It’s A Plunderful Life Read online

  A girl could hope.

  In his youth, Wilder had been naturally athletic, the kind of guy who wore a baseball cap and always knew whether it was supposed to be forward or backward according to the latest hat protocol. He’d seemed perpetually on the verge of challenging you to a game of beer pong. Now, his hair was a bit thinner, and his face had gone full cowboy, years of sun exposure weathering him until his skin had the look of well-loved leather.

  It was incredibly unfair that men could get away with that and women could not. Because he looked sexy as hell, and I would have looked like my great-aunt Myrtle.

  He had a general air of competence around him. Hell, maybe that wasn’t even his toolbox, but I certainly believed he knew how to use it. For a moment, I just reveled in the fact that my insides had gone all mushy. Maybe my husband had left me, but that didn’t mean I was totally dead.

  His eyes narrowed as he studied me. “You lost weight.”

  At the top of the stairs, Toni stifled a cough.

  It was a nice thing to say, I guess? But the thing was, I hadn’t lost weight. I mean, I hadn’t seen Wilder since I was a teenager, before he left to join the Army. In the intervening years, I’d had a baby, aged, oh, thirty years, and eaten about a million desserts. (Hey—sweets are my comfort food!) I might have managed to keep the worst of the extra pounds at bay and I worked out five times a week (okay, three times), but no one was going to call me the skinniest girl in the world.

  “I’m pretty sure the last time I saw you…” He trailed off before he could say anything stupid, but then he ruined it by holding his arms away from his sides in a pantomime of a ball.

  “I never…” And then it hit me. “Wilder,” I said slowly. “The last time I saw you I was dressed as Humpty Dumpty.”

  It had been a particularly painful period in my youth wherein my mother sent me to a busy intersection in town dressed as storybook characters with a sign that read, “The Enchanted Forest. Where All Your Dreams Come Truth.”

  That’s right—I had to dress up as Humpty Dumpty or the mouse that ran up the clock and hold a sign with a typo that nobody saw fit to fix.

  Good times, good times.

  His brow furrowed. “Are you sure?”

  I blew out a breath. “Yes.” I was pretty sure I even remembered the day. Me in my costume, all pastels and cracked eggy head, and Wilder in his beat-up Jeep Comanche, waving at me from where he was stopped for a red light, one arm around…Well, I can’t remember her name, or even what she looked like, but it was a blow to my poor Humpty heart.

  “Well, you look good, is all I’m saying.”

  Nothing wrong with appreciating a little ego boost, is there?

  “How’s your husband?” He cocked his head to one side. “You’re married, right?”

  My mother was backing away slowly, her low heels making the teeniest of clicks on the wood floor and her eyes glowing with what could only be described as triumph.

  “Um, actually we’re getting a divorce.”

  “Oh.” Wilder rocked back on his gorgeous heels—at least, I assumed they were gorgeous as everything else about him was—and rubbed the back of his hand over his forehead. “You lose the weight before or after the breakup?”

  Okay, so he wasn’t the brightest bulb on the tree. But he was so, so sexy. As I watched him leave, I decided it was perfectly fine to appreciate everything he had to offer, looking wise.

  Just as long as he didn’t talk.

  With Toni shooting daggers at me for no reason at all I decided it was time to retreat to my room. Closing the door behind me, I flopped down on the perfectly typical bed and stared up at the ceiling.

  One other thing people like to tell you when you’re going through a divorce is that everything happens for a reason. It’s well intentioned, sure, but I hated hearing it from friend after friend. Because I knew what they thought the reason was. “Cass’s divorce is a reminder that we need to focus on our own marriages,” I knew they told themselves once they hung up the phone or hugged me goodbye outside the coffee shop.

  No one ever tried to help me figure out what the reason was for me. Was I supposed to get something out of this heartbreak? Maybe grow as a person? Start a new career, throw myself into a new hobby, fly to France and marry a guy whose family had owned a vineyard outside Paris for three hundred years?

  Somehow, I didn’t think my divorce was supposed to do that.

  Everything happens for a reason.

