Stoneface

by Tymber Dalton

  He shrugged. “If I thought I could shake some sense into her myself, I would.”

  “You going to be okay by yourself?”

  “Yeah. I’ll only slow you down. Call me when you know what’s up, okay?”

  She kissed his cheek. “Yeah.”

  All the way to the doctor’s office, Gwen wondered how to handle this. She wanted her sister back, wanted her in her life.

  Missed her like hell.

  No, they didn’t always get along the greatest growing up, but she was usually an ally, or at the very least a buffer, against their parents now that they were adults. Despite the angry words she’d tossed at Amy in the kitchen the other morning, there were times she could remember Amy trying to step in when their mom or dad started in on Gwen over her career choice.

  I will not lose my temper. She took a deep breath and let it out again. If nothing else, she could mend the rift with her sister, and the three of them could have a relatively peaceful, supportive relationship. Even if it was only because they’d united against their parents.

  Amy would need help, because Gwen strongly suspected the baby’s father wouldn’t be involved that much. Despite Amy’s assurances to the contrary, Gwen knew what men could be like. Especially lying, cheating assholes who got women other than their wives pregnant. And besides, Amy didn’t need a man in her life. She had enough in savings to get her by until she started working full time again. Gwen and Liam would babysit for her. They could talk her into moving in with them.

  She wistfully smiled. Kids of her own weren’t on the radar, especially now and maybe never, but she wouldn’t mind being able to spoil a niece or nephew rotten. Liam would make a great uncle. He wasn’t much more than a big kid himself in many ways.

  This would all work out okay, once they finished running interference for Amy with their parents. They’d take the brunt of it for her, shelter her, let her focus on being a mom so she could enjoy it as much as possible.

  She didn’t see Amy’s car when she pulled into the parking lot. She parked off to the side, hopefully where Amy wouldn’t notice her.

  Her nerves a jangled mess, Gwen walked into the doctor’s office and was surprised to find Amy already sitting in the waiting room. Amy didn’t look up when she walked in, until Gwen walked over to her.

  Amy’s jaw dropped. “Gwen! What are you doing here?”

  She sat beside her. “Please, don’t be mad at me. I’m sorry we fought and I lost my temper.” She grabbed her sister’s hands. “I’m so sorry. I was a total bitch, and you didn’t deserve for me to go off on you like that. Listen to me, Liam and I love you, and we want to support you in this. We don’t want you going through this alone. Liam and I agree we want you to live with us. We’ll help you take care of the baby. We’ll babysit for you when you go back to work, and we’ll help you with Mom and Dad.”

  She shook her head. “I–I–”

  “Stop, please. Let me finish. We don’t care what happened or why, and we’re not going to play the stupid blame games Mom and Dad are so fond of. It happened, and we’re here for you.” She took a deep breath. “We mean it. We’ll—” Her voice broke off as Ruthie’s husband, Bob Tamsin, emerged from the bathroom and froze when he saw Gwen sitting there. After a moment’s stunned shock, he walked over

  “Bob? What are you doing here?” Gwen asked. Then she looked at Amy and spotted her horrified expression. The Rapid City desk clerk’s description of the man Amy stayed with came back to Gwen.

  All the pieces suddenly clicked into place. Bob had been on a business trip the same time Amy left.

  Bob hadn’t been available to help Liam move.

  Ruthie still swore Bob was having an affair.

  The prepaid phone Gwen spotted in Amy’s stuff.

  Gwen didn’t want to contemplate if Jack knew about this part of Amy’s secret or not. Had she even told him about Ruthie? She couldn’t remember.

  As the full impact of Amy’s betrayal hit Gwen, her breath left in a whoosh. She stood on feet that had suddenly gone numb. “No,” she whispered, shaking her head and backing away from them. “I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it. After all she went through, you do this to her?”

  Bob tried to speak, but Gwen pointed at him. “No. Don’t. Don’t you dare make excuses!”

  Amy hadn’t moved from her chair. “Gwen, please, we didn’t mean for it to happen. It just did.”

