Heartbreak at Roosevelt Ranch Read online

  “But how?”

  I took my sister’s face in my hands and turned it to the doorway, where Justin stood. His face was a little pale, his eyes a little wide, but he was grinning.

  “Is it true?” he asked.

  Kel bit her lip and nodded shyly.

  Justin was across the room in a few short strides, scooping Abby up, and then pulling Kelly into his arms. “How are you feeling?” he asked fiercely.

  “Fine. Not sick at all,” Kelly said. “Or not yet anyway.”

  He smiled and hugged them tightly as I backed slowly away. I’d give them a few minutes before I went back and finished cooking dinner.

  Justin’s voice trailed after me as I slipped out onto the front porch. “I’m not going to call you an idiot, but what were you thinking? I love you both so, so much.”

  And, ding, that was the correct answer. Good job, Justin.

  Henry and the kids were running like maniacs over the front lawn, tagging each other and then sprinting away, giggling and falling all over the place. Adorable little monkeys.

  I slipped back inside, found the kitchen empty, and got back to work. The thought of another baby made me smile. I loved babies. They were so squishy and fluffy and smelled yummy.

  Okay, I knew I was weird.

  I didn’t want another one for myself, but I did like the idea of being an auntie again.

  Most of the perks but less of the work.

  Smiling to myself, I got back to my own work. From what Kelly had told me, the clients were coming over at five thirty. I threw together a quick appetizer of brie, cranberries, and candied walnuts then sliced up and toasted another loaf of my sourdough bread, deciding that my sister owed me big time for parting with my favorite snack.

  Maybe I’d put her on babysitting duty for the monsters. Rob and I hadn’t had a date night since—

  I couldn’t remember.

  Frowning, I sliced herbs and mixed them with butter, then pounded the chicken breasts until they were very thin. I spread the herb butter over the surface before rolling up each piece and searing it in a pan. It would give the chicken a little color—anemic-looking food did not taste yummy—and some nice texture.

  And though I snapped pictures each step of the way, my mind was on autopilot. When was the last time I’d spent some time alone with my husband that wasn’t a half hour on the couch before I fell asleep?

  Years.

  It had literally been years since I’d been on a date with Rob.

  A knot loosened in my chest. Well, that was clearly the issue. We’d grown apart. But I could fix that. I could eliminate the distance between us, and we could go back . . . find ourselves again.

  It was so simple.

  We needed a date night.

  I rolled my eyes. We needed more than a date night, but spending some time alone together would be the first step across that bridge. I would call Callie and set up a time in the next couple of weeks.

  “Okay,” I murmured, sliding the pan with the chicken into the oven to finish cooking. “I can do this.”

  We could get back on track. We had to. I glanced out the window at the little monsters now collapsed on the grass, pointing up at the clouds in the sky. I could picture their voices calling out the shapes, knew that I would do literally anything for them.

  I could fix my marriage.

  For them.

  For me.

  9

  I’d just sat down to my laptop after dropping the kiddos at school the next morning when my phone rang.

  “Hello?” I answered without looking.

  “You’re a goddess.”

  My lips twitched at my sister’s voice. “Tell me more.”

  Kelly laughed, but her voice was sincere. “Thank you, Miss. For bailing me out.”

  “And for writing a full page of instructions that even you couldn’t mess up.” I’d finished up the food, leaving it all to warm in the oven, before gathering the kiddos and scooting home.

  “Hmpf,” my sister said, then sighed. “Okay fine, it’s true. And the MacAlisters loved your food. I was going to take credit for it all, but then I knew I’d have to attempt to replicate it and—” Abby shrieked in the background. “Hold on.”

  I listened to Kel gather up Abby, sounds muffled as she attempted to hold toddler and phone alike. When she came back on, she was panting.

  “I—ouch. That’s Mommy’s hair, Abby-girl. I just want to—ow—tell your auntie something.”

  “Want to call me back later?” I asked as I went through some photographs from the previous night. “Oh, did you happen to take any pictures of the prepared plates? I forgot to take some.”

  A pause. “It wasn’t on the instruction sheet.”

  I grinned, tapped a few keys on my laptop. “So that’s a no. It’s okay, I guess my mind was somewhere else.”

  “You could always make it again,” my sister said, way too innocent. “It’d be a real struggle, but I could be employed to make sure it didn’t go to waste.”

  “Nice try,” I said and glanced at the clock. I needed to get off the phone in the next couple of minutes. I was volunteering in Max’s class in addition to my normal work stuff, and time was already tight. “What did you want to tell me?”

  “Oh! So Tammy MacAlister is the wife of Justin’s work colleague. I guess their fathers invested in the same tech start-up or something, and now the boys are trying to figure out if they want to put more capital into the business.”

  I struggled to prevent my eyes from glossing over. “Okay.”

  “But that’s not the exciting thing,” Kel said.

  “What is the exciting thing?”

  “Tammy works for that food channel. You know the one on TV with all the celebrity chefs, and she loved your food. Like, loved it. Raved about it.” Kelly was talking fast, and my heart was pounding, blood swooshing past my ears as I tried to process what my sister was telling me. “And then I showed her your blog and Instagram—which damn, I didn’t realize you had ten thousand followers, Miss! That’s amazing.”

