Married By Mistake

shops. It was a good five minutes before he realized he was whistling “You Are My Sunshine.”
    Two months later
    “Y OU MUST HAVE SOMETHING more affirming,” Casey pleaded down the line to the help desk at the phone company. “You Are My Sunshine” simply wasn’t powerful enough to counteract the funk she’d slid into since the annulment.
    “How about ‘Blue Eyes’ by Elton John?” the girl on the other end suggested.
    “No!” Casey took a deep breath. “Do you have that old Split Enz tune ‘I Hope I Never Have to See You Again’?”
    “It doesn’t sound very affirming,” she said doubtfully, “but I’ll check.”
    They didn’t have it, and Casey ended up settling for “Love Is a Battlefield.” She gave her credit card number and got the code to download the new ring tone. She’d barely finished the process when her phone rang.
    “Eloise.” She greeted the older woman with genuine pleasure. “How are you?”
    Eloise had called to remind her Casey had agreed to dine with her tonight. “I can’t wait to see you, dear,” she said. “It seems so long since we had a good chat.”
    Guilt pricked at Casey. She’d been so busy working on her new book that she frequently lost track of time, shut away in the studio apartment she’d leased near the center of Memphis. In the evenings and on weekends, she was tutoring several kids in English. She hadn’t had much time for Eloise.
    “I’m looking forward to it,” she said. She ended the call, pleased she’d stuck to her resolution of not asking Eloise about Adam.
    Not that she needed to ask. She’d never heard of Adam Carmichael before she married him, but now she couldn’t escape him. In the first few weeks after their annulment, which had been front-page news for only one day, his name had appeared regularly in the business section, or in support of some charity. She shuddered as she recalled the photo she’d seen of him with a gorgeous, dark-haired woman on his arm.
    Casey didn’t want to know how Adam was getting along without her. It was easier to quit reading the newspaper. Besides, she was too busy to keep up with the Memphis gossip. She had sold her first book—an editor from the conference had picked it up—and Casey was making progress on her second.
    She went back to Parkvale most Sundays to visit Karen and the baby. She didn’t usually see her dad, because he’d started dating a woman in the next town and had taken up driving again.
    On the subject of driving... Casey peered over her computer screen to a window of her apartment, and checked that Adam’s car was still parked in the street below. She was terrified it would be stolen, yet couldn’t bring herself to return it to him. She’d hoped it would bring him back to her, however briefly. But it seemed Adam was willing to relinquish his beloved car rather than speak to Casey again.
    She sighed. What was the point of postponing the inevitable? She would leave the Aston Martin at Eloise’s tonight and take the bus home. Adam could get the Fiesta back to her however he chose. She would take the car for one last spin, to lunch with Brodie-Ann, who’d taken a day off work and should arrive in Memphis any minute.
    When Brodie-Ann arrived, they drove to the park.
    “You sure get a lot of attention in this car,” her friend commented, as yet another man honked his horn at Casey, then gave her a thumbs-up when she looked in her rearview mirror.
    “I don’t miss my Honk If You Think I’m Sexy bumper sticker,” Casey agreed as she gunned the engine and took off from the lights, leaving the car’s latest admirer to eat her dust. She’d attracted more male attention in the past two months than she had in the previous twenty-five years. She would miss roaring around town in this beast.
    Not that she needed the car as an ego boost. She’d had plenty of offers of dates, from men who hadn’t even seen the Aston Martin. No, these days her confidence ran deeper than affirmations, deeper than how many men asked her out, deeper than the dubious satisfaction that came with believing others couldn’t cope without her.
    Thanks to Adam.
    In the time she’d spent with him—and, ironically, through the inept marriage proposal that had ended their relationship—he’d taught her she could survive, and thrive, without being someone else’s crutch. That life’s rewards were about taking as well as about giving. That settling for what she could get wouldn’t make her happy, but