Page 24 of Ugly Duckling
“Wow,” Sutton breathed as we turned the corner to my block. “Fancy.”
“Safe,” I returned as I punched in the code that would let us enter the walk-through gate into my subdivision.
The gates were a new addition.
A while ago, Doc’s wife, Searcy, and her sister, Calliope, had come to wreak havoc on my neighbor’s yard for some slight the neighbor’s teenage son had perpetuated. They’d not only forked the guy’s yard, but they’d also poured boxes and boxes of instant mashed potatoes into it, causing thousands of dollars’ worth of damage.
My neighbor had gone to the HOA and forced them to put up a fence to keep the “riffraff” out.
What was even funnier, Searcy and her sister had the code because I’d given it to them.
They’d left my neighbor alone for the most part, but every once in a while, they’d shove a random fork in his yard for funsies.
“It’s that,” she agreed. “This is a big fence. It’s like the type that they use to keep prisoners in the prisons.”
I choked on a laugh. “It sure is.”
“Why so big?” she asked. “It’s decorative, sure. But I would think a normal height would’ve still kept people out.”
“Nothing in this neighborhood is done anything short of grand. If they were going to put a fence up, they were going to put a fence up that beat out everyone else’s fences.”
She hobbled along beside me and changed the subject. “Am I understanding right? You just decided to run that marathon last night?”
I snorted a laugh. “I didn’t decide to do anything. My friend, Cutter, bet me that I couldn’t run one after I said that I could. We went back and forth on it all night while we were drinking, and in the end, he bet me that I couldn’t. I bet that I could. They signed me up for the marathon last night. Milena signed herself up, too. That’s Cutter’s wife. And she brought me my race bib this morning so I wouldn’t back out.”
Sutton shook her head. “I’ve been training to run for years. Though, today was a personal record for me. I have you to thank for that.”
“Is that what you do for a living now? Marathons?” I asked.
I always expected her to go all the way in track. College. Then professional.
“Kind of.” She grimaced. “I trained for the Olympics in the 2400 meter. Made it to the last Olympics. Placed fifth overall. Barely missed the second qualifying because I was sick as a dog. Now I’m training for likely my last one.” She took a swift breath. “I’m not sure my heart is in it anymore. After this”—she gestured to her face—“I did a lot of self-reflection. I realized that I wasn’t really passionate about it anymore like I used to be. My priorities have changed.”
“Enter the marathons,” I guessed.
“Last year, I’d gotten a little bit over my fiancé. I thought…I needed a break. So I started to go on longer and longer runs. I was up to a hundred miles a week when we got married and this happened.”
I couldn’t stop myself from asking my next question. “If you felt that way about your fiancé…why did you go and marry him?”
She looked away, her eyes studying my living room with all the toys and clothes strewn everywhere. “I wanted kids. I wanted a husband. I guess maybe I just didn’t care that much about the type of person my husband was. I just was so desperate to have them that I was willing to do just about anything—like marrying a man I kind of sort of loved.” She looked at me then, stared me straight in the eyes, and said, “And let’s be honest, Gunner. I wasn’t that attractive. I was lucky to have someone who liked me well enough to give me kids, anyway.”
That made me angry.
“Sutton…”
The knock at the door had me glancing over, and my words stilling on my lips.
“Down!”
I let Lottie down and went to the door to answer it.
I wasn’t surprised to find Webber with Sutton’s bag in his hand.
He was a nosy little bitch, and as our club president, he had his finger on all the pulses.
He was literally the nosiest out of all of us.
“Brought this and the car.” He held out the bag and the keys.
