Elly In Bloom by Colleen Oakes
Prologue
Georgia, two years ago, daybreak.
Early morning nauseated Elly.
That was normal, at least.
Her steering wheel smelled like spoiled milk and rotten freesia.
Gross. That was not normal.
Through the dirty windshield, she watched the creeping fingers of dawn overtaking the horizon. Bright rays approached her car slowly, blasted through the muddy glass, and turned her dark leather seats into blinding mirrors of light that hurt her swollen eyes.
Elly hated the dawn; the insects chirping, the hazy mist. It turned her stomach. And for once, the thought of food was unappealing to her. She pressed her forehead against the pungent wheel and whimpered. It had only been one day, one crappy stinking day, since her whole life had melted down, and now she was in her car having a nervous breakdown. It was getting unbearably hot. The blazing Georgia sun peeked over the hackberry trees that held steady as a slight breeze tossed their leaves. Her eyes, stinging from the sun and from the hysterical tears she’d indulged in the night before, welcomed the moisture. She had cried for twelve hours straight, drunk an entire bottle of wine, trashed a painting, and now she was here. Sweating in her car.
She was filled with something stronger than anger, something more pathetic than sadness. Elly exhaled, feeling the breath stutter out of her lungs, stretched thin after hours of grieving. She hated her sad little life, hated what she had become in this last day, hated the man who was her husband. Who WAS her husband. She gave a whimper. Hated she’d been forced to see everything she’d believed about her life was a lie.
More than that, at the moment, she hated being hot. She was hot so often.
With a sigh, she turned the key and the toy-sized engine of her Toyota Tercel roared to life. After a blast of scorching heat, crisp air puffed her face and dried the mixture of tears and sweat on her cheeks. With the heat retreating, she could think a little more clearly. She glanced at the bags in the backseat: one giant suitcase with orange and blue ribbons dangling from the handle, a couple of plastic bags stuffed with hair and make-up supplies, a cooler filled with apples and sandwiches – a stupid decision, now that she thought about it and her lace wedding dress that lay crumpled in the corner. Elly pursed her lips and whipped around. She couldn’t think about that. Not now. She would find a therapist later to tell about the dress.
Elly glanced nervously at the clock. She knew what she should do. She should drive to her job. She should talk to her boss Jeff, who constantly picked at his shirt near his stomach. She should call her best friend, Cassie, and talk her into skipping work. They would cry – no, she would cry – and talk about that moment, that horrible moment again and again. The creak of stairs. A hand clutching white sheets. The moment when she’d found her husband staring enamored at another woman. They would eat ice cream until she was too exhausted from emotion and dairy to move.
Cassie would pretend to be amazed that he would cheat. She would insist that Elly storm back into the house – she muffled a sob –and demand that he be the one who leave. Demand the house. Demand faithfulness. Demand love and bury what happened in a cemetery at the back of her mind, never speaking of it again.
Yes, that sounded great…but that confrontation would require removing her head from the steering wheel, and her neck seemed unable to do so at the moment. She couldn’t move from this moment. Not now, not ever.