Penelope parked her Escalade on the side of a deserted road and grabbed the siphoning hose that she had borrowed from her neighbor, Tootsie Daniels. She glanced up and down the street for cars, and it appeared as though the coast was clear. She started siphoning the gasoline out of her car into a rusty old gas can she’d found in the shed. She had read how to siphon gas online, but it was not as easy as it sounded.
However, after a while she got the hang of it, and when she was finished, she felt oddly proud of herself for figuring it out all on her own. She placed the evidence of wrongdoing in the trunk and slid back in behind the wheel. She made it approximately two miles before the car began to sputter. “Showtime!” she squealed with delight. She pulled the car over to the side of the road and pulled out her Blackberry.
Her mood blackened as she realized she was cheering herself on for tricking her fiancé. There was nothing about this situation worth cheering about. She covered her face with her hands, and for the first time in days, she didn’t try to stop the tears. She felt awful. Her fiancé was sneaking around, and she was sneaking around in order to find out what he was sneaking around about. How ludicrous! she thought. How can I get married to a man whom I barely even know or trust? Why are we keeping secrets from each other already? Isn’t that what people who have been married forever do when they suddenly get bored with each other?
Penelope let out a loud sigh in exasperation. She had to go forward with her plan, and in order to do that, she had to send a text to Michael. She took her time typing out the text, and reread it a few times to make sure it didn’t sound fishy. I ran out of gas! she reminded herself. There is nothing fishy about running out of gas, she thought with a sigh. She hesitated for a moment longer and then pressed the send button.
Penelope had chosen this road purposefully for two reasons. One, it contained very little traffic, and in fact, she had not even seen one vehicle so far. Two, it was only a couple of miles from Michael’s workplace, so he had no excuse not to come to the rescue of his soon-to-be wife no matter how busy he was at work—not to mention the fact that he’s not even really at work, Penelope thought, and she was filled with disgust and anger.
She glanced down at her phone, eagerly awaiting his response and growing more nervous by the minute. What if he really did have his phone off today? It’s not like she could call B & J Shipping, considering the fact that he really wasn’t there. Was she going to have to walk two miles to get gas on her own?
She groaned at the thought. “That would be just my luck. Drain out my own gasoline in the hopes of getting rescued, only to discover that the only person who can rescue me is myself,” she muttered under her breath.
Penelope was relieved when she heard the familiar beep of her Blackberry. It was Michael! His text read that he was on the way.
Forty minutes later, he showed up with a plastic gas can in tow. Penelope had covered up her tear-stained face with another coat of concealer, and she brushed her long, blonde hair. She was going for the whole “damsel in distress” look. But Michael paid her no mind. He went right to work filling up the tank with gas, and he seemed irritated when she explained she had gone into town and forgotten to look at the gas gauge. Michael once again appeared to be distracted by something, and he could barely look her in the eye.
“All done,” he said. He screwed the cap back on the gas can and headed to the back of the car, presumably to place the empty can in the trunk. “No wait!” Penelope cried out, “I don’t want the gas to leak out onto my shopping bags. Will you put it in the backseat?” she asked. He did as she requested and leaned forward to give her a quick peck on the cheek.
“Michael?”
“Yes?”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, dear, just overwhelmed with these new clients of mine at work,” he responded, finally looking into her eyes for longer than three seconds. He paused for a second, as though he wanted to say more, but then he just patted her arm and told her he had to get back to work.
Penelope watched him pull away. She felt certain something was going on, and after the package Elijah received this afternoon, she was convinced it had something to do with Lexi Ambrose.
She started the car and pulled out behind Michael. She followed him to the stop sign. She watched him go left, and then she turned right. After driving for several blocks, she pulled into a church parking lot and turned around. The whole point of this charade was that she wanted to tail Michael and see what he was up to. But now she just felt so damned depressed that she considered going back home. She could hear her mother’s voice very clearly in her head as she instructed her at an early age to, “Never chase after a man, Penelope!” According to her mother, Jeanie, no man was worth chasing.
“If he’s not chasing you, then go find a man who will,” Penelope reminded herself aloud. Even her voice was starting to sound like her mother’s, and that scared her. Her mother’s advice on love obviously didn’t work for herself because Penelope’s father had finally left her five years ago, and her mother lived alone with a cat and seldom dated anyone. She seemed shrewd and miserable, and Penelope didn’t want to be either of those two things.
Penelope picked up speed and hurried to catch up with Michael. After all, he was the man she loved and wanted to marry. She was willing to chase him around if it meant getting to the bottom of this mystery.