The Challenge(65)

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She told Anne and Pattie that she was leaving, and wished Pattie luck with the baby. She promised to stay in touch and tell them where she was living.

She had told Justin they were moving to Denver, and he didn’t like it, but that was too bad. He had to pay the consequences for what he’d done. It could have been a lot worse. He could have killed someone or himself.

All the boys came to say goodbye to Noel, and he promised to come and visit, or have them visit him. When she sold the house in Fishtail, she could buy one in Denver, and until then they’d be living in an apartment.

They drove out of Fishtail the day after New Year’s, in the van she had rented. The rest of her things were coming later. She felt like a grown-up for the first time in a long time, and she was scared. She could see that Noel was too. He was facing the unknown and so was she. They were both sad to leave Fishtail and their friends. And she was sad to leave Tom.

“It’s okay to be scared,” she told Noel, “just as long as you’re honest with yourself. We’re all scared sometimes. You were scared on the mountain, I’ll bet. But you came through it. That’s the challenge. You win by seeing it through. We’ll get through this together. And Justin will too. You survived three days lost on a mountain. Compared to that, this is a piece of cake.”

Tom had come to say goodbye before they left. They had started a fire that had turned into a blaze. It was bigger than both of them and had gotten out of control, like the fire on Granite Peak. It was contained now, but still smoldering. Tom didn’t kiss her goodbye. He knew that if he did, the obsession would start all over again. And for now it had to stop, for both of them. He was still watching as the car drove away. And he knew he’d miss her terribly.

She smiled at her son and he turned the radio on, as they drove away, and headed for Denver. It was a new life. A new day. For both of them.





Chapter 20


By the end of March, Pattie could hardly move. The baby was a girl but it felt twice the size of her boys when she carried them. She felt like a beached whale, and she still had three weeks to go. Benjie had finally started to get excited about the baby, even though it was a girl. Matt still acted like she was stealing a beach ball under her dress when he went out with her. The whole idea that his mother was having a baby at her age, which wasn’t very old, when he was a teenager, was mortifying. He tried to pretend he didn’t know her at the grocery store.

Bill had been busier this time than he’d been when she’d had the boys. She hardly saw him. She had lunch with Anne and June whenever they had time. She couldn’t wait to have the baby so she’d have something to do.

She was putting the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher when she saw that Bill had forgotten his phone. She was going to call and tell him but decided to walk over to his office and take it to him. She needed the exercise, and it was a sunny day. It had finally stopped snowing and was starting to feel like spring. She picked the phone up to put it in her purse, and it came alive in her hand. He had a text coming in, and by pure reflex, she opened it. He never locked his phone. She thought at first that it was some kind of spam, one of those sex messages that pop up and belong in junk mail or the trash.

“Time for a quickie before lunch? I’ll be naked waiting for you in the conference room. Guess what? I’m for lunch!” She read it again and made a face. It was from someone named Kitty. The only Kitty she knew was the new bookkeeper at the ranch office, whom she hadn’t met yet. She was twenty-two years old, supposedly with breasts the size of melons, according to Bill’s secretary. She realized then that this wasn’t spam. It was a real message to Bill. She stopped walking and responded to see what would happen. “Love to. What time?”

She responded quickly. “Same as always, Big Boy. Anytime you want to come in my mouth.” She felt sick as she read it. Bill was having sex at the office with the bookkeeper he’d recently hired. And then a random text: “Can you get out tonight?”

“Sure. Your place?” Pattie texted rapidly, not even feeling guilty. She wanted to kill him. What had he been doing, and how long had it been going on? And how many other Kittys had there been?

Kitty responded, “Of course. You’ve got the key. Use it. See ya at noon. Conference room.” She dropped the phone like it was on fire and burning her hand. She wasn’t sure if she should ignore it, confront him, hire a detective, call a lawyer, or just sit down and cry. She felt as though there was a white hot blaze raging inside her that she couldn’t put out. She was too angry and too hurt. She was carrying his baby and he was screwing around.

Afterwards she didn’t know how she’d had the guts to do it, but she picked up the phone, went back to the house, waited until a few minutes after noon, then went to the office, counting on the chance that no one knew about their rendezvous except the two of them. At ten after twelve, she found one of the assistants in his office, put on her sweetest Mrs.-Brown-I’m-a-mommy face, and told her she had accidently locked her purse in the conference room. Without hesitating, the girl handed her the key. She walked to the conference room, unlocked the door and walked in. The twenty-two-year-old bookkeeper was lying on the conference table with her legs as far apart as she could get them, and Bill was slamming into her and moaning. The room was soundproofed, so he knew no one would hear them. Pattie had closed the door silently behind her and stood staring at her husband.