I, Michael Bennett

CHAPTER 78

TARA DROPPED ME off in front of the lake house half an hour later. It was pin-drop quiet on the way back. I wanted to explain that it wasn’t her. That it wasn’t about attraction. But even I knew how lame that would sound. I wisely kept it zipped, for once.

“Thank you for di

Somewhere between rage and tears, Tara sat motionless behind the wheel, staring dead ahead as her motor ticked. I took the half minute of her complete silence as my cue to get out. Gravel flew as she peeled back out onto the country road. A tiny piece of it nailed me in the corner of my right eye and became pretty much embedded. Then there was just me and all my friendly chittering cricket friends as I stood there in the dark.

“Way to go, Mike,” I mumbled to myself as I climbed, half blind, up the creaky wooden steps to the front door. “Way to win friends and really influence people.”

As I reached for the front door, something fu

My kids’ loving na

Will Shakespeare was wrong, I thought, rubbing at my eye as moths whacked into each other over my head.

Hell hath no fury like two women scorned.

Standing there, I suddenly thought of a dumb expression from my childhood. It arrived instantly, like a mental text message from Mike Be

Your ass is grass, it said.

“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Michael Be

“That is who just dropped you off, correct?” she said, cocking her head. “A broad?”

She had me dead to rights. Even under the direst of circumstances, I always made every effort to contact her about my status and inquire about what was going on at the house, about the kids. And I hadn’t. I’d gone off to work pretty much yesterday, and I hadn’t lifted the phone once. Not only that, but I knew full well what Mary Catherine thought of my new friend and colleague, Tara McLellan.

With nothing in the holster, I tried drunken charm.

“Mary Catherine, hello,” I said with a courtly bow. “Long time no see. How is everything?”

“Bad, Mr. Be

“Mary Catherine, come on. I can explain,” I said.

She stood there, glaring furiously at me through her soft, wet eyes.

“Actually, I can’t,” I said after a moment. “Only that I screwed up. I should have called you.”

“And told me what? That you were going to be late tonight because you were out on a date?”

I stood there, wincing, as I remembered what Mary Catherine had said on our walk. The date I was supposed to plan but never did.

“It’s not what you think. That was Tara McLellan, the prosecutor on the Perrine case,” I said. “It was work, Mary Catherine. She came up to the Newburgh meeting to discuss the feds helping out with the gang problem.”

Mary just stood and stared at me, the sadness in her blue eyes really killing me inside.

“You mean the Newburgh town meeting that ended at ten?” she finally said.

CHAPTER 79

“YES,” I SAID. “We had di

“Di

“Shit,” I said, closing my good eye. “Mary Catherine, I completely forgot. I’m sorry. Let me come in and we’ll talk about it.”

“Oh, by all means come in,” Mary Catherine said, opening the screen door, which gave out a deafening squeak.

I saw then that she was dressed—jeans, a T-shirt, and a backpack on her back. No! Wait. What?

“The house is all yours, because I’m leaving,” she said. “I’m leaving, Michael Be

“Mary Catherine, come on. I know you’re angry, but that’s crazy. It’s … it’s one in the morning.”

“No,” Mary Catherine said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It’s actually two in the morning, and I won’t come on. Not anymore.”

She stepped forward suddenly. For a second, I thought she was going to belt me one. It was almost worse when she stopped herself and didn’t.

She brushed past me and hit the stairs.

I tried to say something, tried to come up with words that would make her stop in her tracks, but there was nothing to say. She walked past me where I stood rooted to the porch and right out into the summer night.

I would have gone after her immediately, but my eye was on fire, so I ran inside to splash water on my stinging face. After I finally worked loose the gravel grit from my burning eye, I rushed back to the front door.

I was convinced that I’d see Mary Catherine there on the porch, her I’m-ru

You’ve gotta be kidding me, I thought. There was no sign of her. She was really gone.

I went back up the driveway and hopped into the minibus. Driving after having had a few drinks was irresponsible, I knew, but I didn’t care. Panic was building inside of me at that point, the kind of pure panic reserved for a shitheel who realizes that he might have just taken advantage of the special woman in his life one too many times.

I almost took out the mailbox as I reversed it out onto the country lane. Trees wheeled by in the sweep of the headlights as I screeched the stupid clunky bus out onto the road. Then I put it in drive and floored it.

At every curve on that twisty rural road, I was sure that I was about to see her. I’d pull over, there’d be some yelling, some tears, but we’d fix it. I’d fix it somehow. The problem was, I didn’t see her. She wasn’t on the road five miles in each direction. I raced to the parking lot of the pizza parlor and then the bowling alley. I went in and asked the turbaned clerk at the 24-7 gas station if Mary Catherine had come in, but he just shook his head and went back to the cricket match he was watching on his laptop.

I even drove out to I-84 and went up and down it for over an hour, but it was fruitless.

I’d lost her, I thought, near tears as I stared into the roadside darkness. I’d finally done it. I’d finally gone and completely ruined everything.

CHAPTER 80

I WOKE UP the next morning on the porch just before dawn. I sat up, my back and neck stiff as plywood from falling asleep on the ancient wicker love seat. Head ringing from my hangover, I lifted my itchy arms to see that I’d been eaten alive by mosquitoes.