by Dani Collins
“Financial!” Mercedes hadn’t even gone there yet. She shook her head. “You’re moving too fast. I can’t do this to my sister. I can’t do it to the kids! They ask about Porsha all the time. They miss her.”
“Can you contact her? Perhaps telling her what you’re contemplating will motivate her to come back.”
“I’ve been trying.” But Porsha hung up on her before she got two words out. “She’ll come back when she’s ready. She always does.”
“I’ll try to contact her myself, to explain that if she doesn’t turn up to contest it, the judge is likely to grant custody to you.”
Outside, Dayton’s chair was empty. Leaping to her feet, Mercedes shoved open the door and yelled, “Dayton, get off that fence!” She sounded just like Porsha.
“Please,” she added, finding her Auntie M voice. “And come wash up. We’re going out for dinner soon.” Take-out burgers, the working mother’s standby.
Ayjia began packing up her crayons while Mercedes turned back to Shonda. “Sorry. He just won’t stay off that fence.” At least putting him in school would free her from six hours of screaming at him to keep his feet on the ground. But no. She just couldn’t do what Shonda was suggesting. Porsha would see it as self-interest and it wasn’t. She genuinely wanted the kids to be with their mother.
And for their mother to show up in more ways than one.
“Something else to consider,” Shonda said. “If you have medical benefits, the children could probably be added if they were legal dependents. Judging by how active Dayton is, that might be a good thing.”
Mercedes wanted to try Porsha one more time before she let Shonda proceed. She promised to call the woman in the morning, then waited until she had fed the kids, unpacked and played the Kerplunk game they’d bought on the way home from dinner, and put them to bed. Then she spent a couple of hours going through all the paperwork that had piled up while she’d been gone. When it was close to midnight, she tried Porsha’s cell.
“Hey Sis!” Porsha said, all cheery and partied up. “Hey, be quiet,” she ordered someone in the background. “It’s my sister and my kids.”
“The kids are in bed, Porsh.” Mercedes wished she hadn’t had to deal with her sister in this state, but sober, Porsha might not have answered at all.
“What time is it there?” Porsha asked, kind of slurring.
“Time to come home, hon. We have a situation.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Ayjia needs a tetanus shot.”
“What happened? Dog bite?”
“No, just a cut. On her chin.”
“Oh, she’ll be fine.”
“Has she had all her shots?”
“Do you know what those cost?”
“That’s a no?”
“Oh Gawd. She’s gonna start,” Porsha told someone and took a long, hissing inhale, hopefully from a cigarette.
Mercedes clenched her teeth. “Look, I’ll pay, but you have to sign for it.”
“Can’t you handle things for a few freaking days? You’re overreacting. She doesn’t need a shot. Oh, yeah baby, I need a shot, thanks!” she said in an aside to someone, laughing throatily.
“Porsha. She needs a doctor.”
“Is she bleeding to death? Having convulsions?”
“Would you come if she was?”
“I don’t need this, Merce.”
Mercedes drew in a long breath. Losing her temper wasn’t going to help. “They keep asking for you.”
“Tell them I’m on vacation. It’s not a crime to want five minutes to myself. Jesus, Mercedes, you’re living my life. You can see why I’d need a break.”
A life that Mercedes would never have. Not without a surrogate. When she had lost most of her uterus to removal of benign tumors, Porsha had promised to be her ‘spare womb’ when the time came. It had taken the sting out of knowing she would never carry a baby herself.
Now Mercedes faced the hard truth that even that would never happen. Not the way Porsha polluted her body. It hurt along with being taken for granted and dismissed as overreacting. She tamped down her fury and bitterness, saying only, “Break’s over. Time to come home.”
“It’s too much for you, isn’t it?”
“At the moment, yes. I can’t get them medical attention. I had to bring them back to Flagstaff because I need to work. They’re not in school—”
“Oh, hell, school’s almost done for the year. Don’t worry about that.”
“Are you completely fucking stoned?” she snapped. “Listen, I had social services here today. They want me to take custody so I can put them in school and get them into the doctor. What do you think of that?”
