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

by Anna DeStefano

  “You’re…” Law peered closer, into Libby’s eyes.

  Then he hung his head. He took another step back from his ex-wife. Not that the woman still looked inclined to get away from him. It seemed to Kristen that Libby had Law precisely where she wanted him.

  “I loved you,” Law said, “at least, I tried to. A lot more and for a lot longer than you ever tried to love me, Libby. And Dan’s got nothing to do with this. You threw it all away. You did this, not me, because you never trusted me; you never really wanted me. I’m not even sure you know how to love or be happy, but you sure as hell don’t know how to be a wife, or even a mother, if this is how you think I’m going to let you keep treating me and our daughter.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about being happy either, you son of a bitch,” said the woman who acted like a paragon of motherhood when her friends or anyone else from the community was watching. “At least not with me. It was never about me, was it? None of it. Maybe you’ve just been biding your time in Chandlerville all these years…If you wanted Kristen so badly, why did you stay with me as long as you did, huh?”

  “You’re the one who asked for the divorce, Libby. I was committed to us from the first moment I heard Chloe was on the way. And then I held Chloe in my arms, once I was paroled. From that moment on, my heart was hers. And yours, if you’d decided anywhere along the line that figuring out how to love, no matter how much both our parents screwed us over, was worth your time.”

  Kristen pressed her fingers to her lips and blinked to keep her tears from falling. She’d never heard a parent’s unconditional love for a child described more beautifully. And she’d never seen anything more disturbing than the toxic impatience that had washed over Libby’s features.

  “Love?” she asked. “You know how to love? Is that what you call living in the same town as your brother all these years, and never once trying to make things right with him?”

  “You don’t want things to be right with Dan, Libby. All you’ve ever wanted from my brother was his money.”

  “And you wouldn’t even let me keep that, would you?”

  “You never should have taken it in the first place. I asked you not to. You lied to me and said you wouldn’t.”

  “He kept me from having to work three dead-end jobs while our infant was in day care, while you were on the inside.”

  “And I’ve worked my ass off ever since to take care of you both. Dan’s money is off-limits now, just like it was when I was in prison. Leave him out of this.”

  “You better hope I don’t.” She lifted her hand and rubbed two fingers against her thumb, as if she were brushing paper money together. “My daughter deserves the best things and the best friends and the best connections Dan’s money can buy. And you’re going to get them for her and me. If you want me to sit by and watch you chase another woman all over town, then you’re going to pay.” She glanced at Kristen. Her eyes were glassy but piercing. “I’ve got connections, even without a judge. I can make both your lives a living hell. Don’t you forget that.”

  Law twisted Libby’s arm behind her back and pulled her onto her toes, her body flush with his. “That’s enough. You’re out of control, and don’t think I don’t know why. I can smell it on your breath. I don’t know how it could have taken me so long to figure out why you’ve been more off the deep end than usual. But you’re going to stop it, now. Stop embarrassing yourself and our daughter in public. Stop coming after me. And don’t you dare drag Dan or his family or Kristen into this. You understand me?”

  The threat in Law’s voice, no matter how justified, took Kristen off guard. Despite his size, the rough edges to his personality, and his reputation as an ex-con, she had known him to be a gentle, loving man. Even to Fin, when he hadn’t wanted to talk with the boy at first. But he was something else now. His energy had shifted into something threatening that should be given a lot of space.

  Kristen stepped closer instead.

  “Law?” At his side, she was reaching for his arm, ignoring Libby’s glare, when the bowling center’s side door opened and Dan stepped out.

  “You three need to keep it down out here.” Law’s brother glanced at Kristen briefly. He zeroed in on his brother and ex-sister-in-law. “Half of Chandlerville is on the other side of that door, trying not to listen to your shouting. The other half practically has their ears plastered to the wall, trying to make out everything you say—while Chloe’s acting like she doesn’t mind that her girlfriends are eating up the scene you’re making like it’s candy.”

  It was the most amazing thing to watch, how from one second to the next Law forgot about Libby, let her go, and squared off against Dan, fully prepared to vent his frustration at his brother. While Libby turned docile and sweet, smiling at Dan and clutching her hands in front of her, her eyes as soft as a fawn’s in a Disney feature.

  “Oh, my,” she simpered. “What was I thinking? I don’t know what came over me. I had no idea we were being so loud, Dan. Thank you so much for letting us know. Is Chloe okay?”

  Dan had always struck Kristen as the passive, conservative type, except for the one time he’d taken on the school board along with several other parents, demanding reform after Sally had been one of the kids who’d witnessed—and very nearly been injured in—January’s shooting. The outrage and disgust Kristen had seen in Dan’s temperament at the board meeting was back—and to his credit, it was aimed solely at Libby.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me, lady,” he spat.

  He studied her carefully made-up face and hair, and then her camp shirt and chic tailored pants, rounded out by three-inch gold platform sandals. All of it was in stark contrast to the simple golf shirt and jeans Law wore.

