Her Name Was Annie by Beth Rinyu (the little red hen read aloud txt) 📕

“How much cheese from that pizza did Kara give him?” Jack asked.

“You would know better than me. You were the one who was on the frontline cleaning it up.”

Jack came to my rescue when I started to gag over the initial cleanup. Once it was picked up and taken outside to the trash, I gave it a second round of cleaning with the mop.

“Thanks for that, by the way. I’m pretty sure I would have been cleaning up puke along with dog crap if you weren’t here.”

“Well, I feel kind of responsible for not warning you that she was bringing him here.”

“Yeah…about that?” I shook my head and looked over at Max curled up on his bed that Kara had brought along with her. “He’s literally all pooped out.” We both busted out with laughter over my lame joke. “I think we earned a glass of wine. What do you think?”

“I think you earned yourself a glass of wine. I did a little more of the hard labor…so I’m thinking some Jack and Coke for me.”

“Well, you just happen to be in luck. I have a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the cabinet.”

“Wait, since when do you drink Jack Daniel’s?”

“It was some stupid gift exchange we did at work last year for Christmas. I was the last one who got to pick and kind of got stuck with it. I put it up in the cabinet and forgot about it.”

“I thought maybe you were changing it up to the hard stuff.”

“Never!” I said, making my way to the refrigerator to get out the bottle of Coke. “Is diet okay?”

“That’s fine,” he replied.

I stood on my tippy-toes, reaching for the bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the cabinet overhead. Jack shooed me out of the way, grabbing the bottle with no effort at all. He fixed his drink while I opened a bottle of wine and poured myself a glass.

We made our way into the living room and I turned on the fireplace. After taking a seat on the love seat opposite Jack, who was on the couch, I grabbed the remote and flicked on the TV for some background noise to drown out any silence.

“So, any more news about the man?” I asked.

“No, not anything so far. I know the family was contacted. They’re retracing his last couple of days, trying to figure out who he may have been in contact with and where he was staying. Anything that may help them figure out what led him to do what he did. His family is trying to keep it under wraps because of his brother’s political ties, so they’re not making it very easy for the investigation. The detective on the case told me he’d keep me informed if he finds out any more.”

“That’s so sad. The man drowned either on purpose or by accident and all his family is worried about is keeping up appearances. You would think they would want answers more than anyone as to why this happened.”

Jack arched his eyebrow. “I guess politicians live a whole different way than the rest of us.”

“I guess.” I shrugged and took a gulp of wine.

“You changed the color in here.”

It had been well over two years since I’d given my living room a mini makeover, which included changing the shade on my walls from a dull tan to a grayish beige, but since Jack didn’t come around much these days, he wouldn’t have noticed it. This was technically still half his house in the legal sense. After we divorced, Jack bought a condo closer to his job, about forty miles north of us, while he continued to pay the mortgage on this house. He said he didn’t want to disrupt Kara’s life by making her move out of the only home she ever knew. I knew he was sincere with that notion, but I think a little bit of it had to do with his own guilt over how our marriage had ended. The house was now paid off, and I was seriously thinking about putting it on the market, so Jack could have his half of the investment he had paid on for so long. It was too big for just me, and if I was being honest, I felt lonely when I was here all by myself, conjuring up memories of when Kara was a little girl and Jack was still around.

“Yeah, got new furniture too,” I replied.

“Looks nice.”

I downed my glass of wine and took his almost empty glass from his hand to top him off with some more. We were veering toward small talk, and that was the last thing I wanted. I was hoping that maybe some more alcohol would loosen us up to talk more freely and comfortable, like we used to before we had a little thing called divorce between us.

After a bottle of wine for me and about four more Jack and Cokes for Jack, we had bypassed the small talk and gone right into deeper conversation. I found myself laughing like I used to when he’d tell a funny story, and he seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say, instead of being off someplace else like he had been toward the end of our marriage. The conversation finally began to die down and out of nowhere I whispered, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Being there for my mom’s funeral. I know I was kind of cold to you that day, and I’m sorry. You didn’t have to be there and you were.” That had been something that bothered me for the past year. I had felt guilty for the way I behaved toward him that day, and I felt the need to get it off my chest. I was more shocked than angered when he showed up. He did have every right to be there. She was his daughter’s grandmother as well as his mother-in-law at one time. Jack and my mother always had a good