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

by Anna DeStefano

“I want to help, Chloe. And I think you want me to, or you wouldn’t have come out onto the soccer field tonight and let me know you were there. We’re going to fix this—together. Tell me what’s been happening at home. And I promise, I’ll do everything I can to make it better. Trust me, darlin’, please?”

  Chloe’s watery glance accused him of every single time he’d let her down.

  “How much has your mom been drinking, darlin’? How many times has she been so drunk she hasn’t known you’ve snuck out of the house in the middle of the night?”

  Chloe stared out the windshield then, alone and resigned as she mumbled, “A lot.”

  Law focused on his driving, on the prettiest part of town passing them by as he headed for the unexpected sanctuary of Mimosa Lane. When he could trust his voice again, he glanced back at his daughter.

  “How many of the things you’ve been wanting lately, like cheerleading instead of soccer, and being one of the popular girls at school when those girls don’t seem right for you at all, at least started because you were scared that if you didn’t do what Mom wanted, her drinking might get worse?”

  Chloe scrubbed at her eyes. “A lot.”

  Law nodded. A part of him died, listening to his daughter sound so desolate. “We’re going to make it better, Chloe. I promise you that.”

  “How?” She finally worked her hand free. She drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her shins. “Where are we going?”

  “Someplace where things can settle down a little for you. For us. We’re going to be living with Uncle Dan for a while. We’re going to be living together every day, you and me, until your mom agrees to stop drinking and start doing better for you. That’s going to be hard, I know, and I’m sorry. We’ve already put you through so many changes. But I promise you, Chloe, I’m never going to let your mother or anything else scare you like this again.”

  Kristen reached for her customary calm.

  This was a good moment, regardless of the difficult circumstances. Sitting across her desk from the Dixons and Fin at nine o’clock on Friday morning, she was convinced they finally had their chance to get through to the kid who’d returned to Marsha and Joe last night—even if he’d needed Law’s help to find his way home.

  Law…From what she’d heard had happened since their phone conversation, he was dealing with a fresh flood of problems. But he’d promised the Dixons he’d help with Fin.

  “You’ve made a lot of trouble for yourself,” she said to the boy. Marsha had just recounted what had transpired at the park and then the Dixon home. “But facing your mistakes the way you are now is a good first step. I admire that kind of courage.”

  It sounded as if Law had finally found the courage to take a firmer hand with his ex. Kristen and Marsha had had a very brief conversation before Joe and Fin joined them. Before that, Kristen had already heard from Mallory, who’d learned from early-morning school gossip that Law and Chloe had moved in with Dan last night. Kristen’s heart was hurting for both father and daughter.

  “Don’t you want to say something to Ms. Hemmings?” Joe asked his youngest foster child.

  “I’m sorry,” Fin mumbled. He actually sounded as if he was.

  All of this had to be overwhelmingly confusing for a kid who’d already been through so much. It was baffling enough for Kristen.

  I’m glad I called.

  I’m glad, too…

  For those few minutes, things had seemed so good, so possible for her and Law. Now, she had absolutely no idea what to expect from him, or if she wanted to expect anything at all. For the first time, she’d put herself out there—possibly her whole heart—and it was with a guy who came with even more emotional baggage than she did. And now it looked as if he was going to be in a custody battle with his relapsing alcoholic, jealous ex-wife.

  Did she tactfully step back and give Law time to get his bearings and figure out what he wanted? Did she call him and thank him for his help with Fin, and casually feel him out about the rest? Or did she give in to the impulse to break all contact with him now, before he had the chance to dump her, and then her world could stop feeling as if it were tilting off its axis?

  She studied Fin’s file, struggling to focus on her job. She reviewed the long list of mischief Fin had been in just since coming to Chandler. The half-formed thought that had been nagging at her finally snapped into focus. The boy was being entirely too well-behaved this morning. Too calm.