  “I don’t know what you’re after,” Dan continued. “But I know for certain that my niece’s feelings and well-being aren’t even on your radar.” He smiled when Libby stiffened in outrage. He peered into her eyes. Only then did he look to Law. “Is she safe to drive?”

  “Give me your keys,” Law said to his ex.

  He pinned his gaze on Libby, not his brother.

  Libby hugged her tote bag to her side. “You think you’re some kind of an expert about other people, just because you’re a drunk and went to AA and have everyone convinced you haven’t stepped a toe out of line since?”

  “I’m sick and tired of this.” Dan grabbed her purse and dragged it off her arm. He glared back and forth between Law and Libby. “All of it. You two are torturing a little girl, because you can’t deal with the mess you’ve made out of your own lives.”

  The first thing he pulled from Libby’s bag looked like a flask. He tossed it to Law, who had the reflexes to catch it out of the air without looking away from his ex-wife. He stuffed the thing into the back pocket of his jeans. Dan plucked up Libby’s keys next, then handed her back her purse. She snatched it to her chest, and then she turned to Kristen, of all people.

  “You saw them,” she insisted. “You saw them take my personal property and invade my privacy. My lawyer will be calling you, and you better not be considering lying to him. I assure you, you don’t want to join my husband on the court’s bad side.”

  Kristen considered the other woman’s threat.

  Then she considered kicking Libby’s ass, the way she knew Law was dying to.

  Then she smiled her sweetest, emptiest smile—she’d learned it from a master, her mother—and shook her head. “I saw Law and his brother making certain you and Chloe get home safely.”

  “What do you know about what I do or don’t do for my daughter?”

  “I know I’ve thought I smelled alcohol on your breath more than once at school functions this year.”

  Law’s attention resettled onto Kristen. Something in his expression said he realized she was bluffing—that she was guessing Libby hadn’t waited until tonight to start drinking—but that Kristen was backing him up
and forcing Libby to back down at the same time. She watched him inhale deeply, soundlessly, as if he were taking her words deep inside him.

  “And if your lawyer or the judge were to ask me questions about what just happened,” she continued to Libby, “I’d be happy to make a statement about everything I’ve seen and heard tonight—as well as each and every time I’ve run into you at school and wondered if you’d been drinking that day, too.”

  “Let’s go,” Dan said. “My car’s around front. I’ll take you home. Law can bring Chloe over later. She doesn’t need you back inside, doing even more damage than you already have.”

  He left without waiting for a response. Libby cut a killing look at Kristen and then Law. She headed after Dan, digging in her bag for her cell phone, pressing a button and putting it to her ear.

  Kristen watched Law, dazed and worried and wondering how they’d gotten from the intimacy of the moments they’d shared inside to this dark place, with him suddenly feeling light-years away.

  He was looking at the ground, his hands in his pockets again so she couldn’t wrap her fingers around his in support, the way she longed to.

  “I should go check on her,” he said to the dirt beneath them.

  “Chloe’s with her friends.” Kristen didn’t pretend that she thought he was worried about Libby. “If this morning was any indication, she’ll be acting like nothing happened, and that the three of us don’t exist, while Summer and Brooke harass her for as long as they find it entertaining. She’s going to keep acting like she doesn’t care until she’s alone, and then everything that’s eating her from the inside out will be all she’ll be able to think about…”

  Kristen sucked in air so fast, it made her dizzy.

  Or maybe it was the wave of mortification crashing over her, because her own childhood memories were becoming mixed up in all of this.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, not expecting him to understand—and she’d rather die than explain. But hadn’t she just witnessed his deeply personal exchange with Libby? She brushed her hand down his arm. “You’re not the only one who didn’t grow up with the kind of loving home people in a place like Chandlerville think everyone has known.”

  “Your parents?” Law asked, accepting her revelation as if it were nothing, identifying with her, the same as he had inside.

  He seemed so distant and solitary and apart from a lot of what happened around him, because he felt so much of it, she suspected. Because he needed not to feel, perhaps, only he couldn’t stop himself. Which was likely why drinking had become a problem when he was younger. Now he coped by not giving away too much. Not letting anything in that he didn’t want to handle. Not getting close enough to feel more than he could—except close was what he’d said he wanted with her.

  “My mother,” she admitted. It was more than she’d shared with anyone, even Mallory. But with Law, it suddenly didn’t feel like enough. “Most everyone in the town I grew up in thought she was a good mother. My father did, when he was home long enough to notice, which wasn’t often. The problem was, she was good at hiding her addictions, her excess. Too good. No one realized she was throwing her fabulous life and my childhood away, drinking and taking prescription drugs and living it up with her latest lover-slash-dealer-slash-knight in shining armor.”

  “Libby’s evidently good at hiding, too.” Law nodded, acknowledging Kristen’s past with an easy acceptance that floored her. “I had no idea my ex was drinking again. She was off the wagon the year before we moved here. She promised me she’d sober up for good if I gave us a fresh start somewhere like Chandlerville. I wouldn’t have put up with all this if I’d known...”

  “Of course you wouldn’t have.”

