A Weekend Getaway by Karen Lenfestey Page A

selected a stack of boxes nearby. “I guess so.
Why?”
    “Your clothes look like you slept in them.”
    Glancing down at her wrinkled, long-sleeved T-shirt, Beth
gritted her teeth. “That’s Drew’s fault. When he does the laundry, he leaves it
in the dryer and lets the clothes get all wrinkled. It drives me nuts.”
    “That would bug me, too.”
    “And it’s far from his only offense. He doesn’t seem to
notice when the dishwasher is full and ready to be run. There weren’t any clean
bowls for breakfast this morning.”
    As she thumbed through the files, Sarah nodded. “You sound
like an old married couple.”
    Beth flinched. “An old married couple without any of the
benefits.”
    “Do you think you two will ever make it official?”
    Beth paused, a manila folder clutched in her hand. Should
she admit that she almost proposed? Slowly, she slid the folder back in place. The
files, singed and water damaged, weren’t in any obvious order, but Beth
wouldn’t be the one to shift them around. She’d leave them the way she found
them—not alphabetized and randomly dumped in boxes. The foul smell of
smoke and mildew wafted from them. “I’d like to marry Drew, but he seems
content living together. He’s probably gun shy from his first marriage. I guess
she loved living on the east coast and when Drew said he wanted to move back to
Indiana, she filed for divorce.”
    Sarah set a stack of papers off to the side. “That’s
terrible. Doesn’t he want to settle down and have kids someday?”
    “He said he did before I moved in. Then Emma came to live
with us a couple months ago and he suddenly became obsessed with fixing up the
house.”
    “Sounds like he has the nesting instinct. That’s a good
sign. I remember as soon as we found out I was pregnant, my hubby baby-proofed
the entire place.”
    They could be here awhile and Beth’s feet were already
starting to ache, so she placed her hooded sweatshirt on the cement floor,
moved the box she was searching to the open space next to it, and sat down. “I like
fixing up the Victorian house, but I’m getting tired. There’s so much to do, it
feels like we’ll never finish.” Not to mention that the house technically
belonged to him. If it wasn’t eventually going to be hers, too, then why invest
any more of her own time and money? “The longer I live with him, the less
magical everything seems. I used to think he was better than Ben & Jerry’s,
but now...”
    Sarah waved away her concern. “That’s how it is when you’re
married, too. My hubby used to bring me flowers. Now, he just tracks the
flowerbed dirt in the house.” She chuckled in a way that made it obvious she was
still very much in love.
    “The other day, Drew brought home a meat-lovers pizza so he
could eat while scraping paint off the baseboards. How thoughtless is that when
I’m on a diet?”
    “You look great, by the way. How much have you lost?”
    Beth’s cheeks warmed. She considered rounding up, but
instead she shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
    “How’d you do it?”
    “Oh, you know. I stopped eating everything that tastes
good.” She laughed. “Eat less, move more. It’s not rocket science. It’s just
miserable.” God, what she wouldn’t give for a pint of Chubby Hubby ice cream.
    Sarah offered her a sympathetic laugh. “With four kids, I
feel like I’m always on the move, but I don’t know that I’ll ever lose the baby
weight.” She patted her soft belly.
    Beth closed up the box she’d been inspecting and set it
aside. She glanced at Sarah. “You look fine. Being a full-time mom agrees with
you.”
    “Thanks.”
    “So do you keep lists in your head of everything that your
husband does wrong?”
    Sarah burst out with laughter. “Not exactly. I try to put a
positive spin on things. Like if he forgets to put a new liner in the trash
can, I think that it was so nice of him to take out the trash in the first
place.”
    Beth rolled her eyes. She should’ve known