thinking.
At the funeral the next day, I did everything I was supposed to do. Laid a white rose on his casket before they lowered it into the ground, said thank you to everyone who offered their sympathies, turned down the offer of another casserole I wasn’t going to eat. After a funeral dinner hosted by the ladies of the same church that had married and now buried my husband, I sent my sister home, telling her I would be okay. I thought of trying to talk to Dave’s brother, to find out what he knew about this other woman, but right now, I wasn’t strong enough to handle one more thing.
The other wife didn’t show at the funeral and for an hour or so I pretended I was the only woman in Dave’s life, that the words the pastor said about my late husband were true. “Good man…loving husband…devoted son.”
At the end of the day, I slipped into the limo beside my mother-in-law to go back to the house Dave and I had bought a month ago.
The house where we were going to start a family.
He’d told me it would bring good luck, this change of residency. We’d been discussing the idea of kids for ten years, but I’d always had an excuse, a reason we should wait. I’d put him off and put him off, hoping that someday, Dave would just give up on the idea.
But then, finally, after Christmas, I had relented, finally conceding my fight to add anything more complicated than a potted plant to our lives. Because I was thirty-seven and Dave forty, we’d gotten checkups to make sure nothing was wrong. It wasn’t his fault, the doctor had said. Dave had plenty of sperm to go around.
I stifled a laugh in the back of the limo. He’d had plenty of sperm to go around, all right.
My mother-in-law gave me a sharp glance, then let out a sigh. “Are you okay, Penny?”
“Yeah.” As fine as I’m ever going to be after coming face-to-face with my husband’s extracurricular life. “Lillian, if you want to stay at my house for a few days—”
“No. I’m going back to Florida, back home.” She averted her face, watching the pastel tones of spring pass by the window. “I’m best going through this on my own. Do you understand, honey?”
She’d flown up as soon as I’d called her from the hospital and hadn’t left my side since. I couldn’t blame her for wanting some time away from this, to deal with her loss.
“Yeah. I feel the same way.” Though I wanted to be alone for an entirely different reason, so I could sort out the mess of my husband’s life and figure out how I could have been so easily duped by the same man whose underwear I had washed every Saturday. How could I have been handling those Fruit of the Looms and never realized he was a cheater? A bigamist?
A stranger?
I reached out and clasped Lillian’s hand, giving it a squeeze. A tear ran down her face. She smiled at me, her eyes kind and worried. I’d always liked my mother-in-law, figuring I’d gotten awfully lucky to have married into a family where the normal jokes hadn’t applied. Considering my own parents had been the dysfunctional poster children for how not to parent, I had latched on to Lillian soon after meeting Dave.
“Thanks for being here for me the last two days,” I said. “I needed the support.”
“I needed you just as much, dear,” Lillian said, then sighed. “He’s gone for both of us.”
And for someone else. I bit my tongue. “He would have hated this, you know. The big funeral. The music.”
“The flowers.” Lillian laughed. “God, how Dave hated flowers at funerals. Said they were a waste of good landscaping plants.”
I thought of the mums in our garage, the ones we’d planned on planting this weekend. He’d left me with a bunch of plants and a life half-done.
In the space of a day, my life had been thrown into a shredder, taking with it what I had hoped for my future, what I believed about my past, and what I thought I knew about my heart.
Talk about killing a whole bevy of birds with one stone. Dave’s death had pretty much wiped out a species.
We pulled up in front of the house, the limo easing to a stop without even a squeak of the brakes.
Through the car’s tinted windows, I saw her. Again. Like a bad nightmare I couldn’t get rid of. Sitting on the swing—the swing Dave had installed last month—on my front porch, waiting.
“Who’s that?” Lillian asked. “I don’t think I saw her at the funeral.”
“She’s a good friend of Dave’s.” I didn’t want to lie, but I couldn’t tell anyone the whole truth. Not today. Maybe not ever. Heck, even I didn’t want the whole truth.
“I’ll let you two visit,” Lillian said, giving me a final, comforting pat. “I want to go see Kevin again before I head to the airport.”
Later, when I was ready, I’d corner Kevin and see what he knew. He and Dave had been close, going on annual fishing and hunting trips. He had to have told his older brother something.
Then as soon as I solved this mystery—and dealt with any financial ramifications—I’d bury it all in the back of my mind and get back to my predictable days.
It was the only way I knew how to deal.
I got out of the limo, said goodbye to Lillian, then strode up my walkway, not looking at the newly mulched beds waiting for plants. Ignoring the freshly painted white picket fence, the new front door. Projects we’d done last weekend. Apparently my weekend with him since the one before he’d been in “Toronto.”
A fresh wave of pain slammed into my chest. Toronto, Denver, Dallas—how many of those trips had been lies? And to think I’d packed his suitcase, even throwing in a sexy note once in a while, and one time, a pair of my panties, because I felt bad for him attending those boring insurance conventions and client meetings.
I’d thought I was being so clever, such a perfect wife. Clearly, I hadn’t, not if my husband had gone out and found himself a spare.
The other wife rose when I approached, still clutching that lace hanky. “I should have introduced myself,” she said, extending a hand. “Susan Rey—” She cut herself off before giving me my own last name. “Susan.”
Susan. It wasn’t the name of a woman you could hate. It was one of those nice names, the kind given to the girl down the street who always let you play with her Barbies. She should have been named something else—Bambi, Cinnamon, Cassidy—something I could latch on to and despise.
“Penny,” I said, shaking her hand and feeling weirdly like we were at a cocktail party, meeting for the first time over the crab dip.
“I know you probably have a million questions,” Susan began, her voice filled with a nervous giggle.
I nodded. Actually, I thought a million was a low estimate.
“And I’d love to answer them,” Susan said. She was neater today, more put together in jeans and a black top, but still with the same damned shoes. “But they’ll have to wait.”
“Wait? Why?” I wanted her to just tell me everything, to rip that Band-Aid off in one quick swoop.
Susan shifted on those heels and bit her lip. Her lipstick was darker than mine, I noticed, a shimmery cranberry compared to my muted coral. “Well…I have a favor to ask you,” she said.
“A favor? You’re asking me for a favor?” The whole day had become as surreal as a Jackson Pollock painting. I wanted to hit the wall, hit the mums, anything. Hit her, actually. “I want a favor, too. I want to know what you were doing with my husband.”
“I can’t—” She pressed a hand to her eyes, then fluttered her fingers. “I can’t talk about that right now. I need a little space. I just found out about you, too, you know. You have to give me some time.”
I didn’t want to feel sympathy for her. I wanted to hate her. Right now, anger was a lot more comfortable to wear than grief.
