Page 101 of Now to Forever

She smacks her gum. “Real as Reba’s red hair, honey.”

I do not know if Reba’s red hair is real.

I place the stainless-steel ID tag in the casket next to Wyatt as Wanda hums along with “Fly Me to the Moon,” breaking up her song with a pop of a bubble.

“Did you try to kill your ex-husband?”

She’s stunned for exactly a split second before a mischievous smile curls her lips. “Between you and me”—her eyes dart around the room as if making sure we’re alone—“yes.”

At my bulging eyes she swats a hand through the air with a chuckle. “You already knew the truth, honey. I could tell.”

I bat my tongue around my mouth as I let this sink in. “Should I be worried about Dondi?”

A laugh pops the bubble she’s blowing. “I’m sorry.” She puts a hand over her mouth trying to stop the laugher but only making it louder, tears dripping down her face. “No, honey.”

She composes herself, dabbing her eyes with her index fingers, mascara smudging the tips of each. Hands on her hips, she looks at me. “Cal—my ex-husband—beat the shit out of me.”

“What?!” I am floored.

“Shocked it didn’t make it into the papers?” She lifts a brow. “Means he did it right. That’s how it works—they get good at it. Hitting you where it can hide. Making you think it’s your fault. Making you think it won’t happen again and again and again. I said to him one day,‘Cal, I make you mad enough, why don’t I just leave and we’ll both be happier?’” She shakes her head with a sad smile. “No way in hell he was letting me leave. But I wasn’t spending my life like that, either. Covered up because he didn’t like the way I dressed or because I was marred with bruises.” She pops a shoulder. “I grinned, took it, and started putting antifreeze in his shakes. I didn’t know what I was doing, that’s how I got caught. But that’s also why the charges got dropped. I wised up those last few months, started taking pictures of every mark he put on me. My lawyer said drop the charges and we won’t show these. And voilà,” she says with a smile and wiggle of her fingers. “You got Wanda.”

And just like that, Wanda the Wicked becomes my new hero.

“Aren’t you worried about repeating the past? That Dondi might—I don’t know—be the same or care or . . . something?”

She laughs loudly at this. “You know what Dondi does when he and I go out?”

“I can only imagine.”

“He lets me shine, honey. My clothes and my makeup, he loves me for it. Other men look, he doesn’t care. I think he kinda likes the attention.” She gives me a look that sayswhat a mythical creature. “And he’s a vegetarian. If he won’t eat a chicken nugget, Dondi’snever laying a finger on me. If he did”—she shrugs—“I know better now. It happens once and I’ll fight back.”

“So you’re just going to be with him? Just like that? Regardless of everything?”

She grins. “Just like that, honey. That’s how life works. We die a million times to get to who we’re supposed to be. I’m not who I was—that woman is long gone. She picked a bad man and chose a bad way to get out. She was desperate. And I told Dondi everything. I’m never going to shrink down for someone else again—the good or bad parts. Hide them or pretend they aren’t there, even if they make me feel ugly.” She looks at me, emotion filling her eyes as her voice cracks. “You know what he says when he introduces me to his friends? He says,‘This is my girlfriend Wanda, she’s the bravest woman I’ve ever known.’” Tears line her spider-legged lashes.

I see her anew. Dondi too. These two mismatched people separated by decades have seemingly found what they need in one another. Despite complicated histories and quirks, they’re . . . happy. It’s as simple and weird as that. Dondi and Wanda make each other happy.

“Are you worried he’ll change his mind?”

Her lips pinch like this has never once occurred to her. “I’ve never thought about it, but the convincing him otherwise sounds fun.” She shimmies her shoulders, and her chest jiggles.

I can’t help it, I smile. “You’re kind of a badass, Wanda.”

“Well thank you, honey,” she says with a knowing shake ofher head.

Wanda lines the casket up with the retort, and I think of Blair—baring her body to her husband and literally running herself crazy to keep him, even though she doesn’t need to. I think of my parents. Zeb. The hamster wheel of shit that seems impossible to jump from, yet Wanda did. Without running away. Without even changing who she was. If anything, it seems to have made hermoreof herself.

I clear my throat. “Would you want to run the send-off today?”

She stills, mid-blowing of a bubble, and stares at me. When she sees I’m serious, she sucks the gum in her mouth and looks down at her outfit, smoothing her hands down her bold, striped, too-fitted shirt before looking at me. “Like this?”

I smirk. “You think I’m going to be the one to try and hide Wanda the Wicked?”

Her face fills with a mixture of flattery and downright disbelief. “Well, okay then, honey.”

“Okay then.”

When the family arrives—Wyatt’s wife and two grown sons—I watch from my office. Wanda’s louder than I am, more affectionate with them as she hugs each of them and cries right beside them, but she cares and it’s evident. Not for the same reasons as me, but she cares just the same. She could run the place. I see it—she’s proven it the last couple months of me being gone—and I know if someone like Zeb ever got dropped off, he wouldn’t be alone or in a sheet. She would sit with him and see him until the very end.

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