The next afternoon I was finishing up my last dog of the day when my phone rang. It was Viv.
“You know that real estate development guy? Turns out his mother lives over in the east wing. The old wing,” she clarified. Viv is very proud to be living in the newest and most expensive part of Belle Court Retirement Home. “So, I had a little chat with him and got the information on that runaway girl.”
“Oh?” I said idly as I bent and studied the Lhasa Apso’s ears I was trimming. Were they even? Or was the dog’s head crooked? Was I crooked? “How’d you find him?”
“I called Tammy,” she said. “She told me the guy’s name and I found the rest on my own because I’m an investigator, Salem.”
I scowled in Tammy’s general direction. “An investigative reporter,” I corrected.
“Gia Perez,” Viv said, ignoring me. “That’s the runaway. We have an appointment at the Perez family home in 45 minutes. Better not bring Stump, not to this first visit. We don’t know how tolerant they are.”
I straightened and frowned. “I was pretty clear yesterday that I thought this was a bad idea.” But who was I kidding? Viv and I both knew she wasn’t going to consider my reservations for one second.
She was going to do what she wanted to do. The question was—did I want to join her?
I had to admit, it was tempting. But…no, I did not. The story was heartbreaking, and it would be great to be able to help them. But what did we know about finding runaways? The police were already involved. What did we have to offer them?
Besides, I really wanted to focus on my marriage. I did have a marriage, after all—even if it did feel like Tony and I had just been going steady for over a decade.
“Did you tell them that you’re not really a private investigator?”
“Sure, of course. You’d be impressed with how I spun it. Well, it’s not spin, I guess. Think about it, Salem. As freelance podcasters, we basically have no regulations. Unlike licensed PIs, who have all kinds of regulations. It’s like the wild west out here for podcasters. We have the freedom to pursue angles that the regular PIs don’t have.”
I combed the Lhasa’s ears again and crouched, stroking her chin to raise it a bit. “Hey, remember back when we didn’t realize we were committing a felony by telling people we were PIs but we didn’t have a license?”
“Umm, yeah. I remember that.”
“We pretty much thought it was the wild west then, too. Turns out we were just ignorant.”
“And your point is?”
“My point is, maybe you’re breaking all kinds of laws that you don’t know about.”
“Yes, well, you know what they say: ignorance is no excuse. So, are you going to meet me in 45 minutes, or not?”
I stood, deciding both to accept the Lhasa’s ears as they were and to not pursue Viv’s nonsensical thoughts about ignorance. “Sorry, I’m going over to Tony’s after work. You can handle it without me, though.”
“Sure, I’ll be fine. I’ll debrief you later.”
She ended the call before I told her I thought I would be the one debriefing her. It didn’t matter. Viv was going to go off on whatever she was going to go off on, and it would either peter out and amount to nothing, or I would get looped back in at some point. Until such time as that became clear, she would be fine without me.
I was more interested in seeing my husband. Tony and I didn’t live together because our relationship was the poster child of “It’s complicated.” We’d been married for over ten years, but for most of that time we’d been separated. I thought we were divorced. I signed divorce papers and sent them to Tony, then promptly disappeared into a bottle and didn’t emerge again until I sat in a jail cell years later, having just been arrested for my third DUI. Unbeknownst to me, Tony never signed those papers. Once I was ready to be a productive member of society, God threw us back together and we’ve been what I call “somewhat-married” ever since. He had his nice house in a nice neighborhood. I had my mediocre trailer in Trailertopia. We saw each other three or four times a week—well, less than that, lately. I stayed over at his house some nights. He never stayed over at my place. It was working for us.
I was ready to be more than somewhat-married, though. I was ready to be normal.
I had texted him five times since last night and had only gotten a couple of three- or four-word responses. Tony isn’t much of a texter, but he’s usually more generous with his words than that. It was making me kind of nervous. Well, not nervous, exactly. But it made me want to see him in person just to reassure myself that everything was okay.
