First Comes Love
Page 23
“After a day like today, I think we could both use a drink,” she said.
A minute later, she pulled into the parking lot at Ruddock’s.
Two adults having a grown-up conversation with no interruptions, no talk of school forms or vaccinations or Pull-Ups. How long had it been?
Livvie ordered for both of them, and instead of rehashing what had happened that day, she talked about the vacation she was planning to Hawaii in the fall. “Have you ever been?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Oh, you have to fix that. Everything they say is true. There’re white sand beaches where you can snorkel and actually hand-feed tropical fish. Fantastic restaurants. And the waterfalls and rainforests. . .” She feigned a little swoon.
Alex looked, really looked, at Livvie, forcing himself to focus through his gray clouds of grief. How had he never appreciated her no-drama demeanor, her simple enthusiasm for living life to its fullest? At the very least, she deserved an effort at participation in the thread of conversation she’d been carrying on all by herself ever since they sat down.
“Who are you—” He cleared his throat. “Who are going with?”
“An organized group of singles.” She held up a hand. “Not what you’re thinking. Most of us have vacationed together multiple times over the years and become fast friends. Sure, there’ve been a few who’ve paired off, but that’s not the intent. Just a bunch of fun people who happen to be between relationships but aren’t into taking a trip by themselves. If you want, I can see if there’s still room for one more.”
“Another round before you order some food?” the bartender asked them.
“I shouldn’t . . .” she said, but when their eyes met, she arched a brow in a question.
If there was ever a night to have a second drink, tonight was it.
Alex slugged what was left in his glass and slid his glass toward the bartender. “Hit me,” he said, only freezing up when he happened to glimpse across the dining room during the pour.
“Alex?” Livvie’s eyes followed his line of sight to where Kerry and her girls were enjoying dinner with none other than—Danny Wilson.
“Alex?” Livvie tipped her head to catch Alex’s eye.
“Huh?” Somehow, he managed to tear his eyes away from the intimate get-together. He looked down at the bar. “Sorry.”
Her eyes fastened on Kerry’s table, Livvie sniffed a laugh and slowly shook her head from side to side. “After all this time, they still make a great-looking pair.”
“Do they?” asked Alex, staring hard at the surface of the bar, determined not to look Kerry’s way again. “I hadn’t noticed.” Any misgivings about turning Kerry down earlier had vanished on seeing that she had a backup waiting in the wings, all set to swoop in and recover his lost ground.
“It’s not just me who thinks so. Look around you.”
She was right. Everywhere he looked, people were sneaking glances and talking softly behind their hands.
“That’s a small town for you,” sighed Livvie. “I don’t mean to pry, but I can’t help but be a little confused. Aren’t you and Kerry . . .” She made a rolling motion with her hand. “You know.”
“She invited me out tonight. I said no. Thought I needed some alone time.”
Livvie fingered the stem of her wineglass and considered. “So, how does it make you feel now, seeing her with Danny?”
Alex jerked up his head. “Why does it feel like I’m being psychoanalyzed all of a sudden?”
“Sorry. Force of habit.”
“No. I’m sorry.” Livvie really was nice. “I didn’t mean to—”
“You’re right. I might have been projecting my own desires on to the situation.”
Despite his anguish, Alex grinned. “Spoken like a true counselor.”
“A slightly tipsy counselor.” She slid off her barstool and tugged the strap of her bag over her shoulder.
“You leaving?” Out of deference, he stood as well.
“I liked getting to know off-duty Detective Walker a little better,” she said, taking one last sip from her half-full glass. “But I think you have some sorting out to do.”
Alex bent over and kissed her cheek. “Sorry I wasn’t better company. You go ahead. I’ll walk back to my car. Night air’ll do me some good. Thanks for making me smile. Didn’t think I had it in me tonight.”
Livvie smiled back at him, though her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Maybe someday I’ll find someone who can do the same for me.” Then she turned and walked out into the night.
Alex steeled himself not to look at Kerry’s table, but a familiar peal of girlish laughter broke his will. It was Chloé, giggling at the pie on Ella’s face. He raised his finger to the barman. “Check, please.”
Chapter Forty
The next few days passed in a haze. Signs of the boys were everywhere Alex looked in the small house. The neatly made twin beds still sat forlornly in the office he’d sacrificed for them. Gone was the wreckage of dirty clothes and sports equipment that used to litter the room. He’d packed up most of the clothes he’d bought them and delivered them to CPS. But the next day, after work, he’d gone looking for bird food in the storage area out back and found their baseballs, gloves, and bats still there.
He shut the door, went back inside, and opened the fridge to spot a half gallon of whole milk and the apples he’d bought for their school lunches. He gathered the apples into his arms, carried them out back, and hurled them one by one into the woods for the deer.
His phone rang.
“You ready for this?” Kerry asked. She had already broken the ice by telling her parents he was moving in. Tonight was the night they were going to make it official. “Dinner. Right.” He felt numb. “Our order at Happy Family should be ready at six. I got you walnut shrimp, like you asked.”
