by Nora Roberts
“Bingo, professor.”
“Because I didn’t tell you, you thought I slept with other women.”
“You came with a track record. Jake the Rake.”
“Damn it, Callie.” There was little he hated more than having that particular term tossed in his face. And she knew it. “We’d both been around.”
“What was to stop you from going around again?” she countered. “You like women.”
“I like women,” he agreed, and stood. “I loved you.”
Her lips trembled. “That’s a hell of a thing to say to me now.”
“Can’t win, can I? Here’s something else, and maybe I should have told you a long time ago. I was never unfaithful to you. Being accused of it . . . It hurt, Callie. So I got mad, because I’d rather be mad than hurt.”
“You didn’t sleep with her?”
“Not her, not anyone else. There was no one but you, not from the first minute I saw you.”
She had to turn away. She’d convinced herself he’d been unfaithful. It was the only way she could bear being without him. The only thing that had stopped her from running after him.
“I thought you had. I was sure you had.” She had to sit again, so merely slid down the door. “She made sure I believed it.”
“She didn’t like you. She was jealous of you. If she made a play for me . . . Okay, she did make one, it was only because I was yours.”
“She left her bra in our room.”
“Her what? Christ.”
“Half under the bed,” Callie continued. “Like she’d missed it when she got dressed again. I could smell her in the room when I walked in. Her perfume. And I thought, our bed. He brought that bitch to our bed. It tore me to pieces.”
“I didn’t. I can only tell you I didn’t. Not in our bed, not anywhere. Not her, Callie, not anyone, since the first time I touched you.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” he repeated. “That’s it?”
She felt a tear spill over and swiped it away. “I don’t know what else to say.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this when it happened?”
“Because I was afraid. I was afraid if I showed you the proof, what seemed like undeniable proof, you’d admit it. If you’d said, yeah, you slipped but it wouldn’t happen again, I’d’ve let it go. So I got mad,” she said with a sigh. “Because I’d rather be mad than hurt or afraid. I got mad because if I was mad I could stand up under it, I could stand up to it. I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t know how to do it.”
He sat down in front of her so their knees bumped. “We’ve been making some progress on being friends this time.”
“I guess we have.”
“We could keep doing that. And I can work on remembering you’re a girl while you work on trusting me.”
“I believe you, about Veronica. That’s a start.”
He took her hand. “Thanks.”
“I still want to yell at you when I need to.”
“That’s fine. I still want to have sex with you.”
She sniffled, knuckled away another tear. “Right now?”
“I’d never say no, but maybe it could wait. You know, we never got around to taking that trip west and seeing my family after we got married.”
“I don’t think this is a good time to zip out to Arizona.”
“No.” But he could take her there, with words. Maybe he could show her a part of himself he’d never thought to share before.
“My father . . .he’s a good man. Quiet, dependable, hardworking. My mother’s strong and tolerant. They make a good team, a reliable unit.”
He looked down at her hand, began to play with her fingers. “I don’t remember ever hearing either one of them say they loved the other. Not out loud, anyway. I don’t remember either of them ever saying it to me. I knew they did, but we didn’t talk about it. If I were to phone my parents and tell them I loved them, they’d both be embarrassed. We’d all be embarrassed.”
She’d never considered the three most basic words in the human language could embarrass him, or anyone. “You’ve never said it to anyone?”
“I’ve never thought about it but, no, I guess I haven’t—if you’re sure the I-love-your-body thing doesn’t count.”
“It doesn’t.” She felt a warm, unexpected wave of tenderness for him, and brushed his hair away from his face. “We never told each other much about our families. Though you’re getting a crash course on mine these days.”
“I like your family. Both of them.”
She rested her head back against the door. “We always talked about our feelings in my house. What we were feeling, why we were feeling it. I doubt a day went by when I didn’t hear my parents say I love you—to me or to each other. Carlyle did a better job than he could possibly know in connecting the Cullens and the Dunbrooks.”
“What do you mean?”
“Big emotions, verbalized. I’ll show you.”
She got up, took the shoe box out of her duffle. “I’ve read them all now. I’ll just pick one at random.”
She did so now, then brought the letter back, sat on the floor.
“Go ahead,” she told him. “Read it. It’ll make my point. Any one of them would.”
He opened the envelope, unfolded the letter.
Dear Jessica,
Happy birthday, sweet sixteen. How excited you must be today. Sixteen is such an important birthday, especially for a girl. Young woman now, I know. My little girl is a young woman.
