Love on Mimosa Lane (A Seasons of the Heart Novel)

by Anna DeStefano

  He’d moved out as soon as he’d found an apartment. He’d explained things as best he could to Chloe, and he’d done his damnedest since to soften the blow for her as he and Libby had dismantled what was left of their relationship. Of course, his now ex-wife had done her worst to try to bully him into coming back. And then to make him pay for abandoning her all over again. She’d never forgiven him for going to prison, just like she’d never forgiven him for granting her the uncontested divorce she’d said she wanted.

  “The judge gave me primary custody,” she said. “That makes school issues my issues, even when you’ve got our daughter staying at that dump you call an apartment. If I need your help with something at Chandler, I’ll ask for it. But we both know how much of a zero you ended up being when it came to your own education.”

  “You didn’t exactly finish your degree either, Lib.” They’d been partying too hard. They’d taken too many dreams with them, theirs and others’, on their spiral downward.

  “We both could have done more,” she said, “had more, if you hadn’t been so hell-bent on screwing up every chance we got.”

  Law sighed. It was an old argument—the same argument they’d had over the phone last night, and the same grudge that had motivated every bite out of him that she and her lawyers had taken.

  “I didn’t want more,” he said. “I wanted our family.”

  “You wanted Chloe. Not me. It was never about me.”

  He had no comeback to that. It had been the truth for so long, it felt like forever to him, too. The feelings he’d once had for Libby felt like never now. Whatever they’d been, before they’d become this, was so long gone that he had been staying in his marriage for his daughter from practically the beginning. He’d tried harder and harder to make things work, but it had never been enough to get Libby to try, too. They’d never had a chance.

  “Kristen didn’t ask me to come in to talk about Chloe,” he finally said, knowing it wasn’t the complete truth, but it was enough of one to end this conversation before it got out of control. “She wants me to coach one of the Dixons’ foster kids—some new boy she’s hoping will find something in soccer to help him want to settle down everywhere else.”

  “Kristen?”

  Law rolled his eyes. “Ms. Hemmings. The assistant principal.”

  “I know who she is, Law. I just don’t recall her being on a first-name basis with parents she’s never met before. Assuming that the two of you haven’t met before. Have you?”

  Damn, he was tired. He’d walked right into that one. Now his high-strung, extremely jealous ex was reading too much into things.

  “No,” he said. “We haven’t met before. Knock it off, Libby. I don’t have time for this.” Dealing with her angst was becoming a never-ending roller-coaster ride. “There’s nothing going on with Chloe at school. There’s nothing in my life you need to be involved in, period—least of all who I do or don’t see personally.”

  The silence on the other end of the phone catapulted Law’s headache from a warning shot to full-on agony.

  “Don’t think you’re going to just bounce right on to some other woman,” she said, “and bring her home to your bed while you’ve got my daughter with you two nights a week.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Don’t think you’re going to talk my child into playing any more of that filthy sport you waste so much of your time on.”

  “I spend my time away from Chloe working double shifts at the bar to cover the lease on the house, my rent, and all of our expenses. You made sure of that, when you demanded and got primary custody of our daughter.” He felt the anger pumping through his veins. He heard it in his voice. And, as he always had with Libby, he shut it down. She wanted him out of control. He wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction, or let himself go down a road that would take him back to behaving like someone he never wanted to be again. “This has got to stop, Lib. I’m doing the best I can. I always have. That wasn’t good enough for you. Fine. But it’s over. We’re over. Let it go. What I do now is none of your business.”

  “You’re my business, as long as we share Chloe.” Libby sounded close to tears. “And don’t you forget it. Don’t push your luck, or you’ll find your two nights a week with our daughter a distant memory. I have our divorce judge wrapped around my little finger.”

  She hung up, leaving Law staring at his phone.

