Page 12 of Four Calling Birds

I’mprobablygoingtodie. I don’t want to. But we don’t always get what we want.

I had hotwired a car, driven it through mud and rain. I had to keep taking my hand off the knife because we were in eastern europe, which meant that all the cars were manual, not automatics. Each time I let go of the knife, I felt the weight of the hilt pulling down my flesh until the serrated edges threatened to make me blind with pain. Then there was a bang. A white balloon inflated in front of my eyes, then I was thrust into darkness.

But the banging wasn’t a memory. It was real. It was present, like the pillow under my face, and the heavy quilt around my shoulders. I groaned as the pain of the dream melding with the pain of my waking. The stiff stitches tugged at my abdomen.

Being sick, weak, and vulnerable is something I don’t recommend to anyone. Ever. That was humiliating enough. But the memories of last night made it worse.

I had longed for his touch. So much so, that I had asked him tofuckme. And… he’d declined. Kindly.

Had he been an asshole, it would have been less embarrassing. But he was perfect. Kind. Gentle. The same Mack he had always been. The same perfect husband he was.

I blame the drugs, the wound. But at least he had scratched my back. That infernal itch between my shoulder blades had gotten worse over time. I had tried to look at it, to see if I had developed some kind of rash, but no. It was simply a spot. Maybe I had fried a nerve somewhere.

Still. If there was a place to convalesce, then… this wasn’t bad at all. I felt at peace with him if it wasn’t for all the baggage.

I had missed him. That was the embarrassing truth. Imissedmy husband in a way that stabbed my heart, far deeper than the knife wound that landed me here. But denial and tolerance had dulled it into a distant ache. Like an old wound. It was no more significant than the strange itch that had formed on my back from that scar tissue. Something that could be ignored.

The sun was peeking over the horizon, glowing gold through the small gap in the heavy black out curtains. I could see a red barn out in a field.

Still naked, I got up with the sheet against my chest, wrapping it around me like a toga. I winced, as my feet touched the cold wood floors. I opened the curtains and finally took a real look at the property. The red barn was two stories tall, with a grain silo down one side. It looked old and seemed to tilt to one side.

It was very Anne of Green Gables. Picturesque, and perfect. I dreamed of living in a place like this a long, long time ago. With Mack, and the stomping of little children’s feet.

Beside it was a smaller house. Not a Victorian, but some kind of cabin-looking thing. Maybe it was a guest house? It sat on a slight hill, with a wraparound porch, and a long staircase down the steep hill, to a little stone path that led to the big house.

All he needed was some white range fences, a few cows and horses, and this whole property would be picturesque. A perfect little Upstate New York farm. This was exactly what he had dreamed about. A lot of land and mountains. Of course, we expected to have a dozen kids. He’d have a workshop with his carpentry equipment, and the little ones would help him make bird houses for all the trees, and eventually help do upkeep on the house. Maybe we’d even get chickens or goats…

I wonder if he still would. Mellie looked like she liked goats. And I don’t care to figure out if that’s a good thing or not.

I knew when I filed for separation and divorce, he’d end up with someone else. How could he not? A good-looking man, with a little salt and pepper with a retirement pension and years of deep-dicking left in those fine hips? Yeah. He was going to move on fast. I just hoped that I would move on first. But I didn’t. Because he didn’t sign the paperwork and it felt… wrong.

There was a clatter on the other side of the door, similar to the one that had woken me. I reached for the drawer of the nightstand, where a black Glock 19 rustled among some papers. If I knew Mack - and I did! - it had a full magazine, was on safe, but no round in the chamber. I was about to pick it up when there was an awful shout of “Goddamnit!”, quickly followed by a “Motherfucker!”

Oh, Mack… he was trying to cook again.

With my toga secured and tied to me, I walked out to the kitchen, moving on my tiptoes to reduce my little feet’s contact with the freezing floor.Jesus, didn’t he have heaters in this place?

“God damn, fucking duck!” He threw a spatula into the sink, and it caused a splash in the soapy water.

He was in a skin-tight, long-sleeve shirt and low-slung plaid pajama bottoms and bare feet. I saw every flex of his muscles as he moved. I bit my lower lip, staring as he moved from one small culinary disaster to the other.

“You do this every year, Mack,” I said with a barely repressed smile. “Why don’t you just wait for me to get up?”

“Because you have a knife wound and should be in bed!” He turned, rage in his eyes. But that didn’t scare me. Cooking always sent him into a rage. That’s why he ate canned beans and grilled steak all the time. The man did not know his way around a kitchen to save his life. “Why the fuck don’t you get back in bed, or at least get… on.. The…” His voice suddenly slowed down, as his eyes roamed my body, and the sheet-dress. “The couch.”

Suddenly self-conscious, I crossed my arms in front of my breasts and lifted my shoulders to try to hide myself. “I didn’t have any other clothes.”

He looked away and took a deep breath. His muscular chest threatened to pop out of that tight t-shirt.

“Yeah, I went and got your stuff out.” Without looking at me, he stepped over to some moving boxes, opening the lid. They weren’t my nice clothes. But they were definitely mine. The stuff that I had placed in the back of a closet years ago. The items that never really made it into the clothing rotation much. Oversized shirts, boxers, and a sweater. There was one pair of jeans and plenty of thick socks. There were some well-worn tennis shoes that I had left behind in my rapid departure from the house.

I touched them, remembering that dreadful day.

“Get the fuck out!” his father had screamed at me, as I packed boxes into my car. “He doesn’t fucking need an ungrateful bitch like you! My son’s a fucking hero, and you’re just a washed up, waste!”

His father, Old Mack, Had thrown the shoes at me as I backed out of the driveway, his son rushing out to stop him, as Bo barked from the porch.

“You wasted ten years of his life, you insane…” the rest of his insult was muffled as Mack pushed him back into the house. He had picked up my shoes along the way.

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