“Will it get you off my fucking back?”
“Porsha. It’s time to come home.”
“When I’m ready.” Click.
L.C. was unpacking his truck into his side of the duplex when Mercedes hummed to a stop in the golf cart.
The boy, Dayton, sprang off before it had come to a complete halt. Mercedes scolded him to watch for cars while the little girl yelled at him to “Wait up!” Both kids ran pell-mell toward him like dogs enthusiastically greeting a familiar visitor.
It was a contagious excitement that made L.C. grin. A more male-based enjoyment revved at a deeper level as Mercedes strolled behind them.
“Where’s Zack?” the kids asked.
He dragged his gaze from where Mercedes’s sleeveless tropical-print top exposed her pale shoulders. She even smelled tropical, like coconut and pineapple. Yeah, he liked piña coladas.
“He had school today,” he said absently, thinking about making love at midnight.
“Oh.” The little girl, Ayjia, was crestfallen.
“I said he might be in class.” Mercedes gave Ayjia’s shoulder a little squeeze. “Maybe we can drop by later and say hello.” She smiled an apology at L.C. “Would you mind? He made quite an impression yesterday.” Her eyes widened with persecution. “And I could use the excuse to get them out of the front office.”
Ah. “Sure. You kids want to help me unpack? You can take this cereal in and put it away in the cupboard.” He handed each a grocery bag.
“Can we have some?” Dayton asked.
“Dayton! You just ate a sandwich and an apple. No, put it away like Mr. Fogarty asked.”
“The kid’s obviously growing,” L.C. said, remembering a time when he’d had a hole in his own belly that never seemed to fill. As the children carried the bags inside, he told her, “I don’t mind if they snack.”
“He’s bored, not hungry. Eating for comfort maybe,” Mercedes said, frowning at the door the kids left open.
Heavy thoughts. They hung over her sunset hair like a big, gray thunderhead. Was her hair soft or springy? He didn’t have a preference, just wanted to know.
Time to get back to work. He reached for one of the boxes containing cheap, assemble-at-home bed frames he’d bought this morning.
“Can I ask you something?” she asked.
He paused in scraping the cardboard across the grit of the truck bed toward the tailgate. He shrugged, sensing one of those no-win questions in her worried tone.
“I can’t really talk to anyone here about what I’m thinking of doing. In fact, I may well lose my job over it, but I don’t see I have a choice and I’d really like an objective opinion, especially from a parent.”
He hooked his elbow on top of the box and said a cautious, “Okay.”
Checking the kids were still inside, she lowered her voice and said, “I’m thinking of accepting temporary custody. My sister—” Mercedes spun a silver and turquoise ring around her finger. “She doesn’t always remember she has kids, you know? This isn’t permanent or anything, but it’s still...” She trailed off and chewed her lip.
L.C. looked away. This was a no-win all right. His gut knotted. He really wasn’t the person to ask on this one. “You want me to tell you you’re doing the right thing?”
“I shouldn’t put you in that positi
on, should I? I’m sorry. I’ll just check on the kids.” She didn’t move, however. She waited for a response, her brows tugging together with a need for reassurance.
He adjusted the box to ensure it wouldn’t tip off the tailgate, tried to make himself think like a kid rather than a parent. “I don’t know. I look at those two and I see myself and my kid sister.”
He jerked his chin toward the shadowed interior of the duplex, where it sounded like the kids had found Zack’s whiteboard and were fighting over the marker.
“Really?”
He shrugged off her surprise. “I was two feet off the ground. Paige was a little mother. She turned out okay because she spent so much time with my ex’s family. They’re best friends. She grew up across the street.”
“But you didn’t have anyone like that?”
“My ex for a while, but no.” He squinted against where the sun glanced off the chrome of his side mirror. “Not really.”
“So you and Zack’s mom...?”
“Didn’t last more than a few years. And Zack had her side of the family to help him through the divorce and custody. My sister spent a lot of time with him. Paige deserves a lot of credit for him turning out like he has, so I’m pro-auntie involvement, when they have as much give-a-shit as you do. Does that help?”