  She’d simmer down eventually, he reminded himself. He’d been reminding himself of that for months. He’d hoped they would reach some sort of separate peace, now that the divorce was finalized. He’d hoped they’d find a way to salvage their marriage when he’d moved his family to Chandlerville. He’d hoped for the best when he’d come home from prison, clean and sober, to find Libby fighting to stay clean, too, and seemingly wanting to make things work.

  The best he could expect now was that his ex would eventually tire of her tantrums—and that she’d wake up to how much her bad behavior was affecting Chloe.

  He started the truck’s engine. He imagined Libby getting on the phone with one of her friends and ranting, because he’d once again refused to indulge her. But when he pulled out of the school parking lot, heading home for a few hours of sleep before he got Chloe back with him, he found himself glancing over his shoulder, thinking about the few minutes he’d stood there talking with Kristen.

  She hadn’t just been concerned about Fin. She’d thought another season of soccer would be the best thing for Chloe, too. Law couldn’t get it out of his head now: the look in his daughter’s eyes the last month or so—every time she said no when he asked her if she wanted to run a few drills with him. It was like watching a war play out between who his daughter thought she had to be for everyone else, and who she really was.

  Kristen had understood what the pressure of making that kind of choice might be doing to Chloe. Why couldn’t Libby?

  And suddenly, even though he’d just told his ex he wasn’t romantically interested in Chandler’s AP, he found himself smiling again, the way he had several times while he and Kristen had talked. His instincts had said to get away from the woman, but being next to her had felt too good.

  It had been a long time since anything had felt that good.

  “Your dad’s a pain,” Fin said to Chloe at lunch on Thursday, even though the rest of her class—at least the kids she cared about—had decided she was eating alone today.

  It had been an awful morning. Yesterday afternoon, after her dad left school, had been just as bad. Everyone had been talking about her dad, and her dad and Fin. And Fin wouldn’t say anything about what her dad had wanted. By the time the school bus dropped her at her dad’s apartment, she’d been so mad she hadn’t talked to him at all.

  They hadn’t gone for milk shakes or anything before the sitter came over and he left for work. She’d just sat in her room all night, getting snarky texts from her friends, who’d still wanted to know what was up. And then her mom had called, saying all over again that Chloe should be a cheerleader and not join whatever soccer team her dad was thinking about coaching—evidently with Fin or something. And then once her dad got home late, her mom had called again, on the house phone, and she and Dad had fought for like an hour.

  Now everyone had been teasing her at school all morning. Summer and Brooke especially. Word had gotten around about the soccer team and Fin possibly being on it. Not that Chloe had let her dad talk to her about it yet, so she didn’t know what was happening. But her friends were already making fun of her about it—as if she’d really go back to playing, when her mom would make it a total hassle if she did.

  It had made Chloe so mad, she’d finally yelled at Summer and Brooke on the playground, telling them to shut up about it. After that, they’d totally ditched her for the rest of recess. And then there hadn’t been any room left for Chloe at their lunch table—the table they always sat at together.

  T
homas Kilpatrick and Sam Nash were sitting with Summer and Brooke today, even though they usually acted like buttheads toward all the girls. Like yesterday, when they and Fin had laughed at her and Brooke and Summer, when Fin wouldn’t let Chloe have a drink at the water fountain. Now Chloe’s friends were hanging out with Fin’s friends like they’d been friends forever. All because her dad had come to school yesterday and made her already lousy life even lousier.

  She’d been reading a book all lunchtime, pretending that she didn’t care if Summer and Brooke ever saved her a place at their table again. Just like she pretended she didn’t care when her mom talked mean about her dad to people. Chloe was good at looking like she didn’t care about a lot of things. She’d just taken her tray of spaghetti she wasn’t going to eat to her own table and opened the book she wasn’t really reading, as if that was what she’d wanted to do all along.

  But she’d almost started crying on her way to the other side of their class’s section in the lunchroom. Somehow she hadn’t. Except now Fin was standing in front of her, making her feel like she was going to lose it again. Because everyone was staring back and forth between Brooke and Summer’s table, and Chloe and Fin.