But damn it all, she had that nice name and big blue eyes and looked like the kind of woman I’d have coffee with. Not someone I could give a permanent placement on my shit list.
“Later, I promise,” Susan said, and for some reason, I believed her. “But for now, I need you to take care of something for me. It’ll be easy, I’m sure.” She smiled, then stepped back and gestured into the shadows of my porch. When she did, I saw a cage.
It was small and tan, and filled with something that was so excited—or so vicious—it was shaking the plastic crate, causing it to tap-tap-tap on my wooden porch.
“What the hell is that?”
“Harvey the Wonder Dog,” Susan said with a burst of enthusiasm, as if she’d just given me a long-awaited Christmas present. She backed down my stairs and onto my walkway. “And he’s all yours.”
“He’s what? But—”
“I can’t take care of him,” Susan was saying, still moving very fast, considering her shoes. “Dave had left him at my house while we went into the city and then…” She left off the rest. “Anyway, I’ve brought all his things. You’ll love him. Really.” Then she was reaching for the door of her black Benz, a car much like mine.
What had Dave done? Bought everything in pairs?
“Wait!” I shouted, barreling after her. “What are you doing?”
“Leaving.” Susan withdrew a set of keys from her pocket and thumbed the remote. “Sorry.”
“You’re sorry… Sorry you married my husband? Sorry you showed up at his wake? Sorry you were on my porch, waiting for me to come home from burying him? Or sorry you dumped an animal on me that I don’t want?”
Susan wheeled around, her hand on the door handle. “Sorry. But I’ve had him since Thursday and I can’t take care of him anymore.”
“He’s your dog. Yours and Dave’s,” I said, the words thick as a turnip in my throat.
“No, he’s not. I’m not even a dog person. He was Dave’s. I never even met Harvey or knew Dave had a dog until Thursday. Now, he’s yours.” Susan let out a sigh. “Think of Harvey as a part of Dave, left to you.”
Then, before I could ask her anything else, Susan had climbed inside her car, slammed it into gear and left, leaving me choking in her exhaust.
And apparently with one more member of the Dave Reynolds fan club.
CHAPTER 3
Harvey the Wonder Dog came with his own bed, a backpack of toys, his own special food and a rather vague set of notes, written in a six-by-nine composition book in Dave’s tight scrawl.
The book had plenty of information about Harvey’s tricks—balancing a beach ball on his nose while standing on his hind legs, barking the “Star Spangled Banner,” complete with the high notes—and data on where he had appeared—Letterman twice, Animal Planet seven times, and Good Morning America once.
But not a word about why Dave had kept this circus side of himself, or the extra wife, secret. After Susan left, I brought the dog into the house, opened his crate to let him out, then sat down to read. Three hours later, I looked up to find Harvey the Wonder Dog still in his cage, shaking like a leaf, apparently not wonderful enough to conquer his fear of my kitchen.
How had he ever gotten up the gumption to appear on Letterman?
Then I remembered the note on page three. For every good deed he did, Harvey received a treat.
As I went to retrieve the bag of Beggin’ Strips that had come with the dog, I wondered if that had been Dave’s philosophy for everything. The new house, the tennis bracelet on my wrist, the love seat I’d admired in the showroom window of Newton Furniture—each thing bought after I’d done something that Dave decided needed a celebration. A new promotion, landing a big account—
Accepting his proposal of marriage.
I hated my husband right then, hated him as much as I had loved him. I felt the hatred boiling up inside of me, choking at my throat, begging for release. I wanted to tell him he’d screwed up my life but good by dying and then springing a secret existence on me at his funeral.
I didn’t even want to think about what his dual marriage was going to do to our finances. To the life insurance, the 401(k) money. The house. Not to mention to my plans, my life.
“I hate you,” I screamed at the walls. “I hate what you did. I hate how you left me. And I hate that you left me a dog instead of a goddamned explanation.”
Harvey let out a bark and raised himself onto his hind paws, begging.
My sister, who’d always been a bit on the flaky side, would have said it was Dave’s spirit, communicating through his canine counterpart to offer contrition. To me, it was a dog who’d spied the bag of treats in my hand and knew when to put on his sad face.
“Sorry, Harvey. I wasn’t talking about you.” I withdrew one from the package and waved it in Harvey’s direction. “Here, puppy.”
He bounded out of the crate, snatched the strip from my hand, then sat down in front of me, tail swishing against the floor. He didn’t eat it, just held it between his teeth, his mouth spread so wide it looked as if he was grinning. His pointy brown-and-white ears stuck up, tuned to my every move.
“I don’t know what to do with you,” I said. “I’ve never even owned a dog, for Pete’s sake.”
Harvey wagged his tail some more.
“And I can’t take you to…” I looked down at the book, flipping to the page of upcoming appearances, “the Dog-Gone-Good Show on Thursday. I have a job, you know, and it’s not puppy chauffeur.”
Harvey stretched his front paws across the floor, then laid his head down on them and let out a sigh. The Beggin’ Strip tumbled from his mouth and landed on the beige ceramic tile.
“I’m just going to have to find you a good home.”
Harvey looked up at me, wide brown eyes in a tiny, triangular face, and waited. He wasn’t an ugly dog, I reasoned. Why had Dave bought him? Trained him? Toured the country with him?
And most of all, why had he kept him secret?
A snippet of a conversation came back to my memory. Years ago, Dave had asked about getting a dog. I had turned him down, afraid that adding one more thing into my perfectly balanced life would make everything topple.
It was why I had gone into accounting. Nice straight lines, perfect columns of numbers. Everything adding up at the end.
Before I put one foot on the floor of my bedroom, I liked knowing what was coming each day and how the day was going to end. And yet, I wanted more. Wanted to have a taste of spontaneity, which was what had attracted me to Dave.
He was the Mutt to my Jeff, the Felix to my Oscar. I’d married him, thinking he’d help me loosen up a little, and he’d said he’d married me to keep him on track. But once we had the joint checking account and the mortgage to pay, it seemed those plans were dampened a bit.
I had liked our life just fine. Dave, clearly, had not.
The fact that I could have been so wrong hammered away at my temples. How could I have let details like this slip past me? What had I missed?
I looked again at the book, flipping back to the prior appearances page. Harvey had been at the Dog-Gone-Good Show last year. And the year before. Where had I been then? Where had I thought Dave had been? I tried to think back, but my mind was as jumbled as a bag of jelly beans. “Maybe there are some people there who knew Dave,” I said aloud, talking to the dog, for God’s sake. He barked, as if he agreed that it was about damned time I tried to sort this out and restore order.
