by Debbie Burns
Her thoughts circled back to the bright-eyed baby with his exuberance for everything, especially the cats. Maybe he was innocent and infectiously cute, but that baby had no connection to her. She could tell the girl—tell Stacey—to screw off and do her best never to think about them again. Mia had no responsibility to them.
What had Stacey thought she’d do? Hear her sad story and sign up for babysitting shifts the way she signed up to make meals for meal trains when help was needed? Mia had every right to hate her and zero reason to help her.
Only that your son has a half brother, and you know full well there’s a connection here bigger and stronger than you want to admit.
Mia’s mom had spent the last fifteen years in Africa dedicating herself to the causes of others. Mia knew what it meant to live selflessly. But she wasn’t her mother, and she was seriously pissed.
She yanked her hands out of her hair and dropped them to the table hard enough to rattle Ollie’s bowl and draw his attention from the puppy onto her. He’d gone back to sitting on the floor playing tug-of-war with the puppy and had abandoned his dinner.
Hearing the smack, he looked her way with widened eyes as though she was both delicate and explosive.
“Sorry, bud,” she said, somehow managing to fake a carefree tone. “You know those nights when you’re falling apart, and I tell you to get some sleep and everything will feel better in the morning? I think tonight that’s advice I need.”
He nodded and headed back to the table and his noodles. “I can put myself to bed, if you want.”
Dear God, Mia, get ahold of yourself. She pulled him into a hug and breathed in his little boy scent—soap and puppy and the lingering hint of metal from his Hot Wheels. A wisp of calm washed over her like the promise of rain on a scorched desert. “I wouldn’t miss reading to you and tucking you in for anything.”
If she was able to sleep, she’d stay in bed with him and hopefully make it through the night. Only she suspected there was no way she’d be able to drift off in this state.
Ollie stirred his noodles with the puppy chewing at the tips of his thick socks. Finally, it occurred to Mia that Sadie and Sam needed their dinners too. She prepared their food, hands still shaking, and set their dishes on the floor after miraculously getting them both to sit at attention after several tries with her closed fist, a remarkable training success considering how out of it she was.
Ollie wound noodles around his fork, then munched the loose strands from the bottom up as he watched the dogs inhale their food. Both mom and pup ate like dogs who, if they didn’t make fast work of their meals, wouldn’t have one. Considering the environment they’d just come from, this was to be expected. Mia didn’t think they’d ever been mistreated, but they were still a touch underweight and recovering from being confined with eleven other dogs in a closed-off house with their only access to the outdoors a small backyard sectioned off from the neighborhood behind a tall privacy fence.
After Ollie finished eating, Mia gave Sadie and Sam a second chance to potty, then forced herself to get down on the living room floor with Ollie to play with the dogs. They rolled tennis balls back and forth to one another across the expanse of the hardwood floor. Both the puppy and Sadie chased the balls, pouncing and sliding like baseball players into home base as they wagged their tails. For a while, it seemed like they’d never be able to make a dent in the puppy’s energy, or Sadie’s either.
Sadie tuckered out first. She picked up one of the smaller, softer balls in her mouth and carried it to a corner where she held it between her front feet and daintily chewed on it. A nearly endless number of rolls later, the puppy tired as well. He plopped down on the floor next to Ollie, his head half-lifted in the air in noncommittal interest as he watched the nearest abandoned ball roll away.
By eight thirty, after another bathroom break, it was time to get them back in their crates and get Ollie to bed. Mia read two chapters of The Mouse and the Motorcycle without processing a word as images of a bright-eyed baby and a pair of precisely placed poms swam through her mind. When she was finished, Ollie chose a picture book, The Polar Express, and flipped through the pages, making up a wild story of his own. He yawned halfway through and declared he’d finish his story tomorrow night.
He was dozing off before Mia had folded the book shut and placed it on his nightstand. She pressed a kiss against his forehead, allowing herself to savor his soft, smooth skin. After his breathing was deep and even, she lay there forever, trying to create the same peace in herself by matching her breathing to his even, relaxed breaths.
