204 Rosewood Lane - Debbie Macomber [6]
Pleased with the idea, Justine changed out of her business suit and into jeans and a sweatshirt. She collected a novel, a new CD for her Walkman and fresh clothes for the morning. She’d pick up dinner on the way to the marina.
She’d just reached the parking lot when she realized she’d left her cell phone behind. If Seth phoned, he’d call that number. Heading back to the apartment, she unlocked the door and opened it to hear the muted peal of her phone. She lurched for it, pushing the talk button with a sense of urgency.
“Hello, hello!” she shouted. “Seth? Seth, is that you?”
Only a dial tone greeted her question. Quickly she checked Caller ID—the number was unfamiliar, although prefaced by 907, the Alaska area code. She punched it in, letting the phone ring ten times before finally giving up.
Grinding her teeth with frustration, Justine sagged onto the edge of the sofa and rammed her fingers through her hair. It was Seth; it had to be. He must’ve called her from a pay phone on the wharf.
One minute away from her phone and she’d missed talking to her husband.
“I’m home.” Zach Cox let himself in the back door off the garage and stepped into the kitchen. His jaw tightened at the mess that greeted him. The sink was piled high with breakfast dishes, and the milk from this morning’s cereal was still on the countertop.
“Who left out the milk?” he demanded.
His two children—conveniently—didn’t hear him. Fifteen-year-old Allison was sitting at the computer in their home office, cruising the Internet, and Eddie, who was nine, lay prone on the family-room carpet in front of some mindless television program.
“Where’s Mom?” he asked next, standing directly over his son.
Eddie lifted one arm and pointed wordlessly toward the sewing room.
Zach ambled in that direction on his way to the bathroom. “Hi, Rosie, I’m home,” he told his wife of seventeen years. “What’s for dinner?”
“Oh, hi, honey,” Rosie said, glancing up from the sewing machine. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Six,” he muttered. He couldn’t remember when he’d last come home and found dinner in the oven. “The milk was left out again,” he said, thinking it would need to be dumped after sitting for ten hours at room temperature.
“Eddie fixed himself a bowl of cereal after school.”
Okay, he figured, the milk might be salvageable.
She lined up the shiny black material and ran it rapidly through the machine, pulling out pins as she went.
“What are you sewing?” he asked.
“A Halloween costume,” she mumbled with four or five pins clenched between her lips. “By the way—” she paused and removed the pins “—Eddie’s school is having an open house tonight. Can you go?”
“Open house?” he repeated. “You can’t be there?”
“No,” she said emphatically. “I have choir practice.”
“Oh.” He’d had a long, trying day at the office and had hoped to relax that evening. Instead, he was going to have to attend this event at his son’s school. “What’s for dinner?” he asked again.
His wife shrugged. “Call for a pizza, okay?”
It was the third time in the last two weeks that they’d had pizza for dinner. “I’m sick of pizza.”
“Doesn’t that new Chinese place deliver?”
“No.” He should know; he’d had Chinese just that afternoon. Janice Lamond, a recently hired employee, had picked up an order of sweet-and-sour shrimp for him. “Besides, that’s what I had for lunch.”
“What do you want then?” Rosie asked, busying herself with the cape that was part of the Harry Potter costume Eddie had requested.
“Meat loaf, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob and a fresh salad.”
Rosie frowned. “I think there’s a meat loaf entrée in the freezer.”
“Homemade meat loaf,