  Gwen felt ill. Worse, she felt like an idiot. No wonder Amy didn’t want to tell her and Liam about the secret man in her life. “How long has this been going on?” Gwen shrilly asked. She didn’t care that the whole waiting room had gone silent and was staring at them.

  “Six months,” Amy softly admitted.

  Six months. For six months, Ruthie had kept insisting something was wrong.

  How right she’d been.

  Gwen couldn’t stop shaking. She somehow managed to turn herself around and get pointed toward the exit. Bob caught up with her outside and tried to grab her arm to stop her, but she wheeled on him. “Don’t fucking touch me, you son of a bitch!” she screamed. “How the fuck could you do this to Ruthie?”

  “You don’t know what it’s like living with her, Gwen. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did. I’m sorry this is going to hurt Ruthie, but I’m not sorry I finally have a chance to be happy with a normal woman after all the years of crap I’ve had to deal with.”

  Gwen’s stomach rolled. She thought she might actually throw up. She held up a hand to silence him and stumbled backward. “Get the fuck away from me, you lying bastard. I can’t believe I actually thought you were a good guy.” She ran for her car, only realizing she was sobbing once inside. Her fingers trembled so bad she dropped her key three times before she seated it in the ignition and started the engine.

  When she walked into the living room at home, she found Liam on the couch, working on his laptop. “How’d it go, sis?” Once he spotted her tears, he set the computer on the coffee table and opened his arms.

  She fell onto the couch and Liam held her while she sobbed. She felt grateful he didn’t bother asking what happened.

  Retelling it might make her sick.

  Her BlackBerry rang—“Wipe Out.”

  Ruthie.

  She shoved it at him. “I can’t talk to her,” she said, her voice a haggard whisper. “Please, talk to her. Tell her anything, but I can’t talk to her yet.”

  Confused, he answered. “Hiya, Ruthie, what’s up?…She’s upstairs taking a nap. I kept her up late last night. Don’t want to talk to me, huh?” he joked. “That’s okay, you know I was just teasing you, kiddo. So what’re you up to?” After chatting with her for five minutes, he got her off the phone.

  His eyes met Gwen’s. He brushed the hair from her forehead. “All right, sis,” he quietly said. “I take it things didn’t go well. What happened? Talk to me.”

  “I met the baby’s father,” she managed to choke out. “Now I know why Amy was terrified to tell us who he was.” She stared at her phone, which he still held.

  He frowned as he studied the phone. Then he closed his eyes and swore as he connected the dots. “Oh, no.”

  She nodded. “Oh, yes. The fuckwad was there at the doctor with her.”

  He looked at her. “Oh, fuck me. Poor Ruthie. Did he explain himself?”

  “I didn’t give him a chance. There’s nothing either of them can say to me to explain themselves. They’ve been seeing each other for six months.” She laid her head in his lap and let him stroke her hair. “There is no excuse. What? She accidentally fell on his dick enough times to get knocked up?”

  He laughed. “That’s a good one. You should use that in a book.”

  “It’s not funny.”

  He sighed. “No, unfortunately, it’s not funny.”

  She wanted Tim and Jack. She wanted to curl up in their arms and sob herself to sleep. But they were a half a country away in Rapid City, and Jack wanted nothing to do with her.

  “I can’t tell Ruthie,
” she finally said. “It’ll kill her. Or she’ll kill him. Or I’ll kill him, I don’t know. All I do know is I can’t tell her.”

  “Don’t tell her. You shouldn’t. It’s not your job.”

  “But what do I say? She’s my friend.”

  “That’s why you shouldn’t say anything.” He stroked her hair. “It’s between Bob and her.” He glared. “And Amy.”

  “I hate Amy for this.” She looked back at all the times Amy made snide comments about Ruthie. “She knew, all this time, what she was doing and could look me in the eye and…” She swallowed back bile. “I hate them.”

  “I think it’s safe to say you’ll agree with me on rescinding our invite to her to live with us.”

  “Uh, yeah. And she can fend for herself with Mom and Dad.”

