Chapter Two
Her world had been colored in blues and yellows and greens, until it was plunged into shades of gray.
—The Temptress of Pecan Lane, by Mae Daniels
Monday morning, Anna drove to Rockwood Mineral Corporation headquarters because it was what she always did on Monday mornings.
Except she wasn’t sure it was Monday, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that all the clocks in her house were set to military time, she wouldn’t have been sure it was morning either.
Logically she knew it had to be Monday, because she’d survived Sunday, counting minutes, then hours, baking pies and labeling them and waiting for Neil to come home or answer his phone. But this Monday didn’t feel like any other Monday she’d ever met.
And when she pulled into the RMC headquarters parking lot and looked at the two-story brown building and the parking lots around it, the clusters of smaller buildings and giant fuel storage tanks in the distance, she wasn’t sure she was in the right spot, because Friday, the building’s brown walls had been warm and comforting, the windows had had souls, and the parking lots had been solid ground instead of a sheet of glass that could give at any moment, letting the earth swallow her whole.
Anna wasn’t just a thousand miles from home.
She was in a completely different life.
But going to work had been normal Friday, so she’d make it normal today. And then maybe Neil would be normal again, then their marriage could be normal again, and they could get back to their regularly scheduled life.
She snagged her pie carrier and made her way into the lab.
She couldn’t have told anyone her passcode for the door if they’d held a gun to her favorite label maker, but her fingers punched in the right numbers in the right order anyway.
Her shoes echoed in the eerily quiet room.
Once the pies were safe on the clean surface of a seventies-issue metal desk inside a cubicle clearly labeled Anna Martin, she hit the button on a nineties-issue desktop computer.
And found one more bit of normal. Her voice was froggy, but her Monday companion wouldn’t care. “Morning, Rex.”
The computer sputtered and whirred a response.
She unhooked her white cardigan from its perch on the cube wall and wrapped it around herself, buffering her skin from the meat locker setting on the air conditioner, then took the pies to the office snack kitchen around the corner while she waited for Rex to finish his Monday morning grumblings.
Like normal.
Except for the ring choking her left finger.
In the kitchen, she found Shirley, her program manager, sipping from a “World’s Best Mom” mug and listening to Todd, RMC’s contracts guy, talk about something that was probably normal too.
Anna forced a nothing-wrong-here smile and a spring in her step.
Because that was normal. “Good morning.”
Todd’s eyes zeroed in on the pies. “Aw, Anna, you know how to make a guy happy on a Monday morning.”
Her eyelids stung, but she held on to her fake happy and slid the pies onto the counter. “I do my best.” Todd, obviously, hadn’t been to Jules’s wedding.
“Man, I wish Mindy’s best was half this good.” He snagged a plate out of a cabinet. “But don’t tell her I said that.”
“Of course not.” Even if Anna had wanted to use her pies to poison other people’s healthy relationships, she couldn’t remember what Mindy looked like or if she actually existed.
Shirley surveyed first Anna, then the pies. On a real Monday morning, Anna would’ve expected the obligatory How was your weekend? Today, she hoped that glittery angel pin on Shirley’s blazer would work a small miracle and keep either of them from unconsciously uttering the words.
“You okay, kid?” Shirley asked.
Anna’s legs wobbled so hard her heels jackhammered the linoleum.
But she wanted to be okay, so she jutted her chin out. “Just peachy.” She reached for the coffee.
The pot was empty.
Sort of like her life.
A shudder slinked through her body. She yanked open the cabinet where the coffee grounds and filters were stored. The door hinges squeaked. Todd mumbled something about a contract and scurried out of the kitchen, clutching the pie as if it could shield against PMS.
If only monthly hormones were the problem.
Shirley deposited her dirty mug in the sink. Her still-within-military-regs, Clairoled-within-a-millimeter-of-her-roots hairdo tilted toward the pie. “Your latticework’s crooked.”
“I—it—” It was. On the middle pie.
Had she really made that pie?
She squeezed the coffee packet so hard it let out a pop! Coffee dust billowed into the air.
Shirley headed toward the door. “Need the RR-40s from last week so we can get the trucks moving this morning.”
Normal. “They’re on Jules’s desk.”
Shirley pursed her lips and stuck a hand on her hip. Shirley-speak for I don’t enter toxic waste zones. And she wasn’t talking about the hazardous waste disposal bins.
Anna winced. “I’ll get it in a minute.”
After Shirley left, Anna started the coffee, cleaned up the dust, and then sliced the middle pie so no one else would notice the lattice problem.
She poured herself a fresh cup, then retreated to the lab.
Samples were due to arrive from three trucks and four monthly tank checks this morning, and she had to dig through the mess on Jules’s desk to find last week’s jet biofuels release authorizations.
Normal was good.
In addition to their roles as a fuels distributor and specialty engine modifier for the civilian world, RMC was the primary government contractor for fuel supplies for all the military bases in Georgia.
Since the military had turned to biofuels in so many of their planes, RMC’s operations had expanded significantly.