  “Your dad’s a pain,” he said again.

  She glared up from her book. “I know.”

  “So are your friends.”

  She slammed her book closed. “At least I have friends.”

  “You mean the ones who are sitting with Thomas and Sam, instead of you?”

  “You mean the guys who aren’t sitting with you today, who always call Brooke and Summer and me stuck up and snobby and know-it-alls?”

  “Well, you are. You don’t like anybody but yourselves.”

  “No, we don’t like you and Thomas and Sam—because you’re gross. All the time. You fart and even when you don’t, you smell like you never shower, even though Sam’s and Thomas’s families have more money than God. And you pick on everyone, especially me and Brooke and Summer. And you’re always in trouble…Of course my friends don’t like you.”

  Except her friends were laughing with Thomas and Sam right now. She could hear them. Maybe Summer and Brooke thought she was gross, and that was why they’d acted the way they had since yesterday—the way they did anytime Chloe didn’t do things the way they thought she should. Maybe they’d always felt that way about her, like her mother felt about pretty much everything now.

  Her mom had been cool once, a long time ago. Chloe could barely remember now. But when she’d been really little, her mom had seemed…normal and maybe even happy. Now it was like nothing Chloe or her dad did would ever make her happy again.

  Chloe’s family had gotten so messed up. Her parents seemed to want everyone in Chandlerville to know they were freaks. Why would anyone really like Chloe?

  Except the more she’d sat alone at lunch, pretending to read, the more she’d started to wonder…

  Where did her friends get off treating her like this, just because her mom and dad were nuts? Summer’s mom drank like Chloe’s did, even though none of their parents knew that their kids knew. Brooke’s dad was gone all the time, and her mom never said anything about it. Brooke thought it was because her mom was with another man a lot of the times she got a sitter for Brooke and said it was because of some fund-raising thing at school. Except none of the other kids’ moms who hung out with Brooke’s mom would have a school thing those nights. So where else was Brooke’s mom going?

  Summer’s and Brooke’s moms kept it together in public, the way Chloe’s mom hardly ever did now. Not about Dad. But why did Chloe’s friends get to make fun of her, when their own parents were freaks, too? Maybe Fin was right. Maybe Brooke and Summer weren’t her friends. Like Thomas and Sam hadn’t been acting like Fin’s friends, after he’d talked with her dad yesterday and started acting so weird.

  He’d been sitting by himself today, not eating, just like her. And now he was talking to her, which he never did.

  “I’m sorry, okay?” he said, so fast it sounded like all one word.

  Chloe just stared at him. He looked pissed off, not sorry.

  What had her dad said to him? This couldn’t be just about soccer.

  “For being gross?” She smiled at him and tried to look mean, the way Summer and Brooke would have. “Is that what you’re sorry about?”

  Only it made her feel a little sick, acting like her friends. In fact, she’d started not liking Fin because Summer and Brooke hadn’t liked him first. And suddenly she couldn’t smile, thinking about how she hadn’t said good-bye to her dad that morning or hugged him on the playground yesterday, because she was worried what her girlfriends would say. She didn’t like it that Fin looked almost like he was going to cry now, and she didn’t even know why, except she knew it had something to do with her.

  “When isn’t he gross?” Summer asked.

  She and Brooke had walked over to stand behind Chloe, like they hadn’t ignored her for half an hour. They were both smiling. Being mean to Fin, or anybody, was one of their favorite things. Chloe had never liked that about them, but her mom had said to get over it. Popular girls were special. They got to act differently. They got everything they wanted—everything her mom hadn’t gotten when she was in school, and she and her mom had been living in a trailer with even less than she and Dad and Chloe had now. If Chloe wanted to be like her friends, Mom said, she had to stop worrying so much about how everyone else was feeling, and start doing things the way Summer and Brooke did.

  But all Chloe really wanted—the only reason she went along with so much of what her mom wanted—was to calm Mom down and get her parents to cool it, and get her mom to remember all the things about their family that used to make her happy. Chloe just wanted something about her life to feel normal again.