  “We promised each other, when we both dried out before I was sentenced, when she was first pregnant and we’d gotten married, that we’d stay clean and do the best we could for our child, no matter how hard it was going to be for a while. And she’s tried. I know what you heard just now must make it sound like—”

  “It sounds like you’ve done the best you could, Law.”

  His fists were still dug so deeply into his jeans, it was a wonder the seams hadn’t ripped. His expression had hardened to a mask of control. Gone was the sensitive, charming, almost playful man he’d been with her inside. In front of Kristen was someone in pain, a father at the end of his rope who desperately needed something to hold on to.

  “We were both drunks when we met,” he said. “We were just kids, but we were full-on addicts already.” He sighed. One of his hands emerged and took hers, his touch so light it was like a dream. “I really did try to make it work. I did everything I could to make up for the fact that Libby and I were never a good match. It was fun while we dated, how careless and irresponsible and out-of-control she could be. She was the life of every party…”

  “And then the party stopped?” Kristen asked, empathizing more than she wanted to. “When I was thirteen, my mom took her party on the road, with Mr. Wonderful number six or seven, and she never looked back. My dad hardly missed her. Then again, his work for the State Department kept him out of the country so much, he never really noticed if I was there or not. As long as the housekeeper didn’t complain about me, it wasn’t worth his time to notice—except that I paled in comparison to my flamboyant, petite, exotically beautiful mother. I was too much like him, as it turned out. Too tall, too plain, too—”

  “You’re gorgeous, Kristen.” Law squeezed her hand. He brought it to his lips and kissed her fingers. “Inside and out, you’re drop-dead gorgeous and generous and kind—and so fiercely aggressive when you need to be, you take my breath away. What you said about Libby’s drinking…”

  “Yeah, that was a bluff.”

  “But now I pretty much know that tonight wasn’t the first drink, and that she’s blown her sobriety. And I owe that to you. The things she said about Dan and my family…” He nodded after his brother and ex-wife. “It’s complicated, my brother and me. It’s about our past, long before I hooked up with Libby. But lately she’s decided to make it about—”

  “Money?” Kristen said for him. “That’s pretty much how my dad and both sets of my grandparents tried to control me once I was old enough to get away from them. They had a lot of money. They tried to make me believe I was nothing without it or them. And all I had to do to get it was become whatever I had to, to fit into their world. I couldn’t have cared less.”

  Law nodded.

  And then he shook his head.

  “You didn’t just get away,” he said. “You’ve triumphed. Look at your basketball, at what you’ve done for Chandlerville and the elementary school. This place is just as lucky to have you as your family would have been, if they’d bothered to be what you’d needed to stay.”

  “I…” She wiped at her eyes, hating the vulnerable puddle of memories she’d let herself become. But she was mesmerized by his admiration, too. “I don’t know why I told you all of that. I don’t usually ramble like this. I’m not making a bit of sense…”

  Law brought her hand to his lips again.

  “You’re doing all right,” he said against her skin. He was looking at her again in that hungry way of his, a look that could consume her if she let it. Then he gazed past her. “I should see if Dan needs help with Libby.”

  He let Kristen go and stepped away.

  It was all she could do to watch him leave without insinuating herself further into his personal problems, or asking him what she was supposed to do now, after what he’d said earlier and what had just happened with Libby—and how he’d somehow in a single conversation managed to ease for her a lifetime of her feeling invisible to the people who’d raised her. The man’s family was imploding—still—and she’d played a prominent role in tonight’s disaster. Once he was certain Libby was on her way, he had to try to explain to his understandably upset daughter what had happened. Pacifying Kristen’s insecuriti
es was the least of his worries.

  He stopped before he rounded the corner of the building and turned back.

  “You’re an amazing woman,” he said. “You let me hear that you’re blaming yourself for a speck of what’s gone on tonight, and you and I are going to have to talk again. And God knows where that would take us.”

  “I’ve put you and Chloe in an awful bind,” she forced out.

  “I put myself in this bind a long time ago.” His voice hardened. “Libby wants someone to pay for the disappointments in her life. I have to make sure that’s no longer going to be me or Chloe. This isn’t about you, Kristen. Don’t take on my problems, because that’s what you’ve done your entire life to make up for whatever damage you’re still carrying around from what your parents did to you. You can’t fix this by worrying yourself sick, just like you couldn’t fix Fin yesterday no matter how much you put on the line to get me to help him.”

  Kristen could feel her heartbeat all over her body. She shouldn’t say it. She absolutely shouldn’t say it. But how could she not, when it sounded as if he was saying good-bye?

  “I’m not trying to fix you or anything else,” she said. “I’m not expecting anything from you, and I know you need to do what you need to do now, without thinking about me. I’m just trying to care, that’s all. Like you care, a lot more than you want people to know. I see that every time I see you with Chloe. I saw it in how you handled Fin, even if you talked to him at first just as an excuse to get away from me.”

  “What?” Law stepped toward her. He stopped. He stopped way too soon. “What did you see?”