Chapter Four

C ordelia, full of the most excellent cheesecake from the newly remodeled cafe on the high street, was promising herself a full afternoon of sitting on the couch and watching Law and Order SUV when she turned into her street.

The mystery of Doc Morris aside, the day wasn’t turning into a bad one. She had a rare day off, she’d gossiped away most of the morning with Magda, and she’d even get to eat the packed lunch that she’d accidentally left at home. Not bad at all.

She had made sure to pass by the doc’s house on her way home, but the door had been closed tight, and a sneaky peek through the lounge window had revealed nothing untoward. He couldn’t be lying there dead or fatally injured, she was pretty sure, since fatal injuries made it notoriously difficult to register for a locum.

Still, the matter was preying on her mind as she opened up her own front door and walked into the sunny house.

She’d been lucky, she supposed, that she’d got to keep the house. So many divorced women didn’t. She wouldn’t have been the first woman that had had to sell her home to keep herself afloat.

Fortunately, the house was paid off. More fortunately, the house was in her name and hers alone. Understandable, since the place had once belonged to her parents, but uncharacteristic in that Cordelia was, admittedly, not the ideal of the responsible homeowner.

But the house had been left to her and as much as Hunter had bitched about putting it in both their names somehow, luckily, they’d never got around to doing so. All of which meant that she’d kept her home.

She kicked off her shoes, adding to the unsteady pile by the door, and went into the kitchen, hitting the switch on the coffee machine before remembering that she was out of coffee. She was eyeing a bottle of wine on the kitchen counter when she heard the sound of scratching at the front door.

Frozen, she listened as unbelievably, a key slid into the door. Then she gritted her teeth. This was her damn house. She grabbed the bottle of wine, holding it over her shoulder like a baseball bat and strode into the hallway just in time to see Hunter push through the front door.

“What the fuck,” she said.

“What the fuck,” he said.

They stared at each other as Cordelia’s stomach began to sink. She held out her hand. “Keys.”

“No, these are my car keys,” said Hunter.

“Give me the house key,” Cordelia said. She was already mentally cursing herself for not making him leave them before. How could she have been so stupid. “And then you can leave before I call the police.”

“Aw, Cord, come on,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. In fact, I didn’t think you’d be here at all.”

“Yeah, that’s really not an excuse. It’s just even more of a reason why you shouldn’t be in my house,” said Cordelia.

“Our house,” he said.

“No, no. My house. Mine. As in I own it and it’s mine and you have no right to be here.” She was looking at him as she spoke, slowly registering that he was carrying shopping bags and something that looked an awful lot like a bunch of flowers. “My house,” she said again, still computing what all this was supposed to mean.

“Cord, come on,” he said again, his dark eyes wrinkling in the corners in a way that once upon a time had made him seem almost irresistible.

“Come on, what? You’re breaking and entering.” She put her hand to her pocket before remembering that her phone was somewhere in the house and she hadn’t found it yet.

“Look,” he said, holding up the carrier bags. “I was going to surprise you for our un-iversary.”

“Our what?”

“Un-iversary,” he said. “It’s the anniversary of our divorce and I thought, well, I thought a year was long enough and we really should get back on a more even footing. After all, we were married for a decade, Cord.”

She felt her blood start to get warmer. “We were married for a decade until you decided that you needed an upgrade.”

He sighed and put the bags down. “Fair, fair. That’s sort of part of the reason that I’m here. Apologies and all that. I realize that what I did was hurtful and I’m here to atone.”

Cordelia needed the wine she was holding in her hand more than ever now, so she stalked toward the kitchen. Maybe she’d find her phone in there too and call Max, the village policeman, to come and escort Hunter out.

“Can we at least have some coffee?” Hunter asked, putting his bags down on the kitchen table.

“No,” said Cordelia. She thawed slightly. “Because there isn’t any.”

Hunter shook his head. “You should keep it in that glass jar by the machine, that way you’ll see when it’s running out.”

She un-thawed again. “Take the house key off your keyring and put it on the table,” she said, hands on her hips, eyes searching for her stupid mobile.

