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

by Anna DeStefano

  Law stared at the man hard. Because if he didn’t keep staring, he was going to break down. All his pictures of Chloe were packed with his things in storage. He’d been so caught up in everything else since November, he didn’t have anything current. What kind of father didn’t have a recent picture of his daughter to help the police find her?

  “Maybe at my ex-wife’s house…” Where Libby was drying out, probably out cold, even though Chloe was still missing. “I can go check.”

  He’d rather spend another eighteen months in minimum security than face Libby right now. He felt sorry for her. He even understood her a little better. But he couldn’t deal with his ex again yet.

  “Will this work?” Dan pulled his smart phone from his pocket and accessed his camera roll. He selected a shot and held it up for Law and the officer to see. Chloe was smiling, beaming, hugging Fin’s neck, both of them a sweaty mess. “It’s from soccer practice.”

  The officer pulled out a business card, handed it to Dan. “E-mail it to this address, and I’ll get it to dispatch. Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

  The officer was speaking to Dan now.

  Law couldn’t blame him.

  Law had been useless since he and Dan had rushed out of Pockets, leaving Kristen behind when she’d been so worried, too. They’d driven all over town, looking for the kids. Marsha had kept in touch with Dan ever since, not that she or Joe had heard from Fin, either. But Kristen was with them, at least.

  Law wanted to talk to her so badly, to explain the way he’d promised he would, to apologize for being so rough with her at Pockets and then running out. He wanted, he needed her to understand and still give them a chance, once they had Chloe back.

  She obviously still cared. She’d been worried sick as soon as she’d realized the kids were gone. But after Libby’s latest meltdown, he wouldn’t blame Kristen if she decided that caring about him and Chloe was something she just couldn’t keep doing.

  This is a lot for me…

  “We don’t know where my niece is,” Dan responded to the officer. “No one’s been able to find her or Fin anywhere. The park might be somewhere they’d show up eventually. But we’ve checked there. And if they don’t want to be found…”

  “We already have an officer at the soccer field. He’ll patrol the area through the morning, trying to stay out of sight as best he can. The foster mother says the boy’s run off before?”

  “Yes,” Law responded. “But not recently. Not since November.”

  “We’ve pulled his file from Family Services. He’s definitely trouble.”

  “He’s a good kid,” Dan corrected. “They’re both good kids. It was a bad scene last night, and I think Fin might have been looking out for Chloe, leaving with her the way he did.”

  “I’d hate for this to ruin his chances with the Dixons,” Law agreed.

  What a mess.

  “That’s for the boy’s caseworker to decide.” The officer closed the pad he’d been scribbling in. “Let’s just get them both home, and then you can worry about the rest. We’ll be in touch if there are any developments.”

  If…

  Law had been terrified of losing his daughter for so long, and now he had.

  Dan stepped closer, once they were alone in his den. He knew it all now. Law had told him about the fight in the alley, about what he’d done for his family so long ago. He’d made Dan swear to never document any of it—that Libby had been driving that night instead of Law. What difference would it make now? Law didn’t need his record cleared. He just needed his daughter back, and the chance to finally make all of this right.

  “We’ll find her,” Dan said.

  “Yeah.” Law had never needed his brother more. But he was going to need even more help once they got Chloe home and he tried to explain what he’d never thought he’d have to.

  “It all happened so long ago,” he said. “How could that one night still be messing everything up for my child?”

  “Because no matter what you did for Libby to show her you’d be there for her,” Dan said, “she was never going to believe you loved her. That’s not your fault. It’s not because of the accident or you taking the rap. It’s just how Libby is. Stop beating yourself up about any of it. Stop giving her the same kind of control over your future.”

  His future, hopefully with Kristen and Chloe.

  Kristen had conquered so much in her own life. She’d recognized the survivor in him, and she’d believed in him—bad rep and bad attitude and all. She genuinely cared about his daughter. Kristen was the strongest, most loving woman he’d ever met. But had her own past left her too fragile to come back to him one last time? Could she trust him to love her, the way Libby never had?

  Dan was right. He had to be right. Law would get Chloe home. He would explain everything about last night, and he and his daughter would be okay again. But what about Kristen?

  The thought of losing her, of not having captured her whole heart in the first place, nearly dropped Law to the floor.

  “Yes, Mrs. Sewel,” Marsha said into the phone. “I understand. Either Joe or I will be there at noon, and I’m hoping we’ll have Fin back with us by then.”

  Kristen, sitting on the Dixons’ couch, wanted to step to the other woman’s side and give her a hug. But she couldn’t move. She was so tired and frazzled and worried for Chloe and Fin and Law and even Libby. She simply couldn’t move.

  “It’s hell being part of a family sometimes, isn’t it?” Marsha asked.

  Kristen blinked up at her from Law’s rose. The other woman had hung up with Family Services. She crossed the room to the couch.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Marsha said. “Family can be wonderful. But it can also cut you off at the knees when you’re worrying about someone. And you’ve become a part of Law’s family. You know how I know? You look like I feel at times like this. Like I want to run and hide from the people I’m thinking I might lose. And I’m guessing you’ve been thinking just that, pretty much since Libby showed up at the Valentine’s party.”