  I held my breath.

  “Melissa?”

  I released it, strived for a calm voice. “I’m here.”

  “She wants to meet you. She wants to run a camera test and see some more of your food and—”

  “Holy arancini.”

  “I know—what?”

  I collapsed back against my chair. “They’re fried balls of rice. Italian. Super delicious.” I waved my hand through the air. “Never mind that. How? When? I—”

  “I told Tammy I would pass along your information to her if it was something you were interested in.”

  That gave me pause.

  Okay, not really. Because this—a cooking show! Eek! It was something I’d always fantasized about, but had never believed was remotely possible.

  “Yes, please,” I said calmly.

  “Can we squee now?” my sister asked.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “I hope so.”

  And then we squeed.

  After Kelly and I completed our squeal-fest and hung up, I fired off a quick text to Rob.

  Call me when you can. I need to tell you something!

  I settled in for the long haul, editing pictures, finding the perfect descriptive words for my soup recipe from yesterday. Of course, I shared a few more details of our recovery from the Plague—not too much, because it was a food blog, after all—but I did think my readers liked it when I let them in to my own life a little.

  And the sick kids, dog eating my shoe, it was too real not to share. I purposely didn’t say funny, either. It was too soon after the plague to be funny—

  My poor shoes.

  But I fully expected to be able to laugh about it all in approximately . . . eight and a half decades.

  Snorting, I scheduled the post then moved on to selecting which photograph would look best on Instagram when my phone rang.

  I lurched for it, thinking it could be Tammy and all my cooking show dreams, but it was Rob.


  Which was almost as good.

  “Hi!” I said. “I’ve got the best—”

  Wind wove through the speaker, rattling against my eardrums. “Are the kids okay?”

  I stiffened at the shortness in his voice. “They’re fine. Why?”

  “You said to call.”

  “I need to tell you something. I have really awesome news—”

  A voice intruded on their conversation. “Sorry. You’ll have to tell me later,” Rob said. “I need to go.”

  “But—”

  “I’m at work, Miss.”

  “Yeah.” I paused, throat tightening, eyes tearing up.

  “Bye.”

  Before I’d opened my mouth to reply in kind, he’d hung up.

  My heart twisted, aching as though it had been stabbed. I tried to tell myself that his job was dangerous. Important. That my text had been ambiguous so he’d called right away.

  Because he’d been worried. He cared.

  But he hadn’t asked about me.

  And the voice on the other end of the phone, the one that had barely reached my ears over the wind and noise, was female.

  10

  Rob hung up the phone and glanced over at Celeste as he slipped back into the car. “Good?” he asked.

  She clucked her tongue. “Wife calling when you’re at work. So cliché.”

  No, he thought. What was cliché was his wife calling when he was with his girlfriend.

  “Okay, so what do we know about this building?”

  Celeste straightened, all traces of femininity vanishing from her voice as she began listing what the surveillance of the last few weeks had discovered.

  Which, unfortunately, wasn’t much.

  “So we’ve been watching this place for weeks and haven’t seen a single shipment come in or out? Haven’t witnessed a deal?” He shook his head. “Why are we wasting our time here?”

  She tapped a finger—complete with bright-red polish—to her lips. Melissa would never wear something so flashy. His wife wasn’t about upkeep. She liked things simple and underdone.

  Skirts with flowers. Lacy shirts. Jeans and flats mixed with the occasional pair of sweats.

  No heels. Nothing ostentatious.

  Not like Celeste.

  Even in the department-required button-down and slacks, she oozed sex.

  “They’re doing something here,” Celeste said. “I can feel it. I just don’t know if they’ve moved operations because we’re keeping an eye on things or if we haven’t figured out all the moving parts yet.”

  “And our source says he got the drugs here?”

  “Not exactly. He said that all his dealers dried up. Refused to sell to him again until he got clearance from the boss.”

  “And the boss was here.”

  Celeste nodded.

  Rob sighed and stared out the windshield at the nondescript warehouse on the outskirts of Darlington.

  He didn’t want this shit within a thousand miles of his family, let alone the twenty between this building and downtown Darlington.

  Tri-Hills was supposed to be a family-friendly community, a place that was safe for kids to wander, for the elderly to not have to worry about being mugged or assaulted or their homes being broken into.

  He worried that times were changing, that the town he’d grown up in wouldn’t be the same for his kids.

  Which was life, he supposed, but not what he wanted for his family.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s keep up the surveillance. But we’ll run your idea by the chief.”

  Celeste squealed then leaned up and smacked a kiss on his cheek. “You’re the best, Robbie!”

  He turned on the car, reversed out of the alley, and headed back for the station.

  Celeste chattered on about her plan to take down the dealer, expanding on some good trains of thought and doing a very thorough job of brainstorming by herself since he wouldn’t be able to get a word in edgewise with her current mood.

  Not that he wanted to.

  He was more focused on the smear of red lipstick on his collar.

  11

  I was in a mood.

  A bad one.

  And for no other reason than my blueberry pie recipe was off.

