by Nancy Adams
Judy set her purse on the counter, then set up a fresh pot of coffee. She waited until there was enough to justify pouring some into a cup, then refilled Katie Lou's before taking a seat at the table. “Okay, you want to tell me what in the world is going on with you?”
Katie Lou rubbed her face, then added sugar to her coffee. “Mom, I am so confused,” she said. “And I know you're going to be mad at me, but please, please just try to be understanding, okay?”
Judy's eyes went wide. “Sweetheart, why would I be mad at you? Understanding about what?”
Katie Lou looked her in the eye for a long moment, then sighed. “Mom, I—I went out to dinner with Darren last night.”
Judy was silent for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, and?”
It was Katie Lou's turn to let her eyes go wide. “You're not mad? I figured you'd be mad.”
Judy shrugged. “Am I thrilled about it? No, of course not, but I also know that we're talking about your life, so you're the one who has to make the decisions about it. I can't tell you what to do, nor can anyone else.” Judy took a sip from her cup before continuing. “I would have a hard time trying to find something that could honestly make me be mad at you. You're my daughter, sweetheart, and I love you with all my heart, but no matter how much I may think you're absolutely perfect, you're going to make mistakes at times. The thing is, what I may see as a mistake might be something that you don't.”
Katie Lou gave her mother a rueful grin. “Like having dinner with my ex-fiancé? The one who almost killed me?”
Judy smiled at her daughter. “Well, I'll admit to being concerned about you moving backwards. Remember, I just watched you get hurt very badly when Darren broke off the engagement with you. I don't like seeing my daughters get hurt. On the other hand, all I know at the moment is that you had dinner with him. Care to explain what it was about?”
Katie gave a sigh. “He called me last week, when I was going through a bad time with Rob. I didn't tell you everything, but the reason I was so depressed for a few days there was because I had spotted Rob kissing an old girlfriend of his, the night when we were all going out to dinner. Remember when I suddenly got sick, and we had to leave the restaurant in a hurry? Well, that was when I saw it, and I just wanted to get away from there as fast as I could. Rob had kinda betrayed me, and I was feeling pretty stupid, and somehow, Darren chose that moment to call me. He said he had come to the conclusion that he made a mistake, that he'd rather be with me that have his political career. Mom, he—he asked me to give him another chance.”
Judy nodded. “And with the way you are feeling, you decided it might be worth considering. Am I right?”
“Yeah,” Katie Lou said. “I told him I'd think about it, and to call me back in a few days. Well, in the meantime, I ran into Rob's old girlfriend, who explained to me that I wasn't seeing what I thought I had seen. They were saying goodbye, because Rob had told her he was in love with me. I talked to Rob, and we made up, basically, but I—I told him I thought we ought to slow down a bit. And then I told him that I had agreed to have dinner with Darren.”
Judy pursed her lips. “Hmmm. And how did he take that?”
“Not all that well,” Katie Lou said with a shrug. “It sort of felt like a wall went up between us all of a sudden, but I had already promised Darren, so I was just trying to be honest.”
“Okay, and what about your dinner with Darren? How did it go? Are you actually thinking about trying again?”
Katie Lou picked up her cup and took a sip, then took another. “I really don't know, to be honest. I mean, there's a big part of me who remembers all the good times. I told him that if, and that's a big if, I decide to give him another chance, it would be the absolute last one.”
“Well, that sounds smart. But you haven't made any commitments yet?”
Katie shook her head. “No, but I'll confess that I'm leaning toward it. Don't get me wrong—Rob is a great guy, but let's face it, I've only known him a few weeks. I'm pretty sure that the only reason I'm so head over heels about him is because I'm having a serious rebound attack. I'm not trying to say I don't care for him, I do, I really do, but Mom—I was in love with Darren, can I really just throw that away and move on so easily?”
