was straddling her, wearing nothing but the five-hundred-dollar cowboy boots.
“Hey!” he yelped, rearing back, a cowboy on a bucking bronc. “Oh, shit, Jesus Christ.” He scrambled to his feet, grabbing a fringed throw to cover his crotch.
Melissa gasped and clutched a couch cushion against her. “Annie! Oh my God—”
“Really?” Annie scarcely recognized the sound of her own voice. “I mean, really?”
“It’s not—”
“What it seems, Martin?” she bit out. “No. It’s exactly what it seems.” She backed away, her heart pounding, eager to get as far from him as possible.
“Annie, wait. Babe, let’s talk about this.”
She turned into a ghost right then and there. She could feel it. Every drop of color drained away until she was transparent.
Could he see that? Could he see through her, straight into her heart? Maybe she had been a ghost for a long time but hadn’t realized it until this moment.
The feeling of betrayal swept through her. She was bombarded by everything. Disbelief. Disappointment. Horror. Revulsion. It was like having an out-of-body experience. Her skin tingled. Literally, tingled with some kind of electrical static.
“I’m leaving,” she said. She needed to go throw up somewhere.
“Can we please just talk about this?” Martin persisted.
“Do you actually think there’s something to talk about?”
She stared at the two of them a moment longer, perversely needing to imprint the scene on her brain. That was when the moment shifted.
This is how it ends, she thought.
Because it was one of those moments. A key moment. One that spins you around and points you in a new direction.
This is how it ends.
Martin and Melissa both began speaking at once. To Annie’s ears, it sounded like inarticulate babble. A strange blur pulsated at the edges of her vision. The blur was reddish in tone. The color of rage.
She backed away, needing to escape. Plunged her hand into her bag and grabbed her keys. They were on a Sugar Rush key chain in the shape of a maple leaf.
Then she made a one-eighty turn toward the door and walked out into the alley. Her stride was purposeful. Gaze straight ahead. Chin held high.
That was probably the reason she tripped over the cable. The fall brought her to her knees, keys hitting the pavement with a jingle. And the humiliation just kept coming. She picked up the keys and whipped a glance around, praying no one had seen.
Three people hurried over—Are you all right? Did you hurt yourself?
“I’m fine,” she said, dusting off the palms of her hands and her scraped knees. “Really, don’t worry.”
The phone in her shoulder bag went off like a buzz saw, even though it was set on silent mode. She marched past the construction area. Workers were still struggling with the lift, trying to open the hydraulic valve. She shouldn’t have let Martin talk her into the cheaper model.
“You have to turn it the other way,” she called out to the workers.
“Ma’am, this is a hard-hat area,” a guy said, waving her off.
“Leaving,” she said. “I’m just saying, you’re trying to crank the release valve the wrong way.”
“What’s that?”
“The valve. You’re turning it the wrong way.” What a strange conversation. When you discover your husband banging some other woman, weren’t you supposed to call your mom, sobbing? Or your best friend?
“You know,” she said to the guy. “Lefty loosey, righty tighty.”
“Ma’am?”
“Counterclockwise,” she said, tracing her key chain in the air to show him the direction.
“Annie.” Martin burst out of his trailer and sprinted toward her. Boxer shorts, bare chest, cowboy boots. “Come back.”
Her hand tightened around the key chain, the edges of the maple leaf biting into her flesh.
The Segway tour group trolled past the end of the alley.
“It’s Martin Harlow,” someone called.
“We love your show, Martin,” called another girl in the Segway group. “We love you!”
“Ma’am, you mean like this?” The workman gave the valve a hard turn.
A metallic groan sounded from somewhere on high. And the entire structure came crashing down.
So, Dad,” said Teddy, swiveling around on the kitchen barstool, “if the water buffalo weighs two thousand pounds, how come it doesn’t sink in the mud?”
Fletcher Wyndham glanced at the show his son was watching, an unlikely choice for a ten-year-old kid, but Teddy had taken a shine to The Key Ingredient. Most people in Switchback, Vermont, tuned in to the cooking show, not because of the chef or the hot blond cohost. No, the reason was behind the scenes—a quick blip in the credits that rolled while the slightly annoying theme song played.
Her name was Annie Rush—the producer.
The most popular cooking show on TV was her brainchild, and she’d been born and raised in Switchback. Teddy’s fourth-grade teacher had gone to school with Annie. A while back, the show had filmed an episode right here in town, though Fletcher had kept his distance from the production. Since then, Annie held celebrity status, even though she didn’t appear on camera.
That was just as well, Fletcher decided. Seeing her on TV every week would drive him nuts. “Good question, buddy,” he said to his son. “That one looks like he’s walking on water.”
Teddy rolled his eyes. “It’s not a guy buffalo. It’s a girl buffalo. They make mozzarella cheese from the milk.”
“Then why not call it a milk buffalo?”
“’Cause it lives in the water. Duh.”
“Amazing what you can learn from watching TV.”
“Yeah, you should let me watch more.”
“Dream on,” said Fletcher.
“Mom lets me watch as much as I want.”
And there it was. Evidence that Teddy had officially joined a club no kid wanted to belong to—confused kids of divorced parents.
