“Is the traffic awful?” Mary Helen now asked as she approached him for a kiss.
“The usual,” he answered, inhaling her floral aura. “But it’s a Friday so I didn’t mind it as much.”After six months of gracing and blessing their world, Patterson and Mary Helen had gifted little Monty’s parents with every Friday night and Saturday all to themselves. Which, of course, wasn’t really a gift they gave, but one they stole.
Mary Helen reached toward the kitchen counter where a red-and-white flyer announced the opening of a new pizzeria. “Well, I hope it’s not too bad because Patricia brought this.” She eyed their grandson who had laid his cheek against Patterson’s shoulder, relaxing his body against the strength of his grandfather in the process. “But not before telling you-know-who that we’d take him.”
Patterson squeezed the boy. “Do you want pizza tonight, Monty?”
“Pizza, pizza, pizza,” came his answer, which made both Patterson and Mary Helen laugh.
Patterson kissed the boy’s head. “Let Papa get out of these clothes and into something more comfortable and we’ll go, okay?”
“’kay …”
He handed the child back to Mary Helen. “Won’t take me five minutes,” he said.
“Take your time,” she called after him. “We have plenty.”
He should have seen her coming. Or at least noticed her when Mary Helen and Monty and he walked into the pizzeria. He should have caught a whiff of her perfume—the scent of her had been ingrained in his memory, after all. He should have heard her laughter, low and throaty. Or seen her hair, waves of it, spilling over her shoulders, framing a face that had grown more beautiful with new motherhood. And marriage.
But he hadn’t. He had slid into a booth with his family—his wife, his grandson—and enjoyed a pie and a light beer and the joy of watching young Monty devour first one slice and then another, intermittently swigging down Coke, which, when sucked through a straw, made his nose crinkle and his eyes illuminate.
And he should have guessed when the music overhead changed from Steve Perry’s “Foolish Heart” to Lindsey Buckingham’s—Lindsey Buckingham of all the artists—“Trouble,” that the house of cards he’d so carefully erected since the day he met Little Stevie Nicks was about to topple.
It only took a moment. The recognition by Cindie’s husband—“Dr. Thacker! Hello!”—to the exchange of glances—Kyle Lewis to Patterson’s wife, the boy, Little Monty—for understanding to take hold. A full moment for Mary Helen to do the same. To see the resemblance in the children. To see Cindie’s face change from blush to the whitest shade of pale.
The music stopped. Or perhaps it kept going. “Ohmygosh …” Mary Helen sighed. “Ohmygosh,” she repeated, now looking at him. “Patterson, what have you done?”
Chapter Thirty-nine
Allison
Our daughter had become an old soul. Truth be told, she’d always been. There had been a knowing that grew naturally within her. I couldn’t think of a time when she hadn’t seemed focused. Hadn’t known exactly what she wanted and what steps were necessary to achieve those things.
She had also excelled at everything she put her hands to—she was the star of her jazz dance company, played classical piano as though she were performing at Carnegie Hall, even when she was simply practicing in our living room. Michelle excelled in school—never made lower than an A—and after-school activities. She ran track for the school team, often bringing “fear” to the students from rival schools. If Michelle Houser was running … well. They may as well sit down at the starting line. She and Sylvie—a leggy blonde with a quirky sense of style who cheered for OHS—were both considered leaders in their youth group at church. Neither of them had ever given us or Sylvie’s parents a moment’s trouble. “Almost too perfect,” Nikki once commented with a laugh. “Makes Scott and me nervous to let her go off to college.”
Not that everything had been perfect-perfect. There was the time they went out for burgers after a church event but failed to call home first. Nikki and I were on the phone with each other within five minutes of their curfew, nervously remarking that the “girls have never been late before.” On the contrary, they typically walked in five to ten minutes before curfew, gabbing and giggling, then saying good-bye. Punishment had been ridiculously light—neither girl had been allowed to go out the following weekend—and both were so apologetic that, after church on Sunday, Westley offered an acquittal.
