“You’re not my husband anymore.”
“I intend to change that,” he said flatly.
Chapter 5
Hurry, Jill. You can make it.
Hurry…hurry…HURRY.
But as she unceremoniously left Beau’s house and sped back down the hill to the B & B, where she belonged, she didn’t think she could make it at all. Overhead, the sun had begun its midmorning blaze and the air was thicker now, a humid sludge of unbreathable oxygen, all but useless to her.
Run, Jill!
No. She couldn’t run. Couldn’t risk Beau looking out the window and seeing what he’d reduced her to. If it killed her, and it just might, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction and ammunition of knowing how he affected her. He’d only use it against her the first chance he got.
Almost there. Hang on.
Ahead of her loomed the B & B, her beacon, the only thing saving her from collapsing in the street. For a minute it seemed like it was coming closer, but then her legs slowed down, her lungs emptied out, and her tiny safe haven from Beau remained as unreachable as a rainbow’s end.
Meanwhile, her frantic heart had gone berserk and seemed determined to pump out a thousand erratic beats per minute. The staccato pounded in her tight throat and battled with her breath for supremacy. Neither won, leaving her gasping and panicked.
Passing out on the sidewalk seemed like a real possibility. With the way her luck was running today, she’d fracture her skull on the concrete as she fell, and lapse into a coma before the EMTs came.
Maybe she should sit on the curb and wait for the spell to pass. Or maybe she should drape herself around the mailbox post so the mailman would see and rescue her when he came to deliver today’s batch of bills and catalogs.
No. She could do this.
One more step, Jill. You can do it. And another. Last one.
She staggered up the stairs and through the kitchen door into her refuge, where the cooler air didn’t make one damn bit of difference.
No sign of Blanche, though, thank God. She could really do without any witnesses to this, her first full-blown panic attack in months.
Doubled over now, the walls spinning until only streaks of random colors and patches of sunlight passed before her eyes, she lurched into the dark pantry, slammed the door behind her and hit the cold floor right between the fifty-pound burlap sack of basmati rice and the flour bin.
Put your head between your legs, Jill. Do it.
She did it.
Breathe, Jill. Just breathe. There’s no reason why you can’t.
There was a reason. Beau had unleashed these demons inside her, and now they had her throat in an iron grip trapped inside a cage of paralyzing anxiety.
It was too much. This was all too much: Beau and the B & B, Allegra and single motherhood, making lunch and the guests and the payroll and facing another day after this one.
She couldn’t do it.
She’d made it this far, yeah, and built a so-called new life, but she’d only been faking it, and the jig was up.
Now her horrible truth was out and the whole world would know her ugly and humiliating secret: she was a mess, unworthy of the title of mother or even woman. She couldn’t fake her way through another day.
Breathe, Jill. Just breaaaathe.
The constricting pressure around her chest eased up, just a little.
It was a start. Not a good start, but a start.
Trying again, working from her belly, she sucked in another molecule or two of air and it was a miraculous triumph, the same as giving birth to a healthy child or landing a rover on Mars.
Panting and choked, she wheezed her way to a complete lungful and then another after that, and by then her training kicked in to save her.
Good thoughts, Jill, she reminded herself. Think them.
She thought about Allegra. She thought about spending a day on the beach, splashing in the waves and enjoying the sun’s bright heat on her face. She thought about warm, gooey chocolate-chip cookies with pecans, and the fluffy comfort of her down-covered bed. She thought about all the emotional progress she’d made and how far she’d come.
The tension left her body by slow but sure degrees, and the crushing pressure let up until it no longer flattened her into a dark smudge on the floor. She took another tentative breath, just to be sure, and the lifesaving air didn’t kick and scream its way into her lungs.
And then, just like that, it was over.
But of course it wasn’t over at all because she was still a mess down to the marrow of her soul.
Exhausted, she slumped back and tried to ignore the low shelf of baking products cutting across her kidneys. The world came back to her and she became aware of the distant voices of guests in the foyer…the open and close of the front door…the heavy, rubberized footfall that announced the imminent arrival of Blanche.
Blanche. Oh, no. God help her if Blanche saw her like this.
Calling on the kind of supreme effort that Superman used to fly around the earth’s circumference and reverse time, she heaved herself to her feet and tested out her wobbly knees. They trembled but held.
She was just swiping some of the wetness from her face—she wasn’t sure whether it was sweat or tears and didn’t really want to know—when Blanche came into the kitchen singing, or rather rapping, Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” which was just…wrong.
“Fight, fight, fight the—” Blanche chanted and, without warning, swung the pantry door open, sashayed inside and came up short when she saw Jillian.
Jillian tried to look dignified. Blanche gaped.
Apparently, Blanche couldn’t get a good enough look, because she reached out and flipped the light on. Jillian wasn’t prepared. Wincing, she blinked and covered her eyes. Blanche tsked and jerked Jillian’s hand down.
The women faced off.
Judging from her horrified expression, Blanche knew the worst, but she asked anyway. “Have you had a panic attack?”
Jillian pulled free, flicked off the light and tried to escape before this interrogation reached full swing. “No.”
Blanche didn’t buy the lie, which was no surprise since the woman had the unerring instincts of a baying bloodhound on an escaped convict’s trail. “You’re all wild-eyed and sweaty, missy.” She looked around, as though she expected to see a masked intruder. “What’s going on in here?”
“Nothing.” Jillian smoothed her hair and tried not to sound too defensive. “I was just…you know, checking the supplies and—”
Blanche’s brows inched up toward her artificial hairline. “And—what? You were crying because there weren’t enough tea bags? Don’t kid a kidder, honey. What’s wrong with you?”
Jillian opened her mouth to dodge and deflect, but it wasn’t worth the effort. Why bother? Blanche would know soon enough anyway.
“Beau bought the Foster place.”
Blanche, who knew the rough outlines of the implosion of Jillian’s marriage, if not every gory detail, took this news with appropriate solemnity. With a single sharp nod, she squared her shoulders