Sugar Springs

by Kim Law

  Why she’d stood there yesterday and told the man she’d been pregnant when he’d left town was beyond her. Had she wanted to lash back and hurt him the way he’d hurt her? Or was she truly such a small person that she wanted to keep him from her girls’ lives?

  Everything would be easier if he didn’t get involved, but how was that the right thing? And didn’t she pride herself on always doing the right thing?

  She sighed. He may not have been her perfect idea of a father, but he clearly wasn’t completely worthless. If he was, he would have given up long ago instead of putting in the hard work necessary to make it through veterinary school. He also wouldn’t have sought her out simply to apologize for a hurt he’d caused more than a decade before. And she believed him when he’d said he hadn’t talked to Stephanie since the day they’d had sex. Maybe she shouldn’t have, but the moment the words had come out of his mouth, she knew them to be true.

  Why she hadn’t actually considered that an option before, she didn’t know. But as she’d watched the shock cross Cody’s face when he’d learned of Steph’s death, she’d known a colossal mistake had been made. And she’d made it. She’d believed her sister.

  Stephanie had lied and been vindictive toward her throughout her entire life, mostly because their father had left and his departure had been Lee Ann’s fault. According to Stephanie, everything had been perfect until he’d met Reba and then Lee Ann had come along. Of course Stephanie also hadn’t seemed to take into account the fact that her own mother had left her when she was only three. In the end, Stephanie had been left living with a stepmother and half sister, no biological parents, and a whole lot of anger.

  Why Lee Ann had thought Stephanie could change in the last days of her life and show a bit of compassion toward others she had no idea. Especially after she’d practically spit out the words that it was Cody who’d gotten her pregnant instead of continuing to tell lies about it being a country star who’d fathered the babies. She’d snarled at Lee Ann that if it hadn’t been for her having the boyfriend she’d had, Stephanie wouldn’t have ended up pregnant in the first place. Then they would have found the cancer in time instead of during the delivery.

  Only thing Lee Ann could figure for why she’d believed Stephanie when she’d said Cody wanted nothing to do with the girls was that she’d wanted it to be true. She’d wanted to believe that Cody really didn’t want the kids. It made her life easier not to have to seek him out and reopen old wounds.

  Because God, he’d hurt her.

  She’d walked into the house that sunny afternoon, only one week before prom, knowing her world to be perfect. She was in love with the greatest guy she’d ever met, she had a full scholarship and plans to get away to college, and she would soon consummate her relationship with the man she planned to spend forever with.

  Then, in one second, all that had changed. She’d stepped through the front door of her mother’s home, the same house she was living in now, and had seen Cody backing away from Stephanie, who lay on the couch—a couch that was not still in the house today. He’d been tucking himself back into his pants, and Stephanie had been chortling with laughter, her skirt up to her waist, and her panties on the floor.

  Lee Ann had caught a glimpse of pink lace shoved below exposed breasts before she’d escaped up the stairs to her own room.

  She still didn’t understand how he could have done that to her. What had he said? He’d gotten some bad news. Well, that was simply unacceptable. People got bad news every day. You didn’t get bad news, then trip and find yourself penis-first inside your girlfriend’s sister.

  Irritation boiled in her. She knew she should forget about the past and move on, but he’d been the one to bring it up. She’d been perfectly content with it pushed to the recesses of her mind. But no, that wasn’t good enough for him. He wanted to “clear his conscience.”

  So she’d kept her mouth shut about the lie she’d told.

  It hadn’t been right, she knew, and she would correct it. Eventually. But yesterday, as he’d been explaining how he’d come to turn his back on her in the worst possible way, she’d been unable to find it in herself to do the right thing.

  Her front screen door slammed with a thwack, and she leaned over to look out of the room and down the hall. She had to get that spring fixed.

  “Hi Mom,” she called when she caught sight of the woman almost identical to her in size and weight. “Why are you coming in through the front?”

  Her mother shrugged out of her peacock-blue coat and tossed it on the chair against the wall. Since she lived next door, she normally bopped from back door to back door between the houses.

