Ladies' Night, Andrews, Kay [best time to read books .txt] 📗

“Is Wyatt around?” Callie asked, craning her neck to try to see around the bookkeeper.

“He’s been out with a group from summer day camp, but he’s on his way back now,” Joyce said. “Excuse me, Callie. I need to get the snacks ready for those kids. They’re always hungry and thirsty when they come back in out of that heat.”

She turned to go, but Callie placed a hand on her arm. “Oh, let me help, Joyce. I know where everything is.” Callie stepped neatly under the old-fashioned wooden turnstile and bustled into the office.

Two minutes later, when Wyatt hurried into the lobby, followed by thirty clamoring children, Callie was setting juice boxes and plates full of graham crackers and apple slices on the long table in the snack bar.

Bo brought up the rear of the group. He was dressed in a faded and somewhat shrunken Jungle Jerry’s T-shirt, and Cookie the parrot was perched on his shoulder. He beamed at the sight of his mother. “Mom!”

“Hey, Bo-Boy,” she said, looking up from her task. She met her husband’s unsmiling eyes. “Hi, Wy.”

“Shots and beer!” the parrot demanded. “Gimme whiskey. Gimme beer.”

Callie broke off a piece of graham cracker and held it out for Cookie, who snapped her beak around the cracker—taking with it a sizable chunk of Callie’s fingertip.

“Owww,” Callie screeched. “Son of a bitch!”

Startled, the parrot squawked and flew crazily around the room, while the day campers alternately screamed, giggled, ducked under tables, and covered their heads with their arms.

After circling the room a couple of times, Cookie finally settled on Wyatt’s shoulder. He tried to soothe the agitated bird. “Shhh,” he said, stroking the bird’s head. “Quiet, Cookie. It’s all right.”

Callie held her bleeding finger out for inspection. “It is not all right. Look at this! I think I might need stitches.”

Bo studied his mother’s wound. “Awww, Mom, it’s hardly a scratch. Cookie wouldn’t really bite you. She just thought your finger was part of the graham cracker.”

Callie frowned. Her eyes rolled back. “I think … I think I might faint.” She looked around the room. “Wyatt! I feel faint!”

Before he could respond, Joyce Barrett swung into action. She bustled to Callie’s side and looped an arm around her waist. “Come into the office and let me get you some antiseptic and a Band-Aid.” She lowered her voice to a near whisper. “We don’t want to upset the children or make them afraid of Cookie, do we?”

Callie scowled but reluctantly allowed herself to be led away. “That bird never did like me.”

*   *   *

Later, after he’d loaded the children back on their day-camp bus, returned Cookie to her aviary, and settled Bo in the trailer for a late lunch, Wyatt walked into his office to find Callie seated in the chair in front of his desk.

“There you are,” Callie said, holding up her bandaged finger. “See what that stupid bird of yours did to me?”

“Sorry,” he said with a shrug. “I think maybe she got a little overexcited with all the kids around. She’s never bit Bo or me or Dad before. Did you get yourself set up over at your sister’s?”

“Sort of. Kendra’s out of town, but she called her next-door neighbor to meet me over there with the key, so I dropped off a load of my stuff there before I stopped off here. At least I don’t have to deal with her holier-than-thou crap right now.”

“What’s Luke have to say about you bailing out on him?”

“Don’t know,” she said. “He’s been calling and texting me all day, but I’ve been ignoring him. To tell you the truth, I really don’t care what that piece of garbage has to say.”

Wyatt spread his hands out across his desktop. “What is it you want from me, Callie?”

“Who says I want anything? Can’t I just drop by to visit with my son?”

“You’ve had Bo for the first half of the week. He was with you until a few hours ago. So you’ll forgive me if I’m a little suspicious about your motives.”

Callie gazed around the office. “God, this place is depressing. When was the last time you painted this room? Or had the floors mopped?”

“I don’t have a lot of extra time or money for things like paint jobs these days,” he said, struggling to remain civil. “What with legal fees, child support, and the three hundred dollars a week I have to pay for divorce camp.”

“Three hundred dollars! Are you serious? That’s crazy. That’s money your family needs.”

“Seriously crazy,” Wyatt agreed, his face darkening. “But that’s what Judge Stackpole mandated. After your lawyer showed him that video of me smashing Luke’s car window. Which the two of you deliberately provoked me into doing.”

Callie picked up an old plastic Jungle Jerry’s snow globe from the corner of his desk and studied it, deliberately averting her eyes from his.

“That was all Luke’s doing,” she said, her voice low. “I never thought you’d go crazy and break your hand. I never intended things to go as far as they did.”

“You filmed me with your cell phone,” Wyatt said. “And then you called the cops. It’s a little too convenient to blame everything on Luke, don’t you think? You’re thirty-six, Callie. Don’t you think you bear some responsibility for what happened in our marriage?”

“Some of it,” she said, shaking the snow globe, watching the glittering synthetic flakes settle over a tiny plastic replica of the Jungle Jerry’s neon sign.

She looked up. “What if I told you I wished none of this had ever happened?”

“But it did happen,” he reminded her. “You decided you were in love with somebody else and that you wanted to be with him more than you wanted to be married to me. You chose Luke over me. And our family. That’s something I can’t just forget.”

She turned the snow globe over and picked at the yellowing price sticker with her fingernail. “Sixty-nine cents! How old is this thing?”

“It’s ancient,” he said. “As old as I feel right now.”

Callie looked