For You (The 'Burg #1)(35)

“Some women… don’t know, Feb… they just see no purpose in life without kids. Melanie was like that, just slipped through Colt’s fingers no matter how he tried to grab hold. She gave him no choice, he had to let go.”

I knew what she meant though not about the kids. He’d had another girl slip through his fingers who he’d tried to grab hold. I figured he knew when to stop trying.

Melanie had moved to another small town at the other side of the city. Not far, as the crow flies, but with the city in the way and having to navigate the highways and by-ways to get from here to there, she might as well have been in another state. I didn’t know what she was doing now without kids or Colt in her life. I did know I thought she was all kinds of crazy for leaving Colt. Colt was a man with all that entailed but even I wasn’t fool enough to think, when you got down to it, he wasn’t a good one.

Once Dad turned off the ignition to the RV, Wilson and me jumped out the side door. I had him in a kitty carrier in one hand, I had my bag in the other and I had my purse slung over my shoulder.

Colt had been standing in his front yard watching Dad trying to park from attempt two through attempt four. He walked up to me when Wilson and me jumped down from the RV and without even looking at me he grabbed onto Wilson and then leaned around me and grabbed my bag and then he walked into the house.

I looked behind me to see Mom carrying Wilson’s litter box. She jutted her chin to the door and I sucked in a breath, let it out and then followed Colt into my new nightmare.

When I walked into the living room, the cat box was on the coffee table and Colt was crouched in front of it, opening the wire door.

I took this time to look around.

I was surprised to see Colt had pretty much erased Melanie unless she wasn’t that into interior design. The place wasn’t a bachelor pad by a long shot but it didn’t have flowered wallpaper or wreathes made of twigs or little angel figurines (all of which I imagined where the way Melanie would decorate her and Colt’s house).

There was a huge, double-wide frame on the wall, Colt’s purple and white high school football jersey next to his Purdue jersey, both laid out careful and identical, same number on each, sixty-seven, his last name “Colton” across the shoulders. They were pinned to the mat, framed in a box frame on the wall. I hadn’t seen it since he got it and sucked in a quiet breath just looking at it.

Dad had given that to him years ago for Christmas. Colt had liked it so much, after the wrapping fell away he took one look at it, one look at Dad and he left the room. I knew why; men weren’t good with displaying that kind of emotion. Dad got choked up too and hid it behind a cough. Mom just started crying. Morrie had followed Colt.

I shook off that memory because it included me getting choked up too at the time and I didn’t want to do it now so I kept looking around.

In the room there was also a long, wide comfortable couch and armchair that I could tell wasn’t exactly top-of-the-line but it was nothing to sneeze at either. Sturdy lamps with muted shades on top of dark wood end tables, framed photos here and there. I wasn’t close enough to see what was in them but all of them were of people. It was a nice place.

Kitchen to the right, dining area in front of it over a bar. I could see the kitchen had been redone and well, though not recently, but it definitely wasn’t original and someone had put some money into it and I was guessing that someone was Colt and I was guessing that he did it for no-baby Melanie in the hopes that a kitchen would calm the baby craving which was something a man would do or, to be fair, something a caring man would do for a wife who was suffering an ailment he had no way to cure.

To the back, a double-wide opening that led to a den which was where Colt spent his time, I guessed, mainly because it was where he kept his big, flat-screen TV (which was top-of-the line but it was my experience men didn’t f**k around when it came to TVs). There were two big reclining chairs at angles to each other in front of the TV with a table between them, a stereo in the corner, loads of narrow CD shelves chock full of discs around the stereo, neon beer signs that had been retired from the bar on the walls and a fancy pool table at the side. The den was not original to the house, an extension Colt or his predecessor put in. I was guessing on a cop’s salary with that kitchen and the speedboat, the extension was there before Colt bought that house for Melanie.

To the left, a hall which I knew, because I’d been in plenty of houses like this, led to two bedrooms and a bath.

“You’re here,” Colt said and I looked from the doorway of the hall to him.

He’d come up from his crouch and grabbed my bag again. Wilson, my fluffy gray, had two kitty paws out of the box, two kitty paws in it and he was looking around, getting his new bearings and probably wishing he had opposable thumbs so he could hack me up, such was his current shitty life finding himself in four different houses in four different days, only one of them home.

I didn’t have time to comfort my cat, Colt was showing what he meant by his words by disappearing down the hall.

I followed. He walked into the room at the end.

When I arrived I saw Melanie was gone from here too. Blue walls. Dark blue bedspread. Baby blue sheets. Over the bed a fantastic sepia print of the inside of Harry’s Chocolate Shoppe, an old bar on the corner of the Purdue campus that Colt, Morrie and I spent a lot of time in. The shot was of the bar and its barback, devoid of people, just the wood, the stools, the shelves, the bottles, the mirror behind the bar, looking as old and cool as it was in real life.