Twice Her Husband

Boone’s chuckle followed her into the store. He’d never been a fan of papering walls. For him nothing compared to the ease and immediacy of paint.

Boone. Today was his birthday. He would have been sixty-three. The more than two decades between them had never been an issue. She’d fallen in love with his kindness. A big gentle man—jogger, kayaker, skier, daddy—who loved children and whose eyes misted when her eleven-day-old baby lost the battle against his tiny underdeveloped lungs.

The baby she’d conceived with her first husband, Luke Tucker.

The baby he’d never known existed.

The night Robby had been conceived, she and Luke were in the throes of divorce proceedings. He’d come to the apartment to plead with her, and she’d cried for all their lost hopes. Because Luke had been afraid of failing. In work, in life and, irony of ironies, in his marriage.

And that night, as icing to an already imploding cake, he’d become a father.

Ginny hadn’t known of her pregnancy until she’d moved across the country to West Virginia—as far as possible from Luke and the memories they’d made together. For seven months she’d debated telling him about their baby. In the end, eight years of marriage hadn’t tempered his ambitions or his fears, and while she understood and absolved all his regrets and excuses, Ginny could not bear hearing them again. Nor could she imagine the guilt her child would shoulder, hearing the reasons for absenteeism or requirement for perfection from a career-driven father.

So she kept her secret—and birthed her son alone.

For almost two agonizing, worrisome weeks, Robby’s doctor had been Boone Franklin, the hospital’s head pediatrician.

Her solace. Her saving grace.

Today, on Boone’s birthday, she would’ve woken him with a kiss and maybe, if the hour was early enough, unhurried lovemaking. She inhaled long and slow. Sex hadn’t happened in a long, long while. Not that she was looking, but someday…when the kids were older, when she had an established income, when there was money in the bank, perhaps then intimacy would be a part of her life again.

The store owner approached. “Anything of interest?”

“These I like.” She pointed out bold, yellow sunflowers.

“I have more catalogs in back,” the woman offered. “The patterns are last year’s, but they include classic sunflower designs that never go out of style.”

“Thank you, maybe I’ll have a peek.” She followed the clerk into a back room which held shelving, a couch and a coffee table.

Fifteen minutes later, she made her purchase. An archetypal country-kitchen border of sunflowers, which she’d hang below the crown molding above her refrigerator, stove and eating area. The walls beneath she’d paint in spring-green.

She wanted her kitchen welcoming and wholesome. The way it had been in West Virginia with Boone. He had loved green. A healing color, he’d said. Although it hadn’t healed him.

Outside on the sidewalk, she blinked against the late-afternoon sun and hefted the roll of wallpaper under her arm.

At the big, sprawling homestead house, a mile and a half from where Ginny stood, Hallie would be tossing a garden salad for her and smearing grape jelly over bread for Alexei and Joselyn. Time to get in her clunker station wagon across the street, go home where her children waited—and where her loneliness for Boone wafted from the corners.

From between two pickups, she dashed across the street.

A sound like raptors escaping Jurassic Park screeched in her ears. She glimpsed a sleek silver nose.

Not raptors. A car!

The wallpaper roll lurched from her arms as if alive. Her body flung of its own volition through the air, banging onto the pavement. Pain clawed up her spine, shot through her skull.

The last thing she saw was the snarling tread of a tire.

Ginny! Oh, God, Ginny!

Luke leaped from his Mustang and rushed to kneel beside the woman lying on the street inches from his front tire. He hadn’t realized he’d shouted until two men materialized at his side.

“Call 911! Oh, jeez. Ginny! I didn’t see you. I didn’t see you!”

Her right leg angled crookedly from her thigh. Her eyes were open, sightless. Crouching down, he pressed a finger to her neck, seeking a pulse. Please.

There. Faint, rapid under the softness of her skin.

Luke curled her hair behind the delicate shell of her ear, ran a shaky finger down her smooth cheek. Please be okay. Let her be okay. Words tumbling into prayer. Oh, God. Hurry!

If he hadn’t been cruising town looking for her car, she wouldn’t be on the pavement. If he hadn’t been so anxious to see her again after those moments in Safeway five days ago, she would be okay. If he’d gone home after work, let bygones be bygones… If, if, if.

A small crowd gathered.

“Is she okay?” someone asked.

“What happened?”

“Did she jaywalk?”

“Who is she?”

My wife, Luke wanted to shout. Get help! She needs a doctor!

A woman spoke. “That’s Ginny Franklin. She was just in my store, buying wallpaper.”

“Franklin?” a man said. “Any relation to Deke?”

“Don’t know. But she’s been living in the old house at Franklin’s mill site for the past week or so.”

“She’d better watch out then,” a gruff-voiced man said. “Place is spooked.”

Another woman piped up. “My Allan redid the roof when they were doing all those renovations this spring. Said two guys wouldn’t hire on because of what’s happened on that land. Likely why the place’s been abandoned forty years.”

“Wouldn’t catch me out there,” a third woman squeaked.

“Me, either,” Gruff Guy said.

“Is she dead?” asked Squeaky Voice.

“No,” Luke snapped. “Did someone call an ambulance?”

“It’s coming, Luke.” This from Kat, owner of Kat’s Kitchen across the street. The granny-aged woman bent on one knee, opposite him. “I called soon as I saw it happen through the window.” Her eyes were kind. “You weren’t at fault, honey. She just stepped out from between those two trucks. Poor dear. Must have had something powerful on her mind to not pay attention.”

Sirens wailed. The crowd shifted as the ambulance arrived. Three paramedics sprang from the vehicle.

Within minutes, Ginny lay on a gurney. The medics hoisted her inside the van, closed the doors.

A hand clapped Luke’s shoulder. It was Jon, his brother and police chief of Misty River.