As she aged, Michelle took on more of her mother’s look—Stevie Nicks with a little Westley Houser thrown in around the hair color and complexion. Everywhere we went, heads turned, but—while Westley and I were acutely aware of it—Michelle seemed oblivious. Unlike Sylvie—and more especially unlike Cindie—Michelle dressed down. Jeans. Tees. Sneakers. All of which she wore like a model strutting the catwalk.
Above all, she loved me. And I adored her. Those who didn’t know she was not my biological child wouldn’t know. She mimicked me in so many ways, it was as if she and I had been cut from the same cloth. Except that—like Westley—Michelle had no fear. Her athletic abilities—whether on snow or water skis, dancing, swimming, running—were all Westley who cheered her onward and upward.
Everything … everything … about life seemed good. Worth living. Westley and I were happier than we’d ever been and our daughter was the bloom of that rose. Until that Wednesday evening when our lives forever changed. Michelle dashed in from church by way of the kitchen door at the very moment the phone rang. She jerked the cordless off its charger where it rested next to the copper hammered canister set the moment I entered from the family room.
“Hey, Mom,” she panted, then pushed the button to answer. “Hello?” I leaned against the doorjamb, waiting to hear if the call was for me or Westley. “Oh … hey … yeah, I just came in from church.” Michelle glanced at me, mouthed, “Cindie,” then returned to her call. “I love you, too …”
I returned to the family room.
“That Michelle?” Westley asked from his position on the sofa where he lay supine in a pair of pajama bottoms and a tee, his legs crossed at the ankles.
“Mmm … Cindie’s on the phone.”
Westley returned his attention to an episode of Home Improvement without comment. I tried to do the same—to focus on Tim and Jill’s issues instead of my own. Instead, I became more and more aware of the shuffle of Michelle’s feet as she ascended the staircase, the lilt of her voice as it faded into her room, the closing of her bedroom door, the minutes ticking by. It was always like this when Cindie called. I wanted Michelle to have a relationship with her—I did—but their conversations made me uncomfortable. Anxious, as if expecting the worst possible scenario to follow. Even though, most of the time, within an hour or a day, depending on the time of the call, Michelle shared with me their conversation. Leaving me torn in two—part of me wanting to know everything, another part wanting nothing to do with their connection.
Home Improvement ended and Westley changed the channel to watch the last half of a news magazine show starring Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric while I tucked my feet under me and tried to concentrate on the Sue Grafton novel I’d started the night before. I’d just managed to block out the drone of voices from the TV and slip into the world of Kinsey Millhone when Michelle stepped into the room and cleared her throat.
“Dad?”
Westley cast his glance behind him without raising his head. “Yeah.”
She looked at me briefly, then back to him. “Can we talk for a minute?”
There was a change in her voice. Something was wrong. I knew it. Instinctively, as though, somehow, every fear I’d ever pushed aside—especially since Michelle had come into my life—now rose to the surface and demanded to be dealt with. “We’re here now,” they shouted from within me. “We’re here and we are far worse than you ever imagined.”
“What is it?” I asked.
Michelle tucked a strand of her long almond-blond hair behind an ear, shifted from one foot to
the next, then set the cordless on the end table. She jammed her hands into the front pockets of her jeans. Westley sat up then, his fatherly instinct recognizing the ominousness in the moment. “Sit here,” he said to her, patting the cushion beside him, then lowered the volume of the television.
And she did. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Cindie just called...”
“Your mother told me,” he said, glancing at me, concern now drawing lines along a face still handsome and strong. “And?”
“She and Kyle are getting a divorce.”
Blood rushed through me, leaving a shiver to race behind.
“Oh,” Westley commented. “Wow. Man. That’s too bad. He’s such a nice guy … I thought …”
Michelle’s eyes welled with tears and she swatted at them.