He was right. If I was ever going to move past the shock of Dave’s second wife—and his well-trained dog—I had to find out where things had gone so totally wrong. “I need to find some people who can give me some answers.”
Harvey perked up, his ears cocking forward. His tail began again.
“And maybe I’m just nuts for talking to a dog about my cheating late husband.” I tossed the book onto the sofa and crossed into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of wine.
The knock on my back door made me jump and nearly spill the Chardonnay. Through the glass oval I saw my sister. I groaned.
I love my sister Georgia, and though we’ve always been close, our personalities couldn’t be more distant. We were as far apart as Venus and Earth. She’s the Venus, I’m the Earth. Georgia believes in taking life as it comes, living by the seat of your pants and saving for retirement when you get over the hill, not while you’re still climbing it.
The most spontaneous thing I ever did was buy Tide without a coupon.
I looked down at Harvey and realized I hadn’t managed to avoid a damned thing.
“Hi,” Georgia said, letting herself in. “I figured you could use some company tonight. I brought wine.” She hoisted a bottle of Lambrusco.
I have told my sister at least seventeen times that drinking a sweet, full-bodied red is the equivalent of downing sugar straight from the box. Give me something dry, unadorned and I feel I’m actually having a drink.
Georgia never listened. She’d probably gone and bought the bottle because it was the prettiest one in the aisle at the Blanchard’s liquors.
Still, she was here, and no one else was. I had to appreciate her for trying. “Come on in,” I said, gesturing inside. “And meet Harvey.”
She halted inside the door, blinking at the Jack Russell terrier. “Harvey’s a…dog.”
“Dave’s dog, to be precise.”
“When did Dave get a dog?”
“According to his notes—2000.”
Georgia’s eyebrows knitted together. She laid the unopened wine bottle on the counter. “Notes?”
“It’s a long story.” I suddenly felt tired, so tired. I wanted to collapse onto the floor and stay there until a different day dawned. One without a dog looking at me expectantly, waiting for his road trip to Tennessee. One where everything was as regular as a clock and I didn’t have to face a new question around every corner.
“Here,” Georgia said, pressing me into a chair. “You look like hell.” Once I was situated, she crossed to the counter, opened the Lambrusco and poured each of us a glass. I thought of protesting, but the energy to do it had left me a long time ago.
“Thanks,” I said, and took a long swig of the wine, forcing myself not to gag.
“Harvey is Dave’s dog,” she repeated. “And he—”
She cut herself off. I looked at her face, noticed her staring at the dog, and turned my gaze to him. He was balancing on his hind legs, that silly Beggin’ Strip on his nose. “And he does tricks,” I finished.
“Oh my God,” Georgia said. “I recognize him now. I saw him on the Late Show once. He’s, like, famous.”
“And now he’s mine. Surprise, surprise.”
Georgia ran a hand through her riot of blond curls. Last month, she’d had it straight and red. The month before, it had been black and spiky. I was surprised Georgia’s hair hadn’t mutinied. “Wait a minute. You didn’t know Dave had a dog?”
“I didn’t know a lot of things.” I took a second swig of wine. A third. “Like that he also had another wife.”
There. I’d said the words out loud. Now it was real.
All I had to do now was figure out a way to make it all go away.
Georgia opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. “Another wife?”
“And apparently a road show with Harvey at the center.” I shook my head. “I swear, I’m in The Twilight Zone.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Do?” I shrugged, then tipped the rest of the wine into my mouth. “Go to work. Try to lead a normal life again. And find a home for Harvey.”
At that, he slid back down onto the floor and let out a whine.
“You can’t do that. He’s like—” Georgia gave the canine an indulgent smile “—a lost spirit himself. He’s been through a lot, too.”
“He’s also, like, a reminder of a husband who betrayed me,” I said to Georgia, “then left me with a mortgage and a funeral bill I can’t afford because God knows Dave was way too cavalier and happy-go-lucky to invest in something like long-term planning.” I drew in a breath, tried not to choke on it. “Or a marriage.”
Georgia let the heated words roll away. “But aren’t you the tiniest bit curious? Like about why Dave did it?”
“No.” I paused, finally listening to the thoughts and feelings that had been waiting behind Curtain Number Two in my head. “Okay, yes. I am.”
“Then I say you investigate.”
I shook my head, toying with the empty glass. “No. No way. I don’t go running around, investigating. I go to work, pay my taxes and balance my checkbook. Like a normal American.”
“Who happens to be married to a bigamist.”
The word hung in the air, heavy, fat. I wanted to pluck it up and toss it away, bury it under the brown carpet I’d never liked but agreed to because Dave had thought it was homey.
I shook my head. “All I have to do is talk to Kevin. He and Dave were closer than anyone I know.” Or at least, they’d seemed to be. Of course, I’d thought I was pretty close to my husband. But apparently knowing the man’s inseam length and his favorite brand of shaving lather wasn’t intimacy.
“What about the other wife? Did you meet her?”
“She was at the wake.”
“She was?” Georgia let out a couple of curses. “Which one?”
“The one with the rhinestones on her shoes.”
“Oh, those were cool shoes,” Georgia said. “But on her, totally inappropriate.”
I loved my sister for adding that, for saying the words she knew I was thinking.
“Did you talk to her?” Georgia asked.
“For about five seconds. She was here when I got home, but only stayed long enough to ditch the dog and run.” I got to my feet, poured Chardonnay into my empty wineglass and returned to the table. “I don’t know where she lives, and with a last name like Reynolds, I’ll be banging on a thousand doors trying to find her.”
Georgia thought for a minute, twirling the glass between her hands. “Did you check Dave’s cell phone?”
Of course. He’d undoubtedly stored her number in there, probably with a voice tag, because he’d been incapable of dialing while he was behind the wheel.
“I got the feeling she doesn’t want to talk,” I said. “Besides, I’m not so sure I want to know what went on between her and Dave. I’ve had enough information to last me a lifetime.”
“Have you asked the dog?”
“Asked the dog? Are you nuts? I can’t talk to a dog.”
“I bet Harvey is your key.” Georgia nodded. “And I bet he knows a lot more than he’s letting on with that little snout.”
“I am not asking the dog. Or anyone on his upcoming six-city �tour.’”
“He has a tour planned?” Georgia’s turquoise contact colored eyes grew bright. “Perfect! I see a road trip in your future, sis.”
“No, no, no.” But even as I said the words, Georgia was off and running, retrieving the road atlas from the den.
“You have to do it, Penny,” Georgia said. “Where’s Harvey supposed to go first?”