  “I picked up the chrysanthemums and pumpkins for the porch instead of waiting until tomorrow. Ran up to the nursery as soon as I got off work. My car is parked out front. Come help me unload, and we’ll get them set up.”

  Her mother worked at city hall, which suited her perfectly. Easy access to gossip. Lee Ann was certain she was situating herself to be the town’s next Ms. Grayson, holder of all knowledge of everything and everyone.

  She put the spoons down she’d been working on and made her way through the house. Their family was no bigger than the four of them, but they all loved inviting over friends who had nowhere else to go during the holiday. It set the tone of thinking of others that she hoped to instill in her children and also gave everyone a nice, enjoyable day of relaxation. This year there would be seven guests. Tonight she’d do the big grocery run, and then tomorrow afternoon and all day Thursday she’d cook. It was a lot of work, but she loved every minute of it.

  As she followed her mother out the door, she took in the outfit of the day. A peasant skirt in fall colors, lace-up ankle boots, and a long-sleeved, ruffled shirt. With no sign of gray in her hair, and a bounce still in her step, the woman could almost pass for being in her twenties instead of her fifties.

  “Beatrice said Cody found you up at the salon yesterday afternoon,” her mother stated.

  Lee Ann rolled her eyes behind her. She loved this town, but sometimes it really wore on her nerves. You couldn’t get a cavity without everyone knowing which tooth it was in.

  “Did she also report in on what the conversation covered?”

  No one knew that but she and Joanie—she’d filled her friend in after Cody had left.

  Her mother harrumphed. “She didn’t know.”

  “And what? She sent you to find out?” She went to the trunk. “Oh, Mom, these are gorgeous!”

  She liked to decorate the front steps with a mix of mums, as well as pumpkins and other gourds in different shapes and sizes. At the end of the evening, all guests departed with a planted pot of their own, along with their choice of the fruit.

  “Of course she didn’t send me.” Her mother scoffed. She then shot Lee Ann a gaudy wink. “I offered to come on my own.”

  Her mother turned serious. “Was it about the kids? What did he say? You know I won’t tell anything about that, but I will have to come up with some reason he was seeking you out. The current theory is that he never got over you and wants to start things back up.”

  Lee Ann choked on the thought. “Of course that’s not what’s going on. Who is saying that?”

  Reba shrugged. “Everyone.”

  And likely her mother and Ms. Grayson had started the story. Lee Ann grabbed a couple plants and scowled at her mother as she passed her on the way to the house.

  Her mother was two steps behind with her own armload. “Well, it all makes sense. From their point of view, why else would he be seeking you out? And this isn’t the first time he’s done it, either. Everyone already saw him at the bake sale Saturday, and then he was at the diner yesterday. Word is, though, that he skipped this morning. That set everyone to thinking you must be playing hard to get.”

  “Well they can go on thinking it, too,” she muttered. The thought of the two of them getting back together made her skin itch. It was the last thing she’d want.

  “I have to admit, I
encouraged that theory. I don’t see you letting your guard down given how he’s been absent for thirteen years. He could come up with a perfectly good reason that made sense, but you’re not prone to forgiving such things.”

  At least her mother wasn’t completely wearing rose-colored glasses for once. They finished unloading the car before Lee Ann answered the previous question about the reason he’d sought her out.

  When they had the last of the decorations positioned just where she wanted them, she took a seat on the concrete steps in the middle of them all and patted the space beside her.

  “Actually, no,” she finally answered. “He didn’t come up to the salon to talk about the girls. He came to apologize to me for sleeping with Steph.”

  “Oh.” The single word from her mother was spoken softly. She hadn’t expected to hear that. “And did he have a good reason?”

  Lee Ann leaned back, her elbows on the step behind her. “He’d apparently gotten bad news earlier in the day.”

  The woman who was capable of seeing the good in everyone merely turned her head in slow motion and gawked. Lee Ann couldn’t help but laugh out loud, the sound making her feel better than she had in days.