“You don’t take any credit for how he turned out?” she asked, surprised.
“When it comes to pulling this kind of stunt?” He thumbed toward the vandalized duplex. “Yeah, that’s me. But study habits, setting goals, saving money, that’s Brit and Paige.”
“L.C.” She tilted her head in a little scold. “You can’t really believe Zack would have been better off without you in his life?”
“I do.” He had to believe it, otherwise the hole tearing up his insides where Lindsay was concerned would swallow him entirely. “Not that I regret fighting for shared custody. Not at all. Hell, I probably wouldn’t be alive if I hadn’t had to stay sober for the days I had him every week, but when I think of things he saw and heard... Not exactly award-winning parenting.” He picked at a price sticker on the bed. “I think sometimes, in some cases...” The words scraped like gravel in his throat. “It’s better for some kids to have a certain kind of parent left in the background.”
Mercedes pulled her pale brows together and started to say something, but the kids came outside and he was done with this conversation anyway. He yanked the weight of the box into his arms, warned the kids to stay back, and carried it inside.
Chapter 8
“I don’t want to go to school.” Dayton pressed himself into the green upholstery of Mercedes’s backseat.
“I know, hon.” Mercedes was dying inside but clung to Shonda’s advice that attending school would provide a familiar structure to the kids’ lives. “But all kids need to learn to read and write. If I could keep you at home and teach you myself, I would, but I have to work. So you have to go to school. We’re just looking today, anyway.”
Registering. Something Porsha had done at some point so it couldn’t be that tough.
Mercedes picked up the documents Shonda had given her this morning. Interim custody papers. Not written in stone, but enough to get Ayjia mad at her for the shot the doctor had given her and Dayton staging a mutiny for putting him back in school. She was definitely losing ground in the Favorite Auntie polls.
“Come on,” Mercedes prompted. “It’ll be cooler inside. No, don’t bother closing the windows. We’ll only be a few minutes.” And this was a nice neighborhood. Very nice, actually. It was yet one more thing Mercedes loved about her job: the location.
It took a few more minutes of coaxing, working up a sweat in the blistering sun, but Dayton was finally persuaded by Ayjia’s, “Oooh, look at the playground.”
Inside, the vice-principal, a slightly built, well-dressed blond, introduced herself as Dana Wilcox. She invited them to sit in her office, welcoming them with a warm smile that froze when Mercedes admitted no, they weren’t exactly a new family to the neighborhood.
“I’m their aunt. Dayton, please stop kicking. If your foot hits the table, the plant—oh, shi— I mean darn. I’m sorry.” Mercedes moved to right the rubber tree and pushed it closer to the wall, ignoring the dirt that had spilled. “Can you sit still please?” she asked Dayton. “Anyway, as I was saying, I have guardianship and would like to register the children here.”
“I see. And their parents are...?”
None of your business? Mercedes bit her tongue.
“Mommy’s on vacation,” Ayjia volunteered.
“And she’s coming back soon,” Dayton said. “So we don’t need to go to school here. We can go to our old school in Holbrook.”
“Is that right?” Ms. Wilcox asked with a cool, dismissing smile for Mercedes. “Because I’m sure you understand that our educators invest a lot of time in our classrooms. Integrating a new student is difficult enough without the disruption of constant turnover.”
Mercedes made her living negotiating with people strongly set in their ways. She could have called upon those skills, but instead flashed back to a time when sneers and slights from authority figures had been her world. No way in hell were her kids going to believe they had to put up with that bullshit.
“What I understand is that this school accepts registrations from any child living in this catchment. Perhaps we could make this easier on the kids rather than harder and process the registration without awkward questions or further speculation. Just a suggestion, of course.”
A streaking blush rose on Ms. Wilcox’s high cheekbones. She reached for a file folder. “Of course.”
Mercedes felt like a jerk. She wasn’t making this easier on the kids. Now they would be picked on and singled out and she was definitely the worst substitute mother in the world.