Which was why Anna had a job at all. She’d been temping around town when Jules found out she had somewhat of a technical background and gave her a recommendation for the lab assistant position that was created about a year ago.
Rex had finished his Monday morning sputtering, so she logged on and fired up her email. While Rex processed her request, she went into Jules’s cube.
To call it a mess would’ve been like calling Minnesota a state with a couple of lakes.
But Anna didn’t have the nerve to take her label maker to Jules’s Leaning Towers of Important Crap.
Instead, she rummaged around the top layers until she found last week’s documentation.
She popped back into her own cube, which had to be hers since it was neatly organized, and she checked her email, which also had to be hers since her fingers knew the password.
Her heart gave a sputter that matched Rex’s Monday morning grumblings.
Finally, Neil was talking to her.
She leaned in and clicked the message.
Wanted to let you know my attorney will be in touch. Don’t want to make this difficult, but probably best if you get your own. Want to make sure we do this fair. Neil.
P.S. I’d like my grandmother’s ring back.
Her heart writhed in her chest as if someone had doused it in gasoline and ignited it, and her throat clogged up from the fumes. She stared at the screen, unable to blink or breathe.
But then her lungs moved, air tickled her nose on its way in and out, in and out, and she felt something else growing inside her.
Something hot and dark and ugly.
She yanked the ring off her finger and slammed it on her desk.
She’d sacrificed her education. Moved three times. Kept his house organized, stocked, and cleaned, all while working the same hours as he had for over half their marriage.
So he could throw her away.
The bastard.
She hit the monitor’s power button. The screen went black and empty and useless as Neil’s fickle heart.
She snatched the RR-40s and marched to Shirley’s office.
“They’re not signed,” Shirley said. And the look she shot Anna added, So what are you going to do about it?
If the releases weren’t signed, the fuel wasn’t officially QA certified and couldn’t be delivered to base, which meant a potential for unplanned aircraft downtime for lack of fuel.
Which was expensive. Which meant the government might look for another distributor when RMC’s contract was up for renewal.
That, Anna could fix. And being able to fix something felt good.
“I watched Jules test it. It’s fine. I’ll sign for her. ”
Shirley’s jaw settled into that stubborn tilt. “Has to be the analyst. She’s qualified. You’re not.”
Oh, good. A fight. Anna set her jaw to match Shirley’s. “I have a year of experience and I’m highly educated.”
“But you don’t have a degree.”
No, she didn’t. Because she’d left college two semesters short to marry Neil when he convinced her she could finish up at a school close to his first assignment.
He’d been wrong.
About more than she could’ve imagined.
She’d had to retake a few classes that hadn’t transferred in order to get into senior design, and had one semester to go there when Neil got orders early because of his program moving to a different base. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Shirley’s gaze landed on Anna’s hands. She curled them into balls and thrust them into the pockets of her cardigan. “Jules said they were good to go.”
“Jules was preoccupied,” Shirley said. “What happens if you sign off on our delivery and the plane goes down because something wasn’t right on our end?
Then your butt’s on the line, and more important, my butt’s on the line for letting a tech aide certify our analyses.
You want to sign that dotted line, go back to school. ”
A lump of hysterical laughter popped and fizzled around her larynx. She was still paying student loans from three different institutions and had her doubts Neil would consider signing over his GI Bill to her as part of a divorce settlement.
Oh, God. She was getting divorced. “Right.”
“Right’s exactly right.” Shirley plucked a couple of brochures from an uneven stack of papers that made Anna twitch. “The job’s always come second for you.”
“I—”
“I don’t fault you for that,” Shirley interrupted.
“You came here as an officer’s wife looking for an outlet and a paycheck.
The team’s appreciated your work. But you’ve been lax with continuing education and certifications.
You’re organized, but are you ambitious?
Do you want a job, or are you going to start watching the men around here like they’re your next meal ticket? ”
She couldn’t even manage a squawk of protest. She was too busy figuring out if she was angry, sad, or suddenly living someone else’s life.
Shirley pointedly gestured to Anna’s hidden left hand. “You’re a pretty girl. They’ll start circling soon enough. Just make sure it doesn’t mess with the work.”
Oh, God. She was right. Men would think she was available.
More like physically ill.
Shirley leaned forward and shoved the brochures at her. “Take a breather. Look these over. Nice week to take an afternoon off, what with Jules out.” She gestured to her clock. “I have to go placate a client who’s not going to be happy about that late delivery.”
Anna shuffled out of Shirley’s office. Halfway down the hall, she risked a glance at her ringless hand to inspect the brochures.
Three were about RMC’s internal fuels expert certification programs. The last one outlined RMC’s tuition assistance policy.
And in three more days, she would qualify.
She stopped in the hallway. Her lungs seemed to be battling one another. One side of her chest felt panic, the other hope, with her heart caught in the crossfire.
Neil could change his mind.
Or she could put herself first for once in her grown life.
She wrapped her arms around her chest and squeezed to dispel the internal fighting. Divorce wasn’t on her calendar, but neither was living with a man who didn’t love her.
It was time for a new plan.