  “That’s right. Bad news. Then Steph did her Steph thing with him, probably accidently lost the buttons on her top, brought out some ‘special’ lemonade, and the rest, as they say, is history.” She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the breezy, slightly warmer-than-normal day. She’d come outside without a coat, and with all the anger traipsing through her, she found she didn’t need one. “I’ve no doubt she did all the hard work to seduce him, but geez, he had a bad day, so he let it happen?”

  “Well,” her mom started, her tone hesitant. “Don’t forget he was a teenage boy. It’s hard to say no to opportunities like that.”

  “He’d said he loved me.”

  Reba paused. “He was also driven by hormones.”

  Clearly. But in Lee Ann’s mind, that wasn’t good enough. Young and stupid or not, you don’t tell a girl one day that you love her, then have sex with her sister the next. Her mother didn’t argue the fact further, thank goodness.

  After several more moments of silence, Lee Ann could tell her mother was ready to ask the hard question. She had yet to be able to explain away Cody’s selfish avoidance of the fact he’d fathered two girls and had never wanted anything to do with them. In her mind, something wasn’t adding up. Wasn’t she just going to love it when she learned the truth?

  “So...” The hesitancy was clear in her mother’s voice. “He didn’t bring up the girls at all during your talk? Just like Saturday?”

  Eyes open now, Lee Ann stared up through the bare branches of the overhanging tree and focused on the clear blue Tennessee sky. It sure was a beautiful day. She only wished she could have that same clear, easy feeling in her heart. Instead, she wanted to continue with the lie she’d started the day before. She knew, however, that the moment she told her mother what she’d learned, her time of pretending she could go on keeping Cody in the dark was over.

  She pulled in a deep breath and let it out very slowly, still not looking at her mother. “He didn’t know Steph was dead, Mom.”

  A small gasp hit her ears. “How could he not know? She told him that was why she wouldn’t be raising the girls.”

  Her calm, ordered life had been so nice until now. She was going to miss it.

  She closed her eyes once more. “He didn’t know because he never talked to her again after running out of here that day.”

  “What?” Her mother shot to her feet. “But then how did he...How did she...”

  Lee Ann didn’t have to say anything. Instead she watched the lines of her mother’s face change as realization sank in. They went from tense and stressed, making her look every bit her age, to relaxed. Relieved. Life was once again as it should be in her mind. Cody wasn’t the bad guy, and she could go back to pretending life could work out perfectly.

  “She never even told him she was pregnant, did she? He didn’t know? All these years, we thought...” She shook her head, amazement flashing through her eyes. “And he didn’t even know.”

  Words were unnecessary. Lee Ann merely nodded.

  “Oh, my,” her mom said. She turned and slowly lowered herself back down to the steps beside Lee Ann. “You have to tell him.”

  Surely she didn’t. “I know.”

  “And you have to do it soon,” she pressed. “People don’t make it a habit anymore of talking about the fact the girls are Stephanie’s, but it’ll eventually come out. His being back has brought up so many things from that time. You know someone is bound to bring up Stephanie returning and having the kids. And when they do—”

  “Yeah,” Lee Ann interrupted. “When they do, he’s going to put two and two together real fast. And whether he wants anything to do with them or not, he’s going to be livid.”

  Not unlike how he would be when he learned she’d told him a bald-faced lie only yesterday. He would accuse her of purposely keeping the girls from him.

  “Of course he’ll want something to do with them. That’s what parents do.” Her mother’s cell made a noise and she pulled it out.

  “Really?” How the woman could make that statement when her own husband had deserted her and his two kids was a mystery. Not to mention he left his oldest daughter behind with a woman who wasn’t even her mother. “It’s my experience that’s not always the case, Mom.”

  Her mother waved away her concern, then tapped a message on the keypad of her phone. “He’s different than your father. That man had wandering genes. Of course Cody will want something to do with them.”

  Right, like being a vet who bounced from city to city proved stabilization.

