Breakup In A Small Town. Kristina Knight

distributor in Springfield, all the calls to Buchanan’s had been routed to her office phone. Adam’s office, technically, but since he wasn’t working, she’d taken it as her own. It made more sense than trying to get anything done in the outer office, where she’d worked before the tornado. Between Nancy’s constant chatter and Owen’s pacing as he watched the work floor below the office, she’d barely been able to concentrate on filling out invoices.

      Still, at least Adam had tried to do the laundry. A couple weeks ago—shoot, last week, even—he wouldn’t have.

      “I set the shirts and things in the laundry sink to soak overnight. That should get the last of the pink streaks out.”

      “The vinegar didn’t work?”

      She gestured to the clean clothes in her arms. “Only on some of it.”

      “Mom suggested a better hamper system, so the clothes don’t get mixed up again.”

      “We’ve never needed a hamper system before. It’s not that difficult to separate on the fly.”

      “Yeah, I didn’t think you’d want a hamper system.”

      “It isn’t that I don’t want one, it’s that it’s unnecessary.” Really, how hard was it to throw whites in the wash and leave the colors, jeans and towels for other cycles?

      “You seem annoyed.”

      She wasn’t annoyed, she was tired. Tired of... God, she didn’t even know what she was tired of. She was just tired. Damned tired.

      “I’m going to put the boys’ things away and go to bed.”

      “I did what you asked.”

      Jenny sighed. “No, you called your mom.”

      “At least I didn’t leave the mess for you to clean up.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Isn’t that what you were mad about in the car? Me leaving things for you to pick up?”

      “No, it isn’t. And I wasn’t mad.” She took a steadying breath. “I can’t keep doing this, Adam.” Her heart seemed to crack with those six words. She didn’t want this. Didn’t want to break up with him. But she couldn’t help the boys if she had to keep picking up after Adam, too.

      “What, the laundry? I’ll watch for red socks next time.”

      “This isn’t about the laundry.” Jenny smacked her hand against the table and winced. “It’s about you not taking responsibility for anything anymore. I’m doing everything I can, but I need help. Can’t you see that?”

      He just looked at her. Jenny crossed the room, pulled out the drawing Garrett had done of the black clouds over their house, and thrust it into Adam’s lap. “Garrett’s drawing attack tornados in art class, and Frankie won’t let himself sleep until he knows where I’ll be the next day. You won’t be honest with the doctor or go to your PT appointments. Your parents are doing everything they can to turn the Buchanan’s you were trying to build back into what they wanted it to be—”

      “At least they’re here. Your mother has plenty of time for her bridge tournaments, though, doesn’t she?”

      “And no time for me or you or the boys or even my father. I’ve never expected more from her. But I did from you.”

      Jenny shook her head. She took the picture Adam hadn’t bothered to look at and put it back into the drawer, then picked the boys’ clean clothes off the side table. “Good night, Adam.”

      “Jen—”

      “Thanks for doing the laundry,” she said, and went upstairs before he could tell her he was sorry for something that he probably wasn’t really sorry about. Streaking a few shirts was insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Comparing his helicopter mother to her disinterested parent wasn’t the point.

      The real problem wasn’t that he’d messed up the laundry or even that he had called his mother to clean up his mess.

      Jenny slid the little shirts and jeans into their proper drawers, then went into her bedroom, sank down on the mattress and pulled her pillow to her chest while she looked out at the darkened sky.

      The real problem was that she was alone in this house, despite the little boys down the hall or the man she couldn’t reach downstairs. She was as alone now as she had been when she was a little girl. Being talked at by her parents, never allowed to have an opinion or a want that didn’t first come from one of her parents.

      Doug and Margery Hastings were strict, some might say domineering. They’d had Jenny late in their lives, when they had their routines set in stone, and neither of them once considered that the routines they craved might be oppressive to the daughter they loved. And she’d never told them, because telling them would disrupt their routines more than if she just went along. So she went along with them.

      Jenny had thought things would be different when she married Adam. They wouldn’t be set in their ways, they would be caring toward one another. But in the end, she had gone along with Adam, just as she had gone along with her parents, and now here she was, adrift.

      She had no plan, no goal to work toward.

      She was alone in the darkness of this new life, just as she was alone in the darkness of her bedroom.

      She didn’t want to be in the dark.

      “I don’t want to be alone,” she whispered into the darkness.

      The darkness didn’t answer.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      JENNY CRADLED THE phone between her cheek and shoulder, listening as Aiden, her husband’s twin, told her he hadn’t gotten on the plane. The flight he’d promised her the day before he wouldn’t miss. His voice crackled over the line, and she wondered as she looked at the brilliant blue of the morning sky in Missouri how whatever weather system was moving through California might impact Aiden’s travel plans. She needed Aiden here. Adam needed him here.

      “Did they shut down the flights out of San Diego?”

      “No, I just decided to drive. I’m about to cross into Texas.”

      Driving. From San Diego to Slippery Rock? That didn’t make sense.

      “But you’ll be in today?”

      “More like tomorrow afternoon.”

      Jenny bit her tongue. She wouldn’t lash out at Aiden; he knew the situation.

      “I know I said I’d catch the flight, Jen, but I needed a little time alone. You know, Slippery Rock is like a whole other country compared to California.”

      And Aiden was a different person since going off to San Diego five years before. He’d been the one adrift then, reeling from a bad breakup, wanting to do more than install cabinets for his father for the rest of his life. Adam had been the rock at that time, the one to tell him to go off and have his fun. Now, when Adam needed him, Aiden was taking his time returning the favor. She didn’t understand it.

      Not even when the two of them had been in the accident in high school had Adam been this adrift. Both of the men had been sheltered, to some extent, by their helicopter mother. Jenny loved Nancy Buchanan, but before the tornado she had never truly stopped to consider just how interfering her mother-in-law was. To tell the truth, it had been nice having a parent—in her case a parent figure—so involved in their lives. Her own parents were too busy with their own lives to worry much about what Jenny and Adam were doing across town. They’d visited Adam in the hospital only once, hadn’t offered to help out around the house. Not that Jenny had expected them to offer. She didn’t want them to feel obligated, not really, but it would be nice to know she wasn’t so...alone.

      She was beginning to hate that word. Since she’d first allowed it to pass her lips the night before, it