Mr. And Mrs. Wrong

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

HE SHOWED UP without warning on a Thursday night. He said he’d left his boxing gloves behind when he’d moved out and needed them, but they both knew he kept them in his locker at the gym.

Lucky undid the latch on the screen door and the one on her heart and invited him in—again. Last time, the supposedly missing object had been his extra pistol. Before that, a basketball.

In the four months since Jack had taken an apartment in town, putting their eleven-month marriage in question, they’d searched for a “favorite” shirt he’d never worn and for tools he didn’t use. They’d turned the cabin upside down looking for a first-edition Hemingway he didn’t own and for a burglary-case file he’d never have left lying around. The only things they’d ever found were the zippers to each other’s pants.

“Whoa!” he said with a start, getting a better look at her. “What the hell did you do to your hair?”

“Whacked it all off, obviously.”

“No kidding.”

She waved back a moth that tried to follow him onto the porch, then flipped on the lights at the pier to draw the insects down to the water and away from him. The mosquitoes never bothered her. Like all the creatures who called Alabama’s Black Warrior River home, she’d accepted them as a natural part of life.

But Jack was already slapping at his skin, so she handed him the canning jar she’d learned to keep by the door. It contained a mixture of herbs and 190-proof grain alcohol. She’d inherited the recipe for the insect repellent from her granddaddy thirteen years ago, along with this cabin and eighty acres of surrounding bottom land.

Unscrewing the lid, Jack took a sniff. “You didn’t brew this in a whiskey still out here somewhere, did you, runt?”

“If I had, don’t you think I’d be drinkin’ the stuff, instead of making bug juice out of it?”

Chuckling, he dipped his fingers in the jar and dabbed a few drops of the liquid on his neck, face and below his rolled-up sleeves. He wore his dress clothes from work and, after chasing bad guys all day and being out in humidity over ninety percent, appeared wilted and tired. His tie was askew, and beggar lice and other bits of plant material clung to the hems of his pants. He needed a shave.

The gun he usually carried was probably locked inside his car’s glove compartment, but the empty shoulder holster by itself was enough to give him a dangerous look.

Much about Jack was dangerous, mysterious even, including his background. That was one of the things that had attracted her to him in the beginning. These days, though, the unanswered questions about his past only irritated her.

“So what’s the deal with your hair?” he asked. “Did you have one of those hissy fits your grandmother talks about?”

“A hissy fit is when you’re mad. I wasn’t mad.”

“What were you?”

“I don’t know. I felt like cutting it off, so I did.”

She fingered it. Three nights ago, during a depression over their crumbling marriage, she’d suddenly decided—after a lifetime of wearing her hair to her waist—that it had to go. The first crude snips she’d made with sewing scissors. A beautician had taken off most of the rest the next morning while trying to repair the damage Lucky had done. With the weight gone, it was no longer forced to behave, resulting in a riot of brown curls.

“Pretty awful, huh?” she asked him.

“No, not at all. Shocked me at first because you look so different, but it’s cute.” He reached out and playfully ran his fingers through it.

She let out a breath, exasperated. Never in a million years had she imagined he’d like it. Maybe she’d even lopped it off to spite him; she wasn’t sure. Where Jack was concerned, she had a hard time being honest with herself.

“But…you told me a million times I looked good in long hair.”

“You did. But this suits you, too.”

“Cal says I look like I had a brawl with 100,000 volts of electrical current.”

He chortled. “Want me to hurt him for you?”

“No, silly.” She tried not to smile.

“I could maim him slightly,” he teased. “Lock up one of his knee joints so he’d have to hobble around for a few weeks.”

He could, too. She’d once watched him take down three suspects in a robbery and never even draw his weapon.

“Better not,” she said. “As much as I’d love to see him in pain, he’s the only brother I’ve got.” She waved for him to follow her. “Come inside. It’s a bit cooler.”

“Have any beer?”

“I think so.”

The front room was a combination den and kitchen and even had a bed for nights when no breeze came off the river and the tiny bedroom became an oven. The old ceiling fan rattled overhead but barely stirred the air.

Her treasures—bird feathers, turtle shells, fossils, snakeskins and other objects she’d found in the woods and water—covered the walls and nearly every surface. Photographs littered the couch and chairs, leaving nowhere to sit.

“Things are a mess,” she said.

“When haven’t things been a mess?” He headed for the kitchen area.

“Try calling first to let me know you’re coming. I might clean up.”

“Like that would do any good. You need to throw away or burn some of this junk. The place is worse than a nature museum.” He opened the refrigerator, leaned in and started moving things around in search of a beer. He jumped back abruptly. “Damn! There’s a dead animal in here in a garbage bag!”

Oops. She’d forgotten about him. “That’s an otter.”

“What’s it doing in the refrigerator?”

“The poor thing drowned in one of my fish traps. I put him in there until I can give him a proper burial.”

He turned back with a pointed stare. “You’re going to have a funeral for an otter?”

“Not a funeral, Jack. Don’t make me sound like some nut. I don’t feel right simply tossing him in a hole in the ground since I caused his death, so I’m going to find a nice box for him.”

“Dead animals don’t belong in the refrigerator.”

“The next time I buy a chicken, I’ll remember that.”

“I’m serious, Lucky. Stuff like this shouldn’t be in the house, and you know it.”

She made a mental note not to let him in the bathroom if she could help it. He’d have a stroke if he saw what she was keeping in the tub.