“The Dog-Gone-Good Show in Tennessee in three days.”
“How cool,” Georgia said, flipping the pages, moving us visually toward Tennessee. “It could be the key to solving the greatest mystery of your life.”
There’d been a reason I’d hated Nancy Drew books as a kid. I couldn’t suffer through two hundred pages of mystery. I wanted to know the end before I began. I didn’t want to take a path filled with unknowns. Dave was the one who would read Clive Cussler and Stephen King into the wee hours, who’d watch all eight weeks of an eight-week miniseries, content to wait a month and a half for the story’s resolution. Me, I went for the TV Guide recap, the fast way to cut to the quick and eliminate anything extraneous.
I thought I’d lived my life the same way.
Until this week.
But as I sat in my kitchen, looking around at the sage-green room Dave and I had painted on a sunny afternoon last month, I realized I was living in a house filled with questions, not memories. There wasn’t a corner of this house, a picture on the wall, that I could look at and not feel the doubts crowding in, jostling around in the spaces of my mind. Was any of it real? Or was I just clueless?
All I wanted to do was return to the life I’d recognized. Not run around the country with a dancing Jack Russell terrier, trying to figure out who Dave Reynolds had really been.
Even as I held back another round of tears, as reality slammed into me with the force of a nor’easter, I knew I had no choice but to start assembling this puzzle.
And the first place to start was with Susan.
CHAPTER 4
Susan Reynolds’s phone number stared back at me in rounded tiny numbers, displayed on the tiny screen of Dave’s Motorola phone. After my sister left and after two more glasses of Chardonnay, I’d finally gotten up the nerve to scroll through the listings in his phone book. I recognized only a handful.
What scared me was the names I didn’t know. There was an Annie, a Kate, a Mindy. Two Pats—which could have been men or women—and a Matt. I’d stopped scrolling at the S’s, too afraid to go farther. None of those names were familiar. They weren’t people I’d met at the Greendale Insurance Company Christmas parties. They weren’t names Dave had used in conversation.
I could, of course, call them and ask, Uh, how did you know my husband? And did he tell you he was married to a Susan or a Penny?
But no, I couldn’t do that—not yet, anyway. I wanted the truth, but I also didn’t want it, as if I could hold on to my fantasy that everything between Dave and I had been genuine.
Because if he’d duped me about being married, what else had been fake?
That was the real question I didn’t want to answer. The one that clubbed my heart and broke it into smaller pieces every time I gave it voice.
I put the phone down, avoiding it to dig through drawers and filing cabinets, searching for Dave’s will. I came up empty-handed and made a mental note to check his desk at work. Any man who was trying to hide multiple marital beneficiaries probably was smart enough to store that kind of evidence elsewhere.
Throughout it all, Harvey sat there and watched me, his little face jerking quickly with my every movement.
I found nothing. Not so much as a matchbook with a number scribbled on it. The only clues I had were in the Motorola.
I went back to the phone and scrolled through it again, leaving Susan down in the S’s and went to Kevin. I hit Send, then waited for him to pick up.
“’Lo,” he said. Behind him, I heard rock music playing in his bachelor apartment. Apparently Lillian was gone, because he had heavy metal going at full blast.
“Kevin, it’s Penny.”
“Oh, hi, Pen.” His voice softened and he turned down the volume on his stereo. Kevin was the quiet one in the Reynolds family, who’d lacked the charm and sense of humor of Dave, but had the same studious way of watching someone while they talked, making them feel like the only person in the room. “How you holding up?”
“Fine. Ah, listen, I wanted to talk to you about Dave. About…well, what he did when he wasn’t with me.”
A pause. “I don’t know anything about that, Pen. Sorry.”
Across from me, Harvey started nosing at his little denim backpack, his name emblazoned in red glitter across the front. He pawed at it, then sat back and whined.
“You’re his brother. You knew everything there was to know about him. You guys went everywhere together. Fishing, hunting, you name it.”
“I didn’t go.”
The words lingered between us, made raspy by the cell-phone static. There hadn’t been an annual hunting trip to Wisconsin. Or the fishing trip to Maine each May. I’d never thought my husband was much of a sportsman, considering I was the one who baited the hooks at our lake vacation last August, but now I realized he hadn’t been out looking for elk at all. He hadn’t gone to any of the places he’d said he’d gone.
He’d been with her.
And Harvey.
It had all been a show. Another batch of lies. And Kevin had known, at least that Dave had been lying to me. The new betrayal slammed into me.
“I have to go, Kevin,” I said, the nausea lurching up inside my throat again. I closed the phone and tossed it onto the sofa, not wanting to touch it—and the dozens of names I didn’t know—for another second.
I curled into a chair and drew an afghan over my knees. The worn, multicolored blanket was as old as me, made by my grandmother when I’d been born, a blend of blues and pinks. I pulled its softness to my shoulders, then over my head, burrowing myself inside its comfort and darkness.
Here, the world was gone, quieted by the muffling weight of the thick, fuzzy yarn. Like I had throughout the rocky, tumultuous years of my childhood, I imagined staying right where I was until the worst was over. Harvey stuck his head under a corner, took one look at me and began wagging his tail.
The ringing of Dave’s cell phone forced me out of my cocoon. I threw off the blanket and watched the Motorola, its face lighting up in blue to announce the incoming call. For a moment, I hesitated, afraid to answer it. Afraid of who might be on the other end.
Eventually curiosity won out and I reached for the cell, flipping it open. “Hello?”
“Hey, is Dave there?” said a male voice I didn’t recognize.
“No. He’s…” I couldn’t get the words out. I tried, even formed them with my lips, but they refused to be voiced. It wasn’t bigamy I was afraid to say, it was dead. “He’s gone right now. But I’m his wife. Can I help you?”
“You’re Annie? Hey, cool to meet you. Dave talks about you all the time, you know.”
Annie? Who the hell was Annie? A nickname for Susan? Or worse…
Another wife?
“Who did you say you were again?” I asked the voice.
“Oh, shit, I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Vinny. I’m Harvey’s trainer.”
“Harvey’s…trainer?”
“Well, hell, you didn’t think he learned to dance and play the piano all by himself, did you?”
“He can play the piano?” I looked at the dog, sitting a few feet away, his tail swishing against the floor like a carpet clock.
“Not Mozart, but he can bang out a pretty good �Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.’ That’s what got him on Good Morning America.”
I’d entered an alternate universe. Dave, a musically inclined dog and appearances on national television. Not to mention Susan and Annie. And whoever else I didn’t know about.