So, I finished up my dogs, completed my paperwork, took the high-pressure dryer out and blew the dog hair off my clothes, and my dog, Stump, and I headed to Tony’s. I called his office on the way there, because I was pretty sure he would be working late again, but hopefully not too late. He didn’t talk a lot about his work, but apparently someone wasn’t pulling their weight because he had been putting in more hours. Tony owns a building services company, and he told me once he has two main tasks: finding new businesses to service and replacing employees. He’s a good boss and he has some loyal employees, but there aren’t a whole lot of people whose ambition is to stay in a job that entails emptying trash cans and sanitizing toilets. It’s noble work and nothing to be ashamed of, but most people do consider it a stepping stone.
He wasn’t in the office when I called, but Greta, his secretary, said he was out on a sales call. Good. Then I would have time to thaw something for dinner and surprise him. My man deserved some pampering.
Except my man was already home. I pulled to the curb in front of his house, because the driveway was filled with his work truck, a Solis Building Services van, and a black SUV.
As Stump and I climbed out of my 1974 Monte Carlo, Tony’s front door opened and a beautiful young woman came out. She was looking back over her shoulder and laughing at something, so I got a nice long look at her dark chocolate hair, her tan lean legs, the long column of throat as she threw her head back in the laugh.
I stood on the grass and blinked. I wished I had gone home and showered before I came over. Put on fresh clothes, fresh makeup. Did my hair. Lost 25 pounds.
Tony emerged from the house behind the supermodel, also laughing.
A sales call, huh? Just who was selling what?
Tony’s eyes widened when he saw me, but he smiled. He didn’t duck back into the house. He didn’t try to hide this beautiful person on his front porch.
“Surprise,” I said, and tried to sound breezy.
“A very pleasant one.” He reached out to me and turned to the supermodel. “Joanna, this is my wife, Salem.”
Joanna smiled a wide, perfect-teethed smile and held out a hand with perfectly manicured nails. Who cleans for a living and has perfect nails?
“Joanna is helping me out with a situation at work,” he said.
Did they exchange a loaded look?
They exchanged a loaded look. They totally exchanged a loaded look.
“Is that right?” I asked. I might have sounded a little less breezy. “Greta said you were on a sales call.”
“I was on a sales call,” Tony said. “But we have this situation that I needed to discuss away from the office.” He nodded toward Joanna. “We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”
She gave him a mock salute. “Sure thing. It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Solis.”
“My pleasure, Joanna,” I said brightly. I barely tripped up on the Mrs. Solis thing. The truth is, I don’t get called that a lot, because I don’t go by that name. I didn’t mind her thinking of me as Tony’s wife, though.
Unless she was one of those women who see married men as a challenge.
I followed Tony inside. “How was your day?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said. My mind swirled with uncomfortable questions, but they mostly all sounded like, ‘Why are you meeting with a beautiful young woman about a work situation at your home when you have an office?’
But this was Tony. Tony was a rock. If you wanted to create a statue to the ideals of faithfulness and integrity, it would look just like Tony.
So… there was no reason to be jealous except for the situation. And he could probably explain the situation.
I waited for him to do just that.
But instead of explaining, he went back to his home office.
I sat at the kitchen table and considered that for a few minutes. I mean, the workday was still underway, and Tony worked long hours—that was why he had a home office, so he could address some issues from home if he needed to. Plus, there was, apparently, this Very Special Work Situation that needed to be handled. And I wasn’t, like, a guest in his house. Yes, I lived elsewhere, but I had spent enough time here that it was perfectly reasonable for him to assume I would make myself at home while he retreated to his home office.
I sighed and decided to do just that. It would be stupid to let my own insecurities set the tone for this evening. So what if I felt like an old and ugly step-sister next to the beautiful Joanna and her long brown thighs with not a single bump of cellulite? That meant nothing. What Tony and I had was strong, it was real, it had withstood challenges that few marriages could withstand.
I had come here to find something in the freezer to thaw for dinner, so I would do just that.
I went out to the garage to check out the upright freezer there. Tony’s mother and sisters were always making extra food and freezing it for him, so he had dozens of packages of tamales, some brisket, some sausage, and a bunch of smaller bags of frozen side dishes, complete with dates of freezing and directions for preparing. It was kind of sweet but also kind of silly, because Tony was an excellent cook in his own right. He was more of the cook-on-the-grill type, but he could still whip up chicken enchiladas that would make you weep tears of joy.
