0 to 60

0 to 60

Susan Slater

Get another Susan Slater book FREE—click here to find out how!

Chapter One

I have a love child.

Ed, I don’t have time for games. OK, OK, give me a hint. Movie? Novel? She continued to slip his tux from its protective covering, twist the hanger handle perpendicular, and stretch to secure it over the closet door. She smiled. They hadn’t played a version of What’s That Line? for years. But back when things were simple—before children, a demanding job with a six-figure salary—they’d open a bottle of wine and just be together. Would it be like that again now that he was retiring?

She glanced at the man sitting on the edge of the bed holding two socks under the dim light of the table lamp. Were they both black? It would matter to him. She distinctly remembered packing two black.

Let me check them in natural light. She reached out, but he pulled away and dropped the socks on the floor.

It doesn’t matter. He put his face in his hands, then abruptly dropped them to his lap. Shelly, I’m not playing a game. I’m not playing games any more.

All right. But you have to get dressed. A note of concern thinned her voice.

Time was slipping away. There would be five hundred people in the ballroom downstairs in less than an hour to celebrate Dr. Edward Sinclair’s retirement. And their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, not to mention her sixtieth birthday of last week. Milestones. Were they coming faster now? All bunched together in some ominous package?

No, she couldn’t think that way. This was another beginning—maybe the best one so far. Certainly one they had both looked forward to.

Darling, are you feeling all right? She leaned in, touched his cheek, and felt him tense. Now concern hovered in a line lightly etched, but no doubt permanently embedded, across her brow. Just more lines to match the faint tic-tac-toe grids at the corners of her eyes. And just another reason to think about cosmetic surgery and to lengthen her bangs in the meantime.

God damn it, Shelly. Sit down.

I forgot the sheeting on table six. It has a tear. She reached for the phone. His hand quickly covered the receiver.

Don’t. Leave it. Just listen to me.

If you knew how much I have to do … She let the sentence trail off. What was wrong? The air in the room seemed stale. She looked for a thermostat—prominent in most hotel rooms, but not this one. Would a window open?

I won’t be celebrating tonight. I won’t be going downstairs. I won’t be going on the cruise Monday morning. I thought I could go through with this but I can’t … I’d just be prolonging the inevitable.

He sat staring at the floor. Shelly waited, almost afraid to breathe. What did he mean he wasn’t going on the cruise? They’d had tickets for six months.

Shelly, I’ve asked someone to marry me.

Marry? You … you have a wife. Her stomach fluttered and she swallowed twice. What was he talking about?

You’ll get pretty much what you ask for.

Ask for? She could hear her breath coming in labored spurts. Deep breaths. Breathe in, breathe out. This was a joke. Maybe if she moved … got air in the room … she walked toward the window.

I won’t cheat you. You can have the house—I suggest selling it and investing the money. I can’t imagine you wanting to keep it up or even live there, for that matter.

It’s our home. We built it. The window didn’t budge. Locked down tight. Guess they didn’t want you to jump —though it was beyond her how much damage you could do from the second floor. Still, at the moment …

Shelly, look at me. The house has outlived its usefulness.

She swung back around but kept a hand on the windowsill. Balance. She had to keep her balance. Her hands were suddenly so cold and numb she barely felt the metal. Maybe if she closed her eyes this would all go away. When she opened them Ed would be smiling, standing at her side, murmuring his appreciation for all she’d done in planning the party …

She looked at him sitting on the edge of the bed, averting his gaze, not able to look her in the eye. Instantly, a flicker of anger squashed the queasiness and began to restore warmth to her fingers. This was not a dream; the bastard was dumping her—discarding her like used clothing. Choosing a night of celebration to do so. Well, he wouldn’t see her fall apart. Somehow she wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. She forced her shoulders back, her head up and willed her voice not to crack.

A house is like a family member, Ed. The neighborhood … all our friends … it doesn’t outlive its reason for being.

I’m giving you two million dollars. You can go where you want, build or buy what you want. I suggest something modest and invest the rest—it has to last you for awhile.

And you? She was amazed at her steely, emotionless tone.

I bought a house a few years back. It’s in a good school district.

What does a good school district have to do with anything?

I have a four-year-old daughter, Shel. I have a love child.

You also have two sons, Ed. Maybe a reminder of family would bring him to his senses.

At twenty-eight and thirty-three, I think they stopped needing me a long time ago.

Is that what this is all about? Being needed? Had she not been paying attention? Not noticed the possible hurt of an aging father when sons established their own lives?

I don’t need an armchair psych diagnosis. I fell in love; we’ve had a child together and we’re going to establish a home for our daughter.

Just like that? Out with the old, in with the new? Anger again sparked from nowhere but she worked to keep tears in check and her voice strong.

