She's Got Mail!: She's Got Mail! / Forget Me? Not

Ben crossed the linoleum floor and slid open the door. “Maxwell?”

But instead of the scrabble of dog toenails on the living room hardwood floor, he heard the sharp click click of high heels.

“Not Maxwell, darling. Meredith.” His ex-wife halted in the living room, center stage, and smiled so broadly, the white rectangles of her teeth looked eerily like the white wood-paneled blinds behind her.

“How’d you get in?” Ben looked around. In her deranged postaffair state, maybe she’d cut a hole in a window with that mega-ice-cream-diamond ring Dexter wanted back.

“No hello?” Those blindingly white teeth disappeared behind a pout.

“Hello,” he snapped, scanning the room. “Did you break in to steal another couch?”

Meredith threw her head back and laughed. Ben flinched as one of her hairdo chopsticks came precariously close to getting tangled in his ficus tree. As he debated whether to make a mad lunge to save the tree, she raised her head and propped her hands on her kimono-clad hips. “Darling, darling. I’m not stealing a couch. Or a chair. Or any coatracks.” She opened her arms so wide, he feared she’d break into a song from The Sound of Music. “I’m—” she paused dramatically “—re-modeling your bathroom!”

He stared at her so long, he felt that same eyelid start to go numb.

“Say something!” Meredith gushed, her arms still open.

“You broke into my house to remodel my bathroom?” This had to be a first. A thief who doesn’t steal, but remodels.

She dropped her arms, which fell with a soft fwop against the silky kimono getup. “I didn’t break in,” she said peevishly. “I used the key hidden under the brick.”

“The brick?”

“The third one—the loose one—on the outside of the brick patio. We wrapped the house keys in a plastic bag and stuck it under there…remember?”

He’d almost forgotten. Which was easy to do considering his backyard patio was a sea of bricks. A big, round brickred sea. Something Meredith had had installed as a good-will gift after their ill-willed divorce…the divorce where she got to keep the house, the car, the antiques. But worst of all, she’d insisted—and pleaded and cried—that she wanted to keep their golden retriever, Bogie.

That was a painful trot down memory lane.

Ben had only been bitter over losing Bogie. That dog had been his pal, his kayaking buddy, his confidante. Newly single and worse, Bogie-less, Ben had crashed on his friend Matt’s couch for several months until Ben found this small, affordable ranch home in suburban Chicago. Meredith, knowing Ben loved the massive brick fireplace at their old home, took it upon herself to bestow him with a brick patio. He had thought it a gracious gift until Ben discovered Meredith had just broken up with a bricklayer.

He still wondered what their sex life had been like.

At that moment, Max trotted into the living room, his short tail wagging double time. Max rarely got anxious. Had to be Meredith’s impromptu visit.

“How’d you think I got in?” she said, obviously more miffed that she’d been accused of breaking in than dismantling someone’s bathroom.

“Through the doggy door.”

“Doggy—? Hardly!” Meredith smoothed her hand over her dress. “My hips would get stuck.”

An image that filled Ben with a moment of deliciously perverse pleasure. Meredith, stuck in the doggy door. He’d take his sweet time calling for help. Feign deafness to her calls for assistance as he popped open a beer, sat in his favorite chair and, with Max leaning against him, read the paper for, oh, thirty, forty minutes before calling the fire department.

“What are you thinking about?” Meredith said testily.

“Doggy doors. Fire departments.” Time to stop dawdling in day dreams and put a stopper on Meredith’s newest redecorating urge. He’d deal with little issues like breaking and entering later. “Leave my bathroom alone, Meredith,” he said in his best he-man no-nonsense tone. “A bathroom is a man’s castle.”

Max’s tail thumped against the floor, like an exclamation point to Ben’s statement.

Meredith dipped her head, barely missing the ficus tree again. “Well, as of today, your castle needs a new commode.”

He had to ponder that for a moment. “Toilet? Why? What happened—”

“And your castle also needs a new shower,” she said speedily, ignoring his question. “That blue-and-gold-speckled tile and grimy sliding-door look is passé.”

“To hell with passé. What happened to my toilet?”