  They sat quietly for a few minutes. He laced his fingers through hers. “I hear real estate’s pretty reasonable in South Dakota. You know damn well Jack loves you, too. I saw how he was over you, talked to him myself. He was probably trying to protect his heart, afraid you’d never come back once you left for Ohio.”

  She ignored the last part of his comment. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “Who says you have to?”

  She rolled over in his lap and looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “There’s nothing keeping me here. I sure as hell don’t want anything to do with Amy after this, either. I think my relationship with Mom and Dad would benefit from some distance and a few state lines between us. I can work from anywhere I have high-speed internet. I bet Tim’s offer is still good.” He played with her hair. “You and Jack could have a heart-to-heart and patch things up.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  He nodded. “Uh, duh. You’re my baby sister. You’re the one person in my life I know loves me the way I am.” He brushed another stray hair away from her face. “You’re as miserable without them as I was living at Mom and Dad’s. I’ve got my happily-ever-after, romance writer girl. Well, happily enough for me for now considering what the past couple of years have been like. It’s time for you to get yours.”

  She snorted. “Tell Jackson Kelly that. I won’t ask Tim to break up with him, and Jackson made it perfectly clear to me where I stand with him.”

  “So? Then we can move anywhere you want. You name it. I’ve got health insurance, so that’s not an issue. I’ll pay my share of the bills. Roomies. We could move to Laguna Beach.” He winked.

  She ignored his implication. “Too expensive to live there.” She’d never lived anywhere but Ohio, within twenty minutes of her parents. “I don’t know. Moving’s a huge step.”

  “Think about it. Whatever you want to do, kiddo. Seriously. You and me.” He held her chin and made her meet his gaze. “Let’s take a chance and do it. As long as we have each other, we can do anything, right? Just you and me.”

  She patted his arm. “You and me.”

  * * * *

  Jack spent a miserable morning at work. He knew he radiated a foul mood from the minimum ten-foot distance everyone gave him. He threw pens and file folders down on his desk, and nearly broke his desk phone when he slammed the handset down.

  It didn’t help that he’d gotten into a screaming match with Tim the night before over the phone, and again this morning. Now he was wondering if he’d lost both Gwen and Tim because of his stupidity.

  I should call her. I should call her, apologize, and beg her to come back.

  He couldn’t make himself do it. Mostly, because he didn’t know why he wanted to do it. He still wasn’t convinced his feelings for Gwen were really for Gwen and not because she looked like Mel. Sure, Gwen was a great person in her own right, but would it be fair to her in case in a month or a year he realized he wasn’t in love with her for who she was?

  That didn’t ease the ache in his heart.

  * * * *

  She called Ruthie back a little later, after she’d blown her nose and washed her face and didn’t feel like throwing up. She forced cheer into her voice. “Hey, girlie, what’s up?”

  Ruthie sounded subdued. “I need to talk to you.”

  Gwen’s stomach knotted and threatened to upend. “About what?”

  Gwen heard her take a deep breath. “I’m going to leave Bob.”

  “What?”

  “Before you ask me, yes, I took my meds this morning, and yes, I had breakfast and lunch.”

  Gwen ignored Liam’s questioning look. “Honey, what’s going on?” As if she couldn’t guess. Gwen wondered if the rat bastard told Ruthie she’d confronted him and Amy at the doctor’s office.

  Ruthie actually sounded calmer and more rational than she had in years. “I overheard him talking to someone on the phone last night. I didn’t confront him. I heard him talking about meeting her today. So I called him on his cell a little bit ago, asked him how he was doing, and he said he was at work.”

  Gwen closed her eyes. “And?”

  “So I hung up with him and called his office. I told them who I was, that I’d just got off the phone with my husband, and said he asked me to call them to see if he left his umbrella there. See? I didn’t go off half cocked. The receptionist went and looked for me. Obviously, he wasn’t in his office. So I called him right back and pretended like I forgot I needed him to bring stuff home for me from the store and talked for another minute or two, like everything was fine. Then he told me he has to go, that he’s going into a meeting.”

