Act.” She sniffed and lowered herself into one of the chairs, her grip on the bundle in her arms as tight as ever.
Josiah reached for her bundle, intent on putting it in the third chair in the grouping. She clung to it, eyes pinched shut. Oh. Wade’s belongings. Josiah was an idiot on so many levels he’d lost count. “Wade wasn’t bringing Karin home? How do you know—?”
“The accident happened on Route 80. Six miles from here.”
Not possible. “Why would they be heading this way?” But that would explain why the ambulance chose Woodlands. His thoughts stuttered as badly as the words he tried to spit out. Did Leah know more? Did she know about Karin’s child? Karin and Wade’s—? No. Impossible. Josiah wasn’t going to be the one to tell Leah that her man was a slimeball. The woman had just lost her husband. Had Karin ever talked about Wade with anything more than friendship? What had he missed?
“Airport.” She sighed into the plastic wrapped bundle. “It’s the only thing I can think of. He wasn’t taking her shopping at the mall, that’s for sure.” The sarcasm hung like stale smoke from a thousand cheap cigars.
“They were getting on a flight?”
“Not them, Josiah.” She looked at him as if he’d lost all of his senses, not just the few he knew about. “Karin was leaving. I don’t know how she talked Wade into taking her or why he wouldn’t have let me know. I don’t know why Karin didn’t tell me she’d finally had enough.”
“Enough?”
“Of you!”
The word-fists landed harder than her physical punch. She was delirious. Wracked with grief. Shock, maybe. Or completely delusional. They’d both been betrayed.
He wasn’t alone in this. Was he?
Chapter 6
Grief doesn’t know how to tell time.
~ Seedlings & Sentiments
from the “Grief” collection
In less than twenty-four hours, he’d gone from elation to disappointment to concern to anger to fear to—betrayed. Everything except elation still churned inside, rising and abating like toxic, oil-slick tides.
Leah’s husband, Wade, was driving the car? That made even less sense than the wild scenarios Josiah had concocted in the surgery waiting room. Leah’s frame of mind couldn’t be faulted, even if her reasoning was. She lost her husband. What a nightmare! But she of all people should know Karin wasn’t capable of what poisoned Josiah’s mind, what Leah insinuated. The two women worked together almost every day. Karin couldn’t have been leaving Josiah. One suitcase and unsubstantiated evidence do not add up to an affair.
Wade always made Seedlings & Sentiments his last stop of the day, even on Saturdays, Leah said. Nothing suspicious there. Leah had showed Josiah Karin’s note. “You don’t deserve the mess I’m leaving you.”
Josiah slapped his palm on the steering wheel. The overanalysis gene he’d inherited from his mom usually served him well, career-wise. Not now. Not in this shadowed labyrinth.
Morris waited for a phone call. And Josiah should call Karin’s friends from church. If he tapped the domino named Janelle, the news of Karin’s accident would tumble—tap, tap, tap—to the entire community. The whole world would know, and it would require only the one call. They didn’t have to know the details that kept Josiah in a ping-pong match of concern versus anger.
Josiah mindlessly maneuvered the stretch of highway as if a steel rudder on the underside of his car were locked into a groove in the pavement. Inattentive driving? To say the least.
He punched the dash-mounted button for voice-activated dialing. “Call Morris.” Blessed technology. As he waited for Morris to pick up, he designed and deleted three versions of how to tell his agent what happened.
Voice mail. Again. “You’ve reached Morris Lynch’s machine. I’m not available right now. I’m golfing, gulping, or groveling. Leave a—Well, you know the routine.”
Morris, you’re a better agent than you are an author. Leave the writing to me, huh?
“I’ll make this quick, Morris. Karin’s been in an accident. It’s pretty serious. I won’t be available much for the next”—how long? how many days?—“for a while. I’ll keep you updated as able. I’ll take the laptop with me to the hospital and send you the manuscript from there.”
A twinge shot across his collarbone. Disloyalty had nothing to do with his thinking about the book. He had responsibilities. Once it was sent off, he could focus a hundred percent on the crisis at hand.
He should jot that down. Clear the Decks—Your Key to Crisis Management.
The highway spit random remnants of melted ice as he committed the phrase to memory and contemplated what qualified as a “must do” once he got home. Pack an overnight bag. Grab the laptop. See if the Wilson boy would mind feeding Sandi and letting her out a couple of times a day. Before and after school and once more before bedtime ought to do it. The kid might appreciate a chance to earn a few bucks.
Somebody’d better pray. Janelle would call the prayer chain thing from church. Right now Josiah couldn’t think what came after the part about “Oh, Lord God.”
Another chapter for another book. Pray Like You Mean It.
The car knew to turn right onto Peach Avenue. Then left on Hillcrest. The house never looked colder. Had it aged overnight? Had he? Josiah pulled into the garage, turned off the engine, and listened to the off-tune hum of the automatic garage door as it closed behind him.
Sandi’s ADHD registered through the house’s closed door. He thought golden retrievers were supposed to mellow by this age.
Josiah opened the car door and was startled to realize he’d neglected to fasten his seatbelt. And that somewhere in the trip, the seatbelt warning had stopped jangling without his noticing. Dumb. Dumbdumbdumb. Karin, you didn’t really intend to leave me, did you?
I need my brain back if I’m going to survive this. Focus.
Beyond formality, Sandi shot past Josiah when he opened the door from garage to kitchen. The dog bolted through the doggie flap on the people door on the back wall of the garage. Freedom. It must feel good.
Sandi’s stainless steel water and food dishes sparkled as if she’d run them through the doggie tongue dishwasher. He refilled both, in his mind writing notes of apology to man’s best friend.
The answering machine boasted it had captured three messages. He fast-forwarded through two hang-ups then landed on a singsong message.
“Kaaarrriiin. Trudy, here. Where are you? We were counting on you to do nursery duty today, rememberrr? Don’t worry. I grabbed one of the moms out of the worship service and drafted her to take over for you. If you’re going to be out of town, you need to call and let someone knooow. Next time, ’kay? You’re such a good one to call on since you don’t have any kids. I mean, no offense.”
Oh, I assure
