I let him tell it to the door.
Chapter 11
I awoke to Mitch’s puttering about in the kitchen on the other side of the bedroom. Then I heard the garage door rumble up and then back down, signaling that he’d gone to work.
I went back to sleep.
About an hour later, my phone buzzed. I ignored it. Just as I was drifting back to sleep, it buzzed again. And again. And again.
All the buzzing.
Who could possibly want anything from me at this ungodly time of morning. It was ... oh. Nine in the morning? So, not ungodly. It just felt like it.
Had Mitch come to his senses? The sheer volume of missed calls would suggest he had. Blowing up my phone after making me mad was one of his favorite pastimes.
Huh.
I didn’t recognize any of those numbers.
My phone buzzed, startling me to the point that I dropped it.
Rachel. Her I would talk to.
“Hello,” I answered. My voice sounded full of gravel.
“Vivian, Suja has missed the bus, and I can’t go get her because our day just started,” Rachel whispered. In the background kindergartners murmured and giggled. “I really, really hate to ask you to take her. I’ll owe you big-time, I swear. Whatever wine you want. And your favorite dry-aged Jack cheese. Anything.”
Who was I? Where was I? Why did I feel as though I’d been hit by a Mack truck?
Oh, yeah.
Divorce. Mitch had moved back in. I’d cried myself to sleep.
Well, I’d just stuff that into one of my mental drawers and come back to it later.
“Say no more. I’m on it.”
“You are a lifesaver, Vivian!”
“Go teach America’s youth, Rachel. I’ve got this.”
I hung up, but no sooner had I ended the call than the thing started buzzing again.
I answered without looking to see who was calling while I rammed my feet into running shoes. “Rachel, I—”
“Ma’am, this is Yvonne Rodriguez calling from Rock 105 out of Dallas. You are Vivian Quackenbush”—she paused and then read the rest as if she were checking her notes—“of the Mom Scouts, right?”
Why in the blue hell would anyone be calling me about my YouTube channel?
“This is she.”
I paused in my bid to put on enough clothes to get Suja to school. Slowly, I tuned back into what the woman on the other end of the phone was saying, “... wondering if you would like to come on air to talk about your viral video—”
“What?”
“Your video? The model Fiona Dahl shared it on social media, and now our listeners want to know if they can join the Mom Scouts. Someone has even started a hashtag called”—again she paused and then spoke with a low voice as if reading from notes—“MitchIsADick.”
I giggled, but then everything from the week before crashed into me. My cheeks blazed.
