Free Blood Orange by Drusilla Campbell Page A

Even in the middle
of the night.”
    “I’ve been exhausted.”
    “Have you been sick? What’s wrong with your voice?”
    “I’m fine.”
    “You don’t sound fine.”
    “It’s been an incredible week.”

    “You weren’t even there early in the morning.”
    “Don’t be silly, of course I was there.”
    She had anticipated this line of questioning.
    “It’s a crazy place, David. The desk clerks are technological idiots. They probably rang an empty room.”
    “I thought it was a good hotel. Didn’t you tell me it cost threefifty a night?”
    She had forgotten that digging out the truth was what David did
best.
    “It is a good hotel. Great breakfasts every day.” She was winging
it now. “But there was a mixup with the rooms when I got there.
The clerks never did get it straight in their heads.”
    “I was worried.” He sounded petulant. He wanted her to tell
him he had been a good husband to whom apologies were owed.
He had stayed home with a difficult child while she had a good
time.
    Fun.
    “Dana?”
    “I’ve been frantic to see everything. A week isn’t long. In
Florence it’s no time at all.”
    “You sound like you’ve got a sore throat.”
    “Yeah. A little one.”
    The line buzzed in her ear.
    “So,” David said, “you’ve had a good time?”
    “Better than I dreamed.”
    He laughed. “Gracie said I should watch out, you’d fall in love
with Italy. Little old San Diego’s gonna seem pretty boring.”
    “There’s so much here, David.” She wanted him to understand.
“History and art. Just taking a walk, there’s so much … beauty.
You can be in a seemingly wretched neighborhood and there’ll be
an arrangement of pots or some tile or a wisteria vine …” Her thoughts spun forward through all she might tell him; but the effort
seemed pointless. David would try to understand, but to him a picture was a picture and not much else.

    She heard Bailey’s voice in the background.
    “How’s she been?” She was far off her script now.
    “Every day she asks me if this is the day we go to the airport to
get you.”
    Bailey did not understand the concept of anywhere that was too
far away to drive to. David had brought home a travel video of
Tuscany. “That was a mistake. She got hysterical. I guess before
then she thought you were staying at the airport for some reason. I
didn’t know what to do, so I called Miss Judy. She was great. The
next day she taught a lesson about vacations. She’s a bloody genius,
that woman, and I think Bay gets it now, that you’re not living at
Lindberg Field.”
    “I explained. I thought she understood.”
    “The house is lonely without you. Next time you want to take a
trip, I’m going too.”
    She had prepared herself for guilt, but not for the sudden desire
to see her husband and wrap her arms around his solid football
player’s body.
    She had to get back to her script.
    “That’s what I wanted to talk about.” She heard the silence on
the line and the sound of David’s breath. “There’s so much to see,
all the little towns around have fabulous art, not to mention Venice
and Rome…. It feels kind of wasteful to fly over here, spend all
that money, and not see more.”
    In the background, “Mommymommymommy.”
    “Is there something you’re not telling me?” The lawyer was back
in his voice. The trained interrogator.
    She thought of the things she could say.

    I love Micah Neuhaus and I’m never coming home.
    Never that, never those words. They would hurt him too much;
and no matter how much she loved Micah, she loved David too.
And Bailey.
    Dana, the smartest girl in her class, the girl who had always
known where she was going and what she wanted: she knew her
script and had learned her lines.
    “Mommymommymommy.”
    But when she tried to say something, she was interrupted by her
own small voice, weeping into the musty pillow in Imogene’s spare
room. For weeks she had worn shorts and a T-shirt