Soaring (Magdalene #2)(126)

It was sturdy.

I knew this already but Mickey and I put it to the test.

It passed.

Chapter Twenty

Comparing Dicks

The next day, feeling proud of myself, I walked out of Bertram’s Electronics Store phoning Mickey.

“Hey, baby,” he answered.

“Hey, guess what?” I replied.

“Don’t know but I hope whatever it is is good.”

I grinned as I beeped the locks on my Rover. “It isn’t good. It’s fantastic.”

“Right, then lay it on me,” he said with a smile in his voice.

“Tomorrow, someone in the firehouse needs to be available to accept delivery on a new microwave.”

Mickey didn’t say anything so I was open to give him the grand finale.

“And a sixty inch flat screen TV!” I cried, pulling open the door to my SUV.

“Don’t know what to say,” he muttered, not sounding nearly as happy as I expected him to be.

I hauled myself up into the driver’s seat and closed the door, suggesting, “You could say, ‘That’s awesome, Amy!’”

“That’s awesome, Amy,” he repeated after me, doing it by rote.

“Um…did you hear the part about the TV being sixty inches?” I asked, confused by his reaction.

“I did. And I hesitate to get into this with my heiress, but I gotta ask. The folks at Bertram’s donate that shit?”

I stared at my windshield.

“Amy?” he called.

“I didn’t buy it, Mickey,” I told him. “You asked me not to.”

“Just bein’ sure,” he told me.

“They donated it,” I confirmed, feeling deflated.

He heard the deflation and explained, “It just seems too easy, baby. You get a wild hair, go to a store and, just like that, they donate an expensive TV?”

“Well, not just like that,” I replied. “They did remember me from when I came in months ago and bought a bunch of stuff. Your firefighters on duty will also need to stand in front of the TV and shake hands with the delivery guys so they can take a photo to put up in the front of their store. I also got them to donate one to Dove House and Dela and some of the residents have to do the same thing.”

“I hope you get I had to ask,” he said.

“I’m not sure why,” I returned. “You told me you didn’t want me purchasing it, I didn’t purchase it. You told me it’s okay to get it donated, I got it donated.”

“Been played before, babe,” he said, his tone moving from careful to irritated.

“So you’ve dated another heiress who rained goodness on your firehouse?” I asked sarcastically. “Sorry, I didn’t see the evidence of that when I was there. Or did she purchase the rig?”

“In this conversation there’s no call for you to be a smartass, Amelia. You know real f*ckin’ well I had a wife who descended into a bottle, and shit like that happens, games are played. She took cash outta our bank account so she could buy wine without me seein’ the credit card receipts when I did the reconciliations. She fed me bullshit about where she was and what she was doin’—”

I interrupted him to declare, “You’re not Conrad and I’m not Rhiannon.”

“Asked a simple question, Amelia.”

“A question that was offensive, Michael.”

“Right, that picture gets taken I know I can trust you and I won’t have to ask again.”

I gritted my teeth, which meant my next sounded forced.

“Regardless of the fact that my husband was a cheat, our marriage still disintegrated and you know that I spent a lot of time agonizing over that. Including thinking on what I could have done to make it go wrong. In my case, I found out later that it was the simple fact my husband was a cheat. But looking back, there were things that were important to him that he communicated to me that I ignored. Feel free to feel elated that you have the Amelia Hathaway that learned that lesson and isn’t about to make the same mistake again.”

“You sayin’ I had a hand in my wife f*cking our marriage?” he asked incredulously.

I made a disbelieving sound and answered, “I’m talking about me, Mickey. You and me.”

He was done with our conversation and shared this by stating, “I got shit to do and part of that shit is not fightin’ with you.”

“Then I’ll let you go,” I shot back. “You and the boys enjoy your donated microwave and TV. Good-bye, Mickey.”

“Later,” he bit off and hung up on me.

I stared at the electronics store through my windshield, gave a moment’s thought to how all that could have gone so bad and came up with one answer: Mickey. Then I emitted a muted, frustrated scream.

After that, I started up my new Rover and drove away.

* * * * *

It was late. I was in my bathroom in my nightie, cleaning my face when the doorbell rang.

I looked to the mirror, grabbed my hand towel, dried my face and nabbed my robe off its hook before I walked out.

I wanted not to answer.

But unfortunately I was grown up.

I was home. He probably knew I was home. So it was mean-spirited not to answer.

I swung the robe on as I walked down the hall and inspected the body shadowed in the stained glass before I went to the door, opened it and looked up at Mickey in his firefighter-not-fighting-a-fire uniform.