He rubbed his temples.
“Is everything okay? You don’t have to do this. My parents will understand. It hasn’t been an easy week. For any of us,” she added with a tinge of sadness in her voice.
“No.” In all fairness, Kerry had suffered a loss, too.
“Can you stop by my place first and we’ll drive over to their house together? Ella’s too big for me to carry her, and if I let her walk, we’ll never get there. After dinner, maybe you can help me put the kids to bed and we can have a moment to ourselves.”
“Sure.”
“Great! See you soon. You’re not nervous, are you?”
“Why should I be?”
She laughed, but it sounded forced. “You shouldn’t. Don’t worry; everything will work out fine.”
* * *
The sky smelled like rain.
“What does your fortune cookie say?” Chloé asked Alex.
“I didn’t open it yet.”
“Open it!”
“Open it,” Shay repeated.
Alex cracked the cookie in half and pulled out the slip of paper and read, “Wherever you go, go with all your heart.’ ”
Kerry leaned into him and laid her head on his shoulder.
“Shay, race you to the end of the lawn,” said Chloé. The girls tore off running.
“Can I get you anything, Alex?” asked Rose. “More ice cream?”
“No, thanks.”
Rose paused before taking his plate away. “You didn’t care for the shrimp?”
“Just not hungry tonight, I guess.”
“Should I—?”
“No, you can take it.”
“So. Are you ready for this?” asked the judge, with a nod to where Chloé and Shay chased each other up, down, and around the flagstones and landscaping, hollering at the tops of their lungs.
“Alex?” said Kerry.
“It was a rhetorical question, Son,” the judge said with a definite edge to his voice. “But I think it still deserves a response.”
Rose gave Seamus a warning look.
“He’s right,” said Alex.
He looked at Kerry full-on. “Something happened today you n
eed to know about.”
Kerry looked at him with bewilderment. “What do you mean?”
Alex struggled for words. “I came to a decision.”
“What are you talking about?”
Rose stood and began amassing a pile of empty foil tins and used napkins. “Seamus,” she said, “would you carry Ella into the kitchen for me? There’s a new coloring book in a drawer in the buffet.”
“Now? There’s finally a decent breeze coming off the Coast Range.”
“Seamus.”
“Coming, dear.” Seamus stood heavily and gathered Ella into his arms.
When they were alone, Kerry said, “You’re making me nervous,” with a shaky laugh. “Whatever it is you have to say, just say it.”
“I don’t know how to tell you this.”
“Just tell me. Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it, together.”
He looked her square in the eye. “I can’t move in with you.”
Kerry just stared at him. “What do you mean? I thought it was all settled. We already told the girls . . .”
“I know, and I’m sorry. But it would hurt them more if I moved in and then left. They’ve already endured that twice.”
Kerry blinked and raised her hands to the sides of her head. “What’s changed?”
“You know what’s changed.”
“The boys? What’s that have to do with us? I told you before the hearing, I wanted you with or without them.”
“I was never meant to be a father. I don’t deserve to have a family.”
* * *
Alex might as well have punched Kerry in the gut with one of those big, fat leather gloves, because all the wind was knocked out of her.
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know how to be a dad. I wasn’t fathered right from the beginning. Losing the boys is just another sign.”
“You’re having a crisis of self-confidence. That’s all. You’ll be fine. You’ve seen how the girls are around you. They revere you.”
“I don’t want to let them down.”
“How are you going to let them down?”
He ground his jaw. “If I hadn’t sent the boys outside that day, Travis might not have a broken arm right now.”
“The fun and adventure he had in the short time he was with you more than made up for something so minor as a cast on his arm. You were the best thing that ever happened to those boys.”
He gestured toward their grand surroundings. “I don’t belong here.”
“Of course you do.”
“Don’t you see how your father looks at me? Your brothers? They don’t think I’m good enough. They’ll always be watching me, waiting for me to stumble.”
Kerry got up and began to pace like she was querying a witness. “I don’t care what they think. And you shouldn’t either. The only thing that matters is what we think of each other.”
“No, it’s not. That’s wishful thinking. The reality is that we’re constantly going to be on defense. Every time your father looks at me, he’s going to be wishing I were Danny.”
“I can handle it.”
“It’s not just that. Every time you have to recuse yourself, I’ll be the one to blame. Our being together will result in lost income for you.”
“A case here and there.”
“A case here and there will add up over the span of your career. Maybe an entire college fund’s worth. You say you don’t care now, but you might feel differently down the road.”
“We’ll have your income to make up for it.”
He shook his head. “If you were with someone else, you’d have his income without having to give up any of your own.”
“This is unbelievable.”
Her parents had ventured a few tentative steps back outside. On hearing Kerry’s shrill tone, Rose turned right around and ushered Seamus back in.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ker. I’m not doing this to hurt you.”
Chloé came running up to the table, dewy and out of breath. She frowned. “Are you guys fighting?”
