Deconstructed(16)

I took a step backward, blinking madly, before squinting against the porch light. I zeroed in on the spot where Scott and Stephanie stood.

Except they weren’t standing there.

The frickin’ back door was closed, with no rabid, fluffy dog in sight.

“Crap,” I whispered, dropping the hand holding the phone against my thigh. I had missed the golden opportunity of catching Scott playing octopus with Stephanie. How had I missed the sound of the door closing?

Planning the bank Christmas party? No problem. Hosting a shower for a hundred guests? Got it. Wrangling a class of kindergartners on a field trip? I’m your gal.

But pressing a little button and getting a pic? Epic fail.

As I stared at the empty spot, a horn sounded.

Ruby.

Moving like a hound out of hell (or a feisty Yorkie with an attitude problem) was on my heels, I lurched toward the gate, unlatched it, and sprinted toward the red convertible idling curbside. The camera thunked against my stomach with each step, mocking my attempt at gathering evidence.

God, I sucked.

Or maybe I didn’t and that was the problem. Stephanie probably sucked better, and that’s why my husband was shacked up with her in her cute little wrong-side-of-the-road cottage role-playing a woodland creature with a freaking butt-plug tail. If I had done more work on my knees, I’d probably be cleaning up the last of Sunday’s cheesecake with Scott while watching TV. Instead I ran like a madwoman, sliding à la Bo Duke across the hood of the Spider, before diving into the classic car.

Ruby hit the gas, making the tires squeal a little.

“Are you crazy?” Ruby said, heading down the dark avenue toward the side street. “And that little slide across the hood was dope, by the way.”

I waved my hand, trying to catch my breath. “I . . . uh . . . I’ve been going to step class at the YMCA.”

“Impressive,” Ruby said, shifting gears and hooking a turn onto the next street. Swinging back to the left, she headed toward Line Avenue on the street parallel to Stephanie’s. There, halfway down, sat Scott’s Toyota Tundra with the flashy jacked-up wheels and brush guard. The man had no doubt cut through the two dark properties sitting behind Stephanie’s house. Neither had a fence, which made it easy to mosey on over to Stephanie’s. How horny did a man have to be to sneak through another person’s side yard to get a piece?

“There’s his truck,” I commented as we rolled past.

“So it is.” Ruby looked at the truck like she wanted to take a bat to the headlamps. That warmed my heart a little. Or the piece of my heart still hanging around.

She looked over at me. “So?”

“I didn’t get the picture, but I nearly got eaten by a Yorkie.”

Ruby cast a puzzled glance my way as she pulled out onto Line Avenue.

“Stephanie has a dog.” I plopped my foot on the dash and rolled up my yoga-pant leg. No blood, but I’d have a nice bruise just the size of a Yorkie’s mouth. I pushed my hood off and grabbed the hem of the hoodie, ripping it over my head. My tank top was soaked in sweat, and several chunks of hair had fallen from my ponytail to cling to my sweaty neck.

“I hope you punted that thing to Albuquerque.”

“It was kinda cute . . . if not absolutely vicious,” I said, wincing as I probed the bite on my hand.

“I wish you hadn’t taken off before I could finish what I was saying.”

“Well, I had to do something more than sit on my hands,” I said, pulling out a compact mirror from my purse and dabbing at the deeper scratch on my cheek I’d gotten in the bushes. “Do you know how hard it was to do nothing . . . for days?”

“But you don’t need to confront him this way. You don’t need to show him that kind of crazy.”

Okay, so maybe dressing in black, staking out the other woman’s house, and trying to get a picture of Scott with her was a few bricks shy of a load, but being proactive made me feel . . . not so much a victim.

Until Julie Van Ness had uttered those horrible words, I’d lived in a bubble of my own design, and by all accounts, it was a very nice bubble filled with good fabrics framing the windows, gas lanterns hanging beside the right address, and a family that looked mighty nice on the Christmas cards I ordered at the local stationery store each year. I had been floating high in that shiny bubble—even higher since I had reopened a new and improved Printemps.

I had felt valued. Loved. Somewhat successful.

But now I was nothing but a husk of the woman I’d been. I’d been robbed of my security, sidelined as a woman, relegated to a leftover . . . and why?

I had no clue.

Sure, at forty-two I fought crow’s-feet and cellulite. After giving birth to my daughter, I’d gone from a size 8 to a size 10. Okay, sometimes a size 12 in brands that ran small. But I worked out and tried to avoid french fries. I used so much freaking cream with retinol, it was a wonder my face could curve into a smile. And I got regular pedicures, showered daily, and never farted in front of Scott.

But maybe this wasn’t about me. Maybe it was because I wouldn’t try the anal beads, whatever the hell those were. A woman had to draw a line sometimes, and shoving things up my bottom was one I wasn’t interested in crossing.

“Maybe Stephanie likes anal beads,” I muttered.

Ruby hit a pothole. “What the—”