“Well,” Meredith raised her eyebrows so high, they nearly blended in with her hairline. “After the moving men undid the bolts—”

“What were moving men doing in my bathroom?”

“How was I supposed to get a plumber at this hour?”

This logic was giving him a headache. He raised a warning finger when she started to speak. “Forget whoever was in my bathroom, just explain why they removed—” Forget asking. He made a beeline for his castle. The scrabbling of Max’s nails and the clicking of Meredith’s heels followed him down the hallway.

Right before he reached the bathroom, Meredith said, “I forgot to mention something. After that little explosion, we had to turn off the water….”

ROSIE, more than a little cranky from having to double-park her Neon in a spot barely large enough for a cow, shoved open her apartment door. After stepping inside, she closed the door, turned the lock and shoved the bolt. “Home Sweet Fortress,” she murmured. Back in Colby, they never locked doors. But in Chicago, she’d been counseled by her friend Pam to always lock her door. Any door. Car, apartment, whatever. “You get in and you lock it,” Pam had lectured with a dead-on And-I’m-not-kidding-around look.

Rosie tossed her keys into an upside down helmet on a coffee table. It had been her dad’s, from when he served in Vietnam. Years ago, he’d given her brothers mementos from that war—but nothing to her. She’d complained. Said even if she was a girl, she too wanted something that held meaning for him, something that got him through the war and back home. A few days later, he quietly walked into her bedroom and handed her his helmet. Obviously, he’d worn it, but she never knew he’d also used it as a food and water bowl for a German Shepherd war dog, an animal that had once saved his life.

Rosie now stared at the helmet, taking a moment to remember her dad’s stories. The husky timbre of his voice. The way he’d squint one eye when he wanted to drive home a point. The way he’d lightly tap her on the head, an unspoken I-love-you gesture. Typically, she tossed the keys into the helmet, which jangled and clattered as they hit bottom. If she didn’t toss the keys into the hat first thing upon getting home, she’d never find them again in the morning. But tonight, she gently placed them inside before settling onto the futon love seat and stretching out her five-three frame.

Silence.

This was always the toughest part of the day. These first few minutes of stony quiet after coming home. Because no matter how hard she listened, she wouldn’t hear her family’s voices, watch their comings and goings. At this point in the day, her heart always shrank a little as she yearned for how it used to be. She’d slam open the screen door, hear her mom’s voice, “Don’t slam…” Rosie, tossing a coat or book on a side table, would apologize for the slamming while waving hello to her dad. He’d be in his overalls, sitting in his favorite armchair, reading the paper while watching the news. Sometimes he’d catch a discrepancy in what he read and what he heard and loudly announce the difference, whether anyone was around to hear or not.

Scents of chicken or beef wafted from the kitchen, where her mother was making dinner. The meals were basic fare. Chicken and potatoes. Meat loaf and potatoes. Spam and potatoes. But every few weeks the dreaded meal appeared on the table. Everything Stew. A combination of chicken, meatloaf, Spam, potatoes and anything else that caught Mom’s eye. Once a piece of apple pie slid accidentally into the stew—which her mother proudly announced at the dinner table as though whoever bit into a piece of apple got a prize.

Rosie never dreamed she’d miss Everything Stew. But what she’d give right now to be sitting at the thick oak table, seeing the cast-iron pot appear, and suppressing her groan along with her father and her brothers. They’d exchange glances as they picked at the stew’s contents, watching as one or the other identified a fragment of a former meal.

Br-ring. Br-ring.

Jerked out of stew memories, Rosie listened for the source of the sound. Was it buried under that pile of magazines? Wedged under that pillow?

Br-ring. Br-ring.

“I’ve got to remember to put the phone in the same spot,” she muttered, tossing aside a pillow. Nothing. If the phone fit, she’d have kept it in the helmet along with her keys—then she’d never be in this predicament again! Shoving aside some magazines, her fingers hit something hard. The receiver! She yanked it to her ear. “Hello?”

“Rosie Posey?”

Recognizing her oldest brother’s voice, Rosie grinned. “Dillon!” She fell back onto the couch. “What’s up?”

“How’s our big-city girl?”

“Missing Mom’s Everything Stew.”

“Is food that awful in Chicago?”