The Other Wife. Shirley Jump

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