  He was saying all the right things. He was working them. Which made her wonder if he had any idea just how close he was to blowing his shot with the Dixons. Was he luring them into letting their guard down again, just so he could ratchet up his reckless behavior—until Family Services had no choice but to remove him from the kind of loving community he’d needed his whole life?

  You’re a teacher, K, she scolded herself. Enough with the personal drama. Get in the game.

  “Are you sorry enough to stop this, Fin?” She folded her hands over his past. “Because I need to document something here. For starters, there’s your escalating disruptive behavior at school. How far beyond that I take this with your caseworker at Family Services depends entirely on what your plans are once you’re back in class. Are you going to stick this time? Are you going to settle down and try to learn something here, instead of looking for another reason to run?”

  “If my friends keep being stupid and mean like yesterday,” Fin said, sounding more like his disagreeable self, “I don’t gotta take that. You can’t make me. No one can.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” she said, before Joe could say whatever he’d inhaled to say. “No one can make you do anything. But the Dixons are your friends, and they’ve been anything but stupid and mean to you. You scared them to death running away again, but they’re here now, going to bat for you. They’ve hidden all the other times you’ve skipped on them, at the risk of their reputation with the county and their chance to help not just you but all the kids in your home. When are you going to do right by them, and protect them the way they’re trying to protect you, instead of fighting them?”

  “I…” Fin wiped at his eyes. “I didn’t ask them to do any of that. I didn’t ask them to come here today.”

  “And yet you’re a lucky young man, because here they are, right where they’ve been since you were placed with them. Do you have any idea how much they care about you?”

  “I didn’t ask them to care.” Fin gulped, swallowing the tears he wasn’t letting fall from those shiny green eyes. When Marsha’s hand covered his, he didn’t flinch away. “I didn’t ask them not to tell Mrs. Sewel how much I’m screwing up. Go ahead. Put everything in my file. Tell Family Services. It’s all going to end the same, anyway.”

  “It doesn’t have to,” Kristen said. “If you want things to be different, everyone in this room wants that, too. Even Mr. Beaumont does, or he wouldn’t have stayed with you at the park and made sure he got you home.”

  A real home, which Law was now helping make a reality for the boy.

  Kristen felt another piece of her heart slip beyond her control. She couldn’t imagine not seeing Law again, not asking him about last night with Fin, about Chloe and how she was doing, about Libby and how he was handling learning just how bad her drinking had been for so much longer than he’d thought. She wiped at her own eyes and shared an understanding smile with Marsha, though she had no idea exactly how much the older woman understood.

  “No one holds the mistakes you’ve already made against you,” she said. “Not here in Chandlerville, not at this school. We’re all focused on now. But we need you to be, too, so you don’t repeat any of the stuff in this file. Is that what you want, Mr. Robinson? Or are you determined to give up on us before we give up on you? Because I can call Mrs. Sewel right now and make this a whole lot easier on everyone. You don’t have to waste your time or ours acting up again. Do you want to head
back to county and meet with her today and see where she’ll put you next?”

  Fin glared at her. “No.”

  “No, what?” If he said nothing else, instinct told Kristen it was important that he said this.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You don’t want to…what?”

  “No one’s giving up.” Marsha fumbled to keep hold of Fin’s hand.

  “Is that what you want, Fin?” Kristen nodded at his physical connection with his foster mother. “Do you want people fighting to hold on to you? Or do you want to take your chances with another town and another bunch of strangers you won’t trust to love you, any better than you’ve trusted us so far?”

  Fin’s watery eyes were jarring companions to his scowl. He looked young and afraid finally, instead of jaded and cocky. He looked like she’d felt so many times in her youth.

  Please, she begged whoever listened to her when she identified with that kind of loneliness in one of her students. Please help me help this child…

  “What difference does it make what I want?” Fin demanded. “So what if maybe I want to stay here? Who cares, right? Doesn’t matter what I say. You people always get to decide. And so what if I go somewhere else? Whatever. Just tell CFS to send me away already. Stop…”

  “Stop what, Fin?” Kristen asked. “Stop believing in you? Because it’s too hard for you to believe you can have this school and your home with the Dixons, or that people like Chloe’s dad want you around, too?”

