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“Mary Eileen Sullivan, look at you,” she said to her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her skin was radiant. Her eyes glowed and sparkled.
Mary Eileen had never felt this good. Of all the men in her life, Sean Patrick Flynn was the exception.
And now their relationship was taking another step forward. Mary Eileen and Sean were going on a trip together, a vacation, back to their homeland, Ireland. And most importantly, they were going as a couple.
“We leave out of Detroit Metro at 8:15 am Friday,” Sean had told her the night before.
It was all so spontaneous. That made it even better.
Mary Eileen was so excited the night after Sean told her of their vacation she stayed up until nearly 3 a.m. packing. She had a couple of days before she would catch the flight with Sean, but why wait?
The next morning her excitement grew to a point where she landed on a plateau of complete happiness. Mary Eileen could feel Sean’s hands on her back even though he was hundreds of miles away. His aroma was everywhere in her little apartment.
The sun was up and shining through her kitchen window. She was doing the breakfast dishes when a cloud passed over the sun, and her kitchen went dark for a sliver of a second.
It happened so quickly that Mary Eileen caught her breath. Was it going to storm?
She caught her breath as the water suddenly stopped flowing through the kitchen faucet. Then a second later it started again.
She never thought of herself as being a superstitious woman, but Mary Eileen had to wonder aloud, “What does this all mean?”
Her smartphone buzzed on the tile counter to her left. She quickly dried her hands while looking at the name on the phone to see who was calling before she picked it up.
“Shit,” she said to herself.
It was Christina. Something was wrong at the Coffee Shoppe.
Her right hand moved toward the phone and then stopped.
“Why would I want to come down from this high?” Mary Eileen said to herself.
It was probably nothing. Just a late delivery or a problem with one of the machines. Whatever the snafu was, it all seemed so trivial now.
Mary Eileen would deal with it later.
First, she wanted a shower. She wanted to be naked with the water running over her, pretending her hands were Sean’s hands. The Coffee Shoppe could wait. It was going to be a good day for Christina, too. Mary Eileen was going to tell her about the vacation, tell her she was going to be in charge, and the best part was that Christina was going to get the business. They had already signed the papers. If everything went as Mary Eileen expected, she would never return to little St. Isidore. There was no reason she and Sean couldn’t build a life together in Ireland.
Meanwhile, downstairs, Christina was panicking. Customers stood in three lines, four deep, at the counter as the employees looked at each other with shrugged shoulders and raised eyebrows.
What could they do? There was no water. Christina had heard what sounded like water rushing in the cellar below. She had run downstairs only to find the water had stopped completely.
Over the sound of a dozen different conversations, customers and employees heard the unmistakable sound of Christina running up the rickety wooden steps.
She ran into the Coffee Shoppe, skidding on wet shoes over the polished hardwood floor. When Christina slid to a stop, she grabbed her smartphone and pounded out a text message to Mary Eileen.
One word: FLOOD!
Mary Eileen heard the chime tone on her phone signaling a text message from Christina had come in, just as she stood naked outside her shower stall turning the faucet handles back and forth wondering what was wrong with the water.
She was only a few moments away from being knocked off her plateau of happiness.
Now, Mary Eileen grabbed her phone and saw Christina’s text. A cold shudder moved through her body, and she immediately started sweating.
Mary Eileen had felt a little nauseous earlier. Now she was ready to vomit. And she did but choked it back and swallowed hard.
“Plumbers?” She texted to Christina.
“On the way,” Christina replied.
Mary Eileen had to sit down. She flipped the lid down and sat on the toilet, weighing her options.
Sean was waiting for her, or soon would be, at Detroit Metro Airport. If the plumbers found the body parts of David and Hans in the cellar, she would run. But until they found something, there was no reason to change her plans, Mary Eileen decided.
It would be better to be cool, calm, and collected.
“Let’s go downstairs and see what is going on,” she said to herself. Mary Eileen was confident that even though this was a stressful situation she had pushed the big chunks of concrete containing the parts and pieces of her ex and her former far enough back so that they could not be seen.
Mary Eileen didn't want to raise any suspicions by running off like a mad woman. After all, Joy and Amanda already thought she had killed David. They hadn't asked about Hans yet, but that was only a matter of time.
However, if the plumbers did find something, Mary Eileen wanted to be ready.
Just in case, she packed an extra bag and put both suitcases by the front door, so she could just reach in and grab them on the fly.
If worst came to worst, Mary Eileen knew she had to run. Then she would have to reinvent herself all over again.
But there was no need to do either until she knew for sure.