By the time she finished scrubbing, vacuuming and washing, her stomach was growling. The yogurt and English muffin she’d eaten for breakfast were long gone and she decided an omelet sounded good. But when she opened the refrigerator to get the eggs, she found the leftover marinara sauce Tony’d made, the wine he liked, the cheese he’d picked out for her to try. On the counter was the cereal he ate for breakfast.
Shit. She was back where she started.
She poured the last of the pot of coffee and called Fiona.
“You still speaking to me?” she asked when her friend answered.
“Of course. Turns out it wasn’t as hard as I expected to fill the news hole. The guy who was next week’s feature had it already to go. I think he’s after my job but right now, I don’t care. I’m off the hook and ready to hear all the juicy details you promised for my big story.”
“With luck, it’ll be in a day or two.” Margo paused. “I suppose you and Mark have plans for tonight.”
There was a long silence. “Mark has plans. I don’t. He’s gone back to Seattle.”
“For the weekend?”
“No, for good.” Before Margo could ask more questions, Fiona said, “It’s a long story. I’m not sure I can go through it right now. But why were you asking about my plans tonight?”
“I’m at loose ends and would like some company. Actually, I need a shoulder to cry on. You available?”
“Men. Honestly. Can’t live without them. Can’t make them behave so you can live with them.” She sighed. “Why don’t you come here? I have a nice bottle of pinot gris and I just put a pan of brownies in the oven. If you don’t come over, I’ll finish off both of them myself and feel awful in the morning. And bring what you need to spend the night.”
Fiona lived in St. Johns, a neighborhood north of downtown Portland, in a one-story, Craftsman-style house, restored to its original beauty by her landlord. Margo loved visiting there. The only drawback was that she usually had to fight Pulitzer, Fiona’s orange marmalade cat, for the leather lounge chair she liked, as well as the office/guest room where she would be sleeping because Pulitzer viewed both as hers.
This time, the cat seemed to know something was wrong because she vacated the chair as soon as Margo walked in and didn’t scratch at her bag when Margo put it on the day bed in the guest room.
Fiona poured each of them a glass of wine, overriding Margo’s objection that it was only four o’clock in the afternoon. They curled up in their respective places in the living room and sipped at the wine.
“Okay,” Fiona said. “Who’s first?”
Margo said, “I’ll go. I have managed to screw up the best relationship I’ve had in years — maybe ever — because it scares me shitless.” She related what had happened before Tony left for Long Beach and they dissected it for a while before Margo said, “Enough. I’ve been wallowing in this for days. Let’s wallow in yours. What happened with Mark?”
“The long and short of it is that the whole time we were together here, he was seeing someone in Seattle. Now, they’re getting married.”
“What? How … ”
“I don’t know if you knew but he went back to Seattle every other weekend. To see his family, he said. He never said what family but I figured he went to see his parents. Turns out, he was visiting his daughter. And her mother.”