The Other Mothers (Chop, Chop Series Book 5)

by L. N. Cronk

  “Now?”

  “Now it’s one of the things about her that I hate.”

  He looked at me for a long moment and finally sat back, defeated.

  “You can’t just throw everything away without even trying,” he said quietly. He sat back up and looked at me. “You could go see a marriage counselor or something. I know you guys can work things out!”

  “We probably could,” I agreed, looking him in the eye. “But-”

  “But what?”

  “But the thing is,” I finally managed to say, “I don’t know if I really care.”

  ~ ~ ~

  TANNER PULLED BACK out onto the highway. We didn’t talk anymore and during the ride home I found myself thinking back to the first year after Greg had died – when I’d gone into a tailspin and everybody had thought that I’d been suicidal. I hadn’t actually wanted to die, but I hadn’t really wanted to live either. After I’d finally pulled myself out of that, I’d spent the next three years acting like everything was okay and going through the motions everyday – but I still hadn’t really been living. I still hadn’t let myself actually feel anything.

  Why?

  Until now, I’d always assumed it was because deep down I’d been afraid that if I let myself feel anything it would hurt too much. Better to feel nothing than to feel pain, right? Just like I hadn’t let myself cry over Amber until Danica had talked with me and told me that I’d needed to grieve.

  But now I wondered. What if Tanner was right? What if the thing I’d been afraid to let myself feel wasn’t pain, but anger? Was I afraid to let myself be angry at God?

  I tried to determine how I was feeling about God right now. How did I feel about the fact that He’d taken Amber from me and that I might lose Dorito? I closed my eyes and asked myself that.

  How did I really feel? Was I angry at God?

  Yes.

  Wow! That thought actually startled me and I opened my eyes. Tanner was absolutely right. Not only was I angry at God, but the thought of being angry at Him scared me to death.

  You can’t be angry at God! I scolded myself.

  But I was.

  Like Tanner had said, it was easier to be mad at everybody else around me than to let myself be angry with God.

  Being angry at God was dangerous stuff.

  I glanced at Tanner. He seemed to have completely given up on me and was concentrating on driving. I rested my head and closed my eyes again and had a long, long talk with God.

  ~ ~ ~

  “LOOK,” I SAID before I got out of the car. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to me,” he said, staring out the front window.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” I ventured. “I think maybe you were right.”

  “About what?” he asked, still not looking at me.

  Everything.

  “I’m gonna talk to Laci.”

  He turned and looked at me.

  “Good,” he said quietly.

  “Thanks for everything . . .”

  He nodded.

  “Are you still going to come with me tomorrow?” I wanted to know.

  “Do you want me to?”

  I gave him the slightest of nods.

  “Then I’ll be here at eight.”

  “Thanks,” I said. He nodded again and I hopped down out of his truck.

  I knew I needed to talk to her, but it had been so long since Laci and I had connected that I didn’t know what to say . . . how to start. I found myself glancing at her during dinner, trying to remember how I had once felt about her and wondering now about what had happened to us. One time she caught me looking at her and quickly dropped her eyes to her plate, refusing to look up again.

  Like always, we let Dorito carry the conversation. Like always, I wordlessly helped Laci load up the dishwasher and put away the leftovers once Lily and Dorito had cleared their places and gone into the living room. Like always, we worked in silence, carefully avoiding each other.

  All I had left to do before leaving the kitchen was to throw a stick of butter into the fridge. That’s when Laci spoke.

  “I love him, too,” she said quietly.

  I closed the fridge and looked at her. She was standing at the sink with her back to me, her hands on the counter, supporting her weight.

  I didn’t answer, but I didn’t leave either.

  “I know you think I don’t love him,” she finally said, her voice breaking.

  “I never said you didn’t love him-”

  With that she broke down and started crying, gripping the counter. Her head fell forward and her shoulders shook, her breath coming in loud gasps.

  I moved toward her. When she felt me touch her, she collapsed onto the sink and started sobbing.

  “I don’t want to lose him,” she cried, “I don’t!”

  “I know,” I whispered, rubbing her back, “I know.”

  She sobbed harder and we stood there like that in front of the kitchen sink.

  After a moment she quieted and seemed to realize that I was still there next to her with my hand on her back. She straightened herself up and turned toward me.

  “I don’t want to lose you, either,” she whispered quietly. She looked at me tearfully and I cupped her face in my hands and wiped her cheeks with my thumbs.

  “You’re not going to lose me,” I promised and she closed her eyes as I pulled her face to mine.

  “David . . .” she breathed as I kissed her – her lips, her cheeks, her neck.

  When I finally pulled away from her she opened her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  “No,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

  “I should have gone along with you.”

