Part One.
Heather sighed as she folded the clean laundry and stared despondent at the old analogue clock on the basement wall. It read a quarter to seven in the morning and already she felt as though the ticking second hand was shaving curls off the rest of her life like a slowly whirling whittling tool.
She knew she should be happy. Told herself that things were better here in Pittsburgh. Asked herself how many middle-aged women got a second chance at marriage and a stable future with a dependable man?
Dependable.
Was that the best she could come up with for her new husband Paul?
Had she donned the white dress, said "I do" and relocated her entire existence from Plainview, Nebraska to the East Coast for "dependable?"
It sure felt like it as she folded his tighty-whities and paired his business socks into the wicker basket by her elbow. That had only been a year ago, how had the passion and excitement evaporated so quickly? Leaving her struggling with... well,
dependable.
Perhaps Heather had been too keen, desperate even? Plainview was the prototypical mid-west country town hidden behind miles of swaying green and gold cornfields deep in the heart of the cornhusk state. The population barely broke four digits and the most exciting event of the year was the Klown Festival held by the Plainview Doll Museum every June.
That kind of said everything anyone needed to about the place.
But it was where she had been born, schooled, knocked up by her hightailing high-school sweetheart and raised her beloved daughter Gemma. Plainview was where Heather had earned her BA in business accounting (online of course) and took over managing the Hillcrest Motel on North Fifth. It wasn't the Hilton by any means, only a squat brick slab of ten tidy rooms bordering the highway but it was where she met Paul.
Heather sighed and placed another neatly folded business shirt into the laundry basket.
Paul had seemed so different, dare she say dashing, when compared to the weathered farmers and fieldhands that made up the vast majority of the small town's ninety-eight percent sunbleached population.
He looked to have a touch of the Spaniard in his heritage--was that okay to say? Heather was never certain--with his thick, black curls and dark chocolate eyes. He wore chino trousers and sports jackets instead of the unavoidable denim and hard-wearing flannel. Paul was an engineer from the Big Smoke and had stayed at the motel for three months while on contract with Husker AG, performing skilled maintenance on the looming ethanol plant on the outskirts of town.
The beginnings of their whirlwind romance had been more akin to a gentle stirring breeze.
Paul had checked in and asked for the best place to grab breakfast. Heather had told him about Serendipity on Locust Ave and recommended the snickerdoodle coffee. She hadn't missed the appreciative looks he gave her mature corn-fed curves and shiny golden hair before thanking her and accepting the key to his room. His hand had lingered on hers for a while longer than necessary.
The next day Paul thanked her as he passed reception, leaving a steaming take-away cup of the famously sweet morning brew on the desk for Heather on his way to work.
They had struck up idle conversation each morning and most evenings as they both came and went about their daily schedules. Slowly opening to each other through mutual attraction and finding common ground to tread together. Paul was a widower with a son starting college where Heather was a single mother with a daughter nearing graduation at veterinary school.
"She must be both clever and beautiful with a mother like you." He had commented with a wink after she spouted proudly over Gemma's accomplishments.
Flirting had been fun.
Heather had forgotten the delayed gratification of making herself up and dressing down a little to catch a particular man's eye. The rougher sorts in town weren't the type to appreciate the extra effort. She had gone shopping for a few crisp white blouses and a new gray pencil skirt that hugged her fuller figure nicely. Heather had even gone so far as to replace her old horn-rimmed glasses with some trendy wire frames and started wearing her long hair up, just so she could let it down when she spotted him staring.
Sexy librarian was still a thing, right? She had tried looking it up online and nearly died of embarrassment at some of the search results.
Casual flirting rapidly snowballed into semi-serious dating, including some daring heavy petting on a picnic blanket in front of the bandshell at the annual harvest festival.
Then inevitably... sex.
A torrid, if admittedly brief, evening of fumbling, giggly intercourse after a shared bottle of wine at Mary's Steakhouse marked their first joining. They were both out of practice but had remained clear-headed enough to use protection and it had felt... nice. As much to be desired by such an empathetic kindred spirit, if not necessarily from the pleasurable sensations of the physical act itself.
It had still been a mid-life sexual reawakening for Heather and opened libidinous floodgates shut far too long. Who knew that stealing time for frantic little quickies in your lunch break could be so much fun?
But the end of Paul's work contract had hung like the sword of Damocles over their budding relationship. They were both aware that their time together was finite and told each of as much until a week before the dreaded date of departure when Paul had pushed aside a young couple at check-in, dropped to one knee and asked her to marry him.
The rest had been history.
Depressingly recent history.
Heather placed a second stack of crisply folded clothing atop the first, lifted the basket onto her wide hip and headed for the basement stairs.
The honeymoon period had ended almost as fast as the honeymoon they didn't have time for. It was as though the fragile snowglobe of Plainview in which their romance had bloomed had shattered when Paul brought her back to Pittsburgh, splintering apart as the reality of his home and demands of his professional life returned to him.
He had introduced her to his son Sean, a handsome younger image of Paul who was home for the semester break from college, in the most awkward way possible. Heather had quickly sensed a rift between the two, probably caused by the premature death of Paul's wife and Sean's mother. Cancer was a terrible burden on a family and she could tell that the two men had been scarred badly by the tragic loss.
Heather had done the best she could.
She was a stranger in a strange land. Ripped from her country-life comfort zone and dropped into a metropolitan melting pot of people, art and culture for which she was woefully unprepared. Only her regular calls and messages to her more socially savvy daughter Gemma had kept Heather afloat on the unfamiliar tide of Big City life.