  Pain shot through Kristen at the stricken, panicked look on Fin’s face. He pushed himself out of his chair and away from Marsha. Before the adults could react, he was grappling with Kristen’s closed office door.

  “Fin!” Marsha reached for him. “Running doesn’t do any good…”

  But he was already gone, racing through the outer office.

  “Slow down, buddy,” said the deep voice Kristen had been longing to hear all morning.

  “Let me go!” Fin shouted.

  “Not a chance,” Law was saying by the time she and the Dixons made it to the outer office. His attention immediately fixed on her, as he continued to talk to the boy he had a firm grip on. “We wouldn’t catch another glimpse of you before nightfall, if I let go.”

  Law looked so good, and so exhausted. Chloe was standing beside him, staring at Fin, who was now openly, defiantly crying.

  Kristen checked the clock over the door to the hallway.

  “Late morning?” she asked Law, not sure of what else to say.

  He nodded. His demeanor grew even grimmer. “I had an emergency meeting with a lawyer first thing, who’d already woken up a judge on my behalf. He gave me paperwork to file with the school, for Chloe’s records. He said it was important to formalize a few things, in case my ex-wife contacts you, once she hears about the judge’s temporary ruling.”

  Kristen nodded, not all that surprised, desperate to know more.

  The Dixons moved to stand behind Fin. Joe rested his hand on the kid’s shoulders. Fin swiped at his eyes with his jacket sleeve, looking across the office at nothing, as if that could take him away from all of them—maybe especially Chloe, whom he eyed suspiciously.

  And then she did the most amazing thing. She stepped around her dad until she was shoulder-to-shoulder with Fin, standing next to him. When he still didn’t look at her, Chloe nudged his arm with her elbow.

  “Can we go to class now?” she asked Kristen, earning herself a glare from her classmate. She shot him a don’t be stupid look.

  “Can we?” Fin finally asked no one in particular.

  Kristen bit the corner of her lip to keep from cheering.

  We.

  Like I’m sorry, the word hadn’t made an appearance before today in Fin’s vocabulary. His saying it about Chloe, after the trouble the two of them had had getting along, made the milestone even more significant.

  “I don’t know,” Marsha said. “Can we trust you to stay put, and to keep out of trouble?”

  “No more bailing like yesterday,” Joe added. “Like Ms. Hemmings was saying, you either want to be here or you don’t. You tell Ms. Hemmings and Marsha and me right now that you want to be with us, and that you’re not just biding your time in Chandlerville, and we’ll make this work with Family Services. Mr. Beaumont’s even offered to help you become a fine young soccer player come February, when practice for the winter season starts. But you’ve got to decide if that’s what you want, son. If we’re what you want.”

  Silence filled the school office.

  Even the administrative secretaries had grown quiet. There was none of the customary typing and shuffling of papers and files and low-voiced conversations. Phones were ringing. No one picked up the calls.

  “What’s it going to be?” Kristen asked.

  Fin swallowed. He glared at Chloe again, as if it were her fault that she was there to witness this moment. He looked down, saying nothing.

  “You just have to get through today,” Law told him. “Forget the rest, and make today work. Don’t run from it. Trust me, that’s a lot. Sometimes that’s all we can do.”

  We again.

  Kristen knew enough to realize Law was talking about his sobriety, serving time in prison, and maybe even facing his problems with Libby. He was sharing his hard-won personal wisdom with Fin in front of the entire school office. He was determined to help the boy, and a determined Law Beaumont was something to behold.

  Even Chloe was staring up at him as if she was seeing a side of her dad she never had before.

  “Don’t ditch school again,” he said to Fin. “Get through today. Get your homework done. If you can manage that, I’ve called in sick for my evening shift at work. Chloe and I will be at the park at five.”

