Daniel’s going to know you’re not happy. Do it for him, Mike.”
I stared at her, unable to believe this was Shelly telling me to go do something to make myself happy. “You really think I should?”
She nodded. “I was wrong about something else. I thought it would make me unhappier if you were happy. But I think it would make me happy to see you happy.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, I mean, it might not look like it. It will also piss me off and make me jealous, but somewhere down deep inside, it’ll make me happy too.”
That sounded about right. “Thanks.”
She sighed and then pulled herself back up to sit straight. “Okay. I better go.”
I watched my ex-wife stand and walk to the door, still feeling too rough to even be polite and go open it for her. “Shell?” I called from the couch.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for this,” I said.
As the door shut behind her, I let my eyes slide shut again. For now, I needed to sleep off this hangover. And then? I wasn’t quite sure what to do, but I knew it would have something to do with Addison Tanner.
32
Don’t Upend the Pens
Addison
I called my boss to let him know I was coming back early, and things didn’t go quite the way I’d imagined.
“We definitely have a place for you here,” he told me. “It just might not be the same place you left.”
“What does that mean?”
“Look, Addie. It’s just . . . I mean, you upended my pen cup the day you left.”
“Is that a metaphor?” I’d been really angry about Luke that day and didn’t remember exactly what had happened when I’d stormed around work and told my boss I was taking leave.
“No. It isn’t an expression. You dumped all my pens on the floor.” He said this in the same tone one might say, “you stormed in here with a knife and took hostages.” My workplace was traditionally quite sedate. Upending pens was practically a violent offense.
“Um. Sorry?” I didn’t feel sorry. I’d been upset.
“Anyway, I was pretty sure that after that, you wouldn’t be coming right back, and we needed an analyst. So we hired one.”
That hurt a bit. “So where does that leave me?”
“Junior analyst.”
“Roger. I’m thirty-five.” I’d spent ten years working my way up to the position I’d left not four months earlier, and now I was going to be demoted?
“And a bit unpredictable.”
I would figure this out with him in person. “Fine. Fine. I’ll be back Monday.”
“Ah, okay. We’ll see you then, I guess.”
After that less-than-positive interaction, I had to scour my network for a place to stay, finally landing a couch with a friend from college for one week.
Still, I needed to get back to the city. Get back to building the life I’d intended in the first place. Once the house was sold, I could make my city life more comfortable. More permanent.
I just needed to hold to my commitment to help Daniel put on the best haunted house Singletree had ever seen, and then I’d be leaving.
“There you are!” Daniel crowed from the front porch as I strode up the walkway on Saturday, steeling myself to see Michael again.
“Here I am,” I agreed. I had worn a white dress, as instructed, so that I could play the part of Lucille Tanner, ghostly and lovelorn.
“Good. Dad needs help with the lights upstairs.”
“Ah, okay,” I said. “Or I could do something down here. Set up gravestones?” I gestured toward the lawn.
“Emmett and Virge have that covered.”
“Oh,” I said. It had been my plan to avoid Michael as much as possible, not help him hang lights. And though I didn’t want to let Daniel down, I also didn’t want to spend my night in an uncomfortable situation with Michael, and I was guessing he would think the same. So I did us both a favor.
I hid. Like a scared little girl.
I was still dawdling around the back door, watching a surprising number of middle school and high school kids running around setting up, when a tall thin guy with about half a beard appeared from around the back of the garage, squinting as he regarded the organized chaos around him.
“Here for the traps,” he told me.
I must have looked semi-official, the way I was guarding the back door in my efforts to avoid Michael. “Sorry, what?” I asked him. Had we planned traps into the event? Maybe Dan and Michael had changed the plans since I’d left. “Traps?”