I decided I was in the mood for chalupas, though, if he had all the fresh ingredients. If he didn’t, I would make a quick run to the store.
I grabbed a package of taco meat out of the freezer and moved back inside to check out the contents of the pantry. Tostadas. I needed tostadas.
I opened the door and scanned the shelves, but all I could see was those long legs. That wide, white smile. That long, thick dark hair.
Perfect skin. I mean, like, gag me, perfect. I was pretty sure she didn’t even have pores.
What kind of situation would Tony be dealing with that would require him to lie to Greta? What kind of work situation would they need to talk about at his house?
Was I being a complete fool for falling for that line? I imagined if someone had come to me with this story. “I came home early to find my husband at home with a beautiful young girl, and he said it was a special work meeting.” I know exactly what I would think. “He’s cheating on you, girlfriend, don’t be stupid.”
But…this was Tony. When I was mad at him, I called him St. Anthony, because he was honestly the best person I knew—an actual living saint. When I said that we’d been separated for all those years? He knew we were still married, and he acted like it. A young, hot-blooded male who honored his marriage vows even though he didn’t really have a marriage.
At least…that’s what he’d told me. And even though I acknowledged that it was unbelievable that he would honor his vows of faithfulness…I’d still believed it.
I spun and sat back down at the table with a thud. Was I just too stupid to live?
But…this was Tony. I kept coming back to that. Tony had always been honest with me. No matter what. His integrity mattered to him. He had a deep desire to be an honorable man.
But…why hadn’t he told me what this special ‘work situation’ was? He told me stuff about his business all the time. Simple stuff, and I never could keep people’s names straight, but still, it wasn’t like I couldn’t be trusted with information.
I sat at the table and stared down the hallway. He was quiet in there. What was he doing?
I tiptoed down the hallway. I could hear him clicking computer keys, then rummaging through the drawers and mumbling to himself.
I watched him in silence for a moment, then said, “So what’s going on at work?”
He threw me a distracted look, but then found what he was looking for—a pen that worked. He clicked it a few times and then scribbled on a notepad. “I’m not even sure yet, so…I don’t know. I don’t want to…” He trailed off before he finished. He looked at something on his computer screen, scribbled something else, then flipped to another screen.
I realized after a few minutes that he’d forgotten I was there.
Well.
I went back to the kitchen. I was mad, but I wasn’t sure I had a right to be mad. Tony hadn’t done anything. And as a business owner with many people counting on him, he was often distracted with work. There was no reason to be insulted by that.
And as I said, he told me he’d been faithful to our marriage during those years we were apart. We both knew that I had not been. I thought we were divorced, of course, but I would imagine that was pretty cold comfort to the man who had cut off his entire sex life for almost a decade.
And that was the thing. I had so much guilt over that, even though Tony insisted he forgave me. I had a very hard time forgiving myself. So, this voice in my head wondered: even if Tony had brought the lovely Joanna to his home because he was cheating on me, even if he was having a fling with someone at work…did I have any right to be jealous?
Did I not deserve that?
I stood. I wanted to run down the hall and scream at Tony, insist he tell me what was going on, insist he banish Joanna and every other beautiful woman from his life from this day forward. I wanted to be unreasonable and shrieky. I wanted to pitch a fit.
But Tony was so calm and preoccupied, I knew how it would go. He would be patient. He would be longsuffering. He would get that faintly condescending air that always made me feel stupid and belligerent.
I sighed, then picked up my purse. “Hey Tony,” I called. “I need to run out and talk to Viv for a little bit. Do you mind if I leave Stump here?”
After a few seconds, he called back, “Sure, no problem. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Stay here,” I whispered to Stump. “I’ll be back soon.”
She lifted an eyebrow but otherwise didn’t move. Tony and my next-door neighbor Frank were the only two people I could leave Stump with in total confidence that she would not pitch a loud screamy fit. In fact, Stump might like Tony better than me. Something else I was foolishly jealous of, if I was honest.
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