  She sat next to Kristen and took her hand, squeezing it.

  Kristen thought of Marsha and Joe and Fin and the rest of their kids, fighting to belong to one another, no matter their differences. Was this how family felt to them, too? Terrifying? Not that Kristen was even sure Law wanted her to be part of his life anymore, after the way she’d behaved last night.

  “How do you do it?” she asked.

  “You love. The kind of love that doesn’t go away. The kind of love that’s so good when things are at their best, and their worst, that you’re a little afraid sometimes to believe in it.”

  “The kind of love Law sang about last night.”

  Kristen set her rose on Marsha’s coffee table. It had been the best moment of Kristen’s life, hearing the man she adored tell her and everyone how he’d always be there for her, whenever she came back to him, caring about her, wanting her, and never letting her go.

  “And”—Marsha squeezed again—“the kind you both are still feeling for each other, even with Libby doing her worst to destroy it. It’s all love. Good and bad, you can’t run away from something that deep. Whether it lasts for a few months or years or a lifetime, even if it breaks your heart, there’s no getting away from love when you care as deeply as people like you and Law do.” She released Kristen’s hand. “That’s why he’s stuck by Libby and maybe done too much for her and let her get away with more than he should have. Their marriage didn’t last, but he’ll never stop trying to make things work for Chloe. He’ll love you the same. Give him the chance to show you how much, even if it’s not going to be easy for a while.”

  “Give him a chance? I’m the one who freaked out, when he needed me to be there for his daughter. I don’t know how I’ll face him again.”

  She’d refused to go to Dan’s last night, though Mallory
had insisted she should. Kristen had come to Marsha’s instead and kept up there with the search for the kids, trying to help any way she could—including, on her way over, checking all the places in town she could think of that Chloe and Fin might have run to. She wanted to be with Law now more than anything, but she’d just be a distraction.

  It was too important that he stay focused on Chloe now, rather than figuring out things between him and Kristen. Or to hear her say she loved him—which she was going to tell him the second she saw him next, even if the very next thing he said was that they were through.

  “Law will understand how scared you were last night,” Marsha said. “Once he has Chloe back, once both kids are back, the two of you will work things out, learn from this, and you’ll go on from there. If ... that’s what you want.”

  Kristen didn’t know what to say. She’d once told him that she didn’t believe in lost causes, but now she wasn’t so sure. Beyond apologizing to Law, she hadn’t figured the rest of it out. There was still Libby to deal with, and whatever Law and his ex had argued about. There was Kristen, still not knowing for sure if she could really handle any of it, no matter how much she loved him.

  She glanced at the phone on its table across the room. Joe and several of the older kids were out, looking up and down Chandlerville for Fin and Chloe and reporting in from their cells. The younger of the Dixons’ foster children were still asleep, their Sunday morning not yet on the horizon. And Fin’s bed was empty, his place in this accepting, hardworking, loving-through-anything family on the line when the Dixons met with Family Services at noon.

  “Is Fin going to be able to stay?” Kristen asked.

  Marsha’s smile was strong, but sad. “The county is seeing us as kind of his endgame with group homes. He’s run too many times before us. He’s not attaching. Maybe a residential placement isn’t right for him, they’re thinking, and he needs more structure and supervision than he can get with a family.”

  “He’s attached.” Kristen’s heart sank. “I’ve been watching him, Marsha, at school and at soccer and with Chloe and his friends. I’ve heard it from other teachers, from parents. He’s learned how to be somewhere, how to be part of something, how to love something and believe it will be there to love him back—because of you and Joe. I don’t know what happened with him last night. But if he’s not back in time, I’ll talk to Mrs. Sewel with you. I’ll tell her how much better Fin’s doing, and why it’s so important that he stay here. They can’t take away his family, now that he finally believes he has one.”

  The words rattled around in Kristen’s already turbulent thoughts.

  Fin wasn’t the only one who’d had to learn what family meant, or how lucky he was to have people in his life who cared about him, for who and what he was. Hadn’t she stumbled across the same thing on that November morning that had turned Fin’s life around? And maybe she was about to lose it all now, too. Because she’d panicked last night, the way she eventually had with every other relationship she’d been in.

  “I’d appreciate you talking with Family Services,” Marsha said. “But Joe and I have already said all of that to them, more than once. I’m afraid Mrs. Sewel is going to have to hear it from Fin this time. I don’t see anything else convincing her. And I don’t know what happens”—Marsha’s voice caught, her worry and fear bubbling to the surface for the first time since the kids had disappeared—“if we don’t have him back before noon, when we meet with her.”

  Kristen pulled Marsha into a hug, returning the support and comfort and encouragement that the other woman had showered on Kristen throughout the night.

  “He’ll be back,” she insisted. “And he’ll speak with Mrs. Sewel. And—”

  The front door burst open, interrupting them. Marsha and Kristen both sprang to their feet, hopeful. Joe walked in, dragging, exhausted from being up all night. He smiled when he saw them.

  “Guess who I found walking up the drive just now, when I turned in off the street?”

