Used-To-Be Lovers. Linda Lael Miller

she remembered using to wash the roadster. She picked up her own cup and gulped with the enthusiastic desperation of a drunk taking the hair of the dog. “You’re making an awfully big deal out of this, aren’t you?” she hedged.

      Tony shrugged. “If you’re taking the kids out of town,” he said, “I’d like to know about it.”

      “Okay,” Sharon replied, enunciating clearly. “Tony, I am taking the kids out of town.”

      His eyes were snapping. “Thanks,” he said, and then he headed right for the den. The man had an absolute genius for finding out things Sharon didn’t want him to know.

      He came out with a payroll journal under one arm, looking puzzled. “You slept downstairs?”

      Sharon took a moment to regret not making up the hide-a-bed, and then answered, “I was watching a movie. Joseph Cotten and Ginger Rogers.”

      Tony leaned back against the counter. “The TV in our room doesn’t work?”

      Sharon put her hands on her hips. “What is this, an audit? I felt like sleeping downstairs, all right?”

      His grin was gentle and a little sad, and for a moment he looked as though he was about to confide something. In the end he finished his coffee, set the mug in the sink and went out to talk to the kids without saying another word to Sharon.

      She hurried upstairs and hastily packed a bag of her own. A glance in the vanity mirror made her regret not putting on her makeup.

      When she came downstairs again, the kids had finished their cereal and Tony was gone. Sharon felt both relief and disappointment. She’d gotten off to a bad start, but she was determined to salvage the rest of the day.

      The Fates didn’t seem to be on Sharon’s side. The cash machine at the bank nearly ate her card, the grocery store was crowded and, on the way to the ferry dock, she had a flat tire.

      It was midafternoon and clouds were gathering in the sky by the time she drove the station wagon aboard the ferry connecting Port Webster with Vashon Island and points beyond. Briana and Matt bought cinnamon rolls at the snack bar and went outside onto the upper deck to feed the gulls. Sharon watched them through the window, thinking what beautiful children they were, and smiled.

      Briana had been a baby when her bewildered, young father had married Sharon. Sharon had changed Bri’s diapers, walked the floor with her when she had colic, kissed skinned knees and elbows to make them better. She had made angel costumes for Christmas pageants, trudged from house to house while Briana sold cookies for her Brownie troop and ridden shotgun on trick-or-treat expeditions.

      She had earned her stripes as a mother.

      The ferry whistle droned, and Sharon started in surprise. The short ride was over, and the future was waiting to happen.

      She herded the kids below decks to the car, and they drove down the noisy metal ramp just as the heavy gray skies gave way to a thunderous rain.

      2

      Holding a bag of groceries in one arm, Sharon struggled with the sticky lock on the A-frame’s back door.

      “Mom, I’m getting wet!” Briana complained from behind her.

      Sharon sunk her teeth into her lower lip and gave the key a furious jiggle just as a lightning bolt sliced through the sky and then danced, crackling, on the choppy waters of the sound.

      “Whatever you do, wire-mouth,” Matt told his sister, gesturing toward the gray clouds overhead, “don’t smile. You’re a human lightning rod.”

      “Shut up, Matthew,” Sharon and Briana responded in chorus, just as the lock finally gave way.

      Sharon’s ears were immediately met by an ominous hissing roar. She set the groceries down on the kitchen counter and flipped on the lights as Bri and Matt both rushed inside in search of the noise.

      “Oh, ick!” Bri wailed, when they’d gone down the three steps leading from the kitchen to the dining and living room area. “The carpet’s all wet!”

      Matt’s response was a whoop of delight. His feet made a loud squishing sound as he stomped around the table.

      “Don’t touch any of the light switches,” Sharon warned, dashing past them and following the river of water upstream to the bathroom. The source of the torrent proved to be a broken pipe under the sink; she knelt to turn the valve and shut off the flow. “Now what do I do?” she whispered, resting her forehead against the sink cabinet. Instantly, her sneakers and the lower part of her jeans were sodden.

      The telephone rang just as she was getting back to her feet, and Matt’s voice carried through the shadowy interior of the summer place she and Tony had bought after his family’s company had landed a particularly lucrative contract three years before. “Yeah, we got here okay, if you don’t count the flat tire. It’s real neat, Dad—a pipe must have broke or something because there’s water everywhere and the floor’s like mush—”

      Sharon drew in a deep breath, let it out again and marched into the living room, where she summarily snatched the receiver from her son’s hand. “‘Neat’ is not the word I would choose,” she told her ex-husband sourly, giving Matt a look.

      Tony asked a few pertinent questions and Sharon answered them. Yes, she’d found the source of the leak, yes, she’d turned off the valve, yes, the place was practically submerged.

      “So who do I call?” she wanted to know.

      “Nobody,” Tony answered flatly. “I’ll be there on the next ferry.”

      Sharon needed a little distance; that was one of the reasons she’d decided to visit the island in the first place. “I don’t think that would be a good idea…” she began, only to hear a click. “Tony?”

      A steady hum sounded in her ear.

      Hastily, she dialed his home number; she got the answering machine. Sharon told it, in no uncertain terms, what she thought of its high-handed owner and hung up with a crash.

      Both Bri and Matt were looking at her with wide eyes, their hair and jackets soaking from the rain. Maternal guilt swept over Sharon; she started to explain why she was frustrated with Tony and gave up in midstream, spreading her hands out wide and then slapping her thighs in defeat. “What can I say?” she muttered. “Take off your shoes and coats and get up on the sofa.”

      Rain was thrumming against the windows, and the room was cold. Sharon went resolutely to the fireplace and laid crumpled newspaper and kindling in the grate, then struck a match. A cheery blaze caught as she adjusted the damper, took one of the paper-wrapped supermarket logs from the old copper caldron nearby and tossed it into the fire.

      When she turned from that, Bri and Matt were both settled on the couch.

      “Is Daddy coming?” Briana asked in a small voice.

      Sharon sighed, feeling patently inadequate, and then nodded. “Yes.”

      “How come you got so mad at him?” Matt wanted to know. “He just wants to help, doesn’t he?”

      Sharon pretended she hadn’t heard the question and trudged back toward the kitchen, a golden oasis in the gloom. “Who wants hot chocolate?” she called, trying to sound lighthearted.

      Both Bri and Matt allowed that cocoa would taste good right about then, but their voices sounded a little thin.

      Sharon put water on to heat for instant coffee and took cocoa from the cupboard and milk and sugar from the bag of groceries she’d left on the counter. Outside the wind howled, and huge droplets of rain flung themselves at the windows and the roof. “I kind of like a good storm once in a while,” Sharon remarked cheerfully.

      “What happens when we run out of logs?” Briana wanted to know. “We’ll freeze to death!”

      Matt gave a