Page 10 of The Ex Next Door
“Should we wait outside?” Naomi sat up, sliding a bookmark into place.
“If you want to. It’s a nice enough day, not too hot. We’ll wait outside on the porch together.”
And that’s where Rob found themforty-fiveminutes later.
“Hey, kiddos! Let’s go get us some pizza!” Rob said, swinging open the passenger door.
He was dressed in board shorts, dark shades that hid his eyes, a loose T-shirt and sandals, and didn’t look like anybody’s dad. This was very likely his intent. Amy wore the yoga pants she practically lived in, a dab of smeared peanut butter acrossherT-shirt, hair in a ponytail, looking every bit the harried mother of two.
David and Naomi ran into his open arms.
“Daddy! We missed you.”
“Aw, I missed you too, Pumkin’.” Rob patted Naomi’s head and fist-bumped David.
“I think you should give Mommy a big hug because she worked really hard yesterday,” Naomi said with the honesty only a nine-year-old could manage.
“That’s okay.” Amy held up her palms. “I didn’t mind.”
“Mommy’s fine,” Rob said dismissively. “She’s stronger than you know.”
“Yeah, but good thing our neighbor helped us,” David said. “Becauseyouweren’t here.”
“Little dude, I would have been, but I had to work. Youknow how it is.” The kids buckled up, then Rob shut the rear passenger door and surveyed the house behind her. “So, this is it, huh?”
“It’s all I could afford.” She crossed her arms.
It might be small for all three of them, but she felt protective about the rental her mother had located in town. It was in an older but quaint neighborhood, with working-class people who struggled for everything they had. Sometimes Amy wished she hadn’t gone straight from college to marriage and motherhood. She’d been privileged to stay at home with her children, but it had always been her intent to get her teaching credentials once the kids were in school. She never got around to that, and now she’d never worked outside the home. Her last job had been as a waitress in college.
“Well, I’m up for a raise, and things will be better whenyouget a job.” He tapped the hood of his car.
“I have an interview tomorrow.”
“Oh, hey, good luck!”
A strange sensation pulsed through her. She seemed to be talking to a stranger, and not the man she’d lain next to in bed for years. The man whose children she’d birthed. The man who’d gone down on one knee when he asked her to marry him and cried when she’d said yes.
Whathappenedto that man?
“Of course, once I get a job, we’ll need to pay for childcare. I’ll let you know how much it is.”
Rob frowned. “How much is that going to cost me?”
Amy stiffened. Rob complained about every penny he had to give Amy since he decided he didn’t want to be married anymore.
“I don’t know. How much is the safety of your children worth?”
Rob sighed, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I better go.”
“Yes, you better.” Shame hit her, the feeling she’d crossed a line she promised she would not. Unfortunately, she was bitter. “I’ll see you tonight.”
“It will be late, around nine.”
Amy spent the rest of the day unpacking. In the late afternoon, Mom came over with new princess sheets she’d purchased for Naomi’s bed and soccer ball sheets for David’s. They set up the beds, decorating the rooms the way they’d been at their home.
After her mother left, Amy appraised the work they’d done. This would never look like the home she’d left and even if it did, her children were too smart to be fooled. From now on, their lives would be different.
Her house was so close to Declan’s that she heard his front door slam shut around dinnertime that evening. She looked out the window and there he was, walking to his truck, dressed nicely in slacks and a blue button-up shirt. A sense of melancholy hit her hard and fast, a swift and distant memory of their prom night many years ago.
