The Far End of Happy Read online

  An adorable two-bedroom, one-bath, over-the-garage apartment popped up. The wood floors would be a plus with the boys’ allergies. Beverly could almost pretend it would be fun to help Ronnie decorate it. But no dogs. No point mentioning this one. Leaving the dog with Jeff was not negotiable, Ronnie had said. When she adopted Max, she had committed to caring for him for his entire life; she would not leave him behind.

  The listings proved what Beverly feared: her thirty-five-year-old daughter simply wanted too much.

  The knot between Beverly’s shoulders loosened. One more day without a workable solution was one more that kept Ronnie and Jeff in the same house, where they might find a way to address their differences. That may be the biggest help she could offer.

  Lately it seemed Ronnie was more dedicated to her dog than she was to the husband she’d vowed to love for the rest of her life. And she’d done so before God and a church full of witnesses, a snag Beverly had cleverly circumvented with her own marriages, one officiated at sea and the other two in front of a judge. Still. Beverly looked down at the ring with the tiny diamond she’d never removed from her hand. A promise should mean something.

  Beverly had been emotionally invested in Ronnie and Jeff’s relationship from the start. The summer after her college graduation, Ronnie had been so depressed that Beverly splurged for a nice dinner out for the two of them. Ronnie’s degree from Fordham had her ready to “take the world of journalism by storm”—whatever that meant—but left her unprepared to find a job that would pay for the smallest of New York apartments. How could any of them have known that in four short years, the college major offering an on-ramp to a career highway would dwindle to a narrow path as articles that once garnered income were now posted on blogs for free? Ronnie’s return to Beverly’s apartment, and full-time work at the Valley View restaurant, was a one-way street heading the wrong way.

  When surf and turf failed to cheer her daughter, Beverly thought it would be a kick to take her over to have a drink at the hotel bar Jeff tended. Back when Ronnie was a child and Jeff was in college she had adored him, and she hadn’t seen him in ages.

  The hotel was busy that Friday, and she and Ronnie had taken the last two stools at the big U-shaped bar, watching Jeff locate every bottle by muscle memory. He opened coolers, poured drinks, tapped beer, slid napkins, and pocketed tips without one wasted movement, all while looking debonair in a tux shirt and vest. He was only five years younger than Beverly, she’d once realized, although since he was her best friend Janet’s son, she had always thought of him as a generation removed. He was lonely, she knew, since his first wife had left him. Not that Jeff ever mentioned it. It was something in his eyes. She’d seen that same look once before in a rescue shelter, and Beverly had taken the little dog home with her.

  “Hello, Bev.” When Beverly had showings in the area she often stopped in; Jeff set a Manhattan in front of her before she even ordered. He then slipped a napkin in front of Ronnie. “And what would you like, ma’am?”

  “I’d like you to recognize me, for one thing,” Ronnie said.

  Jeff had cocked his head, thought a moment, then flashed her his broad, gap-toothed smile. “No—Little Ronnie?”

  “Well, no one calls me that anymore.”

  He allowed his gaze to dip. “I can see why not.”

  Beverly hid her smile by sipping her drink.

  Her daughter’s face had pinked right up, but she’d kept her gaze steady.

  “Been back in town long?”

  “What town?” They’d both laughed. Both Bartlesville, where Jeff lived, and Potts Forge, where Ronnie was staying with her mother, were rural post offices more than towns. “I’d heard you worked at a grain brokerage, selling corn to chip companies or something.”

  “I did, but this hotel has a busy banquet schedule. The money was too good to pass up.” Jeff had leaned his elbows onto the bar and gazed into her eyes. “Keeping tabs on me, are you?”

  Okay, maybe he didn’t do the elbow leaning—Jeff was nothing but classy and professional behind the bar—but that’s how Beverly remembered it. And just as she’d hoped, she solved her daughter’s blues. Within a year, she was walking Ronnie down the aisle and into Jeff’s arms.

  Since then she’d been watching Ronnie’s marriage from the stands, first cheering then biting nails, hoping her team would go the distance. And what better team to root for than her brilliant daughter and her best friend’s son? Those kids were so in love they’d even made their mothers happier people.

  After all, people meant to be together should not be separated. Beverly felt enough regret for all of them on that score, as might several of her husbands. If only Ronnie could see Jeff safely through whatever personal crisis he’s been going through lately, Beverly thought while shutting down her computer, there would still be hope.

  For Jeff—and for them all.

  Beverly’s smartphone vibrated in her back pocket, prodding her from her chair. A request for a second showing, she hoped. She kept telling her clients the housing market was looking up yet was still waiting for evidence that this was true. But no, it was her daughter’s ever-smiling face that popped up.

  “Hello, Sunshine.”

  “Mom, I need you to come to the farm right now.”

  The panic in Ronnie’s voice gripped her. “Okay.”

  “Jeff was going to leave today, but it isn’t going right and I’ve got a full day at the store and the boys will miss the bus and—”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “I don’t have time to explain—”

  “Ronnie. Let me get my jacket. I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”

  8:00 a.m.

  ronnie

  Ronnie hung up the phone and heard the flip of the dead bolt.

