“I’ll give you my entire next paycheck if I don’t have to come clean up wet hay,” I moan into my phone when Indigo calls in the morning. I was too busy making love all night to worry about what cleanup would be like in the morning.
“All part of the planning committeee,” she chides. “Besides, I’ll take you to the salt cave after.”
One of the shops along Main Street, Oak Clarity Crystals, has a salt cave in the back. It’s really just a room in her store building, but Melody’s lined the walls and ceiling with Himalayan pink salt, creating a “healing cave.” Indigo has been trying to get me to go sit in there with her, to boost my immune system and revitalize my skin.
Hunter says he has to deal with some paperwork and meet his father this morning anyway, so I begrudgingly put on my rattiest clothes to go help take down the Autumn Apple festival. I smile, tying my hair up in a bun, thinking about how he lay on top of me as we listened to the rain, sliding inside me so gently, moving along with the surges of the cloud bursts.
I suspect I won’t see him for awhile today, since he didn’t check on his tissue samples at all yesterday. He left in a hurry, and I realize I never got a chance to ask him the details of what happened with Sara and his legal situation.
As it turns out, a large number of Oak Creekers have shown up to gather the hay bales and decorative gourds for the animal rescue. Diana has a composting operation set up for anything damaged by the storm to feed to the rescued rabbits or line the cat cages. The Acorns, spry and miraculously not hungover, have already taken down the wooden booths and hauled them back to the storage shed at the edge of town. It’s barely ten AM and already, it looks like the festival never happened.
Mary Pat got emergency approval from the co-op board to pass out sprouted wheat muffins and fresh carrot juice to all the volunteers, and by lunchtime, I find myself tilted back in a zero-gravity chair beside Indigo, basking in the pink glow of the salt cave.
“How long do we stay in here,” I ask her, slurping the rest of my juice. I’m pretty sure Mary Pat added tequila to mine, because I feel woozy, but I roll with it, letting my body relax after an exhausting few days.
Indigo shrugs and stretches her hands above her head. “I think like a half hour? I want to come every day to get my body ready for pregnancy,” she says, grinning. “Now that the festival’s over we don’t have anything big to plan until Operation Kringle in December.” She pauses. “I guess that’s only a month. But anyway! I’m going to make time to sit in this cave, dang it.”
“Should I ask about Operation Kringle?”
“Probably not.”
Relaxed and salted, I make my way home by way of the co-op, where I pick up grilled chicken strips and fresh veggies to make Hunter a salad. I think about how nice it felt to go with him at dawn and visit the chickens, find where they’d laid their eggs on his computer chair. The birds really are a nice gesture, I decide.
And, even though they’re supposed to be his responsibility to take care of, I really want to visit them. They’re interesting and friendly. He hasn’t called at all today, so I assume he’s pretty involved in whatever he’s working on with his dad.
I stop in my half of the duplex to put away the groceries and grab some apples that have gone past their prime. I figure the chickens won’t mind, and I walk through the yard to tug open Hunter’s back door.
I freeze in my tracks when I see a woman standing at his counter, writing something. She looks up at me, one sculpted eyebrow raised derisively. “And just who are you?” she asks, coldly.
I’m so stunned I almost answer her, and then I realize there’s no one who should be standing in Hunter’s house. “I should be asking you that question,” I retort.
One of the chickens squawks and flaps her wings, and I stoop to give her one of the apples. “Here you go, girl,” I say, patting the industrious chicken while the stranger stands, legs spread, stilettoed toe tapping the mat near a pile of chicken shit.
“I see Hunter hasn’t picked up any more housekeeping skills since I left,” she says, running her finger along a small pile of feathers on the counter. “You can see how much he needs me. It’s good that I’m back.” The birds flap and she backs up. “We’ll find someplace befitting a scientist of his calibre.” She smiles an icy smile, and I realize this is Hunter’s ex-wife.
“Wait,” I say, dropping the rest of the apples to the chickens. “You’re supposed to be signing divorce papers.”
She tilts her head to the side, pouting mockingly. “Is that what they told you? Aw, sorry.” She walks closer to me. She’s at least six inches taller than me, so she’s literally looking down her nose at me as she says, “Don’t think I don’t know about Hunter’s little diversion here in Oak Creek. But I can assure you, we are very much still married.” She flashes her left hand in my face and I see a gaudy, giant diamond ring on her manicured finger.
None of this makes sense. “I think I’d better call Hunter,” I say, reaching for my phone.
Heather snorts. “Go ahead. Call my husband back to this dump so we can get out of here faster. We’re both eager to get reacquainted after our little misunderstanding.”
She stalks back to the counter where she begins gathering the papers she’d been writing on when I arrived. “Oh, and by the way,” she says. “I hear tell I have you to thank for teaching Hunter some new tricks.” She winks and I want to simultaneously claw her eyes out and vomit on the floor with the chicken shit. “Our reunion is shaping up to be sensational.”
I glance behind Heather toward the living room area and see a few black suitcases packed by the door. My head is pounding and my thoughts are racing. Could Hunter have truly gotten back together with his wife in the few hours since we were last together? He seemed so open last night, so committed to me. But then I remember the article Ed Hastings wrote, where he implied Hunter would do anything to avoid a huge divorce payout. Surely that didn’t include taking back the woman who left him while he was on a mission in outer space?
I know Heather had been really trying to rake him over the coals in the divorce, and that he wasn’t objecting to paying her—I can see now she’s the kind of woman who requires a lot of money for her upkeep—but I heard she was also trying to make sure she got money from his future research patents. The thought of her trying to profit from his research, trying to steal his brilliant passion…it pisses me off.
“Look, Heather—”
“No, you look.” She whips her head around. “I put up with his bullshit for years. I cleaned for him. Arranged his calendar. I did everything, everything so that he could pursue his research. So he could stretch that brilliant mind of his into the universe and back. And I’ll be damned if I put in all that work just so some skank in ripped leggings can reap the reward. So why don’t you let yourself out the way you came in and leave me here with my husband to work out the details of our reconciliation.”
I don’t say a word, slamming the back door behind me as I rush into my apartment and collapse in angry sobs.