“No,” said Alex.
“Alex,” pleaded Kerry.
“You are fighting,” said Chloé.
Betrayal, hurt, and anger mushroomed in Kerry like the charcoal-colored clouds in the western sky, but she couldn’t release it here, at her parents’ house, in front of her kids. She was forced to swallow it back, leaving her insides feeling constricted.
Shay jogged over, looking for her sister. “Come on, Chloé. I thought we were going to see who could be the first to find a four-leaf clover.” It didn’t take seeing everyone’s facial expressions for her to realize that something was amiss. The tension was embedded in the dense atmosphere.
The kitchen door opened. “Chloé! Shay! Come inside. It’s starting to rain.”
“But—” stuttered Chloé.
“Right now.”
Heeding their grandmother’s call, the girls scampered off grudgingly toward the house.
“Again, I’m sorry to put the girls through this.”
“It’s nothing they haven’t been through before,” Kerry replied, emotion thick in her throat. She began gathering up their things. “By the way,” she said, a sweater folded over her arms. “What were you doing having drinks with Olivia Bartoli the other night after you told me you wanted to be alone?”
“Oh. Okay. Here we go.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I could ask you the very same thing.”
“Danny was having dinner with his parents. He saw me and the girls and stopped to say hi.”
“From where I sat, it looked like a little more than just saying hi.”
“I’m sorry if it bothered you that I was talking to Danny after you turned down my dinner invitation.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. We’re getting way off track here.”
“Okay. So let’s get back on message. You remember when I said I was going to talk to Shay about us? About you moving in? You want to know what she said?”
His shoulders tensed, while dark splotches began to appear on the stone pavers surrounding the sparse shelter of the portico.
He was doing well to brace himself, because this was going to hurt him. But she was glad. She wanted him to hurt as badly as she did.
“That she wanted to call you Dad. You know why? So that people would assume she was your, quote, ‘real daughter.’ ”
Alex hung his head. In the near dark, Kerry saw his jaw working.
“I think you should go,” she said.
The only sound was the soft patter of the rain.
“Let me drive you home.”
“My parents can drive us.”
“What are you going to tell them?”
“Does it matter?”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
He rose heavily, and Kerry watched him set off on the path to the front, where his car was parked, raindrops staining on his shoulders, his footfalls on the pavers tapping out a slow drumbeat of regret.
A few seconds later, she heard the solid ka-chunk of his car door, followed by the swish of tires on wet pavement. She kept watching as his car drove down the lane, until the red glow of his taillights disappeared.
The wind whipped her hair, skeins of it sticking to her damp neck, pulling when she dragged her fingers through it.
The back door opened again. “Kerry. Honey. You’re going to be miserable.”
From behind her mother emerged a tall, blocky shape that came walking toward her.
This was going to be the worst part. Telling her dad that his foreboding was right, and she’d been played for a fool yet again by a man. A cop.
“I suppose you put two and two together from what Chloé picked up,” she said as her father reached her. “Go ahead and say it: ‘I told you so.’ ”
“You’re defending him.”
Dad’s voice wasn’t as judgmental as she’d been expecting.
She huffed a laugh. “Force of habit.”
“What am I going to do?”
“The same thing you’ve always done. You’re going to go on taking care of your children. You’ve still got your mother and me.” He put his arm around her and tugged her into his comforting bulk.
“Let’s go in,” he said finally.
* * *
The next day, Shay was furious. “Now everything’s ruined,” she wailed. “First Tyler and Travis, and now Alex.”
“I know how much you wanted Alex to be part of our family, but it just didn’t work out.”
“Nothing ever works out!”
“Alex made me promise not to tell, but remember that day Aunt Indra got hurt? He said the word, crap,” said Chloé importantly.
“Big mouth!” Shay hurled back at her in Alex’s defense.
Kerry swallowed the lump in her throat. Now her poor judgment was causing a rift between her children. “Don’t talk to your sister that way.”
“I miss Ty,” said Shay.
“I miss Trav,” echoed Chloé.
“You can still be friends.”
“How?” Shay said. “We don’t all go to the same school. And Tyler had to give back the phone Alex bought him.”
“I understand there are enough new kids signed up for boxing that they’ve been given the green light to keep the program.”
“But no way are Ty and Trav going to be allowed to take it.”
Kerry pressed her lips together. She had thought about pulling Shay out of boxing, too, but that would only be punishing her for Alex’s actions. And technically, Alex wasn’t the head coach; Gene was.
“What about all the plans we made for the attic?”
“Speaking of the attic, I need you to roll up the sleeping bags hanging on the porch and carry them up there for the winter.”
“I will. Later.”
“Don’t forget.”
“I’m going up to my room,” mumbled Chloé listlessly.
“Why does this always happen?” asked Shay.
Kerry turned from watching Chloé shuffle upstairs.
“It was too soon. I never should have let Alex get so close to us in such a short amount of time.”