Breakup In A Small Town. Kristina Knight
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taken up the slack at work. I’m cooking all the meals, cleaning the house, getting the kids to and from school. I’m paying the bills and doing the laundry and chauffeuring you to doctor appointments—”
“I’ll call a taxi,” he interrupted, but Jenny kept talking. She had to keep talking or she would never get all this out.
“Slippery Rock doesn’t even have Uber. And that isn’t the point. The point is I’m doing it all. By myself. And you’re wallowing.”
“I have a deadly disease.” Adam narrowed his eyes.
Jenny popped the trunk, got out of the car and pulled the wheelchair from it as if she’d been doing it all her life. Some days, it seemed as if she had. She wheeled it to his door.
“Well, you aren’t dying today. And you say you’re well enough not to need a service dog. And yesterday you were well enough to use a knife to cut up an apple. You say you have no vertigo, no headaches...” She counted off the lies he’d told the doctor on her fingers. “And here I am, thinking I had to protect you from the world.”
“Jen—”
“No. Don’t Jen me. Don’t lie to my face and tell me you’re too weak, too scared, too...whatever. You say you’re fine, well, I’m taking you at your word.” She checked her watch. Still time to make the staff meeting at one, and if she hurried through the rest of her day, she could pick up the kids after school. “I have the Wednesday staff meeting. You know, the one you instituted last summer? We’re talking about new product lines, and I’ve been allowing your parents too much say in what Buchanan’s does. I’m going to the meeting, and I’ll pick up the kids—”
“I haven’t had lunch.”
“There is bologna in the fridge—you can figure it out. And while you’re figuring it, would you please do a couple loads of laundry? Frankie’s out of clean underwear and Garrett wants his favorite dinosaur shirt for school tomorrow.”
Jenny hurried around the car before she could chicken out on her demands. She was not going to let the man she loved fade away. Laundry would be her first battleground.
ADAM GAVE WHAT had been a white T-shirt but was now an odd shade of pink a side-eye as he read the directions on the bottle of detergent one more time. Nothing about the possibility of a color change. He tossed the shirt into the empty hamper and pulled another handful of clothes from the dryer. The jeans looked okay, but there was another T-shirt with odd pink streaks, and a bra that had one pink cup and one white. He was fairly certain none of Jenny’s bras were designed that way. Then, at the bottom of the dryer, he found a single red sock. The culprit.
Damn it. Jenny had asked him for one thing. Do a freaking load of laundry, and he couldn’t even do that without messing it up. Putting even more work on her plate. What the hell was wrong with him?
The grandfather clock in the living room chimed twice. Two o’clock. The work meeting would be over, and she would probably be back in her office. He had an hour until the boys were through at school to fix this. There was only one thing to do.
Fifteen minutes later, his mother bustled through the back door, chattering into her phone as she let the screen slam shut behind her.
“No, Owen, don’t tell her where I went. It’s just an errand that I couldn’t put off.” Nancy Buchanan’s voice went quiet, and Adam wheeled himself from the laundry room into the hallway leading to the kitchen.
He waved, but Nancy motioned for him to keep quiet while she spoke to his father on the phone. He felt like he was back in elementary school, with his mom shooing at him like this.
Maybe he wasn’t far off. How many twenty-eight-year-old men didn’t know how to do a load of laundry without ruining all the whites?
His mother began speaking again. “I’ll be back before Jenny has to leave to get the kids. Until then, you keep her busy. And don’t let her come home early.” Nancy snapped her phone closed—she refused to get a new smartphone, instead choosing to use the older flip model he and Jenny had bought her several Christmases ago. “Hey, honey.” She ran a smooth hand over his face, the way she’d done countless times in his life. “How are you today?”
Adam didn’t answer, just rolled the chair into the laundry room. Nancy followed, chattering on about the meeting at work. She didn’t ask about the doctor appointment, so he assumed Jenny had told her there was no real change to his condition. Before he could explain what he’d done, Nancy picked the pink-streaked clothing from the hamper and clucked her tongue. She muttered something about separating whites and colors.
“This would have been a lot simpler if you hadn’t already dried the clothes. Didn’t you notice the bleeds when you transferred everything to the dryer?”
Adam started to answer, but Nancy just kept talking. “It’s not impossible like this, though,” she said, holding the items up to the light. “I’ll need some distilled vinegar and more detergent.”
Adam had no idea if Jenny kept vinegar in the laundry, but dutifully began looking in the cabinets.
“It’ll be in the kitchen, probably,” his mother said, but before Adam could wheel past her, she was out in the hall and headed there. She returned a few minutes later with a bottle of something that smelled awful and a measuring cup.
Nancy fiddled with the machine, put the vinegar into the bin along with more detergent, and then tossed the pink-streaked clothing in, too. She waved a box at him, and then tossed what looked like a dryer sheet in with the wash. “Next time, whether you think the colors are going to bleed or not, stick one of these sheets in. It will capture the running colors before they stain the clothes.” She looked at him expectantly.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“It’s nothing, honey. I can’t believe Jenny left you with the housework. Did you already fold?”
Adam nodded, and she continued talking. “Then we’ll have a little snack while we wait for this load to finish up. Is that the only hamper you have? Your laundry would be much more organized if you had separate bins for colors and whites, towels, and jeans. You’d have fewer snafus like this one.” She started down the hallway, and Adam followed.
“It isn’t like Jen asked me to paint the house. Laundry is low impact, as far as housework goes.”
In the kitchen, Nancy pulled glasses from the cabinet and poured them each a glass of tea. “Yes, but you need your rest. After all that’s happened, surely she understands that. How about a sandwich?” The same lunch she’d made him all through school.
Adam wasn’t hungry, but when Nancy was in mothering mode, there was no stopping her, so he just sat at the table and sipped the tea while she made a bologna sandwich. She brought it to the table, along with a bag of chips.
“About the laundry room situation. I can have the boys at Buchanan’s fix up a temporary system, and I’ll order something more permanent when I get home this evening.” She eyed Adam until he took a bite of the sandwich. It had tomatoes. He hated tomatoes, but he ate, anyway. “Or I could have our cleaning lady come in once a week and do it for you.”
“Jenny doesn’t like the idea of hiring help, but thanks. And we really don’t need someone to do the laundry.”
“Because she’s going to keep putting that off on you, no doubt.”
“It isn’t like that, Mom.” Adam pushed away the food.
Nancy rolled her eyes. “You know, we should get a contractor in here to take care of that step into the family room.”
“Mom—”
“And I know you use the back door most of the time, but there really should be a ramp for the front,