“So, is Dave going to be at Dog-Gone-Good?” Vinny asked. “I was hoping he’d get here a couple days early so we can give Harvey a refresher on his dance routine. I tried calling Dave yesterday but he didn’t pick up.”
“He’s…” I closed my eyes, took in a breath. “He died on Wednesday.”
Silence on the other end, then an under-the-breath curse. “For real?”
“Yes.”
“Aw, Annie, I’m sorry. He was a great guy. We’re really going to miss him.”
I pressed a hand to my stomach, as if putting a palm against my gut would give me strength I couldn’t seem to find today. At least it would help me keep the soggy lasagna the church ladies made from making a return appearance. “And, my name isn’t Annie,” I said. “It’s Penny.”
A confused moment of silence. “But…but I thought you said you were his wife.”
“I thought I was, too. Apparently I was sharing the job.”
“Oh. Oh. Holy crap. Well, uh, I’m, ah, sorry.” I could practically hear him fidgeting on the other side. “Listen, I gotta go. You, ah, take care. And if you want to send Harvey down to me, I’ll make sure he does Dave proud at Dog-Gone-Good.”
Before I could say anything else, Vinny was gone, leaving me with a phone that only seemed to quadruple the horror of my widowhood every time I went near it.
The pain of it all—of Dave’s death, his betrayal, of the loss of my life as I knew it—ripped through me in a sob so big it tore through my throat.
“Oh, God,” I cried, sobbing and yelling at the same time. I banged my fist against the carpet, then pulled back my stinging palm and pressed it against my chest, trying to hold my breaking heart in place.
Something wet and cold was on my hand, then on my face. I opened my eyes to find Harvey the Wonder Dog licking me, his tail wagging in ginger little movements, his ears perked like antennae, seeking, I supposed, signs of normalcy.
Harvey. Dave’s legacy. What had Georgia called him?
The answer to all my questions.
Not much of an answer, considering he probably only weighed fourteen pounds soaking wet. But he was all I had, so I was starting there.
“Harvey,” I said, swiping at my eyes, “want to go on a road trip?”
CHAPTER 5
To say Susan was surprised to see me on her Rhode Island doorstep the next morning would have been an understatement. She lived a little over an hour away from our house in Newton, in a small ranch with a magnolia in the front yard, which was starting to bloom in the bright early April sunshine.
When she saw me, Susan teetered on her high-heeled boots, enough that I thought she was going to faint. Then Harvey sprang out of my arms and into her house, and Susan recovered her wits.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
“Reverse lookup of your phone number in Dave’s cell. The Internet is a dangerous thing.”
She nodded, as if that all made sense, then opened her door wider. “Want to come in?”
“Actually,” I said, drawing in a breath, “I want you to come out. And go to Tennessee with me.”
She blinked. Behind her, Harvey was running in circles around the perimeter of her braided rug, apparently seeing its endless oval as a challenge. “A road trip? To Tennessee?”
“Did you know about Annie?” I asked.
She thought a second, running the name through a mental phone book. “No.”
“Well, it seems she might be Dave’s wife, too. Meaning Mrs. Reynolds number three.”
“He had another? Besides you and me?” Susan gripped the doorjamb. Now I really did think she was going to faint. I knew those feelings, having had them myself quite recently.
“Listen, why don’t we sit down, have a drink and talk about it? I’ve already had time to digest this.” I paused. “More or less. But I could still use a stiff one. Or two. Or ten.”
Susan nodded, stepped back and turned to go down the hall, leaving me to follow. I shut the door, left Harvey to his circles and walked into Susan’s bright yellow kitchen. It was a nice room, small but tidy, decorated in sunflowers and navy accents. The kind of kitchen I imagined a neighbor having. The kind of kitchen where I could see myself sitting down for a cup of coffee on a Thursday morning and gossiping about the guy across the street who mowed his lawn in his Speedo.
It wasn’t, in other words, what I had expected from Dave’s 36D wife.
“I have rum. And…tequila,” she said, searching a cabinet above the Kenmore stove.
“Do you have Coke?”
She shook her head. “Diet Pepsi.”
“It’ll do.” Heck, I would have had the rum straight, but I figured Susan didn’t know me well enough to see me get drunk, something I’d done more in the past few days than in my entire life. After all that had happened, I was beginning to see the upside of staying perpetually toasted.
She poured two rum and Diet Pepsis over ice, then returned to the table, sliding one in front of me. Apparently Susan also wasn’t paying attention to the clock when it came to having a respite from the shock and awe campaign executed by Dave’s funeral.
I drank deeply, then pushed the glass away and folded my hands over each other. Susan was one of the keys to what had happened with Dave, to why he had married another. I needed her, even though I didn’t want to.
“The way I see it,” I began, “both of us have been screwed, pardon the pun, by Dave.”
She nodded. Slowly.
“And I want to know why. I was married to him for fifteen years.”
Susan raised a palm, wiggled her fingers. “Five here.”
I swallowed that fact, allowing it to hit my stomach and churn in the empty pit with the rum. Five years. That meant he’d married her the year I was in the hospital having my appendix removed. I tried to think of when Dave had been gone then, but my brain had become a fuzzy mess of dates and lies.
For a second, I thought of telling Susan the whole thing was a huge mistake. Thanks for the rum, but I gotta go.
Then I realized leaving wasn’t going to do anything but put me back to square one, and instead I stayed where I was, taking another gulp of my drink from a glass decorated with flowers around the edge, and tried to regain some kind of normalcy.
Ha. There wasn’t any of that here. What I had was a whole lot of questions and a piano-playing dog who kept looking at me with expectant eyes, as if I was supposed to do some amazing trick, too.
“Well,” I began again, trying to drum up the courage to press forward, to force myself out of the comfort zone where everything was a known quantity. “I don’t know about you, but I want some answers.”
Susan shook her head. “I—”
“Don’t say you don’t want to know.” I waved the glass at her, the ice clinking in the emptiness. “Because you will. An hour from now, a day from now, you’ll wonder why. You’ll look in the closet and see his shoes—”
Oh, God, his shoes were under her bed, too. In her closet. Was this where his favorite blue shirt had gone? The one I’d torn the closet apart looking for last May? Or the yellow striped tie I told him I hated that he’d never worn again in my presence?
I clutched the glass tighter, to keep myself from running to her bedroom to peek and see how much of my husband was here.
“And you’ll want to know,” I went on, pushing the words past my lips, “because you’re some kind of masochist who hates to have a mystery unsolved.”
“I kind of like mysteries,” Susan said, a bright smile on her face, as if I’d just handed her a new Nancy Drew.