Judy sat at the table and looked at her daughter for a few moments, then nodded her head as if in agreement with something only she could hear. “Katie Lou, sometimes, when people are in love, they can make some pretty stupid mistakes. If you throw something traumatic into the mix, those mistakes can be compounded beyond all reasonable recognition. It's possible that the accident, and your coma and paralysis, may have contributed to Darren making a decision he didn't really intend to make. I'm going to give you an example of how that kind of thing can happen, but I want you to promise me it will stay between us. Can you do that?”
Katie Lou looked confused, but nodded her head. “Okay,” she said. “Our secret.”
It was Judy's turn to sigh. “I'm pretty sure you were too little to remember, but your father and I almost split up a long time ago. It was just after Kylie was born, so you were only about two-and-a-half years old. He was working at the Ford garage at the time. That was a rough pregnancy for me, and I'm afraid that I got pretty cranky during the last half of it. It seemed like your father and I were fighting all the time, and—well, let's just say there wasn't a lot of intimacy between us at the time. I wasn't in the mood, not at all. Anyway, like I said, we were fighting a lot, and then I went into labor almost two months early. They had to do a cesarean, and Kylie had some problems with her lungs not being fully developed, and for a little while it looked like we were going to lose her.”
“Kylie was a preemie?” Katie Lou asked, surprised. “I never knew that.”
“I'm sure we probably mentioned it once or twice, but it wasn't something we dwelt on. But that isn't the issue I'm talking about, it was just something that contributed to it. We actually had a short time when the doctors told us that she wasn't going to live, and it just about destroyed us. Your dad had taken me home from the hospital a couple of days after she was born, and I was trying to take care of you and deal with everything while he was working, and it wasn't easy. We were going every evening after he got off work up to the hospital to see Kylie, but again, the doctors were telling us that we should prepare to lose her. We were both so torn up that we didn't know what to do, and then I got a call one day, about a week after she was born, that said she had taken a turn for the worse. Well, I called your dad at work, and told him we needed to hurry up and get to the hospital, but he—he said he couldn't leave work. I'm afraid I said some pretty nasty things to him over the phone, and he ended up hanging up on me. I called a babysitter for you, and then took a taxi to the hospital.”
Katie Lou was shaking her head. “I can't believe Daddy would refuse to go to the hospital with you,” she said. “Mom, that just doesn't seem like him.”
Judy smiled softly. “No, it doesn't, but you got to remember that he absolutely idolizes you two girls. Here he was, all excited about having a second daughter, and now the doctor was saying she was going to die? I'm afraid it just hit him so hard that he didn't know how to cope with it, but I didn't understand that at the time, so I just took it out on him. When he got home that night, I told him that I had sat all afternoon beside Kylie's isolette, just praying that each breath wouldn't be her last, and that if he couldn't be man enough to be there with me, then maybe he should just move out.”
Katie's eyes went wide. “Oh, Mom!”
Judy nodded. “I was pretty upset, and very hateful at the time. Kylie had pulled through, and by the time I got home that evening, they were saying that she was doing better than they had expected, but I was still angry at him. After I said that, he threw a bunch of things into a suitcase and stormed out the door, and—a few months before that, while I was still pregnant, they had hired a new saleswoman at the dealership, and I guess she thought your dad was quite attractive. When he left, well, he went to a motel and then we
nt out to get something to eat. While he was at the restaurant, he ran into her and they ended up sitting there and talking. Men—sometimes, when they feel they've lost someone they love, they reach out to someone else. I didn't hear from your father for a couple of days, and I was so mad that I wouldn't even call him until I was at the hospital with Kylie and the doctor said she was going to make it after all. I called him to tell him, and he told me that we needed to talk, so we went out for dinner that night.” She picked up her cup and took a drink, then got up and refilled it before she went on. “That's when he told me that he had spent the last couple of nights with Carolyn—that was her name. He said she made him feel like he mattered, and that that was something I had not given him lately. Of course, I got angry at first, but then I began to think, and it dawned on me that I hadn't been treating him like he mattered. I was so miserable with the pregnancy, constantly sick and achy, and I had taken it all out on him. I blamed him for the way it felt, and when Kylie was born with problems, that blame carried over onto that. I felt like it was all his fault, so when he wouldn't come to the hospital that day, I guess I felt like he had left me all alone in a bad situation, and that's why I got mad and told him to leave. I broke down and started crying, told him how sorry I was, admitted that it was all my fault, and begged him to come home, but he didn't. When we left the restaurant, I came home to you, but he went back to her.”
