Lovely Wild Read online

  FIVE

  “MARI? MARI CALDER, right? Ethan’s mom.”

  Mari turns with a half smile she was taught long ago was considered polite. “Yes?”

  The woman in front of her looks as though she stepped out of one of the magazines Mari reads every month but rarely enjoys. Perfect hair, perfect outfit. Perfect smile that makes Mari cover her own mouth with her hand in reaction, though her teeth are no longer gray and broken and jagged.

  “I’m Lorna. Davis?” The woman pauses. “Bev’s mom.”

  Bev. Beverly. Beverly Davis... Mari vaguely recalls a girl with curly red hair and a set of sprouting buckteeth. She is in Ethan’s class.

  “Oh. Yes. Bev.” Mari nods, wondering how it is that Lorna Davis knows who she is.

  “Bev told me Ethan had an accident. Is he okay?”

  “He’ll be fine.”

  “Good. Kids,” Lorna says with a laugh and shake of her head. “It’s amazing any of us survive childhood, am I right?”

  Mari has mastered the social smile, but laughing at something she doesn’t find funny is a skill that still escapes her. “Children are capable of surviving a lot.”

  It wasn’t quite the right answer. She sees that in Lorna’s blink, her raised brow. The woman recovers quickly.

  “Right. Yes. And thank goodness it was just a cut, not something worse, am I right?”

  “You’re right,” Mari says.

  Lorna nods. They stare at each other there in the bandage aisle of the pharmacy. Mari has a package of gauze pads and antiseptic wipes in her hand. Lorna’s small basket contains mascara, feminine deodorant spray, skin lotion, a beauty magazine.

  “You know, you should think about coming to one of our Mommy’s Day Out meetings,” Lorna says suddenly.

  It’s Mari’s turn to blink. “Umm...”

  “You don’t work, am I right?”

  “I take care of my kids,” Mari says.

  Lorna laughs. “Oh, yeah, which is a full-time job, I know that. I feel you. I just started back to work last year, part-time. Gets me out of the house, but leaves plenty of ‘me’ time.”

  There’s a silence that goes on too long, until Mari says, “What’s Mommy’s Day Out?”

  Lorna’s eyes gleam. “Oh, we get together once a month at someplace really delish for lunch. Then sometimes a spa treatment, manicure, something like that. We have a great place we go to that does this amazing chi rejuvenation or a sugar scrub or hot stone massage, really everything they do there is fantastic. It’s a chance for us to get together away from the husbands and kids, you know what I mean? If I didn’t have my ‘Mommy’s’ days, I’d lose my mind.”

  Mari shudders involuntarily at the thought of suffering a massage, of being touched so intimately by a stranger. “I like spending time with my kids.”

  “Oh...of course. Me, too. I love my kids. Of course.” Lorna puts a friendly hand on Mari’s arm. “Just, you know, they can drive you crazy. You know what I mean?”

  The touch makes Mari’s skin crawl, but she doesn’t back away. Mari puts on that same polite half smile she’s practiced for so many years. She will never be a social hugger, but she’s learned to tolerate a lot.

  “Of course. Well, I’ll think about it.” Mari holds up her packages. “I should get home.”

  “Oh, right.” Lorna pauses, expectant.

  Mari has no idea what she’s waiting for and the silence stretches on until she nods and smiles and ducks away from Lorna, who stares after her.

  In the car, she thinks about what she will say if Lorna actually does invite her to a Mommy’s Day Out. It might be nice, she tells herself as she lines up with the other mothers in the school parking lot, each car inching forward slowly, though the kids haven’t been dismissed yet. To do something with other women. Have some...friends.

  Except it wouldn’t be nice. It would be strange and awkward. For them, not so much for her. Mari gets along with most anyone. It’s other people who usually don’t know how to react to her.

  “You’re too honest,” Ryan told her once, long ago, in the very beginning when things between them were fresh and new and still strange. He’d tangled his fingers in a strand of her dark hair, pulling it along his much lighter skin to show the contrast between them.

  “You’d like me to lie?”

  “I don’t think you know how to lie,” had been his answer, and he’d kissed her.

  It isn’t that she doesn’t know how. It’s that she doesn’t see the point. Lies are secrets, and there’s no use for them, either.

  “Hey, honey,” she says when Ethan at last limps to the car and slides into the backseat. “How was school?”

  “It was okay.” He shrugs, clicking his seat belt. “Can we get cheesesteaks from Pat’s for dinner?”

  Pat’s, King of Steaks, isn’t on the way home. In traffic, it will take them an hour or so to get there and back. Still, Mari looks at her son’s hopeful face and doesn’t have the heart to say no. His grin and shout of laughter when she nods is enough to make her laugh, too.

  Small things, she thinks as she pulls away from the school. That’s what matters. Small but beautiful things.

  SIX

  THE NUMBERS DIDN’T add up. Ryan had figured them four or five times, and every time, no matter how he worked them, they still turned red. He’d gone online to check balances and shift some money, but there was only so often he could do that. The checks coming in were too small, and eventually might stop coming at all. He’d have to do something, and soon.

  He could tap into the money his dad had left Mari. The funds had been meant for her to go to college, if she could, or at least to live on her own in case she wasn’t able to support herself. She hadn’t done either of those things. She’d married Ryan as soon as she’d turned eighteen, and he’d taken care of her ever since. Ryan checked the balance in the account now¸ as always with a somewhat sour taste in the back of his throat at the amount that had accumulated.

  It wouldn’t be hard to get her to agree to use it. He’d pulled from it before. The down payment on this house, for example. And he hadn’t felt bad about that, because providing Mari with a home of her own had been exactly what his father had meant the money to do. And once, they’d taken the kids to Disney World, a trip that in Ryan’s opinion had been six grand tossed away. Ryan didn’t like sweating and dealing with hordes of sticky, screaming kids, so the trip had been something of a nightmare for him. Mari and the kids had loved it, though. That was something, and giving her that experience, something she’d been lacking in her childhood, had been a perfect use of the money, too.

  Even after dipping into the account twice for two big expenses, there was still plenty left. There’d been donations, fund-raisers and grants in addition to what Dad himself had set aside. Dad hadn’t known, of course, that Ryan would be able to provide her with anything Mari ever wanted or needed. He’d wanted to make sure Mari would never have to worry about money because he knew how little the concept of it meant to her. Some people who grew up poor became misers, others spendthrifts. Mari simply didn’t understand money. She just saw it as numbers.

  It was Ryan who’d suggested the Disney trip. Who’d bought her the fancy iPhone that, as far as he knew, she barely used. Ryan wanted HD cable television with all the premium channels, the fastest internet. The fancy car that came with the fancy payment, too. All numbers, when you broke it down.

  And now, the numbers didn’t add up.

  Technically, her account was separate from the one they kept jointly, but of course, Ryan knew Mari’s passwords and PINs. Just like he knew she never checked the balances. He looked again at the balance in Mari’s account. The numbers stared at him smugly. He only needed a thousand or so to cover the credit card bill for this month.

  He should ask her, first. It was her money. But he knew she’d just give him one of those quizzical looks and a smile. She’d never deny him. He’d just do it and tell her a little later. Or better yet, he’d just replace the money when h