Snow Baby

“It’s that damn Mickey Mouse, right? You hate him.”

He gave her a grudging smile. “No.”

“Then what?” Chantel studied him again and guessed that what she saw was pain. “Forget it. You don’t have to talk about it,” she said. “Divorce is a hard thing—for everyone.”

“I never thought I’d be divorced,” he admitted. “I never wanted to be.”

“I don’t think anyone ever plans on it.”

“It’s funny how someone you love can turn into someone you don’t even know, isn’t it?”

“Oh, I see. You’re not over your ex-wife yet.” For some reason she wanted to pull away, but there was no room to do so.

He laughed harshly. “Wrong. I’m completely over her. I got over her shortly after her second affair, which, ironically enough, was with the mailman.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. Well, technically speaking, he wasn’t our mailman, but he worked for the post office.”

“How did she meet him?”

“At the gym.”

“Ouch.”

He laughed, but his voice was edged with bitterness. “I used to think that sort of thing could never happen to me.”

“Does it hurt to talk about it?”

“Not anymore. At first I thought I’d never recover. I blamed myself. We got married too young. I was gone too much, working, trying to put myself through school. I think she was lonely and bored and found the wrong kind of friend. She and the woman next door, who was already divorced, started going out together in the afternoons, visiting bars. I could see what was happening, but I thought I could stop it. I thought if I was meeting her emotional needs, she wouldn’t turn to other men. She admitted she didn’t love them.”

“Did you ever find out why she did it?”

“She said she liked the thrill of it. I think she was on boyfriend number three then, and she was leaving the girls with baby-sitters to spend the day at the gym or tanning. I cut back on my hours at work, but she resented the hit our budget suffered because of it, and her behavior only got worse. I finally realized she had affairs because it fed her ego that other men found her attractive. And she liked my jealous reaction.”

“I take it the two of you aren’t friends now.”

“Actually I’m just trying not to dislike her too much. Not for the old stuff, her betrayal of me—that’s history. It’s the problems we’re having now that make me mad. It kills me that I’m missing so much of my girls’ lives. Their mother changes boyfriends like she changes underwear and insists Brittney and Sydney welcome each new guy with open arms. Sometimes she even makes them call whoever it is ‘daddy.’”

Instinctively Chantel reached up to caress his cheek. “You sound like a wonderful father. Can’t you gain custody somehow?”

“I’ve spent thousands of dollars trying to do just that. California is touted as being liberal, but the judge still won’t award me custody. I’d have to completely discredit Amanda to get them, and I just can’t bring myself to destroy my daughters’ mother.”

“What about visitation rights?”

“I pick up the girls whenever I legally can, but a lot of the time Amanda takes off so that they’re not home when I arrive. Or she leaves them at her mother’s, who thinks I’ve let her daughter down and won’t even open the door to me.”

“Fighting all of that must get old.”

He paused. “I’d rather fight it than not see them. Now Amanda is trying to get permission from the court to move to Iowa.”

“Iowa!”

“Yeah.” He scrubbed his face with his free hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

“Because it’s the middle of the night, and we’re naked and huddled together in your sleeping bag.”

“I’m fully aware of the naked part, but how come I’m the only one baring my soul?”

So I don’t have to tell you about the skeletons in my closet.

“Do you like being an architect?” she countered.

“I love my work, but we’re going to talk about you now. What do you do?”

“I work in the district office of my state senator.”

“Were you involved in politics in New York?”

“No.”

“‘No’? That’s it? What, were you a stripper or something?”

“I was a model.”

“Really? Who’d you model for?”

Chantel bit her lip, reluctant to discuss her modeling experience because she was afraid of where the conversation would lead. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Why? You didn’t like modeling?”

“I loved it.”

“Then tell me about it.”

Cocooned against the weather, Chantel breathed in the smell of the aftershave she’d first noticed when Dillon had leaned into her car, and smiled. She could trust him. He’d come for her despite the storm, even after the police had given up.

“I did runway modeling, and some work for high-end catalogs. I was in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue a couple of years, used to model for Calvin Klein a lot. Oh, and I was on the cover of Vogue once.”

“Wow, sounds like you were pretty successful. What happened?”

Chantel thought of Wade and his demands, demands that increased with her success. “I had a boyfriend…well, more like a husband, really. We lived together for the ten years I was in New York. He modeled, too, and when he didn’t get the breaks I did, he became fanatically jealous. He insisted I cancel contracts I never should have canceled, had me refuse jobs I should have taken. I did it to preserve the relationship, to prove he came first. We’d talked about having a family, and I wanted to get married, but he kept putting me off. He said he didn’t see the point of making it official since all that mattered was what we felt, not some piece of paper. The harder I tried to please him, the more difficult he became. And then I got sick and had to quit altogether.”

“What kind of sick?”

Chantel sighed. She hated telling people what had happened to her and usually didn’t. They didn’t understand anorexia, were generally frightened of the self-hate that spurs it on. “It wasn’t anything communicable.”

“I wasn’t thinking that.” He smoothed the hair off her forehead, and Chantel closed her eyes, wishing he’d go on caressing her until the devils from her past were forgotten. “Tell me what happened,” he whispered.