Chapter 34
I had no clue this little Grand would cry when I turned on the jets.
This fun bubble bath ended for him.
Hidden Secrets
Leona Palmer Haag
Chapter 34
The sun set in streaks of scarlet, magenta and
tangerine before it magically deepened to exquisite royal blue. Jenn looked up
now and then from the coloring book Katie was defacing to check its progress.
Finally the sky turned into inky darkness spotted with diamonds as night
settled on Arizona. Jenn uncurled her legs and slid off the sofa to shut the
last blind. With Katie mesmerized by streaks of orange, red, black and green on
coloring book pages, and was trashing the carpet with itty bits of peeled off
crayon paper, she pulled out instructions on changing the lock's codes. It
wasn't hard. She accomplished it before Katie had broken the last crayon.
Jenn whipped up a batch of chocolate chip muffins
next, then took Katie on a search mission to see if there were any hardbound or
paperback fairy tales in the castle while they baked. They came up empty
handed. "What kind of place is this, huh?" Jenn cheerfully said to
keep her daughter happy by not showing her frustration at the lack of
entertainment available.
"What kinda place?" Katie echoed.
After a few paces on the treadmill, and some dance
steps in front of the fitness room wall of mirrors, Jenn smelled the sweet
aroma of down-home-Dallas wafting through the house. They returned to the
kitchen for milk and muffins. Satisfied, they took a long bubble bath without
bubbles other than the ones provided by the tub's jets because they'd forgotten
to buy the bottled kind, then settled into the king-sized bed upstairs in the grand
master suite.
Katie should have been tired, but her long nap after
swimming hadn't worn off yet. She refused to stay in bed and wandered around
the room exploring. Jenn knelt before the master bedroom's entertainment
armoire and went through the entire DVD selection. "Zippo," Jenn said
after reading every title. "Hey, pumpkin, our selection is limited to guy
stuff. Macho man action-packed movies. Boring!"
"Boring!" Katie repeated with a giggle.
"So being women on a mission, let's raid the
other rooms."
Katie took off like a bullet and Jenn followed.
"We are so out of luck it's not funny," Jenn
said as she followed Katie's short little legs up the front stairs after
inspecting the entertainment centers on all three levels.
"Lucky," Katie huffed and puffed.
"Wrong. Try unlucky. Repeat after me:
unlucky."
"Lucky."
Jenn laughed.
"No books, no movies, nothing on TV this late—so
we're on our own. Are we going to be creative and inventive tonight, or dull
and boring?" Jenn grabbed Katie and tickled her ribs. "Huh? Katie,
bug. Fun or a drag?"
"Story?" Katie begged.
"From memory," Jenn promised.
After Katie finally fell asleep after and endless
string of stories, Jenn lay awake staring at the ceiling high overhead. First
thing Sunday morning she was going shopping. The castle would soon be outfitted
for a princess, thanks to Kevin's generosity in handing her plastic to play with.
She began a mental list of other necessities Kevin could mull over and try to
explain to his boss. Oh, being queen of the castle, she'd open a torture
chamber, and rather than her and Katie being guests, she'd thrust Kevin inside.
Lock him up tight. Dispense anguish at her own pace and in highly unusual ways
to the confirmed divorce called Uncle Kevin.
Jenn rolled over to turn off her bedside lamp. A
five-by-seven inch photo of herself smiled from the table. Taken at the lake.
One Nick snapped. A moment later her glossy smile was in the shadows and her
flesh and blood one had drooped to a frown. Where was Nick? When would she hear
from him? She pinched her eyes shut but tears escaped. She let them cascade for
several minutes before she crawled over Katie to get the other lamp. Her
fingers froze on the switch as she stared at a five-by-seven photo of Matt
Jensen framed in silver. Probably posing as Mr. Morgan. "Oh, spare
me," she muttered, turning his smiling face down. He could study the wood
grain on the nightstand for the rest of her visit.
Jenn returned to her side of the bed and curled up in
a tight ball and missed her real husband. The one who had left without saying
good-bye. Had he left her a note at home? It sounded romantic, but not
especially Nick-like. Then she remembered the dinner and flowers she never
received after her Baltimore trip and really cried—the deep down agony sort of
cry. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. And she didn’t know what.
End Chapter 32
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