Only it didn’t work. Finally, she slipped out of the room and headed downstairs. Both mom and pup were sleeping peacefully. They were in separate crates placed alongside each other, curled on their beds. The puppy was sprawled out, his back legs splayed wide, while Sadie was curled into a ball.
Mia headed to her grandparents’ ancient computer and drummed her fingers as she waited for Skype to pull up. She typed in her mom’s screen name and held her breath. Please, Mom, answer. You’re the only one I can tell this to.
When it rang and rang, Mia collapsed her forehead atop the old wooden desk. She was scraped raw and exposed and needed her mom. It shouldn’t matter, Mia told herself. She should be a pro at living without her mom. She’d been managing just fine for half her life.
However, tonight there was a volcanic eruption building inside her, and she needed to let off some steam. If she didn’t, she was going to start smashing things.
She could jog. She hadn’t jogged in months, and the idea of the rhythmic pounding of her feet on pavement promised to be therapeutic. But it was winter and night, and she didn’t want to leave Ollie alone in the house.
With no other escape, Mia thought of the wine. There were still a dozen bottles in the basement, left over on the storage shelves from her grandparents. Her mouth watered at the thought of losing herself in a glass or two. Some scraped-raw part of her screamed Yes even as a more sensible part warned her to find some other way to disassociate from the wild storm of feelings inside her. She’d always been the lightest of lightweight drinkers, and no matter how much self-care she gave herself, hangovers were a constant companion after a night of drinking.
Tonight, the idea of uncorking one of those bold, spicy cabs or merlots and drowning her emotions seemed as if it might be worth the blazing hangover she’d get tomorrow. Half a glass of wine, and she’d be riding a wild buzz; a full glass, and she’d be able to numb the hurt and unspent anger raging through her.
With the dogs dozing contentedly in their kennels, Mia jogged down the steep, narrow basement stairs and over to the storage shelves. She chose a Napa Valley cabernet because she liked the label. She knew nothing about wine and suspected her grandparents hadn’t had highly refined wine palates either, so it was a crapshoot anyway.
Up in the kitchen, when she realized the bottle had a screw cap, her faith in her choice waned even more. Not that it mattered much. It would do the trick. She poured the dark-red wine into one of her grandparents’ handblown Italian glasses, lifted it to her lips, and let the flavor pour over her tongue. It burned her throat on the way down. She took a break and cleared her throat, bracing one hand on the counter, then drank until she could feel a buzz kicking in, racing through her veins.
“Damn baby!” She forced away an image of the little one, only for it to be replaced with a flash of Stacey in that damn reindeer-face sweater.
As if a glutton for punishment, Mia headed to the garage and fished the letter out of the glove box. She’d shoved it in there when she’d loaded Ollie into the car, after feeling as if it had been burning a hole through her jeans’ pocket and into her skin.
Holding the letter between her thumb and forefinger as if she were carrying something infected, she came back inside, picked up the wine, and headed for the couch.
“She even writes like a fricking kid.” Instead of dots,
Stacey finished off her i’s with little circles, and her letters were big and round and girlie. Mia read the letter twice more and, on the second time through, stopped a quarter of the way down.
So I’m telling you even though I know he’ll cut me off. But whatever.
Mia’s vision was blurring fast, but she blinked and stared at that single line, willing it to make sense. She’d read past it the first time, thinking it was a grammatical mistake. “He’ll cut me off,” she said aloud into the quiet room, punctuated only by the rhythmic breathing of the dogs. That didn’t make any sense. Brad was dead. How could he cut her off?
Stacey couldn’t mean Victor, Brad’s dad, could she? Mia couldn’t imagine Brad’s parents knowing this and keeping it a secret from her. As imperfect as this made their son look, it also meant they had a second grandchild.
If not them, then who?
