Page 5 of Merry Little Midlife Matchmaker

That got his attention. He spun around on the couch and frowned at me over the back of it. “What about the bathroom?”

I’d half turned around to head back to the kids, so I paused with one foot in the hallway outside the living room. I met my ex-husband’s baffled gaze. “The bathroom?”

“It’s covered in puke.”

I blinked at him. He blinked at me.

“So…clean it up,” I told him, speaking slowly because my patience for this evening was wearing thin, and I really just wanted to get my kids home and safe. And I wanted that bath, damn it.

He recoiled. “Me?”

“It’s your house, ain’t it?”

“June isn’t back until tomorrow evening,” he protested.

I pretended not to understand what he meant, even though I knew. Iknew.

“I can’t leave it like that all day,” he explained, like it was the most natural thing in the world that he would wait for his wife to come home to clean up a mess.

And I should’ve left. I really should’ve. This wasn’t my house, and it wasn’t my husband. I’d divorced him because of things exactly like this, moments where he was so unbelievably inconsiderate and incompetent that it boggled the mind.

But I liked June. After things fizzled out with the coworker, he’d met June through an online dating site. She was a kind woman who’d been duped by him, just like I had all those years ago. I didn’t want her to come home to crusty vomit after a weekend spent visiting her aging mother. And maybe I hadn’t deprogrammed myself entirely from the grinding wheel mymarriage had been, because I couldn’t quite walk out and leave another woman to clean up a mess that Isaac refused to see.

So, sighing, I headed upstairs and I cleaned my ex-husband’s bathroom, and then I scrubbed the carpet, and I packed the kids’ things. By the time I got them all bundled into the car, Isaac had heaved himself off the sofa and come out to say goodbye, his relief at our leaving clear.

When everyone was in bed and the house was once again quiet, I trailed the tips of my fingers through my bath. Ice cold. I released yet another sigh, pulled the plug, and jumped in the shower to wash that silly oil treatment out of my hair. While I lathered, I thought of Sean, and my lips twisted into a bitter curve.

It didn’t matter that he’d seen me at my worst. Even if he saw me at my best, it wouldn’t change the fact that we weren’t in the same league.

And when I poked my head into Zach’s room to see him sleeping, my heart turned over. Yes, the old me had faded into nothingness, but hadn’t I turned into something better? So what if occasionally I felt lost in motherhood, like what made memewas buried under the label? It didn’t change the fact that I would always be my kids’ mom, and I would always pick up the slack when it came to them.

That’s what mattered. Not some passing attraction caused by some man’s calloused hands brushing over my bare arms. Not a few extra clean-ups that really should have been done by someone else.

I loved being a mom. I loved beingtheirmom.

Shouldn’t that be enough for me?

THREE

SEAN

Heart’s Covehad changed in the years I’d been away. It’d been a little podunk town without much going on other than a bunch of hippies and artists that held no interest for a younger me, but now it was a vibrant municipality with many more restaurants and shops than I remembered. There was a buzz in the crisp late-autumn air, a vibrancy that filled me with a new kind of hope.

Then again, I’d changed since I graduated high school and got the hell out of here. Whether it was for better or worse, I wasn’t sure.

One thing hadn’t changed, though. The Heart’s Cove Hotel still presided over Cove Boulevard like an aging queen. Against overcast skies and framed by bare trees, the patched-up parking lot and fading paint made the hotel look like it was in desperate need of some TLC.

I parked in the lot next to another pickup and made my way to the lobby—and stopped dead as soon as I made it inside.

My aunts—my elderly, insaneaunts—were perched on the top of two matching ladders on either side of the room, a gigantic garland of fake pine strung up between them. Christmas baubles bounced on the garland while tinsel rained down like snow.

Dorothy wore a flowing tunic over a pair of black pants, her wild gray mane of hair curling down to mid-back as she flung the garland over and back to try to get it dislodged from one of the sconces on the wall between them. One of those red Christmas balls flew off and cracked against the wall. Dorothy swore, and her ladder wobbled with every vigorous movement of her hands. I took half a step toward her before stopping in case I startled her and caused her to crash to her death on the floor.

Margaret, the older twin, clung to the other end of the garland and shouted at Dorothy to try to get her to stop being so violent with it. Every yank of the garland made Margaret buck like she was holding on to some crazed animal with a fraying leash. Her own ladder was actually a stepladder, and it had been propped on top of the reception desk, which was crazy. Margaret was supposed to be the responsible one. She wore a navy pantsuit with a silk shirt, her hair in a classic French twist, her lips painted in a deep red. She played tug-o-war with Dorothy with a Christmas garland, looking nothing like the prim, responsible woman I’d known her to be.

“Stop—Dor—Stop it! You’re going to rip it!”

“If I just”—Dorothy grunted as she tried to fling the garland off the sconce with a flick of her wrists—“just get it another inch...”

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