“Work with me, Susan.” I bit off the aggravation in my voice. “You can’t tell me you don’t want to know. About Annie. About where he went when he wasn’t with you.” I swallowed. “Or me.”
She toyed with her still-full glass. Silence descended over the kitchen, seeming to darken the bright, pretty room. “I left him that day, you know.”
“Yeah, the EMTs told me.”
“We had a fight,” she said.
I tried not to let on how much it weirdly pleased me to hear that he and Susan had had a fight.
“We had the fight after we…well, you know.” A faint sheen of red filled her cheeks, a surprise in this woman who seemed so Manhattan. “Anyway, I left and took the train back to Rhode Island, figuring he’d catch up with me at home. If I had known—” Her voice caught on a sob and held the last syllable. “I’m sorry, Penny.”
She was apologizing to me for leaving my husband. For not being there when he’d had a heart attack. She made it impossible to hate her. “I’m sorry for you, too.”
She nodded, then picked up the tumbler, knocked back half the drink and slammed the small glass back onto the wooden surface. Brown liquid sloshed over the rim. “You’re right. I want to know, damn it. I loved that man and I want some answers, too.”
To hear her say she loved him hit me in the gut, hard. I rose, poured myself another drink—skipping the cola this time—and the feeling went away. A little.
Harvey the Wonder Dog trotted into the kitchen, his nose to the floor, looking for scraps, or maybe another rug to circle.
“I say we take him,” I said, gesturing to the Jack Russell terrier, “to this doggie show and ask everyone there about Dave. They knew him, they know Harvey.”
“And if they won’t tell us anything?”
I grinned at my strange new ally and raised my glass. “We’ll break out the rum.”
As she toasted my glass with her own, I had a flashing nightmare of the two of us ending up on Jerry Springer, telling our tale of woe while Harvey did tricks in the background.
Surely, it wouldn’t come to that.
I’d go on Oprah before I’d ever sink to Springer.
Maybe.
CHAPTER 6
The next time I took a road trip to discover the truth about my late husband, I would go it alone.
Susan wasn’t a bad person, but the combination of Harvey and her in the car nearly drove me over the edge. Susan chattering, Harvey pacing and whining. I was used to being alone in my car, listening to the music I liked, the talk-radio programs that interested me, but as we moved farther from Boston, the reception got worse and Susan’s voice box revved up. She’d talked all through the night, making me regret letting her get a fifty-five-ounce Diet Coke at our last gas fill.
We’d stopped for fast food at one of the exits off of Route I-81 in Virginia. The place had been littered by ten million roadies before us, but Susan had assured me, one hand securely on my arm, that there couldn’t possibly be any airborne viruses in a place like that.
Probably because they’d all run for the hills, overcome by the grease fumes.
I’d gotten a cheeseburger, but opted to have us eat in the car—breaking one of my cardinal rules—after I saw a fly groom himself on a table in the apple-themed food court.
“Here’s a napkin,” I said once we were back in the car. “You might want to spread it out, like a tablecloth. There are wet wipes in the glove box, so you don’t get any grease on the door handles. Oh, and watch those little salt packets. They have a tendency to spray.”
“Here, Harvey,” Susan said, ignoring my housekeeping instructions and opening a six-piece box of chicken nuggets on the backseat of my Mercedes. Harvey dug in, as if he hadn’t already had his shot of Purina for the day. His little jaws made quick work of the nuggets, spraying brown confetti crumbs over the leather.
“Can you get him to stop that?” I asked. “He’s making a mess.”
“He’s a dog. He’s allowed.” Susan let out a sigh, her hundredth of the trip, then made a face at her window.
“This is a Mercedes,” I said, realizing as I said it how pretentious it sounded. Like it was okay to get processed chicken tidbits all over a Chevy, but not a Benz. I relaxed my white-knuckled hold on the steering wheel, drew in a breath, let it out, then decided it was going to be a hell of a long drive to Tennessee if I didn’t get a grip. “Never mind, I’m sure he’ll eat all the crumbs.”
He did just that, leaving a gooey white trail of doggy saliva on my seats in the process. Eww. I made a mental note to get the car reconditioned. Or better yet, call one of those crime-scene cleaners to erase all trace of dog.
The miles passed, with neither one of us talking. Harvey thrust his muzzle out the three inches of open window, sniffing the air with an enthusiasm that bordered on cocaine snorting. Every once in a while, he’d let out a yip, as if he’d seen someone he knew, his tail beating a greeting against the backseat. Then he’d hop down, dance around the backseat, nudge at his backpack, hop back onto the armrest and start the process all over again. If I hadn’t known better, I’d swear he was doing doggy aerobics.
I switched on the radio, but couldn’t get anything besides static. I watched the mile markers on I-81, which come every tenth of a mile, as if taunting me with how far I had yet to go, dread building in my stomach with each round number—261, 263, 268.
“Did you ever meet Vinny?” Bracing for the answer, I stiffened my spine and concentrated on the road—and not what lay at the end of it.
Because it sure as hell wasn’t a leprechaun and a nice little pot of gold.
“Vinny?” Susan thought a minute. “No, though I heard Dave talking to someone with that name a couple times, if that helps.”
A pang slammed into my chest, as sharp as a steak knife. Picturing Dave in her kitchen, or worse, her bedroom, sitting on the Sealy, lying against the pillows, talking on his cell. He’d have one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, and he’d be slumped a little, relaxed. If there was one thing Dave hadn’t been, it was high-strung.
“Apparently, he’s Harvey’s trainer,” I said.
“Oh.”
In five seconds, conversation had died, may it rest in peace and never be resurrected. Had I really thought I could spend fifteen-plus hours in a car with a woman I didn’t know, and had nothing in common with—
Except a husband.
Susan fidgeted beside me, adjusting the strap of her purse in her lap, then the deep V at her neck. Susan had a way of dressing that was just a step above streetwalker and about five hundred steps away from me and my turtlenecks and St. John’s Bay suit jacket. I wondered if that was what Dave had needed, a little dash of Victoria’s Secret to keep my husband home. If I’d worn a V-neck instead of a turtleneck, would he have craved another woman?
I had to stop playing this guessing game. It certainly didn’t improve my mood.
“So, Penny, what’s the plan?” Susan asked me, pivoting in her seat as she did, her face now happy and bright, as if the whole thing was just oh-so exciting. Either she was putting on a good show because she was just as bored as I was, or she truly thought this was going to be one long pajama party.
“We go down to Tennessee, meet this Vinny, give him the dog and…” My voice trailed off.
“And find Annie?”
I turned and looked at Susan. “Do you want to find Annie?”