  Andrew yelled, “Mom!”

  Ronnie rounded the corner to see Will, skinny and determined, push through the door.

  “Will, get back here!” Ronnie shouted.

  “We can’t let him drive!”

  For some reason, after Jeff shut the trunk, he had not come to the house but was weaving his way toward the driver’s side door. Will was right—they couldn’t let him drive. One swerve and he’d bowl down children arriving at their bus stops.

  Ronnie burst through the door and chased after Will, who stood outside the open car door, saying, “Give me the keys, Dad.” Jeff ignored him—ignored his own frantic son—and started the car. Ronnie thrust her arm past Jeff, intent on pulling the keys from the ignition. Her hand was inches away from a small cooler, a large bottle of vermouth, a larger one of whiskey, a spilled carton of cigarettes—and a shotgun leaning against the seat.

  Oh god, no. Had Will seen all that?

  Jeff put the car in drive and let it roll forward. Ronnie moved along with it, hit the gearshift, and threw it in park. Booze sloshed in plastic mugs in the cup holders. Jeff’s head bumped against hers, but Ronnie was able to extract the keys. Jeff lurched from the car to take them back and soon Ronnie, Will, and Jeff were pinching and scratching to get ahold of the keys.

  Andrew stood on the front porch, as still as one of its columns. “Mom, what should I do?” he shouted.

  Ronnie answered, “Call 911 and tell them your father’s trying to drive drunk.”

  She had to put an end to this. Ronnie clawed at Jeff’s eyeglasses and threw them, hoping he was intoxicated enough that the vision change might disorient him. In the moment when Jeff watched his glasses skid across the top of the car, Ronnie smashed the back of his hand against the door frame. He released the keys.

  “I’ve got them. Will, run inside!”

  When they reached the house, Ronnie pushed Will through the door, causing him to stumble on the threshold. She heard Jeff on their heels. When he lunged for the screen door, Ronnie looked back at the man she’d vowed to love forever and kicked him in the ribs.

  Jeff stu
mbled but steadied himself against the open screen door, his blue eyes looking up at hers in shock. As if she’d shot him, and he’d seen his own blood. Kick through the board, she heard Andrew’s Tae Kwon Do instructor say. She kicked again, harder, and down he went. Ronnie slipped through the door and threw the dead bolt.

  Ronnie and Will stood inside the door, facing Jeff. What the hell had she just done?

  “Fuck you,” Jeff said, flipping Ronnie the finger. “If you won’t let me drive, I’ll kill myself right here.” He strode back toward the car.

  Ronnie pulled Will back, knocking over the viola case. His body heaved with shivers, as if he’d been submerged in icy water. She turned him toward her and warmed his face in her palms. “Will? Are you okay, baby?”

  He pushed her away and ran to the window by the stairs, still trembling so hard Ronnie was shocked his legs could move. She followed and saw Jeff rooting in the car. Behind her, Andrew said, “Mom, they want to talk to you.” Ronnie pulled Will from the window and into the kitchen, where an L-shaped bank of cabinets would keep them out of sight.

  “Mrs. Farnham? I’m the 911 dispatcher.” The man spoke in a firm, steady voice. After Ronnie verified their address, he said, “Your son has reported a domestic disturbance. Help is already on its way. I understand your husband is attempting to drive while intoxicated. What’s going on right now?”

  Ronnie relayed what had happened so far, panting for air. When she got to the part about Jeff pulling tubing from the tailpipe, Will tugged on her arm.

  “I saw out the window. When he drove from behind the barn, the tube was hanging out of the tailpipe.”

  “He’s suicidal,” Ronnie said into the phone, rubbing her ribs as if she too had been kicked. “And he’s pissed as hell.”

  “And so you fought for the car keys,” the dispatcher prompted in that level tone. “What makes you believe he was intoxicated at this time of day?”

  It was only eight. Ronnie hadn’t even fed the horses yet. She explained about Jeff’s wobble, the booze in the car.

  Will tugged on her arm again. “His breath made me sick to my stomach,” he said.

  Ronnie held him close, kissed his forehead, and whispered, “You were so brave.” Each time he spoke, his shaking lessened. When school started last month, he’d told her that since he was in third grade, there’d be no more hand-holding on days she picked him up from school, yet now he made no move to extricate himself from beneath her arm.

  Andrew stood on her other side. “I didn’t know what to do,” he said. He would not have engaged. How many times had she heard his Tae Kwon Do instructor tell him the smartest way to win a battle is to avoid the fight?

  “You did what needed to be done,” Ronnie said and kissed him as well. The three of them stood pressed together in the heart of the house.

  Her head buzzed on two frequencies. Even as she told the dispatcher that she’d kicked her husband and locked him out of the house and that he had a gun, the part of her that abhorred such words replayed the memory of walking toward Jeff at their wedding, his bright eyes and enchanting smile pulling her ever closer to a true sense of home.

  Will you have me?

  The voice, low and steady, had come from the phone. “What?” Ronnie said.

  “Will has the keys? Or you?”

  “Why does it matter who has the keys!”