You’re beautiful, I know that, too.
I look at young women your age, and I think, oh, how lovely and bright and fresh they are. How thrilling it is for them to be on the brink of so much. And how frustrating and difficult.
So many emotions, so many needs and doubts. So much that’s brand-new. I think about what I’d like to say to you. The talks we might have about your life and where you want it to go. The boys you like, and the dates you’ve gone on.
I know we’d quarrel. Mothers and daughters are bound to quarrel. I’d give anything just to be able to fight with you, have you storm up to your room and slam the door. Shut me out and turn your music up to annoy me.
I would give anything for that.
I think how we’d go shopping, and spend too much money, and have a ladies’ lunch somewhere.
I wonder if you’d be proud of me. I hope so. Imagine Suzanne Cullen, businesswoman. It still amazes me, but I hope you’d be proud that I have a business of my own, a successful one.
I wonder if you’ve seen my picture in a magazine while you’re waiting for a dentist appointment or to have your hair done. I think about you opening a bag of my cookies, and what sort you like the best.
I try not to grieve, but it’s hard, it’s so hard knowing you might do these things and you’d never know who I am. You’d never know how much I love you.
Every day and every night, Jessie. You’re in my thoughts, my prayers, my dreams. I miss you.
I love you.
Mom
“This is hard for you. I can’t imagine how hard.” Jake lowered the letter and looked at her. “I’ve been caught up in patterns and data, facts and connections. And I tend to forget how all this makes you feel.”
“What year was that?”
“You were sixteen.”
“Sixteen years. She didn’t know, not for certain, what I looked like. She didn’t know what I’d become, what I’d done, where I was. But she loved me. Not just the baby she’d lost, but whoever I was. It didn’t matter. She loved me anyway, enough to write that. Enough to give it to me, to give all those letters to me so I’d know I was loved.”
“Knowing you can’t love her back.”
“Knowing I can’t love her back,” Callie agreed. “Not this way. Because I have a mother who I did all the things with that Suzanne wrote of wanting to do with me. I had a mother who told me she loved me, who showed me. A mother I went shopping with, and argued with, and thought was too strict or too stupid, an
d all the things teenage girls think their mothers are.”
She shook her head. “What I’m trying to say is my mother could have written that. Vivian Dunbrook could have written that kind of letter to me. Those emotions, those needs, that kindness, it’s in both of them.
“I already have some of the answers. I know where I come from. I know I was blessed with both the heredity and the environment that allowed me to be what I am. I know I owe two sets of parents, even if I can only love one set without reservations. And I know I can get through this. Through the emotional turmoil, the anxiety, the digging through facts to find more facts. Because the time line isn’t finished until I can give the woman who wrote that letter the rest of the answers.”
Twenty-one
Lana knew there were women who worked successfully out of the home. They ran businesses, created empires and managed to raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted children who went on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard or became world-renowned concert pianists. Possibly both.
These women accomplished all this while cooking gourmet meals, furnishing their home with Italian antiques, giving clever, intelligent interviews with Money magazine and People, and maintaining a brilliant marriage with an active, enviable sex life and never tipping the scales at an ounce over their ideal weight.
They gave smart, intimate dinner parties and served on the boards of several charitable organizations and were unanimously voted in as president of the PTA.
She knew those women were out there. If she’d had a gun, she’d have hunted every last one of them down and shot them like rabid dogs for the good of womankind.
She was still wearing the boxers and T-shirt she’d slept in, was limping from the lightsaber wound on her heel she incurred when she stepped on the action figure of Anakin Skywalker while chasing the dog—who’d decided her new slingback looked tastier than his rawhide bone—and had just finished arguing with the plumber for twenty minutes as he seemed to believe she could wait until later in the week to have her toilet fixed.
Ty had managed to smear peanut butter all over himself, the dog and the kitchen floor and drown several Star Wars villains in the toilet, hence the call to the plumber. And it wasn’t yet nine o’clock.
She wanted a quiet cup of coffee, her pretty new shoes and an organized office outside the home.
It was partly her own fault, of course. She’d been the one to decide there was no point in shuffling Ty off to a baby-sitter while she was working at home. She’d been the one to be generous and understanding when her assistant had requested a week off to go visit her daughter in Columbus.
She’d been the one to decide she could do it all.