In a wooden tone, she offered all the information Ms. Wilcox asked, then waited while photocopies were made of the guardianship documents. Finally Ms. Wilcox said, “We usually introduce the children to their new teachers and classrooms now. Would you like to do that?”
“Of course.” Maybe she could do more damage there.
Ayjia skipped alongside Mercedes, holding her hand. Dayton followed a few steps behind, wearing a sullen expression.
“This is the kindergarten room,” Ms. Wilcox said.
Throughout the room, children sat cross-legged in groups around puzzles, played with numbered cards at a table, and listened to headphones in front of computers. The sunny-voiced teacher gave instructions to a pair of boys in smocks, painting at easels, and approached with a delighted expression. She barely looked older than Zack and had a smile that could melt chocolate.
“New students?” she asked, coming to the door.
“Ayjia will be joining your class, Miss Scott.”
“Ayjia! What a pretty name! Come in.”
“Um—” Mercedes began.
“Can I Auntie M? Pleeeeease?”
Mercedes stroked her hand down Ayjia’s out of control locks. “Of course.”
“Thank you!” Ayjia followed Miss Scott’s directions to join the girls coloring the letters of the alphabet.
Mercedes felt a little pang as she watched Ayjia enter without so much as a backward glance. Was it healthy? Was it right?
It was only an hour. It would give Mercedes the opportunity to pitch her new arrangement to the board uninterrupted. Of course that meant Dayton would have to stay the whole day— Uh, oh.
Mercedes met Dayton’s betrayed glare.
“And this is Dayton’s classroom,” Ms. Wilcox said from down the hall.
“You said—” Dayton began.
“I know what I said. Let’s just have a look.” Mercedes tried to take his hand but he pulled away, scuffing his feet as she led the way.
No dazzling display of educational activities and learning centers here. This was a traditional classroom with all the desks facing front and all the students bent to their work. A Mrs. Garvey Wannabe clicked her way over in low, chunky black-pat
ent pumps, her cardigan buttoned to just below the ribbon tied in a bow at her neck.
“Mrs. Laurier,” Ms. Wilcox said. “We have a new student. Dayton Tischler.”
“Hebrew,” Ms. Laurier said with a vague frown at Mercedes. “You’re Jewish?”
“Does it matter?” Mercedes asked, gritting her teeth behind a cool smile, knowing she was doing it again, but unable to stop herself. The woman hadn’t given Dayton more than a passing glance. This was a bad idea all around. She shouldn’t be doing this to them. Porsha shouldn’t be doing this to them.
Mrs. Laurier tapped her chin as she repeated Dayton’s surname. “At least he’ll be in the last row. We’ll only have to displace three students.”
“Alphabetical order,” Ms. Wilcox explained.
“Right,” Mercedes said weakly, while Mrs. Laurier said, “Come along, Dayton. We’ll put you over here.”
Dayton didn’t move. “I don’t have to go to school today.”
Mercedes opened her mouth, but Mrs. Laurier spoke first. “Of course you do. All children go to school every day unless they are suffering an illness severe enough to keep them home. Come along now.”
With the eyes of his peers upon him, Dayton made the trek to the desk, casting a hate-filled glance over his shoulder at Mercedes.
L.C. looked for Mercedes at her desk, but found it empty. He was just about to head back to his unit when she came striding in from the courtyard, leggy and flustered, wearing a sundress of blue and white with poofy sleeves and stretchy lace that hugged her ribs and waist. It was cute, in a Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island way.
“Hi.” She circled to the inside of the horseshoe and dropped her huge purse on the upper counter of her desk. It knocked the morning’s mail off the front before it slumped backward to land with a jangling thump on the lower work surface of her desk, sending the computer keyboard askew. The mouth of her purse gaped open and a white envelope with a string of gilded names across its front slid onto the floor along with a pen, some lip gloss and a wallet.
Mercedes barely glanced at the mess. Her sigh rang with a need for deliverance. “Need something?” she asked.