Past Midnight Read Free

seated on one of the three metal stools amid parts, disassembled gauges, and test equipment that beeped too loudly. Another stool sat forlorn in a corner, its seat ratcheted higher than the others to accommodate a shorter, smaller body. It hadn’t moved from that spot in over a year. A cold cup of coffee sat on the speckled white Formica counter beside him, “World’s Best Dad” emblazoned on the mug in big red letters. She wondered how he could still use it. Her “World’s Best Mom” mug was gone; she didn’t know where and hadn’t looked.
    Mother’s Day had been the worst. Jay’s birthday, or the anniversary of the day she’d lost him, she’d thought those days would be the most unbearable. But if no one reminded you, you could lie to yourself about what day it was. Mother’s Day, though, it was everywhere you looked, on TV, store flyers, even shouting at you from spam e-mails the filters didn’t catch; everywhere , reminding her that she wasn’t a mother anymore.
    Erin swallowed past the lump in her throat. Aware of the sudden silence out in the roundhouse, she closed the lab door gently. That was the problem with working together; all your employees knew about your marital squabbles. Not that she and Dominic fought much anymore. They didn’t talk enough to do that.
    She slapped down the flight schedule on the counter next to Dominic. “What the hell is this?”
    A gauge in his hand, he glanced at it, then up to her. “It’s your itinerary for the PRI show,” he said mildly, his charcoal-colored eyes so dark they could appear black in certain lighting. Now they smoked, like coals on the edge of blazing.
    “I never go to that show,” she said, her teeth gritted.
    He wore his thick hair short. Despite being forty-three, he didn’t have even a hint of gray, and the overhead fluorescents gleamed in the black strands. He was more handsome than the day she’d first seen him in a university night class back in Michigan. Over the last year, she’d forgotten how good-looking he was. She’d looked at him, but she hadn’t really seen him. Just as she couldn’t really see him in the dark when it was long past midnight.
    “We need some time away from here,” Dominic said, flicking a button on the gauge. “Together.” He watched something on the piece of test equipment he was working, and she hated the way he didn’t even look at her as he added, “Don’t tell me you’ve got too much to do for year-end because I’m only talking about one work day.”
    Damn him for circumventing her argument. “You should have asked me.”
    “You would have told me no.”
    She could feel her heart’s vicious pounding against the wall of her chest. “I hate it when you make decisions for me.”
    He turned his head, smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Like when you decided we wouldn’t go to Michigan?”
    “All right, so I didn’t consult you about that. I didn’t want . . .”
    She hadn’t wanted to argue. Because he made her think when they argued. He made her feel. In a terrifying way, feeling something, anything, even anger, was dangerous. It opened her up to emotions she couldn’t deal with, things she couldn’t think about. It wasn’t like in the middle of the night when she reached for him. That was physical, akin to taking a sleeping pill, a matter of survival.
    He was making her feel now, and she didn’t like it.
    He flipped a switch on the meter, and it pinged at him. “It’s nonrefundable, and I’m not cancelling it,” he said, anticipating her objections again.
    That just pissed her off more. “Screw the money.” Why was he being such an asshole about this?
    All right, she was being more of an asshole than he was. First with Rachel, now with Dominic. But she couldn’t go to that goddamn show, couldn’t wear the game face, or pretend with all those strangers. It was bad enough pretending she was fine with people she knew.
     
     
    “WHOA, I DIDN’T MEAN TO START WORLD WAR THREE,”