Hitting the Target Read online

  “What is this?” she asked again, looking up from the papers. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Isn’t it obvious, Nikki? I want a divorce.” Her husband waved at the papers. “I know this is bad timing—what with tomorrow being your birthday and all. I was trying to be considerate and wait until after it was over at least. But I just can’t take it anymore.”

  “But…I don’t understand.” Nikki shook her head. Now the coldness had been replaced but the feeling that she’d been punched in the gut with a lead-weighted glove. “It’s not like I deny you sex,” she pointed out. Although come to think of it, Gary hadn’t been interested in making love with her in months. “Is there another woman? Is that why you’re doing this?”

  “Of course not!” Gary denied, but his eyes slid past hers and he refused to look at her when he said it. “Although if there was, you could hardly blame me,” he went on defensively.

  “What?” Nikki put a hand on her hip. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean, just look at yourself, Nikki—you’ve really let yourself go these past few years. What size are you now? Sixteen? Eighteen? Extra-extra large?”

  “Extra-extra large?” Nikki exclaimed—she was still fighting to believe what was going on here. And the fact that Gary was calling her fat was really rich—he had a prominent beer gut himself, mostly from laying around in his recliner drinking beer while she did literally all of the housework.

  He scowled and waved a hand in the air.

  “I don’t know—I don’t know women’s sizes. I’m just saying, you could stand to lose a few pounds. And it wouldn’t hurt if you got your hair dyed once in a while too. You’re really going gray up there…” he pointed to his own balding pate. “And it’s just not attractive.”

  The irony of her balding, pudgy husband telling her that he didn’t find her attractive anymore wasn’t lost on Nikki. But the fact was, she was still so shocked and hurt that he had handed her a sheaf of divorce papers, she barely knew what to say.

  “Plus, you’re always nagging me,” Gary went on, scowling. “I can’t take it anymore. So I’m sorry, but I think I need to leave by the end of this week. We can hash the details out in court later. You can have custody of the kids, of course,” he added, as though he was doing her a huge favor. “I won’t contest that. But we’ll have to sell the house—I can’t afford the mortgage on this place and my new apartment too.”

  “New apartment?” Nikki felt numb. “You mean you already found another place to live?”

  “Just planning ahead.” He shrugged. “Don’t worry—I’m not leaving tonight. I’ll need at least a day or two to pack up my things.”

  “But…but what about the boys?” Nikki managed to get out.

  “I’ll see them every other weekend.” Gary sounded like he had the whole thing worked out. “They still need a father’s influence, after all. Other than that, I’ll be out of your life and you’ll be out of mine.”

  “But…but I…” Nikki didn’t know what to say, what to think. She’d known that their marriage was getting kind of stale, but she had never expected this. It was like Gary had sucker-punched her right in the gut and she couldn’t get her wind back.

  “That’s all I have to say right now.” And before she knew it, he was pushing her out the door. “Like I said—we can work out the fine print later.” Then the door of his man cave closed firmly in her face and there was a clicking sound as he turned the lock. The TV un-muted and the sound of the Bucks game came blaring through the door, just as though nothing had happened.

  Nikki had felt stunned…in shock, and the feeling had persisted through the sleepless night and into the morning. Jude’s sullen silence and the twin’s bickering had washed over her as she watched her soon-to-be-ex husband leave the house with a spring in his step. He was even whistling a jaunty little tune and he had the look of a man who’d had a burden lifted from his shoulders.

  Was that all we were to him? A burden? Nikki wondered numbly. She found herself going after him—wanting to confront him and demand an explanation. But as she followed him out onto the front porch of their house, she saw him put his cell phone to his ear and heard him say,

  “Guess what? I finally told her! That’s right—we can finally be together, babe. Just like I promised you. I know—I love you too.”

  Then he was gone, climbing into his late model Mercedes and speeding down their residential street even though their Home Owners Association had posted strict speed limit signs that admonished residents to go no higher than 20 mph in the neighborhood.

  Somehow Nikki had gotten the boys to their various schools but after that, she found herself on the interstate instead of the road that would take her to work. She would probably get into trouble and Missy would tattle on her and she really couldn’t be risking her job now that she was suddenly going to be a single mom but somehow she couldn’t make herself go into Rosy Ray’s Realty and deal with clients and customers and the smug, skinny Missy right now. She needed to be alone…she needed to think.

  * * *

  And right now, what she was thinking about was killing herself.

  Nikki took a step into the chilly surf…and then another, letting the cold, foamy waves wash over her bare feet. It was March but this was Tampa Bay, which meant prime beach weather was just around the corner.

  She had taken off her basic black working-woman blazer and left it in a heap along with her purse and shoes a few yards back in the softer sand. She looked out to sea, watching as the seagulls wheeled and called above the restless ocean.

  This is crazy right? I shouldn’t do this—shouldn’t off myself. Who will take care of the boys if I do?

  But she knew the answer to that—if she was out of the picture, Gary would be forced to become a more hands-on father to his kids. Maybe then he would realize he couldn’t just run off with another woman and abdicate all his parental responsibility because he was “tired of all the stress.”

  “You don’t even know what stress is, you son-of-a-bitch,” Nikki muttered angrily. “You have no idea what it’s like to wait on everyone hand and foot and try to work and get all the laundry and cooking and cleaning and homework done all at once! You have no clue what it’s like to worry about our kids because you always just leave them to me! You don’t know and don’t care how much I do for you—none of you do!” she added, including her boys in the mix.

  But then again, they never would understand how much she did to keep their lives running smoothly if things went on like they were now. They would all just go on taking her for granted and doing whatever the hell they wanted without even being aware that she was always there cleaning up their messes behind them.

  Nikki sighed heavily.

  Still, killing herself definitely wasn’t the answer. But it would be nice if she could just disappear for a little while—just long enough to let the ungrateful males in her life know what they were missing. Maybe if she wasn’t always there to rely on, Gary would be a better father and Jude would stop screwing around and the twins would settle down and Missy would have to do her own paperwork and couldn’t steal Nikki’s listings and—

  Her thoughts cut off abruptly when something sharp jabbed into the sole of her bare right food.

  “Ow!” Nikki hopped up and down, grabbing for her hurt foot instinctively. “What the hell?”

  Looking down, she saw something strange half-buried in the shifting sand where her foot had been planted. A strangely shaped rock, about as big as a large M&M candy winked up at her. Nikki frowned. It might have been a trick of the light, but she could have sworn that the stone was purple, and glittering with shimmering, iridescent rainbows like the shifting pattern on an oil-slick after a rainstorm.

  What is that? Some kind of jewel?

  She reached for it instinctively but just as she was about to touch it, she felt a strange tingling emanating from it that seemed to have nothing to do with the chilly waves rushing over her fingers.