Free Double Wedding Ring by Peg Sutherland

reminded her to wipe her own back at the hospital? Or was he supposed to do that for himself? Never mind, it looked baby sweet and she decided to leave it.
    â€œOkay, down.” She urged Cody to hop out of her lap as she rolled her chair up to the pull bar that had been attached along one wall just over the chair rail.
    The little boy looked up, smiling even as he issued an adamant reply. “Not down. More ride.”
    â€œNot more ride,” Susan insisted. “Down.”
    For the next five minutes, Susan wondered if everyone had as much trouble negotiating with two-year-olds. At least other people had two good arms to lift the boy and put him wherever they wanted him. Susan had to appeal to his cooperative nature, which apparently was not well developed.
    She felt tired by the time she had given him two trips around the perimeter of the dining room. But Cody had also grown tired of riding and cheerfully scrambled down. He toddled over to his pile of coloring books in the corner of the room and Susan once again rolled to the pull bar.
    â€œTired,” she said with a sigh. But she remembered the stern look her therapist at the hospital had always given her when she tried that excuse. Mimicking Yolanda’s standard retort, she said, “Tired don’t win no races.”
    With her good right fist tightly in place and her less effective left elbow hooked over the bar, Susan pulled, using her good right leg for further leverage. Remembering the games she and Yolanda had played in the early days when any movement seemed agonizing, she pictured a determined lion in her mind and let out a long, low growl as she slowly rose to her feet.
    She stood, gripping the bar, leaning one hip against it, but standing nonetheless. An instant of exhilaration flooded through her and she heard a baby-sized cheer from the corner of the room. Pressing her lips together to keep them from trembling, she looked over her shoulder.
    Cody sat, a coloring book spread open across his lap, and clapped his hands together. “Yeah, Mommy! Good girl, Mommy!”
    For a moment, Susan thought she might have to sit again to allow the tears that had risen in her eyes to subside. But she blinked them back, managed a thanks that might have been intelligible only to a two-year-old, and focused her attention on her left leg.
    â€œOkay, move!”
    Before she got her toes three inches off the ground, some kind of bell rang. This one was different from the bell that had rung earlier, when Rose called. Susan froze, struggled to interpret the sound. Squeezing her eyes together, she tried to force her brain to come up with an explanation, with a course of action. But when the noise came again, she still had no answer.
    â€œMommy, door. Me get door?”
    Susan let out a frustrated sigh. The doorbell. Of course. Someone was at the door. But what in heaven’s name could she do about it?
    * * *
    F ED UP WITH ACTING civilized, Tag pounded on the door. Somebody’s home and they can damn well answer.
    He’d steamed over it all night. Actually, he’d steamed for a while, then started to stew over it, and finally, about daybreak, he’d erupted into a full-blown boil.
    Imagine, Susan was right across the street and couldn’t be bothered to call. As if nothing had ever happened between them. As if she didn’t owe him...something. An apology. An explanation. Some damn thing.
    When his insistent pounding on the door raised no more response than ringing the bell, Tag decided they must’ve seen him coming. Must have it in their heads to freeze him out. The way they’d been freezing him out for the past twenty-odd years.
    Screw that.
    Barely making an effort to check his pent-up rage, Tag shoved the big, pristine-white front door open, barely noticing that it slammed with a thump against the coat tree as he stormed into the entrance hall.
    â€œSusan!”
    Silence.
    â€œCome down here right now!”
    He looked up