“Spark is fun,” I said evenly. Oscar looked like he desperately wanted to leave but wasn’t sure how.
“Yes, but you’re not going to find yourhusbandon there. I found my Ted back when we were both in the Air Force.”
I also forgot until right at that moment that Tammy had served in the military for several years after high school. That was well before women were allowed combat roles, so I’m pretty sure she just answered phones and filed paperwork.
“Ah, I remember those days!” Tammy sighed, nostalgic. “Ted always looked so handsome in his uniform. That was before law school, you know.”
Ted and Tammy moved here about ten years ago since their children were grown and Ted semi-retired from his Chicago law practice. When Tammy moved in, she’d taken one look at our Asian faces and talked loudly and slowly to Mom and me, worried neither one of us spoke English. Mom forgot that. I hadn’t.
“If you join up, I bet you could find a husband, too,” Tammy offers, unhelpfully.
“I’m not looking for a husband,” I said.
“You’re not getting any younger,” Tammy rudely pointed out. “I’m sure you want to be fruitful and multiply like the good Lord wants.” She stared at me a beat. Oscar sighed and hung his head.
“Why would I want to have kids?” I challenged her. “So I can do more than twice the amount of childcare and housework than my husband, but get thirty-one percent less pay at my job year after year and passed over for promotions for the motherhood penalty?”
Oscar glanced from me to Tammy. Tammy blinked at me, unsure how to respond, because she hadn’t minored in women’s studies like I had, and I’d short-circuited her tradwife brain. Then she laughed uneasily.
“You always were a stitch,” Tammy said, dismissing my very real argument as a joke. “But we both know a career won’t be a problem. Not right now, will it?”
Her verbal dart hit its mark. I clutched my fists at my sides.
“Really have to get going, Tammy,” Oscar said, interrupting my fantasy of a roundhouse kick to Tammy’s chin. He started to tug on the door. She scooted back as he pulled his SUV door shut with a sound click.
She lingered on the driveway as he turned the ignition on the SUV and it grumbled to life. He rolled down his window with a warning glance to me, even though Tammy was the one blocking his exit down the driveway, not me.
“But it’s hard, I know,” Tammy continued, “especially after that unfortunate accident at prom.” She clucked her tongue in mock pity.
Oscar warily glanced from Tammy to me and back again.
“It wasn’t an accident,” I ground out, referring to that not-so-magical night, when the class president, Alec Stokes—a year older than me—thought it would be a good idea to try to stick his hand up my skirt during a slow dance without my permission.
I broke his nose with a good palm shove to his face right there in the gym under the glittering disco ball. Considering how much blood gushed onto my silver satin dress, I’m surprised people didn’t nickname me Carrie. Somehow, though, Thin Ice was impossible to shake.
She snapped her fingers. “You know what? Alec is the mayor now. Maybe you two could kiss and make up.”
Stokes—the serial groper and predator known by his signature red hair—should burn. Instead, he went on to inherit his father’s lavish golf course and adjacent resort, and then, despite beingaccused of assaulting an intern two years ago, he went on to be elected mayor.
Just like his father before him, and grandfather before that.
“I’d rather die,” I said and groaned. I glanced at Oscar. “And you wonder why I hate this town.”
Tammy blanched as if I’d slapped her across the face. “Hate Lake Sanguis?” she gasped, appalled. “How? We’re a delight. We were named the number one tourist destination in Wisconsin behind the Dells!”
“Right. Blood Lake. Exactly where I want to vacation.”
Oscar not so gently cleared his throat to try to get Tammy’s attention. “Tammy, I really need to go—”
“Sanguis meanssanguine,” Tammy huffed. “Peaceful and the like.”
I sighed. No telling Tammy thatsanguiswas actually Latin for “blood.” Lake Sanguis’s founders either were terrible at Latin or meant something else entirely when they’d named this place.
“Lake Sanguis is a sanctuary—folks look after each other here, unlike those awful big cities.” Tammy shuddered.
“That awful big city is the reason Lake Sanguis has an economy,” I felt the need to point out. This small lake town would fall apart without the revenue from Chicago tourists.
Tammy seemed unfazed by this fact.