She sighed and, in that sound, I heard every emotion that had torn apart my heart in the past few days. Like it or not, the two of us were going through the same grieving, sharing the pain as if we were conjoined twins. “Not really. But I suppose we have to, don’t we?”
I wanted to say no, we didn’t. That we could leave Annie wherever she was in Podunk, USA, and go back to our merry lives like nothing had happened. That we could dump the dog and run.
But the practical side of me knew if there was a will—which I had yet to find in my search through the house—insurance money, social security death benefits, then there were legalities to work out between the three of us. If there were three. Maybe Annie was Harvey’s breeder or dog food provider or something.
“This is kind of fun,” Susan said, resting one skinny bare arm on the door. “I’ve never been on a road trip before.”
Fun? She was having fun?
“I haven’t traveled much, either.”
“Why not? You seem the…sophisticated type.”
“I’m an accountant,” I said, as if that was an explanation for everything.
“But don’t you have, like, accountant get-togethers where you discuss exciting things about taxes or whatever?”
I laughed, the sound bursting from my lungs so spontaneously I almost didn’t recognize it. It had been days since I’d laughed. Weeks, maybe. “Well, they do have conferences, but I’ve only been to one.”
“Why?”
“I don’t do well in strange places.”
“Oh.”
“I mean,” I hastened to add, in case it sounded as if I was some kind of an agoraphobic conference freak, “that a conference throws me off my schedule.”
“I don’t even own a watch,” Susan said, as if that should make total sense to me.
In a weird way, it did.
In the beginning of our marriage, Dave had asked me to travel, to go with him to conventions and client appointments in different cities. I’d tried it, once, and found the whole experience so unnerving and so out of my control that I’d never gone again. I’d pleaded headaches, the flu, work deadlines—until Dave stopped asking.
Now I knew why. It hadn’t just been my reluctance that had made him quit inviting me along. He’d been hiding a life that he’d apparently decided I didn’t want to share.
If he’d asked one more time? If he’d told me…
What would I have said?
I already knew that answer. Hell no, I didn’t want a dog that could pirouette. And a definite nix on the idea of trotting him around dog shows all over the country. I mean, we’d had a mortgage to pay, a lawn to mow, for Pete’s sake.
“Oh, look, hitchhikers!” Susan pointed at what was clearly a novelty to her, standing on the highway in the misty rain. “Let’s stop.”
“Haven’t you read Stephen King? Don’t you know the chances of us being maimed or robbed…or worse?”
Susan waved a hand in dismissal. “Oh, they look okay.”
I glanced at the couple by the side of the road as we neared them. A scrawny guy in jeans with long, unkempt brown hair standing beside a short, plump woman who was either pregnant or hiding an Uzi under her shirt. “No. We’re not picking them up.”
“Fine.” Susan pouted, then turned her face again toward the window, giving the couple a little wave as we drove past.
Mile marker 274. Tennessee had never seemed so far away.
If these miles didn’t start passing faster, or if Susan didn’t suddenly fall asleep in her seat, there was going to be a felony committed in this car. And it wouldn’t be at the hands of some nameless hitchhiker.
“Susan, listen, I—”
The Benz jerked to the right with a loud pop, cutting off my sentence. I gripped the wheel, struggling to pull the car back into the lane before we were creamed by a mint-green Honda Odyssey puttering along in the slow lane.
“Holy crap! What just happened?” Susan asked, her face deathly white.
“Flat tire.” Or at least, that’s what I assumed. I’d never had anything go wrong with the Benz. Dave had always taken care of maintenance and when one car wore out, he’d replaced it with another just like it, black, dependable. “I think.”
I slowed, waited for the Odyssey to go by, then pulled off the road, gravel spitting between my tires and dinging against the body. The Benz leaned to one side, sinking into the ground as if an elephant had taken over Susan’s spot.
I got out and walked around to the front of the car, feeling the whoosh of traffic passing by, lifting my hair and jacket, making them flap in the hurried sixty-five-miles-per-hour breeze. There was no mistaking what had happened. The tire on the passenger side had gone flatter than a sheet of cardboard.
“Do you know how to fix it?” Susan asked, climbing out of the car and standing beside me in her ridiculous heels, shoes that were definitely not designed for performing car maintenance.
“No. I know how to call Triple A, though.”
Susan looked disappointed, as if she’d paid her dollar for an adventure and was expecting me to provide one. I went back to the car, searching for my cell phone. It wasn’t in the ashtray/change dish. Not in the cup holder, not on the dash, not in my purse. I started feeling blindly along the carpet, trying to ignore the French fry and nugget crumbs, then finally found it. Under Susan’s seat, the cover flipped open.
The battery was dead.
When had I gotten this distracted that I’d forget to recharge my cell? That I hadn’t even noticed it had bounced out of my purse? I couldn’t think of a single other time when I hadn’t been on top of everything, knowing exactly how to get from A to B.
And yet, I’d left this morning in a car with a woman who was a total stranger with nothing more than an overnight bag, a road atlas and a can of soda. I’d never done anything that unrehearsed, that unplanned.
At least not until my dearly beloved and stone-cold husband had thrown a big old roadblock into my life. A roadblock with impossible shoes and a tendency to talk at the worst time.
I cursed and tossed the useless cell onto the seat. It hit the hard surface of the armrest, bounced up and pinged into the backseat. Harvey let out a yip, then cowered in the corner.
And peed on the leather.
That was it. The last straw in a haystack that was already depleted. I started to cry, collapsing onto the driver’s seat in a useless heap. What was I thinking, driving this far? I could have just stayed in Newton, handing off the estate to some attorney who would tell Susan and Annie they’d get to split the dog and none of the things Dave and I had worked so hard to build together.
I didn’t want to hear that our entire life had been a group effort, that I had to triangulate my assets, as I had my husband.
Soon as the tire was fixed, I was turning around, heading back home. I didn’t want to know what Dave had been up to. I didn’t want his damned dog. And I especially didn’t want his other damned wife.
“Penny?” Susan’s touch was light on my shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yes.” Years of conditioning, of pretending everything was all right even as it crumpled around me, spit that word out on a sob.
“Don’t worry about the tire. Help has arrived.” She gestured beside her with a flourish, at the two hitchhikers I’d bypassed five minutes earlier.
They grinned at me. I gave them a watery, please-don’t-rob-us-and-leave-us-to-die-here smile back.
Somehow, given the circumstances lately, I had a feeling my luck wouldn’t be that good.