  “No,” I argued, shaking my head. “You were right. If I’d just let her see him in the first place, all this probably wouldn’t have happened. It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

  “Can we play a game?” we heard Dorito ask. He was standing in the entry way between the living room and the kitchen, apparently oblivious to the fact that both of us had been crying.

  “What do you want to play?” I asked him.

  “Sorry?” he suggested

  “How long have you been standing there?”

  “I dunno,” he shrugged.

  I glanced at Laci and we gave each other a little smile.

  “Sure,” I told Dorito. “Go get it set up and we’ll be right there.”

  “Woohoo!” he cried and we watched him run off into the living room.

  We turned back to each other and I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

  “What happened to us?” she asked softly.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, winding another lock of her hair around my finger. “I don’t have any idea.”

  I looked into her eyes, wondering how I had ever lost sight of how beautiful she was or of just how much I loved her.

  “Come on!” Dorito called from the living room. “It’s ready!”

  “There’s no way that board is set up already,” I called back.

  “It almost is!”

  “Well, finish it!” I yelled before turning to Laci once more. She smiled at me and I cupped her face in my hands again.

  “We’re going to be alright,” I told her.

  “Yes,” she said, closing her eyes once more as I kissed her again.

  “No matter what?” I asked, pulling back and looking at her.

  She nodded at me in agreement. “No matter what.”

  Despite the fact that the next day could potentially signal the beginning of the end, that evening wound up being one of the happiest nights of my life. Laci and I sat as close to each other as we possibly could without being on top of one another and Lily sat on Laci’s lap, helping her draw cards. Dorito ran around the board, moving everybody’s pieces for them so that we wouldn’t have to get up. We laughed and we joked and we hugged. It was like something from a sappy commercial for ice cream or laundry detergent.

  At one poin
t Dorito tilted his head and looked at us.

  “I like it when we’re like this,” he said, seriously.

  “We do too,” Laci said and we grinned at each other again.

  Sappy, yes. But also very nice.

  ~ ~ ~

  I’M GOING TO come with you tomorrow,” Laci told me that night, coming out of the bathroom after brushing her teeth. “I want to be there.”

  “No,” I answered, happy that I was going to be sleeping in our bed tonight and not on the couch in my office. “I already gave the judge this big song and dance about how you weren’t there because we were trying to make everything as normal for the kids as possible.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered miserably, sitting down next to me.

  “It’s true, though,” I said, picking up her hand. “I do want things to be normal. I want you to pick Dorito up from school tomorrow and bring him home and have him get started on his homework and stuff – just like you always do.”

  “Okay,” she finally agreed. She leaned forward and kissed me gently.

  “What are we going to do?” she whispered, sitting back and looking at me. “What if the judge says we can’t keep him?”

  “We’ll appeal,” I told her, reaching up and stroking her hair. “And Reanna says that even if we lose an appeal then they still have to overturn the adoption that we did in Mexico and then we could appeal that and then . . .”

  “But what if we never win?”

  “Reanna says it could be tied up in the courts for years. If we drag it out long enough he could be a teenager before it’s all over. He could tell the judge himself what he wants . . . he’s not going to choose to live with her instead of us.”

  “You didn’t tell me that!” she said, dropping my hand in dismay. “You made it sound like he could get taken away from us tomorrow!”

  “That’s because I was trying to hurt you,” I admitted. “I’m sorry.”

  She looked at me for a minute.

  “It’s okay,” she finally decided, taking my hand again. She thought for a moment. “So, no matter what happens, he’ll still be with us for a while?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Nothing’s going to change right away – he’s going to be with us for a good, long while.”

  She nodded and I stroked my thumb across her hand.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come tomorrow?”

  “I want you there,” I clarified, “but, yeah. I’m sure.”

  “I don’t want you to be there alone,” she protested. “Is Tanner going to go with you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, good,” she sighed. “I’m glad he’s going.”

  “I am, too,” I said.

  That night Laci and I prayed together for the first time in over eight weeks. It was actually the first time in three months that I’d prayed at all except for my desperate pleas of Please don’t take Dorito from me and the one single prayer I’d offered up to God in Tanner’s truck that afternoon. And after we’d prayed, Laci and I talked and kissed and cried and made up – long into the night.

  ~ ~ ~

  LATER, LACI FELL asleep with her head on my shoulder. I was on my back with one arm under my head and another wrapped around her, staring up at the dark ceiling and thinking about something that had been bothering me ever since Tanner and I had talked. Something Tanner had said.

  I don’t really care if you work things out with God or not.

  I knew Tanner believed in God (he talked about Him from time to time, but it was usually with very little reverence). But reverent or not, even if Tanner believed in God, that was a far cry from loving God. And loving God was great, but it wasn’t the same as accepting the fact that Christ had died on the cross for your sins.