  Maybe. But sometimes that reason is simply that the universe has a cruel sense of humor.

  3

  The next morning, I laid in bed for an hour, just looking at that doughnut motivational poster and thinking about the new daily planner I’d purchased in a moment of optimism before I left Louisville. My old planner had been full of plans for my old life. There was the trip we had planned with Sandy and Paul Carmichael to the coast of Maine for August. And then there was the surprise couples massage I’d booked for Father’s Day weekend at a spa outside the city. When I’d called to cancel, the woman who answered the phone had taken pity on me—maybe because I was swinging wildly between heartbreak and barely suppressed rage as I explained my reason for canceling—and she’d generously converted the massage to a full day spa package for me, which I’d taken full advantage of before I left town.

  Oh—and I had dutifully noted Brad’s mother’s birthday in my planner since he liked to send her flowers every year, which, of course, was something I always took care of.

  The best part of getting a divorce, hands down, was not having that woman as a mother-in-law anymore. Honestly, that whole mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship was one of the reasons I was so happy I never had a son. No daughters-in-law for me. I’d never have to deal with that fraught relationship again.

  I had to buy a new planner—it would have been too painful to try to use the old one, my heart breaking every time I flipped a page and came across a little moment in our lives together. But the new planner left me with a very different problem—a year of blank pages, stretching out from here until…Well, until I figured my life out.

  I hadn’t had blank pages in my planner for years. Decades, maybe. Not like this.

  It was terrifying. And, yes, I knew I was supposed to find this all liberating, and I was supposed to make the best of things, but if I’m being perfectly honest, that was proving very difficult at the moment.

  So I did the responsible, mature thing to do—I pulled the blankets over my head and dozed off again.

  When I finally woke up for good, the sun was high in the sky, the light streaming through my window. Fighting the impulse to stay in bed all day, I got up and dragged on a pair of yoga pants and a tank top. My favorite thing about athletic wear is that much of it is every bit as comfortable as sweats, but it makes you look instantly sportier, like maybe you just ran a mile and have actually earned the right to lie on the couch and eat Doritos, even if you just skipped right to the Doritos part.

  Which was pretty much all I had planned for the day.

  After brushing my teeth, I made my way downstairs, where I found the kitchen empty and silent. There was a plate of cinnamon rolls on the table. I helped myself to one, which I ate over the sink, looking out the back window at the woods behind the house. Although it was broad daylight, the occasional light flickered in the shadows of the trees—fireflies, calling to each other.

  Even though I was standing in my childhood kitchen, with its warm copper ceiling tiles and creamy cabinets and deep green tiled countertop, I felt a wave of homesickness. I had come back so I wouldn’t have to be alone, and at that moment I wanted my mother. Licking a rogue dab of icing off my finger, I headed outside to look for her.

  I found Kurt asleep in a lounge chair positioned beside a lilac bush in full bloom, a light breeze loosening a few fragrant blossoms enough that they drifted over him, dotting his faded denim shirt with soft purple splotches of color. A book on WWII was facedown and open on his chest, and a glass of pineapple
juice sweated on a small table near his elbow. The sight of the book squeezed my heart painfully. Kurt would once have scolded me in his gentle way if he’d seen me leave a book like that. “You’ll damage the spine,” he would have said. If I needed any more evidence of just how far gone he was, this book was it.

  I reached down and picked up the book, tucking the inner flap on the dust jacket between the pages to mark his spot. “I’ll just leave this here for you,” I said, bending to set the book on the grass beside his chair. I brushed a stray lilac petal from his chin, then patted his shoulder and looked around for my mother.

  Hearing voices from the side yard, I walked around the corner of the house and found…well, I’m not sure exactly what it was. A series of what looked like plastic wading pools lined in black landscaping fabric was arranged across the grass. Each pool was filled with plants, although these weren’t the flowering kind that my mother loved so much. It was a lot of green interspersed with patches of some tall, thin, reddish plant.

  And in the middle of it all was Toni, arguing with a young woman I didn’t know. The other woman’s face was pale, with two angry spots of color along her cheekbones, and she spoke in a voice so low I couldn’t make out the words.