“Honey …” I started to move. To stand and walk across the room. To gather my daughter in my arms and tell her … what? That it would be okay? Too cliché, I knew. That this was probably somehow Cindie’s doings and that—truth be told—I’d been surprised the marriage lasted as long as it had. Surprised but grateful.
Or was I going to say—to actually say—that this wasn’t her fault. Michelle’s. That I understood how she felt, when, clearly, I did not. But Westley’s eyes told me without words to stay put. To remain quiet.
“And she—um—she wants me to come live with her,” Michelle said, now looking only at her father. She clasped her hands together, cracked her knuckles. “Kyle—um—Kyle took Karson.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Westley moaned. “What has she done?”
Michelle began to sob, her shoulders hunched and shaking. Again, I wanted to go to her and, again, Westley’s eyes told me to stay. Instead, he gathered her to himself, kissed the top of her head, and whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Sweetheart … what did she say to you?”
Our daughter’s words became mumbled and messy, leaving me to catch scant few. But by the time she had finished spilling them, I knew only that Cindie was alone. And scared. And that she wanted Michelle to come live with her after junior year. To give her a chance, she said. Because, doesn’t every mother, even a bad one, deserve a second chance?
Most shockingly of all, from the sound of her voice, Michelle had taken it all to heart. “She sounded so pitiful,” she said. “I mean … Dad … you should have heard her. She was crying so hard.”
Westley kissed her head again. “Listen to me … are you listening?” Michelle nodded. “I want you to not worry about this tonight, hear me?” Again, she nodded, and in that single movement, relief slipped through me. Westley wouldn’t let this happen. He would never let our daughter just pack up and move. He knew all the things to say. The logical things. Things about school and sports and friends—Oh, Sylvie!—and her church group. About senior year and awards that always went to students with a history in the school, and GPAs, which would surely be affected. And he’d speak them with an authority I was no longer sure I had. “I want you to go upstairs and get your shower and get ready for bed. Do you have homework?”
“I did it already. Before youth group.”
“Good. Then go get a shower, take some Tylenol, and go to bed. You don’t have to answer Cindie right now and we aren’t going to make any decisions tonight.”
We. Good … good. This was a we decision. Not a she decision or a he decision. We would decide. Two to one, at best. Or at worst …
“Okay,” Michelle whispered. She righted herself from her father’s arms, then said, “I’ve got a lot to pray about, huh?”
“You do,” Westley admitted. “But I wouldn’t expect the Lord to give you any answers before the sun comes up, so, give him some time to mull it over, too.”
Michelle smiled then, wobbly and unsure. But she smiled nonetheless. Stood. Kissed her father followed by me, her lips quaking and lingering longer than usual. Then left the room.
Westley’s gaze found mine and held, but he said nothing. Too numb to speak, I closed the book that had remained open throughout the conversation. Then, as soon as Michelle’s bedroom door closed, he leaned over and snatched the phone from the table, punched in a number he knew by heart, and waited.
“She’s not answering,” he said, killing the call.
“Of course she’s not,” I whispered.
“I’d like to go up there and yank a knot in her,” he growled, then stood to pace around the room. “Who does she think she is?”
“Her mother,” I said around the knot forming in my chest, because I knew—I knew—no matter all I hoped for, that by summer’s end, Michelle would move to Tucker permanently. That every plan we’d made for senior year would have been tossed out the window of possibility, leaving only a door of regret. Homecoming. Prom. Graduation. Senior trip … these would be left for Cindie to enjoy. Applications to colleges—Michelle wanted Emory more than any of the others … Cindie would pore over these with her. Not us. Cindie. We’d gotten Michelle this far and now Cindie would grab the baton from our hands and run toward the finish line as the victor.
Somehow … somehow … I’d known it all along.
And, of course, I’d been right. All along.