We haven’t had a relationship for a long time.

How can you say that? You’re my husband.

A husband is not a relationship.

Silence. She swallowed, then, Do I know her?

Yes.

She waited. Well?

Shelly, I really think the less we talk about this, the better. Paul Green is handling the details. You can get your own lawyer, but I don’t see why you’d want to waste the money. There won’t be anything to contest.

Nothing to contest?

I said earlier I’ll be generous.

Who is she? Why was he dodging the question? Shelly was mentally running down a list of their friends— who was single, who had shown interest—but for the life of her, not one name popped out. Almost all their friends were married—and happily so. But, she thought ruefully, wouldn’t they have said the same about the Sinclairs?

He looked away, then back. Tiffany.

She choked back a laugh. Oh, come on. This is a joke, isn’t it? The receptionist? She’s twenty-four? Twenty-five? And an insult, but she bit back the words.

Twenty-four.

You’re sixty-three.

I don’t have to be reminded.

I thought men had midlife crises in their forties.

I wouldn’t call this a crisis—we’re very much in love.

My God, she’s thirty-nine years younger.

I don’t think age matters.

I never thought I’d wake up at sixty to realize the secret to happiness was perky boobs and elastic skin. Because that was the only thing the trailer-trash tart had that she didn’t. What had happened to valuing a partner’s years of support? Of growing old together with shared memories of family? This wasn’t a level playing field.

She watched Ed shrug. Whatever, Shel. I’m leaving now. Say what you want downstairs or have an announcement made. Our friends will understand.

What is there to understand? A sixty-three-year-old man gets his jollies with a twenty-four-year-old—is going to marry a twenty-four-year-old—and all should be forgiven.

There’s nothing to forgive.

Then overlooked—maybe that’s a better word. When you attend dinner parties with Miss Pop-Tart by your side, our friends will just pretend nothing has happened. Tell me, are you going to get her teeth fixed, or is she going to continue to look like trailer trash?

I won’t listen to this. Tiffany has been disadvantaged—never had the breaks we’ve had. I intend to rectify that.

I just bet you do. You don’t see money as a motivator in all this?

Tiffany and I have been together for five years. We’re confident of our love. I’m through discussing something you don’t understand.

Oh, I understand all right. You fucked a nineteen-year-old who had a baby at twenty. All when you were the ripe old age of fifty-eight and all behind the back of your wife. It was amazing how good the anger felt when it surfaced.

I’m out of here, Shelly. I won’t listen to that kind of language.

Room service. A couple firm raps accentuated the young-sounding voice outside the door.

Well, it must be the clowns. Right on cue. I’ll just send them in. Shelly stepped forward, the anger bubbling like the bile riding up the back of her throat with no place to go.

What are you talking about?

You wouldn’t have a clue. Oh, shit. The champagne—I’d wanted to toast the start of our new life.

Not totally inappropriate.

Fuck you.

She grabbed her purse, opened the door, pushed past the cart with a silver ice bucket, champagne flutes, and assorted canapés, then took the stairs to the parking garage. He’d parked next to her. The sleek black Porsche screamed midlife crisis. Her car, a station wagon overflowing with gifts and table decorations. Table decorations! Oh my God, she’d totally forgotten … fifty miniature love boats and scantily clad, plastic, bobble-headed natives in grass skirts. And the sprays of orchids …

She dug in her purse for the spare set of keys to the Carrera. Somehow it just wasn’t her problem anymore.

Chapter Two

She prayed he wouldn’t come home that night. She couldn’t have stood it. But just in case, she sat in the driveway a long time in the fading light, making sure she could get away—back out and rush up the street before she had to see him again. Him. She wasn’t even allowing herself to use his name. How could this be the end to a life together? Thirty-five years had to mean more. And then inertia set in. She couldn’t have moved if she’d had to. Only her mind continued to grind away and entertain little voices that said, You knew. You had to have known. Think of the trips … solo … reasons why you couldn’t go, too.

She looked at the house that sat on a slight upward slope above her. The entry was arched with pottery urns on either side. She’d nixed Tara-like columns. Too ostentatious—too un-New Mexico. Though now columns were everywhere. The edges of Corrales, an established township abutting Albuquerque on the northwest, were dotted with stuccoed monstrosities that sported the ever-popular Ionic, Doric, or Corinthian sentinels supporting fake balconies, narrow overhangs, or sweeping porches. No, she was pleased there were no columns. Still, the house was a monster with its three-stall garage and huge second story. A mixture of adobe look-alike flat-roofed construction with a quarry stone entrance. Not a house a single person would want to rattle around in. Not a house for someone alone.

