Page 2 of Filthy Little Midlife Fling

I beat myself up about it so much that I procrastinated when I was supposed to take the van for its yearly service appointment—because that’s the thing about perfectionism. Sometimes, I convince myself to delay tasks that I know I can’t do perfectly, and I end up not doing them at all. Logically, I know it makes no sense. I know there are good mechanics out there (somewhere). I know I could have brought the van in and paid for whatever repairs were needed without understanding every single detail.

But I didn’t. I told myself I’d learn about engines so I didn’t get swindled again, but that task was a mountain I didn’t know how to climb. As a result, I did nothing.

Now my brakes have failed, and I’ll fly down this hill and drown in the Pacific Ocean.

And who buys a house at the top of a steep hill? Who did I think I was?

I’m rapidly approaching my new home, going too fast to pull into the driveway. The van lurches as I make a tight turn, now fully perpendicular to the road. The front door of the house ahead of me opens, and an old man pokes his head out. He yells something at me, but I can’t hear him over the sound of my horn and the screech of the grim reaper in my ear.

I yank the steering wheel around and the van tips onto two wheels, crashing back down as I complete another arm of the zigzag that might possibly be my worst idea yet. I try to angle the van uphill to slow down but there’s a car parked on the road, so I have to lurch in the other direction, over the bushes that separate my house from the neighbor’s, and onto my next-door neighbor’s pristine front lawn.

And I shriek.

Because directly in front of me is a group of elderly ladies clustered near a colorful flower bed in front of my neighbor’s house. Their white heads are perfectly permed. Their wrinkled faces are masks of horror, painted lips open wide in silent screams. Their bejeweled hands are clutching canes and hearts and purses, like they’ll somehow plant their feet and win against five thousand pounds of steel and rubber and whatever else cars are made out of. Hell if I know. I’m not a mechanic.

Instinct kicks in, and I slam the brakes. Ha. They still don’t work.

Tossing instinct aside, I jerk the wheel away from the ladies and crash into a flowering tree in full bloom. My airbag explodes into my face. A car alarm starts to go off, or maybe that’s just the ringing in my ears. Outside my window, big white flowers fall onto the grass all around me. Faint thumps on the body of my van tell me the blossoms are dropping all over me like some kind of beautiful, fragrant rain.

Southern magnolias. They’re in bloom right now. The checkout lady at the grocery store told me all about it when she caught me reading a poster for the Heart’s Cove Garden Walking Tour.

As the airbag deflates, I stare at the beautiful white flowers all over and around the van, and I begin to laugh.

Then I pass out.

TWO

REMY

When I roll up to my house in the garage’s tow truck, the paramedics already have the driver on a stretcher. I cut the engine and slip out of the cab, and my eyes dart to the magnolia tree.

Hell.

A hard ball lodges itself in my throat at the sight of the tree and the van whose front bumper now has a tree-shaped indent in it.

It had to be that tree. Of all the trees on the street—of all the houses and cars and plants that they could have hit—it had to be that one.

At least the tree is still standing. It’s decades old with a foot-diameter trunk. The driver must not have been going very fast. Judging by the skid marks on the sidewalk and the carnage on the lawn, the bushes slowed them down some before they made impact with the tree.

Good thing for them, because if they’d killed my magnolia tree, there’d be hell to pay.

Gritting my teeth, I head for the paramedics to get an update on the situation. And, fine, also to get a look at the idiot who just crashed into my magnolia. Hundreds of flowers litter the ground, covering the hood and windshield of the van like a funeral shroud. That tree was spectacular this year, and now who knows if it’ll even survive the impact.

Hell and damnation.

My emotions are wound too tight to make any sense. All I know is they’re bucking and rolling very close to the surface of my skin. I could break something. Or someone.

“I’m fine,” a woman says from the gurney. Its mattress is tilted up at a forty-five-degree angle facing away from me, so all I can see is an arm flinging to the side for emphasis. Dainty fingers spread out in a stopping motion toward the paramedic. “I don’t need to go to the hospital. I promise; I’m okay.”

My steps slow.

“Agnes said you were out cold when they opened the door, ma’am. I strongly recommend you go to the hospital and get checked out. You could have internal injuries.”

The digits curl into a fist, and the pointer finger shoots out. “First of all, I turned forty just three months ago. Don’t you ‘ma’am’ me, you…you…you mustachioed donkey.”

Mustachioed donkey. The paramedic’s eyebrows twitch. I’m halfway to the gurney now.

“Second of all, who’s Agnes and why is she suddenly the arbiter of who does and doesn’t need medical attention?”

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