He’d made that trek every day for over a year, going the opposite direction from the house he put his family in that was in one of the few (there were only three) slightly sizeable old neighborhoods in the town of Glossop, McCook’s county seat.
He’d left his ex-wife and three kids in a big, graceful old home that had been built just before the turn of the twentieth century. A house Hope had wanted before she even left to go to college. A house she kept at him to get after they’d moved there, even before they could afford it, but regardless, it wasn’t for sale.
When it was, it had been a pinch, but Hix bought it for her.
It was perfect. Four bedrooms, two and a half baths with another half in the basement, a big kitchen, a big dining room. The basement done so the kids had a place to call their own. Close to work for him.
The day he’d moved them in had been the fifth best day of his life, behind the day he’d married his wife and the ones she’d given him their children.
Greta lived in a house like that, thankfully in one of the other neighborhoods.
Hers was smaller, the area she lived in not as old, not as affluent, home values not as high. But it was just as graceful, settled in among wide streets and tall trees and established houses that had been built before any post-war housing boom so they were all different, distinct and had their own style and charm.
It didn’t suit her, a gorgeous woman in a sequined dress singing torch songs in a classy shack. That kind of woman lived in a bohemian loft or makeshift warehouse, though Glossop had none of those.
But it was a great house.
On that thought, as he drove, for the first time taking that trek going home or anytime, his head turned so he could look into Lou’s House of Beauty.
He then looked ahead, not only because he didn’t want to drive into the oncoming lane.
Because he saw her there, working on a woman in the chair closest to the window.
Lou’s House of Beauty, owned by Louisa Lugar, was the only game in town.
Corinne went there. Mamie too. Also Hope’s mother.
And Hope.
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath. His eyes filled with the road and the businesses that lined Main Street in front of him.
But his mind was filled with seeing the back of Greta, her hands raised to work on the woman in her chair, her big mess of hair tumbling down her back.
While driving, Hix felt that hair in his hands, on his shoulders, chest, stomach.
“Shit,” he repeated.
He kept driving and swung into his apartment complex that did its best not to be the shithole it was. Four buildings, two side by side and across from each other, four units in each building, two by two up and down.
It was clean. Well-kept. But not attractive.
Hix’s was a top unit, two bedrooms, stairs to reach it at the side so as not to obstruct the bottom unit. His parking spots were to his side and open to the elements, which was a bitch in the winter. The parking spots to the unit under him were at the front of their house.
In the inside parking spot was Shaw’s silver Toyota Camry with its Glossop Raiders sticker in the back window that Hope had graduated from two cars ago, and they’d kept for when Shaw could drive.
The kids were home.
Hix focused on that and not Greta, Greta’s hair, the feel of it, her working in the salon his wife and daughters went to, or the fact that his kids were up in a shithole apartment where his son had his own room, but his girls had to share his bed and he had to sleep on the couch when they were there.
This would end soon. He had a real estate agent looking into things for him and he’d be introducing that notion to his kids that night.
He could live anywhere in the county.
He also could not.
His older kids went to school at Glossop High and Mamie to Glossop Middle School.
So it was going to have to be Glossop.
He parked the Bronco, got out making sure to lock her up and jogged up the steps.
He barely got through the door before Mamie was on him.
“Dad!” she shouted, her arms going around him in a tight hug.
He put his hand to the top of her dark hair.
His kids were all him, all of them. Dark hair. Blue eyes. Tall, lean bodies with long torsos, proportionate legs. None of Hope’s strawberry blonde hair or green eyes, or shorter torso with long-ass legs for any of them, and none of her curves for the girls.
Mamie tipped her head back and demanded, “Guess what?”
He grinned at her, standing in the still-open door. “What, baby?”
“Madam DuBois says I get a solo at the next recital!”
Madam DuBois, real name Margaret Leach. She was one of the many full-blown characters in town and she ran one of only three dance schools in the county, the most popular one, likely because she was the most dramatic, and likeable, teacher.
No one called her anything but Madam DuBois, and Hix suspected no one even knew her as Margaret Leach since she’d moved there eighteen years ago after her husband died in a car accident on I-65 outside Chicago, and to put that tragedy behind her, she’d taken his life insurance money and reinvented herself.
Hix only knew because, before he put his baby in her class, he’d ran her.
“Why are you excited about that?” Hix asked.
His little girl’s eyes got huge.
“Why am I excited about a solo?” she asked back, like he was a moron.
He shuffled her in so he could close the door, saying, “It’s not surprising to me the best dancer in the troupe gets a solo.”
That was when she gifted him with her smile coming at him huge.
“Yo, Dad,” Shaw called from his place sitting at the dining room table that was in the miniscule space off the equally miniscule kitchen, a space that could loosely be called a dining area.
His son.
Otherwise known as Mr. Cool.
“Yo, kid,” Hix replied.
“Hey, Daddy!” Corinne yelled, moving from the master at the back into the bathroom in the hall and closing the door.
Corinne had a love affair going on with the bathroom, mostly because the mirror in there had the best lighting and she was perfecting the art of painting her face and doing her hair in as many arrangements she could dream up, or watch how they were done on YouTube.
“Hey, honey,” he yelled in return, seeing as she’d closed the door.
Mamie let him go and danced to her brother, asking, “What’s for dinner? Chicken tenders from the Harlequin?”
Translated, Mamie wanted chicken tenders from Harlequin Diner and wouldn’t be happy with anything but.
Now that she got from her mother.
“Thought I’d cook,” he told his girl and grinned as he watched her nose scrunch.
“You’re not the greatest cook, Dad,” she replied.
“He is, Mame,” Shaw clipped, zoning right in on ticked the second he always did, right when he thought either of his sisters were giving their dad shit.
This was new. Or new-ish.
It had been going on about eight months.
“Shaw,” Hix said low, moving to the kitchen.
“Your cooking rocks,” Shaw shot back.
That was a lie.
He sucked at cooking.
“All he can make is hamburgers, waffles and tuna casserole,” Mamie butted in, looking at Shaw then turning her attention to Hix. “You make good hamburgers, Daddy, and waffles. But your tuna casserole is kinda ick.”