“Oh, Mom, I'm so sorry,” Katie Lou said. “I still can't believe Daddy would do something like that. That just doesn't seem…”
“I know. And that's because it isn't like him. He wasn't trying to betray me, he was trying to cope with the way I treated him. When I told him to get out, he felt like it was something that had been coming for a while, that I was just waiting for Kylie to be born so that I could get rid of him. Well, I started calling him a lot, telling him over and over how sorry I was and letting him know that I still loved him, no matter what. We were apart about two weeks, and then one day he showed up at the door. He told me that he had left Carolyn, and begged me to forgive him, but I told him that I was the one who needed forgiveness. I was the one who had done him wrong, and his actions after that were my fault because I wouldn't let go of the anger I had been feeling for so long. He asked me if I would let him come home, and swore nothing like that would ever happen again, and I was just so happy that he was willing to take me back that we put it behind us. Since the day he came home, this is the first and only time I have ever talked about it.”
Katie Lou sat there in silence for a few seconds, and then looked her mother in the eye. “Are you trying to say that what Darren did might be my fault? Mom, I…”
“Oh, my goodness, no!” Judy said. “I'm trying to say that it's possible that Darren felt, between his own guilt feelings over the accident and the pressure he was under from the people he was working with, that he had already lost you. It's possible that he made his decision out of grief and fear and guilt, and not because it's what he really wanted to do. The thing you've got to figure out is whether you can forgive that, and accept that he's sincere in wanting to make it work with you now. Do you think he is?”
Once more, Katie Lou sat silently for several seconds. “I think he is,” she said slowly, “and there's definitely a part of me that still loves him. I mean, even though I was mad at him, when I answered the call and heard his voice, there was that part of me that always got excited when he called, still in there. I guess if I hadn't felt that, I would've told him there was no sense in even discussing a possibility of reconciliation, but I told him to let me think about it for a couple of days. I even accepted the dinner invitation after I already knew that I hadn't lost Rob after all. That alone tells me that I must have some feelings for him, right?”
“Katie Lou, of course you still have feelings for him. You two were together for a long time, and were engaged for quite a while. You had been planning a life together, and you can't just turn off feelings like that. It takes time for them to fade away.” She paused, and then smiled. “Your problem now is to decide which of these two men you truly want to be with. Don't let yourself be swayed by memories of the past, not now. You've already been hurt, and I can tell you from experience that forgiveness doesn't make that hurt go away instantaneously. Getting over a hurt takes time, and if there's the slightest doubt in your mind that you can completely forgive him for all of what happened, then you'll be fighting a double battle. Not only will you be trying to reconcile yourself to forgetting Rob and going back to Darren, but you'll also be fighting the pain and anger that you've been feeling since he broke up with you. Dealing with either one of those will be bad enough, but dealing with both of them at once could be a disaster.”
Katie Lou gave her mother a sad smile. “I'm just gonna be honest here, Mom, but I'm not sure you're really helping me make a decision.”
Judy smiled brightly. “Oh, but Sweetheart, I'm not trying to help you make a decision. I'm trying to give you a couple of different viewpoints to look at it from, so that the decision you make on your own will be the right one for you. You can't worry about what the rest of us think about this, you've got to decide what's best for you and your life. If that means going back to Darren, then I can promise you that you will have your family's support. If it means that you continue your relationship with Rob, then we'll support that decision. Either way, it has to be your choice, and your choice alone.”