  Simply put, I was pretty sure that Tanner wasn’t saved.

  Trying to share anything about Christ with Tanner had always been a challenge for me. It was weird how I could talk to strangers about what Jesus had done on the cross all day long, but give me someone I really cared about? Whole other story.

  I don’t know why it was so hard for me to talk about it with Tanner, but it was. Plus, he didn’t want to hear it. Anytime I tried to talk to him about it, he always changed the subject or told me to shut up. Maybe that’s why it was so hard . . .

  Laci stirred in her sleep and started to turn away from me, but I tightened my arm around her to keep her against me. This was enough to wake her up and she lifted her head off of my shoulder and looked at me in the dim light.

  “Hi,” she said, and I could tell from the way her voice sounded that she was smiling.

  “Hi,” I answered back.

  “I’m not dreaming, am I?” she asked.

  “No,” I smiled back, squeezing her.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Thinkin’ about stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Tanner.”

  She propped up on one elbow. “Really?” she exclaimed. “I’m laying here like this next to you for the first time in months – and you’re thinking about Tanner?”

  “Sorry,” I said sheepishly.

  “You’re worried about him,” she stated quietly. (We’d had this conversation before.)

  I nodded.

  She put her head back on my shoulder and rested her hand on my chest and I thought of everything that Tanner had done for me over the past year. Honestly, I didn’t know how I could have gotten through it all without him.

  And what had I done for him in return?

  Nothing.

  I couldn’t even bring myself to have a conversation with him about what I knew was the most important thing in the world.

  Some friend I was . . .

  “Laci?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” she said, propping back up on her elbow.

  “When you and Tanner were dating,” I began, “did you two ever talk about . . . about God?”

  “When we broke up we talked about Him,” she said wryly.

  “So he knows?”

  “Knows what?”

  “Knows that the reason you two broke up is because it was God’s will for you and me to be together?”

  “Yeah,” she said with a derisive laugh. “He knows.”

  “You didn’t talk about God with him any other time while you were going out?”

  “No,” she said quietly.

  “Really? I can’t believe that.”

  “Why’s it so hard to believe?” she asked. “You know how hard he is to talk to about stuff like that.”

  “No, I know that, but what I can’t believe is that you – of all people – would go out with someone that you couldn’t talk to about God with! God’s the most important thing in your life!”

  “I already told you,” she said. “I’d gotten pretty far away from God at that point in my life. Being able to talk with someone about God wasn’t exactly what I was looking for in a boyfriend.”

  “What were you looking for?”

  “Oh, no,” she worried. “You’re not gonna start obsessing about this now, are you?”

  “No,” I promised. “But, that is something I’ve never really been able to figure out. If you were going to date someone . . . why Tanner?”

  She looked at me in the darkness and finally sighed, laying back on her pillow and staring up at the ceiling. I rolled over on my side and faced her, waiting.

  “Because I loved him,” she finally said, reluctantly.

  “I know you loved him,” I answered. “I’m asking why? Why did you love Tanner?”

  She sighed again and thought for another moment.

  “You know what he’s like” she began. “He’s a lot of fun, he’s nice. We had a good time doing things together . . .”

  I didn’t ask her what things she was talking about.

  “He was always there for me . . . he would do anything for me,” she went on. “And I guess . . . I guess I loved him because �
� because he loved me so much.”

  “Do you really think he loved you?” I asked her.

  “I know he loved me,” she said with certainty.

  “That’s what you said last time I asked you that.”

  “Then why do you keep asking me?” she wondered, sounding offended. “Why can’t you believe that he really loved me?”

  “I believe,” I said, propping myself up on one elbow and stroking her cheek with my finger, “that you are the most beautiful woman to ever walk the face of this planet.”

  She smiled at me in the dim light.

  “And,” I continued, “I find it easy to believe that Tanner or any other man could fall in love with you, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “But something just doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you said that he’d never told anybody else before you that he loved them.”

  “Right . . .”

  “And I can’t think of anyone he’s dated since then that he might have loved, can you? I mean he lived with Megan and I know for a fact that he didn’t love her.”

  “So?”

  “So, if he really did love you, Laci,” I said, “then you’re the only woman he’s ever loved.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “And . . . and if you’re the only woman that he’s ever loved, and I’m the reason the two of you aren’t together anymore . . .”

  She remained quiet.

  “Then why is he my friend?”

  She still didn’t answer.

  “I mean . . . by all rights, Laci,” I said, “he should hate me! He shouldn’t be able to stand being around me . . . around us! Why doesn’t it bother him that you and I are together?”

  “Because he got over me,” she said simply. “He doesn’t love me anymore.”

  “You really think that?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We broke up and Tanner got over it. He moved on. I don’t think about him that way anymore and he doesn’t think about me that way anymore.”