Chapter 1 : Part 3

Hot Wheels and High Heels
By Jane Graves

(Page 3 of 4)

Then she remembered the papers she'd signed fourteen years ago before they got married, the ones that short-circuited Texas's community property laws. Warren had the right to do anything he wanted to with this house, and she couldn't do a thing about it.

Consciousness seemed to fade a little, leaving her dazed and confused. Then a horrendous thought jerked her back to reality.

"Where are my things?" she said, her voice rising with panic. "My clothes? My shoes? My jewelry?"

The woman and her husband exchanged those glances again.

"Tell me!"

"He took your jewelry with him," the woman said, "but he left everything else. So this morning we called Goodwill - "

Darcy actually screamed. Or, at least, she thought she did, but it was hard to tell when the world was moving in slow motion and her head felt as if it were underwater, where voices get muffled.

She raced to the front entry and scrambled up the stairs, images of street people filling her mind. She saw them huddled in doorways wearing her Emilio Pucci pants and smoking Camel nonfilters. Stretched out on park benches, using her Gucci jackets as pillows. Carrying drug paraphernalia in her Fendi bag. And whatever clothes of hers they weren't wearing were stuffed inside rusty shopping carts, suffocating beneath something flowered and polyester from the Kathie Lee Collection.

Darcy went into the master bedroom and threw open the closet door. It was like looking into an eclipse, because she was blinded by the most pedestrian clothing she'd ever seen. Cotton T-shirts. Sneakers and flip-flops. Enough denim that Levi Strauss had to be feeling the shortage. They were clothes only a mother could love - the mother downstairs with the husband and two kids and the title to Darcy's house.

She ran to the jewelry box on her dresser and yanked open the door. It was empty. Visions of pawnshops danced in her head, their grimy glass cases displaying her gold Lacroix bracelet, her diamond chandelier earrings, her Cartier watch. As she stood there sucking in sharp, horrified breaths and gaping at the black hole where her jewelry used to be, the truth finally sank in.

It was gone. Everything was gone. What the hell had Warren done to her?

Strangely, it hadn't occurred to her yet to question the why of the situation. She was still dealing with the what, when, where, and how. She ran back down the stairs and wheeled around to the living room, where she spied the French art deco vase she'd gotten at the Moonsong Gallery on McKinney Street. Whatever Warren's plans were, they clearly didn't include her, so when it hit home that she'd gone from having everything to having nothing, she was determined that she wasn't leaving this house without something.

She grabbed the vase and stuck it under her arm. She took the silver candlesticks from the mantle, plunked them inside the vase, and grabbed the Waterford clock from the end table. She spied the wine rack in the dining room and started toward it, intending to snatch the bottle of 1996 Penfolds Grange Shiraz that these people were going to drink over her dead body.

She had to hand it to the new homeowners. They knew temporary insanity when they saw it, and they were smart enough to back off and call 911. But that didn't slow Darcy down. She knew she was slipping off the deep end, but she was caught in one of those weird out-of-body experiences where she was watching herself doing something stupid but couldn't stop. She told them she didn't care what Warren had done. She didn't care if they had a ream of closing papers. She didn't care what kind of evil prenuptial agreement she'd signed. The things in this house were hers, and she wasn't letting them go without a fight.

Just when she was wishing for a third hand so she could grab the Tarkay serigraph off the wall, she heard a rapid-fire knock at the door.

Plano's finest had arrived.

Cop number one was an older guy who looked like a hound dog minus the floppy ears. Cop number two was a cute young guy who'd been there a couple of times when their security alarm had gone off by mistake. He'd been friendly beyond the call of duty, giving her a few suggestive smiles in spite of the fact that he wore a wedding ring. Now he was looking at her as if she were a crazed asylum escapee. But that was only fair, because she was feeling a little differently about him, too. Those other times, she'd noticed how cute his legs looked in his summer cop shorts and the way his green eyes sparkled by the light of her foyer chandelier. Now she saw the Gestapo coming to drag her kicking and screaming from her home.

After getting the gist of the situation, the cops managed to pry everything away from her but the bottle of wine, which she had a death grip on. The new homeowners just shoved her handbag at her and waved at the cops to take her away, figuring it was more important to get rid of the crazy woman than it was to have a nice red with dinner.

She scooped up Pepé on her way out the door. Young cop escorted her to her car while old cop spoke to the new homeowners. He came back a few minutes later to tell her that the people had no desire to press charges in spite of the way she'd behaved, as long as she swore she would never step foot in their house again. She countered that the prenup she'd signed didn't cover the things in the house she and Warren had bought since they were married, so he had no right to sell them. Old cop said fine, but that was something that had to be sorted out between her lawyer and her husband's, and for now it would be best if she just left the neighborhood.

Copyright © 2007 by Jane Graves

About the Author

At age five, Jane Graves wrote and illustrated her first book, Padre the Mexican Mouse. It was a hit among family and friends, but failed to make the bestseller lists. And when she realized she'd named her dashing young mouse hero "Father," she was crushed.