Linda Randall Wisdom - Two Little Secrets

He regretted not bringing his laptop computer along. Writing down his impressions of his vacation could be some good fodder for his column. He pulled stationery out of the desk drawer and began writing. When he got a chance, he’d pick up a notebook in town.

I’m sitting here in paradise. I’ll be meeting a beautiful woman for dinner. Is this not every man’s dream? After all, the kids are three thousand miles away. So why am I thinking the kids would have a ball here? Yeah, I know I’m a fool.

I’m a single dad who works out of my home. Meeting women isn’t easy unless we’re parents in the same play group or at the preschool.

But I’m still feeling guilty being here without the kids. Maybe I should look at it another way. Maybe the kids are enjoying a vacation from me. Maybe they’re doing all the things I don’t allow them to do.

Can any of you tell me why when I woke up this morning, I thought about that beautiful woman instead of my kids? In a sense, I did think about them. I thought about how it felt not having a small body jump on top of me and demand breakfast. I thought about how it felt to hear sounds of the ocean in the background instead of Sesame Street.

Then I thought about seeing the lovely lady in a bikini.

You know what this means, don’t you? I’ll be taking home a small fortune in souvenirs for my kids because I’ll feel guilty I didn’t take them with me.

And for now, I’m going to enjoy my time with this lady. Do guy-and-girl stuff. I bet there isn’t one of you out there who wouldn’t do the same thing.

Zach sat back and reread what he’d written. Not bad. Some fine-tuning and he’d have a column in the making, detailing his vacation.

He looked out over the glorious expanse of blue water and white sand.

The man was looking forward to spending time with Ginna. The father was missing his kids big time.

“Vacation is starting out to be even more than I wished for,” Ginna said aloud as she wrote on a postcard she’d already addressed to the salon. “If you only knew.” She signed her name and stuck a postage stamp in the corner. “This will make them crazy wondering what’s going on.” She went on to write short notes on several other postcards to family members. She made sure each note hinted at something good without giving anything away.

She’d hoped to spend most of the day with Zach, but then she thought it over and decided maybe it was better if they didn’t spend too much time together. She didn’t want him to think she was too eager.

Even if she was feeling pretty impatient to see Zach again.

He might have thought he was less than macho for losing his battle with the sailboard, but she saw it as adorable. A description she knew he probably wouldn’t appreciate, but she thought he was pretty special. She’d met more than her share of men who wouldn’t have dared admit any type of weakness. It was nice to meet an honest man.

“I’VE COME to the conclusion I wasn’t the one having a problem with the sailboard,” Zach told Ginna over dinner. They were tucked away in one corner of the hotel’s Chinese restaurant. “It was the sailboard. It was definitely possessed by an evil spirit, and I was the idiot who had to battle it.”

“So you’re thinking if you try a different sailboard, you won’t have the problem you had with that one,” she guessed.

“I’m not sure it would be a good idea.” He moved his rice around on his plate. “Second time around, I might push my luck, get too cocky and really get hurt.”

“You’re afraid that sailboard will kick your butt,” Ginna said bluntly.

Zach winced at her candid, and all too realistic, assumption.

“That, too,” he admitted. “Death by sailboard isn’t my idea of a suitable epitaph.”

She used her chopsticks to corral a piece of ginger chicken. “Don’t worry, my brothers wouldn’t be able to do it, either. They’re happy as clams on a football or baseball field and can do their worst on a basketball court. Anything to do with water is way out of their scope. Even Denny could beat them at water polo,” she muttered, choosing a water chestnut next.

“Denny?”

Ginna grimaced. “My ex-husband,” she explained. “I usually refer to him as the scum formerly known as Denny. Even if it’s because of him I was able to take this trip.”

“He wanted you out of the state and sent you here?” Zach asked.

“If he wanted me out of the state, he’d send me to the Amazon jungle, since he knows how much I hate bugs and snakes,” she said. “About a month before we got divorced, he cleaned out a bank account that was in my name only. He claimed the money was his. I took him to court. One of my clients works on one of the TV court shows. When she heard I was planning to sue, she suggested I apply to the show. As a result, we ended up on camera. He looked like a total idiot, which wasn’t too difficult. The judge saw what an idiot he was, awarded me not only the money he took but punitive damages, since he kept saying he had the right to take the money.” She looked embarrassed. “Not one of the finer points in my life. So what about you? Any ex-wives?”

Zach shook his head. “I was married for six years, but my wife died four years ago,” he said in a low voice. “Complications from surgery.”

The way it was explained to him was that she basically bled to death. They couldn’t control the hemorrhaging even when they performed a hysterectomy in hopes of stopping the heavy flow. But it was too late. Cathy only saw her babies for a few seconds after they were born. She didn’t even have a chance to discuss their ideas for names. In the end he took the names that were at the top of the list. Names written in Cathy’s delicate script.

Ginna’s expression softened. She reached across the table and covered his hand with hers.

“I am so sorry,” she said softly. “I can’t imagine what you went through. I bet she was special.”

“She was,” he said. “She was an artist. She liked to work in pastels. Chalks. She’d create these incredible landscapes and seascapes that seemed to leap out at you. I wouldn’t have thought someone working with chalk could come up with anything so powerful, but she managed to do it.”

“Denny’s talent was that he could burp ‘Jingle Bells’ and crush a beer can against his forehead,” she told him. “I’d say you definitely had the better deal. I was really into my stupid period when I met him. He seemed adorable in a Neanderthal way. I was blind to his faults, and by the time I realized what a major mistake I’d made, we were married. Since I was brought up to face my mistakes, I decided to make the best of it. Which didn’t work out at all. My parents wanted to throw a party the day I told them I filed for divorce. My dad declared I’d finally come to my senses.”

“But it was still hard on you,” Zach guessed. “Because you saw it as a failure.”

“I wanted a marriage like my parents,” she conceded. “But that meant meeting someone who had the same ideals I did. And Denny didn’t have them. He wanted things that weren’t possible.” For a moment pain flashed across her face. “And when he couldn’t get them, he blamed me.” Her words ended on a bare whisper.

“Because it was easier than blaming himself.” Now he was offering the comfort. “We guys are pretty bad about things like that. If he screwed things up between you, it wasn’t because of you. It was all him.”

“I don’t think his new wife would say that.” She laughed softly. “But thank you.”

“I bet you wished you’d given him a lousy haircut,” he said in hopes of lightening the atmosphere.

“I was tempted to offer to give him a haircut, then shave something on the back of his head. ‘Kick me’ seemed like a good idea.”