The 24th Time My Husband Chose Another Girl, We Left novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Alder Street

Winona and Maxine sleep in her grandmother's empty house and Blaine comes at midnight with roses and a promise they will be back by Monday. At dawn Maxine's car is gone.

My grandmother's house on Alder Street had been empty since her funeral two winters ago.

I kept the water on and paid the taxes out of my own paycheck, and I had never told Blaine why.

I told myself it was because I couldn't bear to sell it.

Maxine stood in the front hall with her gym bag still on her shoulder and looked at the white sheets over the furniture.

"Mom, it's freezing in here."

"The furnace works. I had it checked in the fall."

Maxine looked at me for a long second and didn't ask why.

We pulled the sheets off the couch together and found Grandma's afghan underneath, orange and brown and smelling of cedar.

I plugged in the space heater in the living room and found a sleeve of crackers in my purse and split it with her.

Maxine ate hers standing up.

"I stopped writing them down when I was twelve," she said.

"Writing what down?"

"The games he missed. I had a list in my closet, on the inside of the door. When it got to twenty I painted over it."

"Maxine."

"I just kept counting in my head." She brushed crumbs off her jersey. "Tonight was the twenty-fourth. I thought it might be different, because it was the last one."

"I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. You came out and stood there with me." Her voice cracked on the last word, and she turned toward the window so I wouldn't see.

I put my hand on her back and kept it there.

We didn't talk about the badge.

We didn't talk about Leah's cocoa or the laugh behind the bench or the thirty people who had watched us leave.

At eleven Maxine fell asleep on the couch under the afghan with her sneakers still on.

At ten past midnight, headlights crossed the front window.

I knew the sound of that truck.

I went to the door and stood with my hand on the deadbolt.

Blaine knocked softly, three times.

"Winona. Open up. It's me."

"It's after midnight," I said through the wood. "Go home."

"I brought you something."

Through the narrow glass beside the door I could see a bunch of red roses from the grocery store, still in their plastic sleeve, and a price sticker on the cellophane.

"Winona, come on. I'm sorry about tonight. I'm sorry, okay?"

"Okay."

"So open the door."

"No."

His breath fogged the glass.

"Babe, I know you're upset. You've got a right. Leah's still crying about the whole thing, she feels awful."

"Does she."

"She does. We all do. But it's late. Come home, sleep it off, and I'll make it right on Monday."

I leaned my forehead against the cold door.

There it was, the sentence I had heard so many times that I could say it along with him.

I'll make it right on Monday.

"You'll be back by Monday anyway," he said, softer, almost kind. "You always are."

Behind me the afghan rustled.

Maxine stood in the hallway in her socks, her hair loose, her face still creased from the couch cushion.

She walked past me and put her palm flat on the door.

"Dad."

"Maxie! There she is. Max, listen, I want to explain about tonight."

"You wore her badge," Maxine said.

"Honey, it was a team thing. Leah needed an escort for Kenzie and I just."

"You wore her badge, and Mom was standing there alone."

"Your mom wasn't alone, she had you."

"I know," Maxine said. "That's what I'm saying."

Nobody spoke on either side of the door.

Then Maxine took her hand off the wood and said, "Go home, Dad. We're not coming."

His footsteps went down the porch steps slowly, and then fast.

The truck door slammed.

I watched the taillights until they turned off Alder Street.

I stood there with my daughter, and for the first time in eighteen years I did not feel my heart reaching after him.

We slept in the living room, the two of us under one afghan.

At six I woke to the sound of my phone buzzing against the floorboards.

It was a text from Blaine, and a photo.

The photo showed Maxine's little blue Corolla sitting in the gravel lot behind the Linwood Heating shop, with its hood up.

Under it he had typed: "Home and it comes back."

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