  “Ma’am, let’s stay calm,” the dispatcher said in his ridiculously measured way. “Focus on one detail at a time. Who has the car keys?”

  “I…I put them on the rack by the door.”

  “Is this where your husband would look for them?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve pulled up an aerial view of your home. Looks like you have a second floor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you explain the layout?”

  “It’s a typical farmhouse—two long rooms on the first floor, and four square rooms on the second. You have to go through a sitting room at the top of the stairs to get to the others, and to access the stairs to the attic. The sitting room and the bathroom face the back, where we fought with my husband. The two bedrooms face the road.”

  “Is there an extension on this line in one of those bedrooms?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, good. I’d like you to take all the car keys off the rack, move upstairs, and pick up that other line. Keep the boys and the keys with you, and stay away from the windows.”

  “Should I come back down and hang up this phone?”

  “That’s all right, ma’am. Leave this line open. Go on upstairs. I’ll hold. I’m with you until help arrives.”

  On their way to the stairs, Ronnie slipped three rings of car keys off the antique hotel key rack that Jeff’s mother had found at a flea market and shoved them in her pockets.

  Ronnie and the boys climbed to the bedroom where Jeff had slept alone for the last six weeks. Already this morning, up and down, up and down, the verticality of the house one more reminder of the challenges of their marriage. The boys climbed onto the bed and Ronnie let them turn on the television. Max flopped down between them. Ronnie picked up the cordless.

  “Mrs. Farnham?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you see where your husband is now?”

  On one side, the bedroom windows overlooked the yard where Max had been romping that morning. On the other, they overlooked the farm store on the road below. No movement in either direction. The car was hidden from view.

  With the phone still held to her ear, she said, “Boys, I’m going upstairs to get your blankets.”

  “What should we do?”

  “Just stay here and watch your show. Be right back.”

  Ronnie shut the bedroom door and headed toward the attic, the only room that had windows looking onto the driveway. She kept the phone plastered to her ear.

  On the way to the attic door, Ronnie heard a loud pop.

  She ducked; her head jerked toward the windows. Birds lifted from the trees. “Oh no. I–I may have heard a gun.” She looked behind her toward the bedroom door, but it stayed shut, muted music the only sound. Outside, a frightening quiet.

  “Where are you now?”

  “I’m in the sitting room. Facing the parking area at the back of the house.”

  “Can you see the car?”

  Ronnie ran up the attic stairs to peer out. From this vantage point, she could see straight down through the windshield and into Jeff’s car. During their scuffle, the car had rolled into the narrowest part of the driveway, between the house and a briar-filled bank.

  “Yes, but Jeff isn’t in it.”

  “And how about the gun? Can you see it?”

  Ronnie inched forward. The shotgun had been propped against the passenger seat. She should be looking right at it.

  “It’s gone.”

  “Okay.” Silence. “You mentioned you locked the kitchen door. Are there any other doors that might be unlocked?”

  “There’s a home office in the basement with a door that opens out onto a patio, but I leave it locked all the time.”

  “Not a bad idea. And you checked it today?”

  No, she hadn’t checked it today. Why would she? It was locked all the time. Unless Jeff… Her stomach turned hard as stone. “Should I check it now?”

  “At this point, ma’am, just stay away from the windows and get back to your sons. Then lock the bedroom door. Help is about ten minutes away.”

  From beneath their pillows, Ronnie grabbed the soft blankets the boys slept with—Andrew’s red, Will’s black-and-white Holstein. They had replaced the sanitized lambskins she’d gotten each of them when they were born to help them settle at night. As a baby, Andrew would rub his face on his from side to side until he’d made a nest; Will would work his little fingers into the deep fluff. After repeated bouts of bronchitis and ear
infections prompted a trip to a pediatric allergist, she’d learned that among many other things on this farm, the boys were allergic to wool. The very objects she had offered as an extension of her love and comfort were hurting her children—and she had to take them away. Ronnie had been as sick about this as if the doctor had said her sons were allergic to her.

  Recently the boys had left their replacement blankets tucked away during the day, but to hell with that. Even if it was tenuous, today she’d connect them however she could to the notion of safety. When she rejoined her sons, she handed them their blankets and locked the bedroom door.

  Ronnie thought of the other “safe” choices she’d made in her life. Marrying a man twelve years her senior, a kind, even-tempered man whose family she’d known her whole life thanks to their mothers’ friendship. Living on land his family had owned for more than a hundred years. In this house that had needed loving care, yes, but whose bones had for generations withstood the cycles of hurricane and blizzard, birth and death, hope and despair. On this one door alone, she’d spent hours stripping, sanding, staining, and tracking down period hardware. For what? It wouldn’t protect her from a crazed husband in this remote location, its wood all of an inch thick, with a latch that barely caught.

  She was ashamed to think how afraid she’d been at the thought of going down to lock her own office. Ronnie had never been one to watch horror movies, but she knew that obligatory scene where the woman goes down to the basement—could already hear the pulsing bass in the score—and she did not want to star in that scene. She’d rather hole up here with her sons. Pretend it was Saturday morning, with the kids piled in for snuggles and cartoons.