The bigger questions—what would being alone mean? how would it define her life now?—didn’t surface. Couldn’t surface through the paralysis. She wallowed in the anger, let it take over—she was so afraid of the alternative. She was sixty and back to zero. There was something ominous about zero. But hadn’t she gotten to where she was in record time? Zero to sixty in seconds, or so it seemed. So, what had happened to her life? Where had it gone? What was there to show for an investment of thirty-five years? Besides two children now well established and on their own. What had happened to her in that time—how had she lost touch with herself?

She shivered. The March evening had a touch of coolness—spring could come late 5000 feet above sea level. She watched the lights of Albuquerque twinkle on below her. Eventually she felt strong enough to get out of the car, but not strong enough to open the garage, park the car, and walk into the house. Lights on timers blinked on—upper hallway, a downstairs bathroom … the kitchen. For all the world, the house looked warm and inviting, like happy people lived there.

How could he do this to her? What gave him the right to start a new life? Leave her behind while he did it? And with someone thirty-nine years younger. She remembered when Tiffany applied for the job. A refugee from Oklahoma where her father did some ranching when he wasn’t in jail for beating up her mother. A strange child with a hint of baby chubbiness under the oversized sweater, taffy-colored hair pulled severely into a bun—to look older? Or tame its wiriness? She hadn’t graduated from high school but had a GED and begged for a chance. She wanted into the field of medicine. Receptionist/file clerk in a pathology lab hardly seemed to qualify, but she was adamant. Promised she would prove herself.

Shelly couldn’t help but smile at the irony of that. So, when had it happened? When had Tiffany stopped being a lost kid and become her husband’s lover? It had been Shelly’s decision to hire her—at least, she gave the final nod. And that first week of November weather, with Tiffany wearing white fisherman sandals in the winter’s first snow, it dawned on everyone that she didn’t have another pair of shoes. Allison, the lab manager, remedied that with a pair of hand-me-down boots and sturdy brown loafers. Not the height of fashion, but warm and almost new. If Tiffany knew they had belonged to Allison’s recently deceased mother, she didn’t let on, but burst into tears at the largesse that was soon followed by hand-me-down skirts and blouses and a really stylish mauve peacoat. The last had been Shelly’s contribution—one of those mail-order Bloomingdale’s items that had been too small and somehow just never got returned.

Funny how she had always felt so sorry for Tiffany— the prominent, misshapen, stained front teeth with lips that couldn’t quite close over them but formed a rosebud opening—sort of nature’s Botox. Alluring? Maybe. But it was her eyes—huge, liquid ice-blue with lashes you wanted to tug on to insure they weren’t glued in place. They were difficult to get past. As if God had given her one completely arresting feature in an otherwise nondescript, dumpy package. Sort of a Here kid, the rest is up to you. If the stakes were different, Shelly would be applauding her success. But she was realizing that there were limits to sisterhood.

To be fair, Shelly couldn’t fault her for not trying. Tiffany worked hard; she took direction and, once comfortable, offered to help others when paperwork in the lab got backed up. The pregnancy surprised everyone. The two-days-a-week bookkeeping stint in the back room kept the doctor’s wife current on the gossip. No one had seen evidence of a boyfriend. There was a lot of speculation—everything from immaculate conception to the possibility that the greasy-haired boy who picked her up every night after work wasn’t really her brother.

But then the baby came. Sweet, perfect Marissa. Tiffany ran home three times a day to breastfeed until Shelly put a stop to it and had her just bring the baby into the office. Her sons’ baby sister, half sister. Almost a member of the family—and she had been clueless.

She thought of the night when Marissa was a toddler and she’d offered to babysit while Tiffany ran errands. Ed was furious that Shelly had brought her home. Said that the house wasn’t childproof, there were too many dangers. He’d locked their twelve-year-old golden retriever in the garage—just in case. In case of what? The baby was enthralled with Sunny’s long silken coat. And Sunny hadn’t wanted to leave the child’s side. Shelly’d laughed at Ed’s protectiveness—just a male’s reaction to the vulnerability of a tiny female. But she never brought her into the house again.

Even then, was there a flag on that entry in her brain’s Rolodex? Something not quite right. Overreaction. Far too protective? Anger out of proportion with the deed?

This wasn’t getting her through the front door, and standing in the middle of the drive was losing its appeal. The orange of the sky had turned a pale peach that outlined the underside of wispy gray clouds. A new moon showed up between the two towering blue spruce that held court to her left. Didn’t this beginning phase always herald starting with a clean slate? Not starting over to, perhaps, reinvent the past, but starting new—fresh, something uncharted— whether she wanted to or not?