  “We will?” Chloe sounded scared, but excited, too. “What about Mom? She—”

  “I’ll deal with your mom,” Law said. “You’re taking the bus home to Uncle Dan’s, and then you and I are spending the afternoon together.”

  “But—”

  “Head to class,” Kristen said, diverting more public discussion of Law and Libby’s issues. “Both of you. That is, if you’ve decided that’s what you want to do, Fin.”

  Two confused kids glanced at each other. Fin shrugged and opened the office door to the hallway, brushing against Chloe’s shoulder in the process.

  “Come on,” he said. “Everyone’s at social studies.”

  Without another word, they headed into the hall together.

  I’ll never let you have her, Libby had screamed over the phone at Law at six that morning, her voice sleep-heavy and not yet completely sober. Moving her in with Dan and shutting me out isn’t going to happen. She’s my daughter. I’ll fight you for her. I’ll never stop fighting you for her. If you take Chloe, then what will I have? Even Dan doesn’t have enough money to keep her away from me.

  Law couldn’t get his ex-wife’s threats out of his head as he watched Chloe trudge away, following Fin.

  Libby didn’t want Chloe. At least, not as much as she didn’t want to lose her leverage with Law. Whatever natural mothering instincts his ex-wife had had, she’d sacrificed them long ago, by constantly indulging her own insecurities.

  She hadn’t asked whether Chloe was okay, not once that morning. She hadn’t apologized for having no idea Chloe had been gone all night. Since phoning Law and going ballistic, she hadn’t tried to contact their daughter at all.

  He handed Kristen a folder of documents he’d read and reread a dozen times since meeting with Dan’s lawyers, for a butt-crack-of-dawn powwow in his brother’s ridiculously opulent den on Mimosa Lane.

  “These are for you,” he said.

  “Oh…” Kristen glanced toward the Dixons, looking worried. “Thank you.”

  “Marsha and Joe heard enough last night to guess what’s going on.” He checked out the administr
ative staff, who promptly ducked their heads and went back to their jobs. “I’m sure you have, too. Everyone in town probably knows what happened at Pockets, and likely some of what went on after I dropped Chloe off at Libby’s.” He pointed to the folder now in Kristen’s hands. “That’s a temporary stay to Chloe’s custody guidelines. Based on Libby’s behavior last night, which Dan substantiated, and the pattern of blackout drinking Chloe’s described—not to mention Libby’s complete spacing on the fact that our daughter’s been running around town at night by herself for months—a judge has agreed that Chloe’s better off with me for now. I’m asking for a formal adjustment, something that will stay in place until Libby gets the help she needs and I’m certain Chloe’s no longer at risk when she’s with her mother.”

  “I see.” To her credit, Kristen made the nonsense reaction sound convincing. He could tell she was holding back a ton of questions, or possibly trying to find a nice way to say that he should keep himself and his problems away from her from now on.

  And why shouldn’t she?

  Dan and Charlotte’s upstanding reputation in the community had been enough to appease the court temporarily. But Law had a knock-down, drag-out fight on his hands, regardless of Libby’s obvious issues. He couldn’t afford a second’s distraction from what he had to do now for his daughter. And what woman in her right mind, especially one with Kristen’s responsibilities and high profile in town, would risk taking on the array of shit coming his way over the next month or so?

  She looked so professional and pressed and perfect today in her curvy light pink skirt and matching jacket. She’d never know how much her support had meant to him last night. But now…

  “Until a judge makes an official ruling in a day or so,” he said, “I’m Chloe’s primary school contact. All the information you’ll need is in there, plus an affidavit from my brother about us moving into his house, and the supervision Chloe will have there with Charlotte when I’m at work.” Law switched his attention to Marsha and Joe. “If you don’t mind, I’ll have Dan’s lawyer contact you about a statement of what you witnessed last night when I brought Fin home.”