Flying. Megan Hart
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to look for, Stella knew better than to fiddle with any of the settings. She did notice the small light by the temperature gauge wasn’t lit, but maybe it never was. She couldn’t remember ever really looking at the hot water heater before.
No time to deal with it now. She had to get to work. And, adding to the joy that had begun her Monday, the trip that normally took forty minutes took an hour and a half because of an accident.
A car had hit and flipped over the guardrails along the deep, V-shaped gully that separated the east-and westbound sections of the rural highway. It had caught halfway down the steep embankment, the front end a crumpled horror. It had caught on fire. There’d been no way to see if anyone was stuck inside, though the ambulance and fire trucks had given her hope that even if there had been, there wasn’t anymore. Traffic had backed up for a couple miles, moving slow, rubbernecking. Stella had been stuck inching along the accident site for a good ten minutes before reaching the opposite side and being able to speed up.
Ten minutes wasn’t so long, but by the end of it, she’d been sweating. Her hands shaking. Her breath catching hard in her throat, like needles in her lungs. In the rearview mirror, her eyes were wide and dark, the pupils dilated to cover her irises.
At work, she sat in the parking lot for another five minutes longer than necessary in order to get herself under control. In the office, she went directly to the restroom so she could splash her face with cold water, which had her remembering the frigid shower from the morning.
Frustration, at least, was better than fear.
Despite the morning’s rough start, the day itself went smoothly. It almost always did. Sitting for hours in front of a computer, editing out zits and wrinkles, listening to music or audiobooks on her iPod... It certainly wasn’t the sort of job Stella had ever imagined herself doing, but it suited her. Her manager was nice and accommodating, and you couldn’t beat the hours. Four ten-hour days a week. Jeff had liked to snark at her for that... But again, Stella put that memory aside. It no longer mattered what Jeff thought and hadn’t for a long time.
Today’s queue of photos was the easiest she’d had for weeks. The customers were all dressed appropriately, nobody had any weird requests and the packages they wanted to order were all standard. Stella worked her way steadily through the jobs, one after another. She worked so efficiently that, despite arriving late, she finished her queue early, and rather than stay and fuck around waiting for more jobs to show up, she decided to leave early.
She called Tristan on her way home, but typically he didn’t answer. Nor to her text, which did annoy her, though it was possible he was out running, not just ignoring her. Benefit of the doubt, Stella told herself. Give him the benefit of the doubt. She called Jeff next, already wincing at the sound of his voice.
“What?” Jeff said.
She shouldn’t be offended—it was how he always answered the phone, for anyone but his boss. Even his mother had been subject to his lack of phone etiquette. Stella had never heard him answer a call from Cynthia, though. Maybe she got the princess treatment. God knew she did with everything else.
“Is Tristan with you? I can swing by and pick him up on my way home. I’m getting out now.”
“Why are you getting out now?”
She owed him no explanations, Stella reminded herself, but that didn’t mean she had to be a total douche canoe to him about everything as a matter of course either. “I finished early. Is he there?”
“Cynthia took him shopping.”
“Oh.” Stella paused. “Well, I have some errands to run. I can swing by and get him when I’m finished, if she doesn’t want to bring him all the way to my place on her way home.”
“I’ll have her text you.”
Stella sighed. They disconnected without saying much of anything else and for a moment, melancholy, Stella tried to remember when they’d loved each other. She couldn’t, really. Everything that had happened since colored all the good memories in shades of black.
Her errands didn’t take as long as she’d expected, which was why she was surprised to pull into the drive to the blaze of lights in the house and the front door half-open. Irritated, Stella yanked it shut behind her. “Tristan!”
“He’s upstairs,” Jeff said from the kitchen, where he sat at her table with one of her diet sodas and a pile of her mail, along with her latest issue of Entertainment Weekly.
She hadn’t seen his car, dammit, forgetting he preferred to park along the opposite side of the street so he didn’t have to back out of the driveway. She hated the sight of Jeff in her kitchen—which had once been his kitchen, that was true enough. But by the end she’d hated the sight of him in it then too.
“Did he eat?”
“Yeah. Cynthia made pot roast.” Jeff drained the last of the soda and put the empty can back on the table, then tossed the magazine onto the pile of mail.
Of course she did. Stella gave him a tight smile. “Great. Thanks for bringing him home.”
Jeff pulled something from his back pocket—a piece of paper he’d folded into thirds. He flattened it on the table and pushed it in her direction. “Here.”
“What’s that?” Stella asked warily, not taking it.
“I brought over a spreadsheet.”
“Of what?” She crossed her arms, keeping her expression carefully neutral. Jeff had always been fond of spreadsheets.
“Of expenses.”
Stella’s eyebrows rose. “Expenses? For what?”
“Tristan,” Jeff said, and Stella’s jaw dropped. “I’ve been keeping track.”
Now she took the paper and looked over it. True to form, Jeff had made columns for medical expenses, sports equipment, orthodontia, clothes, school supplies...and gifts. Stella looked at him. “You have to be fucking kidding me.”
Jeff looked pained. “Stella.”
“You kept track of how much you spent on gifts. For your son.” Her lip curled.
They’d hammered out a lot of details in the divorce settlement. Argued over who got to keep the china and how long Stella would remain on his account with Pegasus Airlines so she could get free travel. She’d fought hard for that one. But they hadn’t set up anything specific regarding child support for Tristan, mostly because the original plan had been that each of them would be responsible for whatever expenses arose while he was with each of them, and they’d share major expenses. Stella simply tried to take care of whatever Tristan needed, only going to Jeff for stuff like the braces that had come off last year. Like the ski club trip Tristan had wanted to take last Christmas break that had turned out to be twice as expensive as she’d planned for.
Jeff gave her a look. “Of course. I just wanted to show you...”
Stella crumpled the paper in her hands, then thought better of it. She smoothed it. Folded it. Handed it back to him. “What’s your point, Jeff?”
“I just dropped a couple hundred bucks on him for gear. New shoes. He needed clothes too.” Jeff paused. “Cynthia made sure he had everything he needed.”
Cynthia, who matched her shoes to her belts to her purses. Who got her nails done every week. Hair too.
“Please tell Cynthia I said thanks.”
Jeff blinked. “I estimated your expenses too.”
Stella set her jaw at that, willing herself not to totally lose her shit all over him, but already knowing she was about to blow. “And?”
“Just wanted to share with you, that’s all.”
“Because you want to show me up.”
Jeff frowned. “That’s not what I want.”
“No?”