“Listen, Cord, I sort of have an ulterior motive here.”

Ha, finally. She grabbed her phone from where it was hiding behind a cereal box.

“You should really put those cereal boxes away,” said Hunter. “They’ll go soft if you don’t seal them and put them in the cupboard. Or even better, pour the cereal into one of those tupperware things.”

Feeling more confident now that she had her phone in her hand, and angrier now that Hunter had criticized her not once but twice in her own house, Cordelia snapped. “Put the key on the table or I’m calling the police.”

Hunter raised an eyebrow. “Max? You think he’d throw me out?”

“Throw you out of my house? Yes, yes I do actually.”

Slowly, Hunter began sliding the front door key off the metal ring. “Cord, come on now, listen to me. It’s just for a couple of weeks until I get things figured out.”

She smelled a rat. “What’s just for a couple of weeks?”

Hunter had the grace to blush slightly and she remembered that he could be quite adorable at times. “It’s Casey, she’s, uh, well, she’s none too happy with me at the minute and—”

Cordelia started to laugh.

“What?” Hunter asked, straightening up, door key still in his hand.

“You,” Cordelia said. “You honestly think you can come over here to make amends, criticize me, and then tell me that your piece on the side has dumped you and you need a place to stay?”

“I’m on my knees here, Cord,” Hunter said somewhat miserably.

“No, actually, you’re not,” Cordelia said conversationally. “Though feel free to get down and beg if it would make you feel like you’ve tried all avenues. But the answer will be the same.”

“Cord, come on.”

“Stop saying that. First of all, my name is Cordelia, and second of all, there’s no ‘coming on’ about anything. You walked out on me, Hunter. You walked out on this and everything else because you thought you had a better offer, and now you’re crawling back expecting me to be sitting here waiting for you. You’re an idiot.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to be waiting for me,” Hunter said, his lower lip sticking out.

He could be attractive, Cordelia thought. He had been attractive. It was just that now, he had the patina of experience on him, and every time she looked at him she could see the affair, could see how he’d secretly been excited when he’d walked out, how he’d been thinking about his new life. And that all stopped his attractiveness from attracting her somehow.

“You need to leave.”

Hunter was looking around. “You know, I’m not useless. I could clean this place up, put things in order. Think of it as a way to pay for my keep.”

“Hunter, I feel like you’re really not listening to me.”

“You should have a shoe rack by the door, for example,” he said. “And all those spices that are sitting on the counter, they need a shelf, or somewhere where you can clearly see what they are, and—”

“Listen!”

Her voice came out stronger and harder than she thought she was capable of and it almost made her laugh. Hunter stopped, frozen in his tracks.

“Listen to me,” she said, not shouting now, but clear and calm. “You are going to put the key on the kitchen table and then you are going to turn around and walk out of my house for the last time. You will never set foot in here again, is that clear? I have no desire to be friends with you in any way, shape or form. All I want is to be left alone.”

“Cord—Cordelia, I…”

There must have been something on her face that said she wasn’t kidding because with a sigh, Hunter put the key on the kitchen table.

“Cordelia, can’t we talk about this?”

“There’s nothing to talk about. Now take your bags and go, I don’t want to see you again. I don’t want to talk to you again. This is it. It’s over. No mercy.”

She watched as he picked up his carrier bags, as he walked slowly down the hall, as he turned back one last time to speak. But she simply shook her head. So wordlessly, he unlatched the front door and walked away .

It took a second before she could move. A second for her to realize that that was really it, it really was over. Like anyone, she’d wondered what she’d do if he ever came back, but now she knew, she had to wonder no more.

She thought about calling Magda, but Magda would be tired now and napping. Besides, Magda couldn’t drink, and if there was one thing that Cordelia really, really needed to do right now, it was to open that bottle of wine.

A glass of wine in a perfectly empty house where she was free to do as she pleased. She could hardly believe that she’d been afraid of the silence when Hunter had first left. Now, she reveled in it.

Wine, TV, a frozen pizza. And the mystery of whatever had happened to the doctor would have to wait until the morning when his locum would finally show up.