Mia chugged another few swallows of wine and gasped. Ben! It had to be. This new awareness ripped through her sharper than the sharpest of knives.
She slammed the glass down on the coffee table and processed this new thought. Her buzz was growing, and her thoughts were coming slower. She was flipping hot and still wearing her ugly sweater, and Ben knew this life-changing truth and hadn’t told her.
Betrayal washed over her, trailing behind the buzz. How could he not have told her? They were the two people who’d orbited Brad’s crazy and stayed. And she and Ben had a history. All those years. All that talk. And Ben had held her hand that night in the hospital when Ollie was born and Brad was in another room being treated for his injuries from the car accident.
Whether she wanted it to be true or not, it had to be Ben. There was no one else. His father had left him a big chunk of money, and he made a good living as an architect. He didn’t even have a pet anymore, so he could certainly afford it.
She sway-walked across the room to the kitchen and fished through her purse for her phone. On the way back to the couch, she tugged off her sweater and dropped it on the floor. It was so fricking hot. She attempted to unbutton her jeans but couldn’t manage to work the button free, which was all fine and dandy till she had to pee later.
Still burning up, she crossed over to the thermostat and turned off the heat. She hovered next to it when she was finished, trying to remember what she’d been about to do.
That’s right. Ben. It was harder to walk, and the room was swaying. Mia sank to the floor close to the coffee table and swiped Stacey’s note off the top of it. It took several tries, but finally she snapped a picture of it. It took another few tries to attach it in a text and send it to Ben. His number was near the top of her texts. She’d texted him yesterday about the dogs being deaf and again this morning about the dogs’ first night in the house.
Knowing she was too out of it to type accurately, after searching for the right words to explain the betrayal she felt, she pressed the voice-to-text button and added, “Et tu, Brute.”
She squinted at the text that appeared, trying to make sense of it.
It to brew day
Close enough. She sent the text and dropped the phone on the floor next to her. Her gaze landed on the bottle of wine. She lifted it and shook it. She’d downed a few glasses and fast. She was going to pay for it, and she was most likely going to throw up.
And she didn’t feel any better about Stacey and the reindeer-face sweater or about that damn baby. “Damn baby.”
Her phone buzzed, went silent, then buzzed again thirty seconds later. She knew without looking that it was Ben, but she’d made her point. For tonight at least.
With nothing else to do, she sank to the floor. First she sprawled out. Then when her stomach was a nauseous mess, she curled into a fetal position and closed her eyes.
Finally, sleep was beckoning her. She pushed toward it, ignoring a new round of buzzing that was both impossibly close and far away at the same time.
Chapter 12
Under most circumstances, Ben considered the four-year-old Aston Martin V12 Vantage stored in the basement of his converted warehouse loft a wasteful extravagance. It—and a handful of other things he didn’t need, including a shit-ton of money—had been willed to him when his father passed away. In spite of years of threats to cut Ben from his will, his father had been generous in death, though Ben figured it had been more his father’s attempt to keep the wealth in the family than anything else.
Knowing the Aston was valued almost as high as some of the lofts in his building, Ben intended to sell it. He’d just been waiting for the estate to be settled and to feel a bit more closure. In terms of closure, he’d thought his Everest climb would do it, considering the climbing he and his father had done as a team was probably the only thing he’d enjoyed doing with him.
When he did sell it, Ben had it in his mind to give the money from the Aston to one of the organizations helping to support the Sherpas in Nepal. He’d not meant to put it off, but his father’s estate had been tied up in probate for several months, and then Ben had been climbing. Since he’d gotten back, he’d been too distracted with Mia leaving Brad to deal with it.
He’d driven the car a handful of times and had gotten pulled over half of them. For the most part, cops had seemed to want to see the car up close more than they’d wanted to issue a ticket.
Knowing he could cut the drive from his loft in downtown St. Louis to Webster Groves from twenty minutes to ten if he didn’t get spotted by a cop, Ben grabbed the Aston’s keys and headed out.