CHAPTER 7
It turned out Norm, the scrawny guy, knew how to change a tire and pop off a wheel cover, but lacked the strength to get the lug nuts off, so he had his girlfriend stand on the tire iron. Apparently neither one of them cared that she was six months pregnant—something Norm proudly told me as his girlfriend lifted up her Penn State sweatshirt and displayed a big round belly with an outie that seemed a lot like a tongue sticking out at us.
“Are you sure she should be standing on that?” I asked Norm. I had finished cleaning the seat with the wet wipes, given Harvey the evil eye, then swiped the whole thing down again with the remaining napkins. What I wouldn’t have given for a little Lysol.
He shrugged. “Rita’s cool with it. Aren’t ya, baby?”
She beamed at him and gave the metal rod a little bounce. “Absolutely. I do it all the time in the garage where Norm used to work.”
“Where are you guys headed?” Susan asked after the kid—the closer I looked the more I realized Norm couldn’t be a day over seventeen—finished jacking up, replacing, then jacking down.
“Dollywood,” his girlfriend answered for him. “Norm’s a country singer. A real good one, too. We’re headed there for this season’s American Idol tryouts. Norm’s gonna be a star.”
Her smile for him was so filled with adoration and hope that I didn’t have the heart to mention Norm’s chances of breaking onto the Billboard Top 100 were about nil. Particularly since he looked more like Charles Manson’s younger brother than Clint Black’s replacement.
“You’re all set,” Norm said. He swiped his greasy palms across his jeans, then stared at me expectantly.
“Uh… How much do you want?” I said, reaching for my purse, keeping it hidden behind the open door in case Norm and Rita got any ideas.
“Nothin’,” Rita popped in. “’Cept maybe a ride. Susan says you guys are going to Tennessee, too.”
I shot Susan a glare, but she ignored me. “We really can’t—”
“Get on in,” Susan said, ignoring me. “We could definitely use the company.”
Which meant she wasn’t having much more fun than I was. I said a quick prayer that neither one of them was a homicidal maniac, then slipped in behind the wheel. I did owe Norm, after all.
I pulled out onto the highway, easing into traffic, giving the tire a test before getting back up to full speed. Behind me, Harvey settled in between the two new passengers, sitting up and panting something that looked oddly like a smile.
“Oh my God!” Rita shrieked.
“What? What?” I whipped my head around, trying to ease across two lanes, back to the side of the road. Was she in labor? Had the wheel slipped off? Had Norm forgotten to reattach the lug nuts?
“It’s that dog, baby,” she said, smacking Norm on the arm, making his faux leather jacket crinkle. “The one from Letterman.”
Norm leaned around to look at Harvey head-on. “Holy crap, it is. Harry the Dog.”
“Not Harry, silly. Harvey the Wonder Dog.”
At that, Harvey let out a yip of agreement. He sat up and begged, then did a twirl of a dance around the leather. I thanked God that he didn’t get too excited. I only had so many wet wipes.
“You own Harvey?” Norm asked, clearly impressed. I could have been Dolly Parton for all the awe I saw reflected in my rearview mirror. “That’s, like, cool, dude.”
“I only sort of own him.” I concentrated on getting the car back on the road, without being creamed by a passing double semi.
“Oh, Penny, don’t be so modest,” Susan said. “She’s Harvey’s mommy.”
Only because you dumped him on me, I thought but didn’t say. “We’re both his owners,” I said, giving Susan a friendly you’re-stuck-with-me-in-this-one smile.
“Dude, this dog is, like, famous.” Norm let out a low whistle. “No wonder you’re driving an M.B.”
“M.B.?” I said.
“Mercedes-Benz, dude. A rich chick’s car.”
I wasn’t rich, nor was I a chick, but I let it go. The green sign on my right promised the Tennessee state line was only another forty miles away. Pigeon Forge was another thirty from there. Soon, Norm and Rita would be gone, off to pursue fame and fortune at Dollywood.
Or maybe just ride the rides and leave with their ticket stubs and some disappointment.
“So, like, what kinda tricks can you make him do? Can you get him to do that thing where he opens a can? Man, if he could pop open a brewski, he’d be a damned handy dog.” Norm thought a second. “Though, it might be better if he could open the fridge and the brewski. Save me from getting off the couch.”
I didn’t say anything about his obvious underage status and the fact that he was already sofa surfing and drinking beer. Not to mention the example he’d be setting for his future child.
“So, what can you get him to do?” Norm asked again.
“Hello,” I said, annoyed and frustrated with my passengers, “I’m not really his—”
I caught sight of Harvey in the rearview mirror. He was standing on his back paws again, waving the two others at me.
“Cool. He waves.”
I’d said hello, the dog had started to wave. Coincidence or was Harvey listening to me? I opted for the first one.
“He’s such a cutie,” Rita said. “Do you know how old he is?”
“How old are you, Harvey?” I asked, half joking, figuring the dog would ignore me and go back to his crumb hunt. Instead, Harvey began pawing at the seat, almost tapping on it. Once, twice, three times…eight times total. “Eight,” I said, not sure I’d just seen the dog count, but maybe…
I mean, he was called Harvey the Wonder Dog. Wouldn’t he at least be able to tell how old he was? Dave had mentioned a few tricks in the journal, but overall he’d been pretty vague, mentioning things like Harvey’s A Routine and his C Routine, whatever those meant. Either way, it didn’t matter to me. Soon enough, Harvey—and his routines—would be Vinny’s problem.
“Oh my God!” Rita shrieked a second time.
“Don’t tell me that dog peed again.” My wet wipe supply was running low, along with my patience.
“Uh…no.” In the rearview mirror I saw Norm’s eyes grow wide as Rita began to curse and yell, grabbing at his hand. He held hers tight, their joined knuckles turning white, along with every feature in Norm’s face. “We gotta go to the hospital. I think Rita’s having the baby.”
At that she let out another scream and smacked him with her other hand. “Will you quit talking and just get this thing out of me?” She whipped her head around, glaring at Norm. “This is all your fault, you—”
Another scream, a third smack-down for the situation. Norm took it all, no complaint, but the color was a shade off in his face. “Dude, we gotta go faster.”
“You said she was only six months pregnant.” I swerved again, into the exit lane, narrowly avoiding a FedEx truck. My gaze darted to the roadside, praying for a little blue sign with an H.
Norm shrugged, cool as a cucumber. “What do I know? I failed math three times.”
CHAPTER 8
Pandemonium.
That word pretty much summed up the entire day. In Whitfield, we found a hospital, thank God, and brought in Norm and a nonstop screaming Rita. By the time we got there, she was full out thrashing and clutching at Norm and begging for drugs. I started calculating the chances she’d give birth on my backseat.
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