Unlucky

It was late, the road was dark and it was raining. Kate knew she shouldn’t be speeding but she was already late and promised her husband she would be there.

She had to be there, her marriage depended on it.

She checked the clock; the reception had started ten minutes ago. She had less than twenty minutes before her husband was set to give his speech and she was almost a half hour away. If she was lucky the opening speaker might drag on giving her more time; but Kate knew better, she wasn’t the lucky type.

She pressed harder on the gas pedal and the car lunged forward. She was glad she took her husband’s car; it was much faster than hers.

The rain picked up, her wipers moved frantically across the windshield. She turned on the radio to drown out the sound of rain hitting the car. She thought about the last thing her husband had said to her.

‘Look, you’re either there or you’re not, and if you’re not’, her husband raised his hands in exasperation and held them there for a moment before saying ‘if you’re not there then I know how much this marriage means to you.’

Kate walked up to her husband, ‘I’ll be there, I promise.’ She smiled to reassure him and kissed his cheek. ‘I’ll even be early,’ she added.

‘I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have promised him anything.’ She was always making promises that were impossible to keep. She slammed her hands down onto the wheel. Her heart was beating fast, she was scared. But it wasn’t her fault, not entirely.

Kate was a surgeon. She had a surgery scheduled the same night as her husband’s reception. She tried to explain that to him, he wouldn’t listen; he didn’t want to hear it. She knew that her job got in the way of a lot, especially their marriage. But it was her job and he knew what it entailed about before he had married her. Still, she tried. She wanted to be a good wife and a good surgeon. With her marriage on the line she wasn’t sure that she would ever be able to make it work, but she was at least going to try.

She felt like she was making good time now, even the rain seemed to have eased up. She allowed herself to hope that maybe just for tonight luck would be on her side.

Kate just wasn’t the lucky type.

Her heart dropped. Red and blue lights flashed behind her accompanied by the familiar wail of a police siren. She was the only car in sight, they were meant for her.

She choked down the panic, took a deep breath, and pulled over.

‘If it doesn’t take too long I might be able to make it just before his speech ends. He wouldn’t know that I wasn’t there for the whole thing.’

She watched as the police car pulled up behind her. She checked herself over in the rear view mirror as the officer walked up alongside her car and knocked on the window.

She took another deep breath and rolled down her window, letting the rain in.

‘Hello Officer.’

‘License and registration please.’

She couldn’t see his face; the light from the flashlight was near blinding.

‘Yea, sure.’

Kate reached over and opened the glove compartment; she fished around, knocking some stuff onto the floor of the car, until she felt the little black book where her husband kept his car papers. She handed them to the officer, along with her license.

‘It’s my husband’s car,’ she paused. ‘He’s actually the reason why I was going a bit fast. He’s giving a speech tonight at the…’

The officer raised his hand to silence her, ‘I am going to check these out, and then I am going to write you a ticket.’

She watched the officer walk back to his car. She could feel the rain on her face and knew her makeup was ruined. She rolled up the window and turned on the overhead light to see by. Her eyeliner had started to run down one side of her face; it looked like she had cried one big, black tear. The sight of it depressed her. She looked around for some tissue to clean herself up with. Instead of tissue Kate found a pair of red, lacy panties, lying amongst the contents of her husband’s glove compartment.

She froze, and then shook her head.

‘Those aren’t mine.’