Now her little boy was upstairs sulking because she’d shouted at him. Her dog was afraid of her for the same reason. The plumber was mad at her—and everyone knew what that meant—and she’d managed to do nothing positive except turn on her computer.
She was a failure as a mother, as a professional woman, as as dog owner. Her foot hurt and she had no one to blame but herself.
When her phone rang, she considered, seriously, just covering her head with her arms. If anyone thought she was capable of solving their problems, they were going to be bitterly disillusioned.
But she took a deep breath, picked up the receiver.
“Good morning. Lana Campbell.”
Doug knocked, then decided it was doubtful anyone could hear him over the noise rolling out of Lana’s house. Cautious, he opened the door, poked his head in.
The dog was barking like a maniac, the phone was ringing, something blasted on the living room TV and Tyler was wailing.
He could hear Lana’s frustrated and close-to-strident voice trying to cut through the din.
“Tyler Mark Campbell, I want you to stop this minute.”
“I wanna go to Brock’s house. I don’t like you anymore. I wanna live with Brock.”
“You can’t go to Brock’s house because I don’t have time to take you. And I don’t like you very much right now either, but you’re stuck with me. Now go up to your room and don’t come out again until you can behave like a civilized human being. And turn off that television!”
Doug nearly stepped back outside again. From the sound of it, nobody was going to notice if he hightailed it back to his car and drove off in a cloud of cowardly dust.
None of his business, he reminded himself. Life had enough complications and conflict without voluntarily asking for more.
“You’re mean to me.” Tyler sobbed it, his voice rising and inciting the dog to join in with a long, high howl. “If I had a daddy he wouldn’t be mean to me. I want my daddy instead of you.”
“Oh, Ty. I want your daddy, too.”
He supposed that was it—the child’s pitiful sob, the absolute misery in Lana’s voice, that pushed him in the door instead of out again.
Still, he opted for denial first with a big, easy smile and a cheerful tone of voice. “Hey, what’s all this?”
She turned. He’d never seen her look less than perfectly groomed, he realized. Even after they made love she somehow managed to look perfect.
Now her hair was standing in tufts, her eyes were damp and a little wild. Her feet were bare, and there was a coffee stain splattered over the front of the WORLD’S BEST MOM T-shirt she wore.
Embarrassed color flooded her cheeks even as she lifted her hands in a helpless gesture.
He’d been attracted to the stylish, organized attorney. Seduced by the warm, confident woman. Intrigued by the widowed single mother who seemed to effortlessly juggle all the balls in the air.
And to his utter astonishment, he fell in love with the messy, frustrated, unhappy woman with toys scattered at her feet.
“Sorry.” She forced what she hoped resembled a smile on her face. “We’re in bedlam at the moment. I don’t think this is a good time to—”
“She yelled at us.” Seeking sympathy, Ty flung himself at Doug, wrapped his arms around Doug’s legs. “She said we were bad.”
Doug hauled Ty up. “Asked for it, didn’t you?”
Ty’s lip quivered. He shook his head, then buried his face against Doug’s shoulder. “She spanked my butt.”
“Tyler.” Lana supposed that had the floor opened up to swallow her, she’d just have been battered to death by the toys that fell in with her.
“How come?” Doug gave the butt in question a light pat.
“Doug.” Lana resisted just pulling out her own hair.
“I don’t know. She’s mean. Can I go home with you?”
“No, you may not go anywhere, young man, but to your room.” Livid, Lana reached out to tug Tyler away, but the boy clung to Doug like a wiry monkey to a branch.
“Why don’t you go answer the phone?” Doug suggested, jerking his head toward the shrilling phone. “Give this a minute.”
“I don’t want you to . . .” Be here. See this. See me. “Fine.” She snapped it out, stalked away to answer the phone.
He switched off the television and, still carrying Ty, opened the door, whistled for the dog. “Had a rough morning, haven’t you, slugger?”
“Mommy spanked my butt. She hit it with her hand. Three times.”
“My mom used to spank me sometimes. It didn’t really hurt my butt. It hurt my feelings. I guess you wanted to hurt hers back when you said you didn’t like her anymore.”
“I don’t like her when she’s mean.”
“She get mean a lot?”
“Nuh-uh. But she is today.” He lifted his head, aimed a look that managed to be woeful, hopeful and innocent all at once. “Can I come live with you today?”
Jeez, Doug thought, just look at him. A guy would have to be a