  He pushed the door open wider, and Chloe and Fin trudged into the Dixons’ foyer. Marsha hurried to Fin and Kristen hurried to Chloe, pulling the kids into desperate hugs.

  “You’re here,” Chloe said, clinging to Kristen, needing her, making Kristen need right back. “I’m so scared. I’m scared of going home.”

  “I know you are, sweetie.” Kristen knelt in front of Law’s daughter. “But you don’t have to be scared. You’ll see that as soon as you talk with your dad. Everything will be fine.”

  “She came back for me,” Fin told Marsha. For the first time since Kristen had met him, he was openly crying. “She was worried that I’d get in trouble, so she came back for me.”

  “Well...” Joe joined Fin and Marsha. “That’s what good friends do. Everyone we know has been worried about the two of you. Half the town’s been out looking for you all night. Where did you go?”

  Chloe and Fin shared a long look. Neither one of them spoke up. They’d grown even closer, Kristen realized. They weren’t going to say anything that might get the other one in more hot water.

  “Am I in trouble?” Fin asked Marsha.

  “We have an appointment in a few hours to talk with Mrs. Sewel. She wants to see you alone, today, instead of waiting until next week. You’re going to have to try to do something more this time than just staring at her and refusing to say anything. I know you don’t like Family Services. I know it’ll make you mad to be there. But you need to tell her what’s going on. All of it. Everything since last fall, when you were having so much trouble here. Right up to last night, after you’d been doing so well but you ran away again anyway. She’s going to want to know why.”

  Chloe and Fin looked at each other again, a world of silent communication passing between them. Fin shook his head, not answering. He looked positively defeated.

  “Come on.” Joe steered him toward the kitchen. He hugged Marsha close as she joined them. “Let’s give Kristen and Chloe a few minutes alone, while we go call the police and Law and try to talk this through a little bit.”

  “Will you take me home?” Chloe said, before the others had gotten too far. The Dixons and Fin turned back to see her throw herself into Kristen’s arms. “Please come with me to talk with my dad. I don’t want to, not alone. I can’t.”

  Kristen’s gaze connected with Marsha’s.

  Law will understand how scared you were ... the two of you will work things out, learn from this, and you’ll go on from there. If ... that’s what you want.

  Kristen closed her eyes as Joe and Marsha led Fin away, praying that Marsha had been right.

  “Kristen?” Chloe asked.

  “I’ll drive you home, sweetie. But I don’t know if my being there when you talk with your dad is such a good idea.”

  “But I can’t. Not by myself. Not now that I know.”

  Kristen shook her head. “Now that you know what?”

  Chloe hugged Kristen again, clinging even longer. “My mom ... she was the one who did it.”

  Kristen smoothed her hand down Chloe’s back and led her to the couch. They sat, and Kristen hugged the little girl close, worried about saying the wrong thing. At least this, she would do right for Law.

  “What did your mom do, honey?” she asked while Chloe cried softly, silently against her shoulder.

  “The accident. The reason my dad went to prison. My mom was the one. I heard them arguing about it, and her saying that was why my dad had never loved her and they never should have gotten married and he’d done it all for me, not her ... and I couldn’t stay. I just couldn’t. What’s going to happen now? My family’s never going to get any better. My mom and dad ... they never should have been together at all!”

  My mom was the one...

  Kristen sorted through the possible meanings for what Chloe had said. Her thoughts screeched to a halt when she finally understood.

  Law ha
dn’t been driving the night of the accident that had sent him to prison—Libby had.

  “He didn’t want me to know,” Chloe said. “He wanted me to have my mom, so he...”

  “He went away, so your mom wouldn’t have to.”

  He’d loved Chloe and his family so much, he’d given up his freedom to keep them together. He’d still loved them and tried to make things work, after paying for Libby’s mistake. He’d put up with Libby all these years, for Chloe’s sake, after all his ex had done since their divorce.

  He could have punched out so many times: when Libby relapsed back to her alcoholism the first time, when they’d moved to Chandlerville and she still hadn’t settled in, or even last year, when she’d relapsed again. But he’d stayed, for his daughter.

  ... there’s no getting away from love, when you care as deeply as people like you and Law do.

  Law, the man Kristen had been so worried she couldn’t let herself trust, loved to the bottom of his heart. He loved forever, completely, unconditionally. Exactly the way Kristen had dreamed her entire life of being loved ... and of learning how to love in return.

  Law opened Dan’s front door the second he glimpsed Kristen’s Mustang pulling into the driveway. She’d texted ten minutes ago that she had Chloe with her, and that they were on their way over from the Dixons’.

  Chloe opened her door and shot out of the car before Kristen had completely stopped. His daughter ran across the lawn and the crystal-clear Mimosa Lane morning, meeting Law halfway because he was running, too. He dropped to his knees and scooped her close and prayed that he could do or say or be whatever she needed him to be, so she’d never think she had to run from him again.

  “I’m so sorry, Daddy,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, too, darlin’. Tell me what I can do. Tell me I can still make this right for you.”

  “You already did it. You already did everything, but Mom…Did you never love her, like she said? Did you really do it all for me?”

  “Do what?”