November 1993
We fell into a rhythm, my husband and I, as familiar as the one we’d had when Michelle lived at home. Only now, instead of Michelle getting the silverware and placing it on the table—just so, the way I’d taught her—I performed the task. Now, instead of Michelle clearing the table, Westley gathered the dishes and took them into the kitchen where he placed them, gently, beneath soapy water to soak. Later, I came along and transferred them to the dishwasher.
Now, instead of banter about school and friends and church and dance class and track meets and teachers to avoid, our supper conversations were filled with directionless lines about work and what he planned to watch that evening on television and where I was in the latest Sue Grafton alphabet novels.
I’d made it to “J” which meant “as far as they went.”
For now.
Westley brought up going to Paul and DiAnn’s from time to time, but I nixed the idea before he could even finish the suggestion. “I can’t,” I said. “Not yet.”
The last time, over a Friday morning breakfast, his shoulders rolled forward. “Ali, she’s not dead. She’s living a few hours away, that’s all. She would have gone off to Emory in a year, anyway.”
I opened my mouth to argue the point that no, she wasn’t dead, and yes, I knew that about Emory, but the four hours away may as well have been four states away. To inform him that, unbeknownst to him, I felt as though I’d lost a part of myself. That Cindie and I had been playing some sort of chess game since he and I had married and that she, with all her wrong moves, had me in checkmate. That I only managed to go through the motions at work every day and then, after our supper, I went to the balcony off our bedroom and stared up, wondering if Michelle was looking into the same stars as I, searching for Orion as we’d done every autumn as far back as I could remember. To remind him that we’d not seen her since late July and wouldn’t see her again until Thanksgiving, which felt like a million years away rather than two weeks. Instead, I pressed my lips together and said, “I know that, Wes. But … don’t you see? Paul and DiAnn have their children there. And, right now, I cannot bear—” Words caught in my throat. Words I dared not say and barely thought. Words that said You were a failure as a wife, unable to have children of your own. A failure as a mother, your love unable to compete against Cindie’s failures and needs.
I broke down then, crying hysterically. Sobbing that I simply could not believe Michelle had left us.
“What do you think?” Westley asked me. “That she loves her more than us?”
I nodded between hunched shoulders.
“Come on, Ali,” he said, reaching for my hand. “She loves you to bits, you know that. And she loves me, too. Hey now …” His thumb rubbed over the back of my hand. “Do you know why I’m okay with all this?”
I shoo
k my head, no, my head still down.
“Because I wouldn’t be surprised if Michelle doesn’t come home for good after the Christmas holidays.”
I looked up then, tears and snot dripping from my nose. “Really?”
He handed me a napkin. “Really. Now, how often have I been wrong?”
Chapter Forty
But he was wrong. She didn’t come home for good. Instead, she returned to Tucker, leaving me with a lovely antique pearl bracelet with a rhinestone fishhook clasp she’d picked out herself at an antique market, along with entirely too much information on the details of the dissolution of Cindie’s marriage. Of her long and sordid affair with one of her professors. Her tumultuous divorce from Kyle. Of the custody battle she ultimately lost because she never really fought. Michelle had told me in explicit detail about Patterson—who, according to Michelle, was a nice enough guy who’d managed to salvage his marriage but was back in Cindie’s life regardless—of Karson’s true paternity, and of how Kyle had threatened to go to the college board with all of this unless he received full custody of the child and a legal obligation never to tell Karson the truth—at least until after his twenty-first birthday. She told me that Karson came every other Wednesday night and alternating weekends. And that she, old soul that she was, couldn’t help but feel somehow responsible for this little half-brother.
“She also feels like the odd man out,” I told Westley a few days after 1994 had dawned, entering southwest Georgia with its chilly temperatures, days after Michelle had returned to Tucker.
“What do you mean?” He stood at the kitchen counter where he poured himself a cup of early-morning coffee. He glanced at his watch. He’d have to leave within the next forty-five minutes to make it to work on time. I’d have to do the same.
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