  The kids were in bed, close enough to sleep that they wouldn’t be coming out because they needed another cup of water or their light wasn’t bright enough, or one of the multitude of other reasons their creative little minds came up with.

  Rob was asleep on the couch, the TV a soft murmur that barely reached the kitchen.

  And my pie was off.

  It wasn’t the crust. That was tender, salty, and slightly sweet. Perfect. It was something in the filling, something that tasted off.

  I popped an unused blueberry from the bowl into my mouth. Tangy but not bad. The butter was fresh, as was the cream. I’d picked them up from the store that morning.

  Maybe it was the eggs?

  “Hey.”

  I whirled around and saw Rob leaning against the doorway of the kitchen.

  “Hey,” I said, setting down the carton I’d picked up to check the expiration date.

  “You’re up late.”

  He didn’t move from his position. Once he might have come over, taken me in his arms, teased me about my obsession over the pie, then kissed me until I forgot all about recipes and blueberries and fresh eggs.

  “I don’t have the plague any longer,” I blurted.

  He raised a brow. “What?”

  “Never mind.” Why had I said that? Why was I scared as hell to tell him that I might have a chance at a cooking show? That I, a small-town girl who’d married young and not amounted to much might have a chance to realize my dream? Why couldn’t I tell him, ask him to hold me close and tell me everything would be all right?

  Why couldn’t I find a way to breach the wall that had been erected between us?

  “Meliss—”

  “How’s work going?” I asked.

  Three words that closed him up tighter than a vault. His face flattened out—no emotion, no twinkle in his eyes. “Fine.”

  “I—uh. Okay.” I turned back to the eggs, blinking rapidly, but I managed to get a look at the expiration date. Which was several weeks in the future.

  So not the eggs, the milk, or butter. What the hell was wrong with my pie?

  “You should go to bed.”

  I shrugged, surveying the counter. The answer must be a simple one. The pie wasn’t inedible, just not quite right. “I’ve got to fix this.”

  The pie.

  My marriage.

  “Why?” Rustling came from the doorway, and I turned, heart skipping a beat as he walked toward me. “It’s just a pie.”

  Perhaps it was.

  But it wasn’t just a recipe gone wrong. Somehow this had become about everything that had gone wrong with our relationship over the last few months. The slow rot, trailed by the rapid disintegration of our communication. Maybe we’d been lazy, too comfortable in our ways. Relationships took work, and we’d sat back on our laurels too much, assumed that everything would always be good. That when it wasn’t, we would still find a way through.

  But I was at a loss now.

  I kept bumping into that brick wall, unable to find my way over, under, through, or around.

  And, frankly, I was almost tired of trying.

  “It’s not just a pie,” I snapped. “This matters to me, and I know that you’ve been wrapped up in whatever has been happening at the department lately, but this”—I waved my hand at the kitchen—“is important to me.”

  My chest heaved as I waited for him to respond.

  Except, he didn’t.

  Silence stretched as we stood three feet apart, a visually perfect slice of blueberry pie on a plate, ready to be photographed.

  The distance between us may have been the Grand Canyon for all that I was able to cross it. He didn’t know about the cooking show, or rather, the possibility of one. I hadn’t wanted to tell him in
front of the kids, in case things didn’t pan out. We’d eaten dinner together, and he’d taken the kids up for a bath and books while I’d done the dishes.

  It was all very routine. When he was home, he did bedtime then relaxed with a show while I cooked.

  Sometimes I propped my iPad up in the kitchen to catch up on the latest Netflix craze or Rob sat with me while I worked, acting the part of official taste-tester.

  But more often than not of late, he hadn’t been home to play that role.

  He sighed. “I get that it’s important to you, but the pie isn’t life or death.”

  “Of course not.” My eyes dropped to the floor, one that Rob and I had laid together. It wasn’t perfect but it did the job.

  I almost snorted. If that wasn’t an analogy for our current circumstances . . .

  Silence.

  “I’m not happy,” is what I wanted to say.

  I didn’t get the chance.

  Rob turned and walked away. “Try not to stay up too late with your pie.”

  “What am I going to do?” I said into the phone two days later. Or shrilled, more precisely. If shrilled was a verb, which I hoped it was, since that was all my brain could come up with.

  “What, Miss?” Kelly asked, distracted.

  I could hear Justin’s voice in the background—murmurs punctuated by soft laughter—and had an idea why she was distracted.

  Normally I’d hang up, because gross. Today I was freaking out.

  “She’s going to be here in ten minutes, and I’m not ready!”

  The kids were at school. Tammy, the wife of Justin’s colleague and the food channel producer, was due any moment. And I hadn’t done—

  “Switch to FaceTime.”

  “What?”

  Kel sighed, and my phone began trilling with that distinctive chirp. Automatically, I swiped, accepting the call. My sister’s smiling face appeared on the screen. Justin was behind her, resting his head on one of her shoulders.

  “You look beautiful,” she said and Justin nodded in agreement. “That is the perfect Melissa outfit.”

  I glanced down at my jeans and blouse and my second favorite pair of flats. “You think? It’s not too casual?”