  The cell phone chirped again and a line formed between her mother’s brows. She then glanced up at Lee Ann. “It’s after five.”

  “Yeah?” Oh. The girls weren’t home. She looked around as if she could see the school from where she sat. It was up the hill behind the house. “Maybe they came in quietly.”

  Blue eyes that matched her own showed back at her with a sarcastic gleam. “And you think I’m the one who always believes the ridiculous. Those two couldn’t come in without making noise if the peace of the world were on the line.”

  Lee Ann stood, worry filling her. Her mother was right. Even on days she was in the darkroom and the girls didn’t seek her out, she never missed the sound of them coming in the house.

  “Where could they be?” she asked. She hurried to the side of the yard and stared up at the school. No girls.

  As panic threatened, she reminded herself they lived in a city where only one police officer was needed, and he spent 95 percent of his time playing gin rummy with his wife-receptionist.

  Her mother held up her cell phone. “Beatrice says they just went into the back door of Keri’s clinic.”

  Alert signals clanged in her brain. Half-jogging, she hurried to the middle of the road and craned her neck as if she could see to the other end of the road. “Why would they go there? Keri isn’t even working now. She’s at home waiting for the baby to come.”

  Her mother’s cell signaled again and she read it out loud. “They figured out Dr. Dalton wouldn’t have any plans for Thanksgiving so they’re going over to invite him to Lee Ann’s.”

  Lee Ann’s lunch almost returned. She didn’t want him at their house on Thursday. Worse, she had a very bad feeling about this unplanned excursion. “I need to go.”

  Cody jotted notes from the day’s last patient while Kendra and Candy London continued with their steady stream of information. Though the clinic had closed at four thirty, they’d arrived shortly after via the unlocked back door, and had promptly situated themselves in his office, attracting Boss and the clinic cat, Howard, over to them. They’d been talking nonstop ever since, and he had yet to figure out a way to get rid of them.

  Not that he wanted to be rude, but he struggled to look at either one of them without jealousy swamping him. At l
east Lee Ann knew who he’d cheated with. Not that either of the incidents mattered at this point; they’d happened so long ago. He let out a soft sigh and tossed his pen to the desk. He just couldn’t seem to let the infidelity go.

  He’d almost broken his own code of staying out of people’s business and called Holly to ask her who the father was. He’d taken her to the fund-raiser, so she owed him one. Plus they were becoming friends of sorts. When he’d gone to the diner Sunday, she’d taken a break and sat down to have breakfast with him again. He believed her when she said she wasn’t looking to date him, but he also wasn’t what you would call comfortable eating with her on a regular basis. He preferred his solitude. Regular meals taken together could easily bleed into other parts of his life if he wasn’t careful.

  That was the reason he’d given himself for skipping breakfast that morning, but he could admit it when he was lying to himself. He’d 100 percent not wanted see Lee Ann.

  Yet if he’d gone to the diner, he could have used the time to ask Holly who’d sired the London kids. Even if she didn’t know, it would take her less than two minutes to get him the answer. But he didn’t like gossip, and he certainly didn’t want people thinking that anything around there mattered to him, so he’d stayed home and eaten the leftover macaroni and cheese he’d fixed for dinner the night before. Cold, boxed mac and cheese was not good for a person’s mood.

  “So Coach Taylor told me that if I keep practicing, I’ll be on the first string before the season is over.” Candy’s words worked their way back into his consciousness, and he looked at her. She wore an earnest expression. “I’ll probably take that mean Jenna Hopkins’s position.”

  He didn’t think she was expecting a reply, so he sat in silence. What was he supposed to say anyway? He didn’t know anything about Candy’s athletic skills, nor whether she was any better than Jenna what’s-her-name. Too bad there were no more animals to see. The office manager had confirmed that the numbers had already declined in the two days he’d been alone in the office, even though he was doing all he could to let it be known he wasn’t the reckless teen he’d once been. Hadn’t he shown up to help put the town’s Christmas lights up the moment he’d been asked?