Page 64 of Mother Clucker

That meant I’d be working day and night on the promo for the show. And every time I saw a picture or a video of the farm, or Rowdy, or Drew, would be like a slice across my heart as it all reminded me of David.

It was hard enough the past couple of days working on stuff for the shelter while checking my cell for a text, and for battery life, and for signal.

“What are you thinking?” Lucy asked.

I was thinking that I wanted to call him. I needed to know one way or another. And I couldn’t tell Lucy that because she wouldn’t approve.

“I don’t know what to think,” I lied.

She drew in a breath, testing the tenacity of the fabric of her top. “You want to go out somewhere fun for lunch today?” she asked.

The only thing I hated worse than feeling like this, was having people try to cheer me up while I felt like this.

“We’ll see. Okay? I got a lot to do between real work and the shelter stuff.”

She looked skeptical but nodded. “Okay.”

When she went back to her desk I palmed my cell, hid it behind one thigh and headed for the bathroom.

Inside the quasi-private space my heart thundered as I unlocked the cell and navigated to the recent calls.

There, slowly getting buried in the list of recent calls as the days without communication from him passed, was the last call from David from the weekend.

Thinking it was stupid, knowing I shouldn’t do it, I hit the listing with my thumb and the cell dialed his number. I was shaking as I pressed the phone to my ear.

Every ring had my heart pounding harder. Then the ringing stopped and I heard the jostling of the phone on the other end of the call.

But the voice that said, “Hello?” was not David’s.

Nope. It was most definitely female. I almost dropped my phone into the sink as I pulled it away from my ear and juggled it, trying to hit the screen to end the call. I was shaking so badly my hands seemed to have stopped working.

My brain hadn’t stopped though. No. In fact my imagination was working overtime. Not that it had to. It was pretty clear. Now I knew why he hadn’t called for going on three days. David wasn’t calling me because he was with another woman. A woman who felt comfortable enough with him, close enough to him, to answer his cell phone.

Maybe she was a woman just like me. A woman who was wondering what David was doing and with whom while he had been away from her last week.

Was he lying to both of us? Double dipping like Larry had been? Seeing both her and me? Sleeping with both of us . . .

The answer to Lucy’s questions about lunch was clear. I wouldn’t be eating anything, not out or at my desk, because I was about to puke up my breakfast.

25

David

Something woke me. It took about two seconds for me to realize it was my sister jostling me. Shaking my shoulder while saying my name.

“Hey. David.”

I peeled open first one eyelid and then the other as I tried to focus while struggling to sit upright. It didn’t take very long for me to realize that was going to be more difficult than I’d imagined.

The muscles in my back had pretty much seized up from spending two nights in a chair next to my father’s hospital bed.

“Hey.” I rubbed both hands over my face and groaned. “What time is it?”

“About ten-thirty.”

I wrinkled up my face. “Great.”

I’d actually managed to get some sleep after I’d made my mother finally go home at six this morning.

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