Free Retreat by Liv James Page A

table tent
that was now serving as a wayward roadmap to emotional solvency. Clara twitched
her lips into a toothless smile and picked up her sandwich, which by now had
grown cold. The heavy batter around it was falling limp and soon might slide
off completely. She set it down and took another drink of iced tea.
         If Brighton
was a so-so move socially, it would certainly be a good one financially, which
was why it was topping the list. She held the deed on a bitsy lake-side
bungalow that was erected shortly after World War II. Her grandmother had
willed it to her on the grounds that she was the only one of the grandchildren
to take an interest in anything that Grammy ever had to say. She’d made that
point clear in her will, much to the chagrin of Clara’s cousins.
         The truth was she’d enjoyed spending time
with her grandmother, particularly after her mother started taking side trips
into other marriages. They’d play pinochle with a dummy pile on the front
porch, listening to the boats and birds on the lake and drinking hot tea with
milk and sugar. Grammy was her anchor and her sail, grounding her in the things
that were important while insisting she chart her own course. God she missed
her.
         A few months at the bungalow would be good
therapy, she decided. She had a feeling her father would want her to come to
work for him, particularly since he offered both she and David positions a few
months earlier when they came for the dreaded
hi-mom-and-dad-this-is-my-boyfriend-you-just-found-out-about-and-we’re-getting-married
visit. Clara was nervous about the age difference but her parents hadn’t said a
word about it. They were more concerned about her lack of a paycheck than
anything.
         Clara frowned. They were right. She hated
when they were right. Life experience and all that. But she was 32 for Christ’s
sake, not some wide-eyed kid fresh out of Penn State.
         Clara told David they’d stay at the
bungalow, and asked her father to take the winter boards off the windows and
get his cleaning lady to give it a run through. He’d happily obliged, but when
David pulled his rented caddy into the dirt driveway at the bungalow he
insisted that they stay at the hotel in town instead. Clara tried to explain to
him that the bungalow would be more comfortable but he wouldn’t hear of it.
         She should have taken it as a sign.
         She picked up her bill – a ticket the
waitress called it – and walked over to the check-out counter, which was
buffeted by a convenience store’s worth of paraphernalia. She pulled a couple
of bottles of water off a refrigerated shelf and an atlas out of the magazine
rack. It was almost a straight shot back to Brighton,
a little bit north and a whole lot east, but she’d never driven the route
before.
         She paid the bill with her debit card and
got cash back so she wouldn’t feel broke. After she plotted her route in the
crispy new atlas, she settled in, turned up the radio and set out to put as
many miles between her and Tulsa
as she could before nightfall.

 
         Clara snapped out of an eerily long road
trance somewhere east of Indianapolis,
so she pulled off the highway at a well-lit interchange and checked into a
medium-sized hotel meant for business travelers. She chose it because of its
proximity to a Wal-Mart, where she could pick up something clean to sleep in
and a change of clothes. By the time she got back to the hotel it was nearly nine o’clock and she was exhausted.
She pulled a large sleep shirt out of her Wal-Mart bag and slipped it on.
         She flopped down on the edge of the bed and
stared at the phone. She owed Jon a call after the scene he overheard back at
the house. He was probably worried and she could at least put his mind at
ease.   She owed him that much for
alerting her to her slime-ball fiancé.
         She picked up the phone, punched in her
credit card number and then dialed Jon’s condo.