“Claire, just do as your mom says, please,” Amy said, heading toward the door. “I promise it’ll be fun.”
Long after the two had gone, Claire sat alone in her room, picturing Trent in bed with the other woman, laughing and pretending she didn’t exist. She tossed the covers back, and with anger bubbling inside her, she yanked the suitcase from the closet and started packing. Damn it, she was going to St. Lucia without Trent. Fuck him!
CHAPTER 3
It was an exciting moment for two out of the three passengers in the cab that drove along the interstate to the airport that evening. Claire stared as the outside world raced by, her thoughts doing the opposite, remaining fixated on one event.
“I bet you will love it in St. Lucia,” Willow said as she playfully poked her daughter’s ribs.
“Come on, Claire,” Amy nudged. “Blue skies, white sandy beaches, crystal clear water. That’s got to put a smile on your face.”
Claire looked at the girl with a blank expression. “Perhaps.” It was hard to imagine anything fun when hurt weighed on her like an anchor. Her entire life was drifting by, and as far as she was concerned, she was just floating into oblivion.
The other women temporarily gave up any attempt at lightening Claire’s mood. They reached the airport and wheeled their luggage sets from the car. Luckily, the airport wasn’t crowded. They quickly checked their luggage and joined the other passengers as they waited for boarding.
Claire had the window seat once inside the plane, and she stared endlessly through its crystal partition, taking account of every cloud that passed. Amy had the seat next to her, and Willow had the aisle seat. Willow was busy doing a crossword puzzle, and Amy struggled to find something to watch on the small rectangular monitor in front of her.
“I don’t get it,” Claire said, to no one or to them both.
“That’s how these things operate,” Amy said as she continued pressing the control on her armrest. Then she looked over at Claire and realized she wasn’t looking at the television. “Oh, did you mean something else? What don’t you get?”
“Trent and I have been together for three years. Why would he do this now?”
“Men sometimes do stupid things, Claire. Chalk it up to that. It has nothing to do with you,” Amy told her.
“Yeah, but what if I drove him away? What if he was with that woman because she was sleeping with him?” She had guilt in her eyes, and she looked pleadingly at Amy. “Maybe I shouldn’t have been a prude.”
“That’s nonsense,” Willow intervened. “You did nothing wrong by waiting to marry him before having sex with him, or any other man, for that matter. A good man would have appreciated that.”
“Still, it could have been the reason. Men are more physical than women,” Claire defended. She wanted that to be the reason; nothing else made sense to her.
“If that was the reason, he wouldn’t have waited so long,” Amy told her.
“He wasn’t waiting. He was probably fucking the other woman throughout our relationship. No wonder it didn’t seem to bother him so much, and I respected him for it. Ugh!”
“Enough of this foolish talk, Claire,” Willow interjected. “Trent chose his path, and I am glad you became aware of it before you married him. Trust me, divorce is never easy. You know I went through that with your father. You need to move on. Whatever the reason, it’s already happened and you can’t fix it.”
At that instant, the aircraft dipped a few feet, surprising them and making Claire forget whatever response she had meant to give her mother. They looked at each other with horrified expressions. Some of the other passengers were whispering.
The plane started moving up and down haphazardly. The passengers were talking loudly and beginning to panic. The shaking continued, and some of the passengers began screaming as oxygen masks fell from the overhead compartments.
“What’s happening?” Claire asked as she looked out the window. She could see nothing but blue and white. Her heart hammered in her chest. The blood rushed to her head, and she could feel it flowing inside her as her palms grew clammy. She started hyperventilating. “We’re crashing!”
“Ladies and gentlemen, please make use of the breathing masks in front of you,” the flight attendant called over the microphone.
Claire tried to remember the instructions given before take-off.
“Come on, girls,” Willow told the girls as she began strapping on the device. Claire could see terror written all over her face, but her voice remained calm.
“Hey, what’s going on?” a man behind them shouted. “Is the plane going to crash?”