  “Maybe he didn’t mean at the office.”

  “No, he told me his receptionist came in to tell him his appointment was there early.”

  Gwen didn’t know what to say, so she kept her mouth shut.

  “Gwen, I can’t live like this. I know I don’t always think clearly, but dammit, for the past six months, something’s been different about him and even I know it. He hides his cell phone all the time. If he leaves it around, he’s wiped the call logs. He changed the password on his e-mail account. He did a bunch of little stuff I didn’t think about at first. I know I’m not easy to live with, but I can’t live with him if I can’t trust him.” She cried. “He’d be better off without me anyway.”

  “Ruthie,” she soothed, “please don’t talk like that.”

  She let out a snort of disgust. “I don’t mean killing myself. I don’t even mean killing him.” She sniffled. “I already called my brother. He’s driving over right now. He said I can stay with them. He’s always hated Bob anyway.”

  “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

  “Yeah. I don’t even want to know who it is. I don’t care.”

  Gwen stifled a guilty pang. “I’m so sorry, honey.”

  Ruthie sniffled again. “Listen, I need to get off here and pack some stuff. If Bob calls you looking for me, don’t tell him where I am, okay? Please? Just tell him I’m safe and that I wanted to go away for a few days. I need to get my shit together, get my life back. I’m tired of living like this. You can call me on my cell, I’ll have it with me.”

  Maybe this was a good sign. “Can I tell you something?”

  “Of course you can, as much as you put up with me.”

  “Liam and I might be moving.”

  She gasped. “You’re getting back together with your guys?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d say that.” She wouldn’t allow herself the luxury of hope. “I haven’t even decided for sure if we will move, but Liam wants to move, and frankly, I want to be someplace else. We love Amy and our parents, but we agree it’d be healthier for both of us to put some distance between us and them. At least for now.”

  “Good for you!” She laughed. “I’ll still call you and bug you.”

  Gwen laughed, too. “You’d better. I’ll get mad if you don’t.”

  “You’re a good friend, Gwen. Do you know how much I love you?”

  She would miss Ruthie like hell. As exasperating as her friend could be at times, she really did love her. The things that had happened to her weren’t
her fault, and Gwen couldn’t honestly say she wouldn’t have reacted exactly the same way Ruthie had. “I love you, too, Ruthie. I promise we’ll come visit you.” They said good-bye. After Gwen hung up, she stared at the phone.

  “Well?” Liam asked.

  She related the conversation and he shook his head. “Well, that saves you the hassle. Talk about fortuitous.”

  “Yeah.” She looked at him. “You mean it? You really want to move?”

  “Anywhere you want to go, sis. I have money saved up, about thirty grand. I was going to use it to move out of Mom and Dad’s. Might as well use it for us to move. Or we can use it for a down payment on a house even.” He studied her expression. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m scared.”

  He smiled and pulled her in for a hug. “Me too, kiddo. We can be scared together, okay?”

  * * * *

  To keep fireworks to a minimum, they’d relented and accepted their mother’s invitation to come over that night for dinner. Gwen prayed Amy didn’t show up despite her mother complaining she couldn’t get Amy to return her calls. Liam rolled out of his bedroom door in his wheelchair.

  “Are you hurting?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Nope. Just resting up.” He grinned. “I’ll be damned if I’ll show up there in my chair. We’re not even taking the walker. I’ll take my cane. But I’ll use this until we leave so I don’t wear myself out.”

  “Do we tell them tonight about the move?”

  He nodded. “Yep. I plan to. We’ll tell them I accepted a job out west.”

  “Why? We don’t even know where we’re going yet.” She didn’t even know where she wanted to go. Anywhere far enough to allow her to run from her painful memories.

  Anywhere that would take her mind off Tim and Jack.

  “Because it’ll take the pressure off you, and because you damn well know where we’re moving to.” He smiled. “I’d love to live out there and be able to see the West. If we don’t like it, in a year or so we’ll move somewhere else. Or hell, we can buy an RV and travel. Neither one of us needs to be tied down.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “You need doctors.”