  I started to back away, but Toni caught sight of me, her jaw tensing as she placed a hand on the other woman’s arm. “Later,” she said.

  The other woman turned her head. Seeing me, she smoothed one hand over her sleek black bob and threw me a smile so sunny I thought for a moment I’d misinterpreted what I’d seen. Surely she hadn’t been hissing something at Toni just seconds ago, right?

  “Di, this is Evelyn’s daughter, Cass. Cass, this is Diana Fitzgerald. She works at the park, in the gift shop.” She pulled on a pair of gardening gloves. “You might have met her boyfriend, too. Peter? Works in ticket sales?”

  Diana nudged Toni, then waved one hand in a quick greeting as I walked closer. “It’s so great to finally meet you, Cass. Evelyn talks about you all the time.”

  Toni’s face darkened, and she knelt down beside one of the pools filled with plants. I didn’t really want to prolong any contact with my stepsister at the moment, but curiosity got the best of me. “What is all this?” I asked, gesturing at the pools.

  “Oh, this?” Diana laughed, a trilling, musical sound. “This is Toni’s little pet project. Right, Tone?”

  Toni’s lips tightened. “It’s a carnivorous plant rock garden.”

  Of course. What else would my antagonistic sister grow besides carnivorous plants? Moving closer, I recognized a few Venus fly traps and pitcher plants in the mix, but the rest of the plants were a mystery. Whatever they were, they were clearly thriving.

  Toni reached down and stroked the puffy top of some pale green plant with one finger, murmuring something I could have sworn was meant only for her plants.

  Okay, that was creepy AF. Suddenly all I could think about was the Little Shop of Horrors.

  I cleared my throat and took a step backward. “Well, that’s cool. I think I’m going to just…go back inside.” And, without turning my back on Toni and Diana, I all but fled to the relative safety of the house.

  I thought I could hear Diana’s tinkling laughter even once I closed the back door.

  I didn’t see my mother until dinner that night. We ate in the dining room just off the kitchen, the scarred old table from my youth covered with a spring green tablecloth and yellow and white placemats. Toni cooked, a surprisingly delicious chicken piccata with angel hair pasta and roasted asparagus, and Kurt took great joy in chasing the capers around his plate with a fork, eventually spearing them one at a time and savoring them in triumph.

  “Did you have a good day, baby girl?” my mother asked me.

  Oh, sure. Four hours of daytime TV, followed by an eighty-minute nap, and then more TV. Plus those Doritos I’d been looking forward to.

  Definitely a red letter day.

  “I did, yes,” I said.

  My mother neatly cut off a bite-sized piece of chicken, her eyes fixed on her plate. “Did anything…um…interesting happen?”

  Well, I’d discovered that Toni was infatuated with flesh-eating plants, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t what she meant. “I don’t think so,” I said. “Anything in particular you were thinking about?”

  “Nope. Just asking.” She paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. “Kurt, sweetie, what did you just put in your pocket?”

  My stepfather blinked at her. “You’re so pretty.”

  Mom set her fork down on her plate with a clink. “Kurt Hollingsworth, you take that piece of chicken out of your pocket this instant.”

  Kurt slipped a piece of buttery chicken out of his pants pocket and set it back on his plate. But as soon as my mother returned her attention to her food, that little bit of meat went right back into Kurt’s pocket.

  My mother sighed. She must have seen him—the man was definitely not subtle—but she ignored it. “For the cat,” she mouthed to me, I suppose so I wouldn’t think she was starving her husband and forcing him to hoard food. Then, aloud, she said, “What do you have planned for tomorrow, baby girl?”

  “I imagine she’ll have a pretty packed day, what with The Price Is Right, The People’s Court, and General Hospital,” Toni said.

  “Hey, I’m retired.”

  “From life?”

  Ouch.

  Across the table from me, my mother arched one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Toni has a point, Cass. I know you’re still mourning your marriage, and I know a lot has changed for you in a short time, so we’ll be patient with you. But you can’t hide from life forever.”

