Running Wild(Wild #3)(15)

“Oh, you know.” I grab a bottle of beer from the fridge, twist off the cap, and take a big swig. “Just out there, somehow surviving life without a husband.”

Liz’s eyes narrow. It’s my subtle dig at her, and we both know it, but she deserves it after what I just walked in on. Liz doesn’t know how to be single. She’s had a boyfriend since she turned sixteen and was allowed to date. When one relationship ended, it wasn’t more than a week before she was locked into a new one. She met Jim when she was twenty-four, married him at twenty-six, and was pregnant immediately after. Now they live in a beautiful modern house near Eagle River, close enough for an easy commute to Anchorage where Jim is a partner in his father’s accounting firm.

“Where is everybody else?” The pot roast is already plated and wrapped in foil.

“Jim’s working late tonight.”

“Oh yeah? How’s his football team doing?” Another subtle dig because I can’t help myself. No doubt he’s skipped family dinner to stay home and “work” in front of the television. Not that I’m complaining. Conversations with my brother-in-law always lead to talk of money—namely, how much I should be making at the clinic. He’s my accountant, an arrangement my father made and I abhor but have honored thus far to avoid family strife.

“Vicki and Oliver will be here any minute.” Mom wipes her palms across her apron and slips off her glasses to clean them against her shirt. “They were putting together the crib this weekend. Well, Vicki was putting together the crib.”

I chuckle. We all love my little sister’s husband, but instruction manuals and Allen keys have never been Oliver’s forte. He’ll be the first to admit it. “They must be getting excited.” The baby is due in two weeks.

Liz sniffs. “Are you kidding? More like anxious. Swollen ankles, eight pounds sitting on your bladder, seventy-two pillows just to try to get comfortable? That last month is hell.”

Not that you would know, I hear tacked on to the end. But that’s just my sensitivity talking. Liz isn’t outright cruel, she just speaks without thinking. Often. And ever since she had Tillie, she is the self-proclaimed expert on all things pregnancy and baby related.

“Could be any day now. The baby’s dropped.” Mom pauses to look around the kitchen as if to take stock of what still needs to be done for dinner. Her teal-blue eyes—a perfect match to mine—land on the harvest table. “Would you mind setting that for me, Marie? For eight tonight.”

I collect a stack of plates from the cupboard and set to task, happy to have something to do.

Liz, who has never been the first to volunteer when I’m around, remains where she is, leaning across the counter. “So, I ran into Jonathan at Target yesterday.”

That explains the conversation I walked in on.

“He looks really good.”

“Yeah. I heard he’s taken up running.” Though Jonathan always looked good.

“And he’s engaged. Her name’s Carrie. She seems nice. Pretty.”

“They’ve been together for a while.” Almost two years, I think. I saw them once, as I was pulling up to the grocery store and they were walking out. She’s petite and dark-haired and, I’ve heard from mutual friends, allergic to dogs. It’s like Jonathan was following an “opposite of Marie” checklist when he started dating again.

I’d been expecting a run-in, eventually. It’s impossible to not cross paths with your ex when you live within five miles of each other, but I’ve succeeded in avoiding any close encounters so far. That day, I waited in my truck until they were gone. I heard they bought a house in a new subdivision in Palmer, so the likelihood of a grocery store meeting has diminished considerably.

“She’s pregnant.”

“Oh yeah?” I swallow my surprise with a swig of my beer, feeling an unexpected twinge at that news. Predictable, though it must not have been planned. Jonathan was always adamant that the wedding comes before the baby.

“She’s due in March. A boy. He told me its name, but I can’t remember—”

“Clancy,” I finish. After his grandfather. Jonathan has had that name chosen for years. It was just the mother of his son who he had to swap out.

Liz is observing me as if I’m a bug beneath a microscope. I know what she’s doing—searching for proof that I regret handing back that diamond ring. She never understood why I would. Jonathan is husband material on paper—handsome, smart, faithful, successful, well mannered. And to be fair, there was never anything wrong with him, nothing concrete that I could add to the cons column for why I shouldn’t marry him other than “doesn’t make my heart race like Jonah does.”

Liz and Jonathan got along famously. At one point, I thought she might have had a secret crush on him. She has never met Jonah, but I know she would never approve of him. She approves of very little in my life lately.

It wasn’t always that way. Liz and I are sixteen months apart—I was born in February and Liz the following year in June. Growing up, we had people convinced we were legitimate twins because we looked so much alike, and we were inseparable. I can still remember sitting on the clinic floor with our legs stretched wide to form a makeshift pen for the litter of sled dog puppies our father had rescued from being culled. We laughed as they stumbled around, unable to control their bladders, peeing all over. It didn’t bother us any. We had grand plans to take over Dad’s clinic one day, working side by side as Dr. Lehr and Dr. Lehr.