Katie Lou sighed softly. “I should've known that's what you would say.” She smiled at her mother again. “Thanks, Mom.”
5
Anna walked into the café, glancing back over her shoulder to make sure no one was following her. She almost felt like she was in an old spy movie, one of those old black-and-white ones with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. She had to take off her sunglasses to look around the interior, searching for the one who would be waiting for her.
There she was, back in the corner booth. Great place for some private conversation.
Anna made her way between the tables and slid into the booth across from Kylie. “I am so glad you called,” she said. “I don't know how it's going on your end, but Bubba is about to drive me up a wall!”
“Yes, well, Katie Lou has me at the point that I'm thinking about lynching her. You know what's going on, don't you? That she's talking to that jerk who almost killed her and then dumped her?”
“Yeah, Rob told me. It's got him all torn up. You don't really think she'll go back to him, do you?”
Kylie shrugged. “A couple days ago, I would've sworn there was no chance of that happening, but right at the moment, I'm not so sure. It was just horrible timing. Darren called just when she was all upset, thinking that Rob was messing around with that other woman. If he had called at any other time, she probably wouldn't even have answered.”
“Then, what are we going to do? Kylie, you and I both know that these two belong together, but they're a pair of the most stubborn blockheads you'll ever meet, trust me on that.”
A waitress came over to get their orders, and they both ordered coffee. “Believe me, I know what you're saying,” Kylie replied when the waitress was gone. “Katie Lou has always been hardheaded; I think it just comes natural to her. The bad thing is that she doesn't always seem to know when she's headed for disaster, and she isn't real good at listening to advice.”
“Neither is Bubba. He's one of those who always has to figure things out for himself, and hates the thought of letting anyone find out that he's not sure what he's doing. It was all I could do to get him to let me help him with his tie, the night he took Katie Lou to the dance.”
A shadow fell over Anna's face suddenly, and Kylie reached across the table to put her hand on the other girl's. That had been, of course, the night that Linda had passed away, and the memory brought back a fresh wave of pain.
“I didn't know what else to do, that's why I called you,” Kylie said. “I just feel like Katie Lou will be making a big mistake if she lets Rob get away, whether she ends up with Darren or
not. We've got to find some way to get them focused on each other again. Any suggestions?”
The red-haired girl shot her an evil grin. “Yeah, I've got one. Let's just lock them both in the storage room at the clinic, and refuse to let them out until they see reason.”
Kylie giggled. “I can't say it isn't appealing, but somehow, I don't think it would help. We need to find a way to make them want to see each other again, and quickly. What about that, any ideas?”
“We don't have to worry about Rob on that score,” Anna said. “I think he'd give just about anything to see Katie Lou, right now. If we can figure a way to make her want to see him, we'd probably be halfway to solving the problem.”
Kylie grimaced. “What's he doing today?”
“Ha! Nothing. I haven't even been able to convince him to get dressed, yet. I even offered to buy him breakfast; that usually works, but not today. He's just sitting around the house, moping.”
“So what if we just tell Katie Lou that he's so depressed he can't see straight, and that she's the only one who can bring him out of it?”
“Well, that might get her over there,” Anna said, “but I'm not sure either one of them would thank us for it. He'd get all embarrassed that she saw him in this condition, and she might feel like we were trying to shove him down her throat. That could blow up in our faces, and make the situation worse.”
Kylie put her chin in her hands and stared at her friend. “Yeah, I guess it could. Come on, think, Anna, we've got to come up with something. I never cared a lot for Darren in the first place, but after the way he treated her when she was in the hospital, I just can't bear the thought of having him for a brother-in-law.”
“I can imagine. I feel the same way about Julie. The first thing Rob told her when she got here was how crazy he is about Katie Lou, and she still tried to ruin that for him. I just don't know what to do—it seems like no matter what we try, we're likely to end up making them mad at us.”