D J Palmer - The New Husband

Seventeen months later...

Nina told herself everything would work out fine. A cloudless August day gave the sun free rein to scorch the earth dry and bake her olive-toned skin a shade darker. She stood on the brown grass of her new lawn, facing the thirty-foot Ryder truck that held the majority of her lifes possessions, all carefully packed inside corrugated boxes which were stacked neatly between the small pieces of furniture moved without the help of professionals. The bigger items were coming later.

Anybody see the box cutter?

Using her hand as a visor against the sun, Nina glanced at her feet and around her general vicinity, but did not see a box cutter. She did, however, catch the harsh look her thirteen-year-old daughter, Maggie, sent Simon, the new man in their lives, who was fumbling about the truck in search of the missing tool. That single glance reconfirmed Ninas greatest fear, that this move wasnt going to go as smoothly as she dared to dream. It was not a look of pure contempt, not the scathing, narrowed-eyed death stare any middle-school-aged girl could serve with the speed and accuracy of a pro tennis player, but still it smoldered with an unmistakable hostility.

Poor Maggie had so much on her plate, so many reasons to be angry, and for sure Nina was partly to blame, because she had opened her heart and soul to another mana man who was not her daughters father.

Found it! Simon yelled, holding up the box cutter like he was wielding a broadsword. As it turned out, the missing tool had been hidden in the tall grass of the sloping front yard, which needed mowing as much as it did water. Somewhere, buried deep inside that truck, was the mower.

Nina was familiar with her new neighborhood because it was still in Seabury, New Hampshire, a few miles from where she had lived only this morning. Even so, she had no friends nearby, and maybe for that reason it felt foreign here, as though shed moved clear across the country. She was used to living near her very dear friends Susanna Garston and Ginny Cowling, but pop-in visits would be less frequent now that they lived fifteen minutes across town. For whatever reason, it felt much farther than that. Of course shed adjust, and eventually shed be as comfortable here as shed been in the place where shed spent the last fifteen years raising her children. She understood it would take time and effort for things to feel normal for everyone, and that applied to her new relationship as much as to her new home.

But today it all felt eerily unsettling.

At the far edge of her lawn a splendid oak tree growing near her property line spread its thick branches from the neighbors yard into hers, providing pockets of shade where a bold chipmunk escaped the August heat and observed the move with curious dark eyes.

Turning her head to the sound of scuffing footsteps, Nina watched nervously as her son, Connor, backed down the truck ramp clutching an oversized box in his outstretched arms.

Careful, buddy. That looks pretty heavy, Simon said as Connor made a tricky pivot move at the bottom of the ramp that had heated to a steak-sizzling temperature under the unrelenting summer sun.

After deftly avoiding the familys five-year-old golden retriever, Daisy, who had splayed herself out at the foot of the ramp, Connor sent Simon a confident look that carried no resentment, but then again, he didnt share Maggies unrealistic fantasies about their dad. He knew as well as Nina that Glen was gone, and gone for good.

Connor trotted the box up the wide front stairs with ease. Nina still could not get comfortable with how much hed grown in the past few years. He towered over her and his younger sister. Not only was he tall for his agesixteen going on twenty-six, judging by his attitude these daysbut he was also well muscled, thanks to his dedication to the football team. He was as handsome as a Disney prince, too, with a wavy head of jet-black hair and an irresistible dimpled smile. Hed gotten Ninas darker Italian coloring, and Glen, who was Irish through and through, had made plenty of milkman jokes over the years.

Inside, Nina caught Maggie, blue eyes brimming, surveying the empty rooms from the unfurnished foyer. The modest home was a good deal smaller than the one her daughter had lived in all her life, but square footage was not the reason for Maggies distress. It was all about whom shed be living with, not where.