Fricking Stacey. The kid was lost and stressing, yes, but bringing Mia into things like this wasn’t going to help her. Brad’s parents, maybe. But not Mia.
Mia didn’t have anything that Stacey wanted. Brad had had a paltry life-insurance policy, barely enough to cover funeral expenses. And Ben wasn’t sure if Mia suspected it yet, but Brad had accumulated a considerable bit of additional debt while they were separated. Ben had rerouted some of the bills to his accountant. He’d been waiting for the dust to settle before talking to Mia about finances. He was hoping she’d let him wipe the slate clean, but he suspected she wouldn’t agree to it easily.
But now she’d have to deal with this first.
It had taken him a minute to understand what she’d texted him. The picture was considerably off-center, and he’d had to zoom in before he was able to decipher some of the content of the letter.
Then there’d been the It to brew day. Had she meant it was a day to drink? He hoped not. He’d never seen her drink, but he knew she was a lightweight when it came to alcohol. She admitted that freely and stuck to sparkling water at social events.
He picked up his phone and dialed her number again. She didn’t answer, but it wouldn’t have been an easy conversation over the thrum of the engine. Besides, he’d made incredible time on the highway and was already exiting.
In Webster Groves, he rolled through the empty streets, passing storefronts including the shelter, and then quaint houses shining under the glow of Christmas lights, emanating a peace that eluded him.
It was two minutes till ten when he pulled to a stop in front of Mia’s grandparents’ house. Light flowed out several windows past its cottage-like exterior into the night, but the red and white lights she and Ollie had strung on trees and bushes and the house were off. When he knocked but got no response, he jogged around back.
Panic flooded in when Ben spotted her through one of the half-closed blinds at the back of the house. She was lying on the living room floor, clad in a bra and jeans. An open bottle of wine sat on the coffee table a few feet away.
He tried the back door, but it was locked as well. After pulling in a breath, he kicked it full force. It exploded inward, the dead bolt ripping from the frame, and thwacked against the wall.
Sadie jumped up in her crate, barking and alert, having been alerted by the flying debris or the flood of fresh air. Mia didn’t so much as stir. Ben crossed over, wasting only a s
econd to assess the situation. The bottle was nearly empty. For Mia, that was a bender. Kneeling beside her, he heard her soft, even breathing as the barking died down, and he exhaled a giant breath of relief.
He grasped her shoulders and shook her gently but persistently until her eyes blinked open. “Mia. Wake up.”
She looked at him from behind a tousled mess of hair. Her eyes fell closed, then opened again. She swallowed and winced, lifting up a hand to bat him away. “Go away.” Her voice was sluggish, as if she’d been in a deep sleep, and hearing it made some of his tension wane. “Go. You didn’t tell me. I don’t want you here. I texted you. ‘Et tu, Brute.’”
Ben suppressed an unexpected chuckle. She was drunk off her ass and quoting Julius Caesar. “Wait, was that what you texted? I couldn’t figure it out.”
Had she meant that he was Brutus? The cut that hurt the most? He gave into the desire and brushed her hair back from her face. When the feel of it against his fingertips stirred the long-slumbering fire in his gut to life, he pulled his hand away. She was shirtless. He was already working to keep his gaze from trailing over her body.
“Mia, I’m sorry. More than you know or I can explain. When you’re sober, I’ll do my best.” He couldn’t tell her everything. At least, not yet. But he could explain some of why he hadn’t told her about the baby. “For now, please accept my apology and let me help you.”
“No. I just wanna sleep.”
“Let’s figure out how drunk you are first. Did you drink everything that’s missing from that bottle?”
Moving with sloth-like slowness, she pressed the palm of her hand against her forehead. Her eyes stayed closed. “I think… Yes. Some got on my sweater.” Lowering her hand, she brushed it against her chest, drawing Ben’s attention to her pale-pink lace-and-satin bra and, worse, the phenomenal full breasts swelling up from it.