Seana Kelly - Welcome Home, Katie Gallagher

He’d canceled my credit card, the Nutsack. Sure, why not? It wasn’t like I was the one who had cheated. Fidelity should be punished.

I handed her my debit card. There was roughly eight hundred dollars in my checking account. She swiped it, and I waited to see if he was angry or if he truly hated me. Her computer buzzed. I recognized the schadenfreude making sister-wife’s eyes bright while the enormity of what was happening rolled over me. My husband of ten years wanted me broke, unable to care for myself or for the dog he hated. He wanted me... What, on the streets? No, he wanted me to come crawling back to him, to apologize, to suffer for having embarrassed him. Forget about love. Would he treat me this way if he even liked me? I was having a humiliating revelation while sister-wife looked on, taking notes for the retelling.

“I see,” I said, and I guess I did. I saw exactly what I meant to him. I checked my wallet. I had eighty-seven dollars in cash, but I still needed to pick up Chaucer’s food. That meant I had about forty-five dollars I could spend here. Apparently I was also going to need to start selling blood.

I looked up at the annoyed cashier, and then back at the four people waiting in line. Sweat broke out on my forehead.

22) Find a hole. Jump in.

The woman second in line checked her watch. I wanted to run to my car and hide, but I needed traps and food. I stood up straighter and powered through.

“Sorry, everyone. I’ll just be a few more minutes.” My heart raced, pounding in my ears as everyone watched me figure out how to pay for three hundred dollars’ worth of groceries with forty dollars.

Sister-wife watched, but didn’t offer any help. I kind of hated her. “I’m sorry. I’ll need to put a lot of this back.” I pulled out the traps, the big bottle of discount spray cleaner—I could probably cut it with water to make it last longer—the jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread. I pushed the bags of chips and cartons of ice cream, the pasta and vegetables, all down to the end of her counter.

“I’m sorry. I can’t get those things today.” I gestured to my much smaller pile. “Could you ring me up for just these items?”

She sighed heavily and turned back to the computer. “I need to void out your original order first.” She hit a few buttons and a long tape spit out. She paused and looked at me before she started scanning. “Can you keep an eye on the total as I go? Let me know if I need to stop?”

My eye twitched. A bead of sweat ran down my spine. I nodded.

After another sigh, she began scanning. She did it slowly, checking after each item to see if she should keep going. The people in line shifted, looking around as though trying to will another checker to appear.

My revised total was forty-one dollars. I paid and left as quickly as possible without actually running.

I put the grocery bag in the trunk and then sat in the car for a while, breathing deeply and wishing I could take back the last twenty minutes of my life. If I’d checked my accounts this morning, I would have known what he’d done. I leaned back and let the tears go. Thirty years old and I couldn’t pay for my own damn groceries.

Chaucer leaned over the seat, resting his head on my shoulder again. After a minute, he licked my face. “You’re right. Humiliating, but in the grand scheme of things, not important. I’ll call my lawyer. Let her deal with it.” I glanced at the front windows of the stores around me, looking for a help-wanted sign. “In the meantime, I need to find a job. Kibble doesn’t grow on trees, you know.” I wiped my face and sat up straight. “Enough of that.” I had responsibilities, and feeling sorry for myself wasn’t one of them. “Let’s go see if that feed store is still across town.”

Once we were back on the road again, I looked in the rearview mirror at my poor boy, falling off the seat, trying to figure out how to turn around in a space that would have been difficult for a dog half his size. From California to Maine, he’d been uncomfortably squished in the back seat with nary a whimper or whine. I needed to do a better job of taking care of my family. “Someday, I’ll get us a big rig, one with snow tires, four-wheel drive and a roomy back seat. Okay?” He sniffed my ear in agreement.

The feed store was right where they’d left it, so once I’d wedged a forty-pound bag of kibble into the passenger seat, I pulled out my phone to call my lawyer. No service. It went right to an emergency screen, allowing for a 911 call. That Shithead had turned off my phone, as well.

I dropped it back in my purse and started the car. “Let’s go for a walk, okay? I think we can both use one.”

This was good. It was. He was forcing me to start over fresh.

I parked on Main. I figured we could window-shop on our way down to the harbor. We’d just started walking when Chaucer pulled on his leash, which was very unlike him. I looked across the street and saw Aiden. He was talking to the tall, cool brunette who liked to rub his arm. See? She was doing it again. Chaucer wanted to go to him, but I held him firm.

Turning away from Aiden, I pretended to look in the store window; Chaucer sighed and flopped down at my feet to wait. The butthead probably thought I was an idiot, crying over ouchy wrists. I looked past his reflection into the store and saw it was empty, and not a store at all but a little restaurant.

I may not be able to do much, but I could cook. I may never have finished college, and I may have few marketable skills. I may not have held a job since before I was married, but—wait, what was my point? Oh, right, I’m an unemployable loser. Good pep talk. Maybe I’ll go into motivational speaking.

I stared in the window, dreaming of opening my own breakfast diner—the colors I would paint, the items on the menu, the name. It was all so much stuff and nonsense, but it felt wonderful and I was reluctant to walk away. The placard in the corner of the window said the location was to lease, and it gave an agent’s name and number. Although I recognized it as foolishness, I copied the number on an envelope in my bag before tugging on the leash, letting Chaucer know our walk was continuing.

“Look at the big, lit-up elk. Moose? Deer... What the hell is that on the roof? Moose, definitely a moose. Think they let doggies in their shop? Probably not. Too bad. I could really use a shot glass with a cartoon lobster on it. Come on, baby, we’re almost to the water.”

The ocean was only a block away. The air was ripe with the tang of the sea. Chaucer shook himself and began to pull again. Newfoundlands were water dogs. If I let him, he’d run to the water’s edge and jump without a second thought. It was one of the reasons I’d decided to come to Gran’s house. I knew Chaucer would love living by the sea.

Main Street gave way to an expansive view of the Atlantic, blue gray as far as the eye could see. Fishing boats dotted the water along the horizon, their labor and strain taking on a romance with the distance. A masted schooner sat close to shore. Chaucer yearned for the water and gave a little whine.

“Oh, all right. But don’t you dare shake all over me,” I said, as I leaned over to detach the leash. When he looked up at me, I gave him the go-ahead sign. He barreled over the brick walkway and went flying into the ocean. I followed at a much slower pace, bursting out laughing when he belly flopped. I made my way to the dock and sat to watch my baby frolic in the waves.

The wind was icy off the water, but I was hard-pressed to call Chaucer back to me. The punishing winds cleansed as they tore through my clothes and hair. I closed my eyes, felt the cold of the frigid rocks below me seep into my bones and let the ocean winds blow away the uncertainty and humiliation that filled me.