The garage lay bathed in shadows. She made a mental note to check the motion sensors; the driveway should have been illuminated when she pulled in. But she was certain that there would be a hundred small fix-it items—things that would have to be done before the house could be put on the market. Funny. She remembered standing on this spot thirty-five years ago—just six months before the wedding and Ed’s graduation. The area later named Sandia Heights. Above the city nestled among chamisa and scrub brush at the base of the mountains. It took a Jeep to maneuver the roughed-out roads. The lot had been a little beyond their means with Ed still in school, so his parents had stepped in and bought it for them as a wedding present.

The elder Sinclairs—moneyed, snobbish, controlling, and now dead. A car accident with Mame, at eighty-three, driving the wrong way up an off-ramp in heavy California traffic. Still amazing how she did it, how she could have reached 75 miles per hour in the Lincoln Town boat in such a short distance to careen off one car and projectile launch them at a semi.

Ed had been devastated—because he lost a father who always had to have the last word, or because both their deaths boosted him to senior status within the family unit and heralded an impending end to his life, too? She suspected the latter. Interesting. It would have been about the time that he’d taken up with Tiffany.

What would his parents have thought of Tiffany? Would Ed be marrying her if they were still alive? Probably not. Shelly in her twenties had been crushed when she overheard Mame say that what Shelly lacked in breeding she’d make up for by being a solid mother. She almost laughed. It would have been worth it to see how Mame would have gotten past Tiffany’s teeth. How many times had she heard Mame with her horse-perfect incisors say, Teeth reflect breeding? Could she have stood to have the Sinclair blood mixed with Oklahoma crude?

And her own parents. With a start she realized she’d have to call them. But not tell them anything. At ninety and ninety-two, they just wouldn’t be able to comprehend. And Pam, the only sibling, twelve years younger and light-years different—she’d have to tell her. None of the telling would be easy. She knew she would very quickly tire of having to go over and over and over the story ad nauseum.

She left the Porsche in the driveway. There was no need to see Ed to exchange cars. He could just come by and trade. And she knew he would. The joke had been that he’d bring the car into the bedroom to sleep with it if he could. He loved the car that much.

She leaned back in its window, pushed the garage opener on the visor, and was appalled when the door’s slow roll upward revealed, inch by inch, box after stacked box of … what? Did she even know anymore what packed the stall that held Ed’s abandoned projects—a potter’s wheel, woodworking tools, two sets of seldom-used golf clubs? Would she have to go through those boxes? Couldn’t she just hire a backhoe and shovel them into a trash bin? How do you move from someplace that you’ve lived for thirty-five years?

But she knew she would move. The house felt more like a traitor than a friend, not a safe harbor anymore, just a reminder of what had ended. Was the house part of the two-million settlement? Or an addition? Just the beginning of a myriad of questions—that her lawyer could answer. Stephanie Brooks came to mind. She’d call her on Monday. But she’d call the boys over the weekend. And Patrice. Good friends could be as important as family.

She hit the button to lower the garage door and walked through the utility room to the kitchen. The house was so quiet. As she climbed the stairs, she didn’t even glance at the chronologically placed photos in matching frames that stretched across the mantle. It wasn’t time to face what had been.

At their bedroom door she caught her breath. Ties unknowingly dropped trailed between walk-in closet and bed. Underwear apparently deemed not up to snuff lay discarded in a heap on the floor, likewise, several work shirts, and a pair of chinos. Hangers were everywhere. She looked in the closet—the gun safe was empty. Shoes, other than throwaways, gone. And the Wyeth watercolor above the bed, gone—only a faint outline where it had hung. Likewise, two others by lesser-knowns. She had spent the afternoon at the hotel overseeing preparations while her home was being ransacked.

But what had she expected? Did she think she’d be able to follow him from room to room, exclaiming over this piece or that, debating why she should keep it or give it to the boys? Maybe that would come, but she wasn’t sure. A book closed, a door slammed. Ed had moved out. Just like that, he was gone. This felt so final—so carefully planned and so final.

The phone rang. She ignored it, even when it didn’t stop but call after call started and, without a pause, linked to another in some unending jingle of bells. Her cell was off, but no doubt it was going through the same electronic gymnastics, storing far more messages than she was interested in retrieving. Their friends would have left the hotel by now, unanswered questions keeping them gathered here and there in the parking garage. How could she reiterate, time after countless time, what had happened? But starting tomorrow morning, that would be her litany. Fodder for the curious.

She switched off the bedroom light, then on again long enough to grab her pillow. Then grimaced. Patchouli. The scent Ed bathed in. Everything was steeped in it—bed sheets, pillowcases, duvet. She’d sleep on the couch tonight and get an apartment tomorrow. She could not—would not—stay in this house.

The couch was