  “You can’t hide forever,” Kurt said. Looking over at him, I realized he was talking to one of his capers. “Got you.”

  I hoped I had better luck with life than Kurt’s poor caper had with him.

  4

  My mother lost her patience with me three days later.

  She swept into my room far too early, throwing open the curtains and letting sharp rays of sunlight fall all over my face in bed. “Mom,” I grumbled, pulling the duvet over my head.

  “Breakfast is waiting. You can either get up now or there’s no food for you until lunch.”

  “I’m not hungry.” But I was lying. The scent of bacon wafted through the open door, along with something achingly familiar. “Did you make gingerbread waffles?”

  “I did. Now come on. Get dressed. Kurt won’t eat until you come down.”

  I wanted to remind her that Kurt didn’t even know who I was, but that felt unspeakably cruel.

  I mean, even more cruel than what my mother was doing to me, which was waking me up at—I checked my phone—6:45. And how did she manage to look so pulled together so early? She was impeccably dressed in a candy pink skirt and a matching jacket over a blouse in some fabric with a gorgeous opalescent luster. A quick glance at her feet told me what I already knew—she was wearing perfect pink high heels. Before seven. I flopped back onto my pillow. “I know what you’re doing.”

  “Yes—I’m making my baby girl’s favorite breakfast. What a terrible mother.” She paused beside my bed. When I didn’t move, she reached out and deftly swept the duvet off the bed, leaving me shivering under a thin sheet.

  “Hey!”

  “Laundry day,” she sang.

  “Now you’re being a terrible mother.” But she was already walking out, the duvet bunched in her arms, humming to herself and leaving me with no choice but to roll out of bed and drag on clothes.

  At least there were waffles waiting for me.

  Downstairs, I found Kurt and Toni already sitting around the table, Toni keeping up a running conversation with her father with minimal input from him. I settled into a chair as far from my stepsister as possible and my mother set a cup of coffee in front of me. The mug read “You’re Special” above a cartoon unicorn, but the unicorn was smoking a cigarette and looked like it was coming down from a three-day bender, so it kind of felt like Mom was sending mixed messages
.

  “I think it’s time you stopped sitting around being sulky,” she said.

  I dumped a couple spoonfuls of sugar into my coffee. “I’m not being sulky.”

  “Um, yeah you are,” Toni said. “You’re actually being the epitome of sulky.”

  I paused, my spoon mid-stir. “This is why I sleep in. So I don’t have to listen to people use words like epitome at the breakfast table.” I resumed stirring. “Besides, I think I’m being more mopey than sulky.”

  “Sulky, mopey…” Toni took a sip of her own coffee, her eyes glittering over the edge of her mug, which was shaped like the tail end of a rooster—a completely appropriate cup for her as “rooster’s butt” was a good way to describe my sister’s personality. “We could rename the Seven Dwarves with your post-divorce moods.”

  It was a low blow, and I gritted my teeth against the sharp pain. “Maybe we could name one after you. We’ll call that one Bitchy.”

  She casually blew a bit of steam from her mug. “Takes one to know one, I guess.”

  “Regardless,” my mother interrupted. “You know the rules—no sulking for more than three days.”

  I set my mug down. “When was that ever a rule?”

  “Yeah, that’s news to me,” Toni said.

  “Girls!” My mother leaned one hip against Kurt’s chair, rubbing his shoulder affectionately. He glanced up. “You’re so pretty.”

  She smiled at him. “Thank you, dear.” Leaning down, she dropped a kiss onto the top of his head. Then she straightened. “Cass, today you’re coming with me. We’re on cleaning duty.”

  A warning bell went off inside my poor, sleep-deprived mind. She wasn’t talking about cleaning the house.

  Suddenly the gingerbread waffles made more sense. She hadn’t made them to be nice. She’d made them to soften the blow of this news. “Wait—I have to do housekeeping?”

  “You do. And we’re leaving in thirty minutes whether you’ve eaten or not, so you’d better get a move on.” She nodded toward my plate.