Page 7 of Four Calling Birds

I was met with silence. It stretched for so long that I looked up to make sure he was still alive. But his face…Holy shit, he had no idea.

4. Married

Mack

“Youneverdivorcedme,you fucking moron!” Her hands went to her eyes, as if she was rubbing the disbelief from her face. Her fingers slid up, combing the matted mess away from her angular forehead, and she looked at me like I was some kind of imbecile. “You really didn’t know?”

You could have bowled me over with a fucking feather.

“What the hell are you talking about, Lotte?” I hated how easily that nickname came back. For three years I had forced myself to think of her as Charlotte. Charlotte Elizabeth. Charlotte Elizabeth Rivera. Not… Lotte McClanahan. “I mailed you the damn papers. I assumed you took care of it.”

“You are a complete idiot,” she said in an exasperated sigh. “You did send back the papers, that is absolutely accurate.” She pressed her palm to her forehead like she was fighting off a headache. “But you didn’t sign it, dipshit.”

“I… I didn’t?” I swear I had. I remembered standing overourdining room table, the one I had made for her on our first anniversary. The same dining room table that was in my workshop now. I contemplated turning it into firewood. But Ihadthe pen in hand and I had vowed to bleach Lotte out of my mind, and move on with my existence. “No, that’s not right. I signed them.”

“Really? Because the signature line beside the little sticky arrow that said, ‘sign here’ was blank.” She came to her feet, but didn’t fully straighten. One shoulder stooped lower than the other, and I watched a slight red stain bleed through her bandage. “I stared at it for days trying to figure out if you were trying to send me some kind of message.”

“What message would that be?” I said, flapping my arms to the side.

“I have absolutely no idea!” She waved her hands to the side, back and forth. “It was like you were trying to piss me off or something.”

“Why would I do something like that?”

“I don’t fucking know, Mack!” she said. “Why would you contest the divorce in the first place?”

“Obviously, because I didn’t want a divorce!” The roar started from somewhere in my gut and bellowed out of my mouth. Her hair almost moved with the force of my yell. But she didn’t back down. Even as her side started to shake with the effort of standing. I didn’t know what pain she was in. But she was in it. And she was still up, ready to fight.

“So that’s what I assumed you were trying to tell me! Trying to make it hard for me again!”

“Oh, come on,” I rolled my eyes, stepping away from her. “It was a mistake. I meant to sign them that time… I just…”

The memory of what happened came fast. I had the blue pen in my hand, I was ready to drop it onto the paper to sign my name. I had paced the living room of my North Carolina house over and over again, trying to build up the courage to end a ten-year marriage. I deserved to be free. Hell, why wouldn’t Iwantto end it when she so clearly had no intention of being tied down. I was letting her go. Setting her free.

Free of me.

Free to go off and be the super-secret spook she had always wanted to be without the burden of her fucking husband who had held her back, over and over again. She had sacrificed her job to be my wife. To move from duty station to duty station, and heading up Family Readiness Groups, and hanging out with my soldier’s needy wives… all for the possibility of a family that we would never have.

But then I got a call from my soldier, Kai Griffith, who found himself on the other end of a divorce as well. We decided to get rip roaring drunk instead. I must have mailed it off the next day without looking.

“So…” I said, my brows coming together in front of me. “We’re… still man and wife.”

She let out a long, annoyed moan of disbelief.

“That’s what I’m saying, asshole.” She shook her head, looking off to the side. “We’ve been legally separated, but not divorced, for over three fucking years.”

I stared at Lotte, and her gaunt frame. She’d gotten thinner in the last three years. But she was still beautiful. She still had that invisible pull, the one that had made me drawn to her across from a Fayetteville Bar. Staring at her face, especially those eyes, was a bit like seeing the world through those old movie-close ups, where they put a soft filter on everything but a woman’s eyes to make everything look like it was in a dream.

But I had to focus. And when I did, the thing I saw was the growing red mark on her bandages.

“Sit down,” I told her, coming up to grab her by the elbow and help her to the couch.

She flinched away from my touch, and sat down in a pained, groaning movement without my assistance. Stubborn, as always. When she was situated, Bo came over and put his snout on her thigh, and she petted his head, and he moaned in happy contentment.Traitor.

“We’re still married?” I sat beside her on the couch. The drop made the cushions bounce, raising her a little before the old thing settled under our weight. I wiped my face, feeling the roughness of my beard under my palms.

“Do you…” I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say. “Do you have the divorce papers? I’ll… I’ll sign them now.”

Please don’t have the papers.The words popped into my head, even though I didn’t want them to.

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