Page 113 of Happily Never After

“Things are pretty shitty, I’ll give you that.” Charlie’s eyes were bloodshot. She had traded in her standard tailored pantsuit for a pair of white capris and a rumpled button-up blouse. There was a stain on one shoulder. She leaned back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. “I’m not going to boss you around and tell you what to do, because I think you already know what you need to do.” She glanced pointedly at the prescription bottle.

Claire grunted and popped the top off the bottle. She chased one of the round white pills with a swallow of water. There. She had done it. She paused, waiting for some monumental shift in her worldview, but there was nothing.

Charlie stood and slung her purse back over her shoulder. “Come on.”

“Come on where?” Claire was in no state to go into public. Her mass of curls had globbed into an untrimmed bush perched on her head. Her leggings had an ice cream stain on them.

Charlie glanced at her watch. “You have ten minutes to make yourself presentable. We’re going out.”

Claire crossed her arms. Had Charlie literally not just said she wasn’t going to boss Claire around? That promise had barely lasted five seconds. “I don’t really feel like leaving the house right now. I was abducted less than twenty-four hours ago, you know.”

Charlie plunged one hand into the mound of rice and pulled out Claire’s phone. Her baby blue eyes cut like lightning. “We’re Hartleys, Claire. Hartleys don’t hide from the world and pout.”

What if she wanted to hide from the world and pout? Hadn’t she earned that? If ever there was a day to hide under a blanket, it was today. But it would be too much effort to keep refusing Charlie. One way or another, Charlie always got what she wanted.

Claire let out an exasperated sigh and stomped through the kitchen and up the stairs. By the time she came back downstairs, Charlie had cleaned the kitchen, taken out the dogs, and, from the looks of it, alphabetized her spice rack. Apparently she was going to have to wait for pizza.

“Well? Where are we going?” Claire asked as she shut the door behind her and ushered the dogs down the front steps.

“Please.” Charlie darted across the lawn and rapped on the window of the black sedan. The window rolled down, and she exchanged a few words. The engine fired up.

Claire slammed the car door and slumped in Charlie’s passenger seat. Rosie shook in the backseat, sending a cloud of fur over the interior of the Lexus.

A field trip was the last thing she needed. If she wasn’t going to be allowed to pout, she needed to figure out her next steps. Did she go home and move her things out of Luke’s house? Where would she go? Mindy was living in Claire’s old apartment. Oh god, was she going to have to move to Florida and live with her mom? Alice would certainly love that. She shuddered.

“What?” Charlie asked. The car roared to life, and a finance podcast droned from the speakers.

Claire twiddled the dial. “Am I going to have to move in with Mom?”

Charlie cringed. She swung out of the driveway and headed east. “Let’s not worry about that right now. We’re going to give Luke a couple days to cool off and change his mind.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

“Then fuck him.” Charlie slid her sunglasses over her eyes.

Easy to say for someone who had married their college sweetheart and never regretted a single day. A lead ball the size of an eggplant lurked in Claire’s stomach. Not even the determinedly cheery California sun could lift her mood. Shewasn’t ready to start all over again. She had done it after leaving Jason, and it had nearly destroyed her. The vision of her engagement ring pinging off Jason’s nose was still fresh in her mind.

She stared at the bare spot on her left ring finger. If she was being honest with herself, she thought that in a year or two she and Luke would be engaged. As much as they drove each other crazy, she couldn’t imagine a life without waking up to his stupid, smug face every morning.

And now she would be forced to. And this time, she wouldn’t have her friends at her beck and call whenever she needed a pick-me-up. Charlie and Bri would be in California. Nicole didn’t need Claire’s drama while she was growing a tiny human. And Mindy was attached to Sawyer like a fleshy backpack. Claire was on her own.

Her phone blipped. Her breath caught in her chest. Messages streamed through, and her phone vibrated continuously as Charlie dropped the dogs off at daycare. Claire flipped through them, but none of them were from Luke. There must have been thirty from her mother alone. Her lead eggplant constricted, and she dropped her phone into her purse.

“Phone works,” Claire announced as Charlie climbed back inside.

“Good. Guess who apparently stopped by daycare earlier today looking for the dogs?”

Panic gripped Claire’s chest. Who was it? ESA?

“Sorry,” Charlie said quickly. “It was Luke. Not a bad guy.”

Claire’s fingers shook as they curled around the grab handle over her door. It was like a faucet inside her had been switched off. The grief vanished, replaced almost instantly with white hot rage. Her lips pursed so hard she could practically feel the fine lines etching themselves into her face.

“Was he trying to take the dogs from me? He has the audacity to dump me after I’ve been abducted, and then he’s going to take my babies? So help me, I will fly them home to Pennsylvania and he will never see them again. Go back.” Claire pointed at the daycare center behind them. “I need to revoke his visitation rights.”

Charlie ignored her and merged onto the highway. How she did it without screaming and panicking, Claire would never know.

“I love this energy,” Charlie said, “but he wasn’t trying to take the dogs. He brought them treats and just asked if he could see them.”

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