  “When aren’t you a stuck-up brat?” Fin said back to Summer, making Sam snicker.

  Sam and Thomas had walked over to stand next to him.

  “Maybe my nose is in the air,” Summer said, “because you keep stinking things up.”

  “Maybe it’s your crappy perfume that smells so bad,” Sam said, like he hadn’t just been hanging out with her, liking the way she smelled.

  Sam liked Summer. All the girls knew that was why he acted like he hated her. And most of them wished he’d act that way with them. Chloe didn’t, though. It reminded her too much of how her mom treated her dad, all mean and nasty, when she was worried about everything Dad did still, even though they weren’t married anymore.

  “At least she doesn’t stink like she forgot how to wipe her butt,” Brooke said.

  “If I smell like crap,” Sam said, “your rotten-flower perfume smells like a funeral.”

  He and Thomas laughed together this time, even though everyone knew Thomas liked Brooke more than he liked any other girl their age.

  Sam nudged Fin’s shoulder, because Fin was just standing there and not laughing any more than Chloe was.

  He usually liked it when his friends were being this way—at least, he usually acted like he did, the way he acted like he didn’t care what anyone thought about him. Only Chloe had always thought that maybe he did. She’d always wondered if Fin wasn’t a lot like her, because he seemed to be just going along with everyone else a lot of the time, the same as she did. She’d never dared to ask him, because he’d only have made fun of her. And even if he hadn’t, their friends would have.

  Now he was looking at Chloe instead of Thomas and Sam, and everyone was staring at him. Then her. And then him again. She looked down at her book. But Chloe hadn’t looked away from Fin fast enough. Not before she’d seen it.

  He was sorry. He was ... upset. He was really upset about something.

  “Hey, Fin, if you like Chloe so much,” Thomas teased, totally not getting it, “why don’t you just get it over with and kiss her?”

  Sam made kissing noises, and then everyone was laughing.
/>
  Fin’s hands were bunched into fists.

  “Leave him alone!” Chloe shouted at their friends.

  She could feel her face getting red while she tried not to cry. For herself. And for Fin. He looked ready to punch someone out, and he had to know that he couldn’t, not at Chandler most of all. After what had happened last winter between Troy Wilmington and Bubba Dickerson, the teachers didn’t put up with anyone acting out at anyone else.

  “Leave him alone,” she said again, ashamed of how Summer and Brooke were laughing even harder at her, and how it was making her want to do almost anything to stop them. “I’d rather kiss a muddy soccer ball than kiss Fin. I hate him. I’ll always hate him. So just leave us both alone, okay?”

  And that was when she really did start to cry.

  Because Fin did, too.

  Right there in front of everybody, he wiped at his eyes, as if she’d hurt his feelings or something. She shouldn’t care. Like her mom had said, she should only care about being with her friends—and Summer and Brooke were laughing about what she’d said now, instead of laughing at her. Chloe couldn’t apologize to Fin the way she wanted to, not and be one of the cool girls in class everyone wanted to be like.

  But she wanted to say sorry. She really, really wanted to. She didn’t like being mean like this. She never had.

  “You six knock it off and get in line,” Mrs. Glover said from behind them. “You’re holding everyone up. We’ll be late for math.”

  The rest of their class was lining up at the lunchroom doors. Chloe’s friends left first, then Fin’s. Thomas and Sam were saying stuff to Brooke and Summer that made them laugh again. Fin looked like he wanted to scream at Chloe, but he didn’t. He didn’t say anything. He just kept staring.

  “What’s the use?” he finally asked, only she didn’t know what he meant, and he didn’t really seem to be talking to anyone but himself.

  She should say something to him. But Summer and Brooke were looking at her again, like they wanted to be friends and they wouldn’t gossip about her to everyone else the first chance they got. And Fin was watching them and Sam and Thomas and balling up his fists even tighter, like he really was going to yell and make everything even worse.