The Good Provider

by Debra Salonen

  “What are you in the mood for?” William asked, putting the key in the ignition. He didn’t turn on the engine. Although the temperature read a meager twenty-nine degrees, the sun had warmed the cab to a very comfortable setting.

  “I forgot a couple of points in my e-mail and I didn’t feel like typing. Are you ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be, but can I ask you something first? Did you have my parents vet these complaints as well? Do they agree that I’m a worthless ingrate who mooched off them my entire childhood and never made any attempt to pay them back?”

  Notty was silent for several seconds. William had surprised him with the question. Good. “No. Of course not. They would never expect anything from you. They love you. You are perfect—or fairly close to perfect—in their eyes.”

  William slouched forward. Bollocks. He could take Notty’s contentiousness much easier than he could handle the man’s raw honesty. “Why do I have to come right this minute, Not? Why now? You said yourself Father is holding his own. He’s not getting worse. His mind is still sharp. Mother is there. Why is it so damn important that I drop everything to come now?”

  Another long pause followed. Finally, Notty heaved a sigh and said, “I don’t know why, William. I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe what bothers me is that I even have to pick up the phone to plead with you to do what most people would do spontaneously. ‘My father is ill. Oh, no, I’d better go home and visit him in his time of need,’” he said in a staged voice.

  “So I’m a cad,” William muttered. “What can I say? I was never a priority in either of their lives, Notty, and damn it, I’m not going to drop everything to fly to England. I will come on my own terms. May we leave it at that?”

  “William, do you remember when you were a lad and you told everyone you were going to be a doctor when you grew up?”

  William shook his head. “I did not. I’ve never been interested in medicine.”

  “You were. For a number of years. It’s all you’d talk about. When you were in the hospital camps with your mother, you’d even wear an old stethoscope and pretend to help.”

  William closed his eyes but no such image came to mind. “I hate being around sick people. It’s one of the reasons I’m not rushing back to see Father. When I visited Mum in those camps, I’d volunteer in the supply shack or the office.”

  “Yes, later on. When you were older. But as a very young child, you wanted to be a doctor.”

  William scowled. “I don’t recall, but apparently I grew out of the notion. What is your point?”

  “My point is, you stopped wanting to be a doctor for a reason, William. On the flight back from wherever we were—I’m not sure which trip this was, actually—you broke down and cried. You told me you’d accidentally seen your mummy kissing a man. Some visiting surgeon from Germany. I tried to explain that your mother was not infallible. She was a woman, and human.”

  William felt an unpleasant tension pass through his body. “I have no memory of any of that,” he lied.

  “I’m not surprised. Everything in your world, William, is black or white, including your memories. There’s no gray area. No room for mistakes.

  “From that point on, you decided medicine wasn’t for you. Although I encouraged you to bring up the subject with your mother, you refused. Obviously, Laurel wasn’t madly in love with the man. She didn’t divorce your father to marry him. She might not have even kissed him passionately. You were a child. What did you know of passion? But you based a pivotal, life-altering choice on your assumption.” He paused to sigh. “That’s all I wanted to tell you.”

  The line went dead.

  William looked at his phone, stunned. That conversation had to be the strangest he’d ever had with his uncle. He closed his eyes and brought to mind the image that—his uncle was right—had left an impression on him. Not black and white at all. Blurry and completely out of focus. Was the man her lover? Or a friend?

  He and Daria had kissed, too. With spectacular passion and possibility. But Daria was divorced. Even a child knew the difference—one was right, one wrong. So, he’d judged his mother’s actions and the experience changed him. How did that make everything his fault?

  He cursed softly and turned the key in the ignition. The only person he planned to offer an apology was Daria. He’d been completely out of line kissing her last night. They were the proverbial two ships passing in the night, brushing a shade too close for a split second. His hull, he feared, would always carry the imprint of that kiss, but he didn’t intend to tell her that. She had enough to worry about without adding any more guilt.

  “A quick, polite goodbye,” he said aloud, pulling into Cal’s driveway. The tires made a loud crunching sound against the hard-packed snow. His nervous buzz of anticipation began to ebb when he realized Cal’s car wasn’t there. Damn. Was the family gone? He thought about leaving a note but didn’t have the first clue about where to find a pen and paper.

  He glanced toward the garden, recalling the fun he’d had playing with Daria’s children the day before, and spotted an odd bit of color. Someone was sitting on a bench in the garden. Daria. Even from a distance, he could tell she was upset about something.

  He turned off the engine and got out. “Daria? Are you all right?” he asked, giving her plenty of warning of his presence. The sky was clear but the air had a decided nip in it made more biting by the gusty wind.

  “I heard once that freezing to death is a fairly painless way to go,” she said, her tone flat, resigned.

  “Compared to say, stepping on a land mine, you mean?”

  The quip earned him a half smile. When she looked up, he saw her eyes were red and puffy. Guilt stabbed him mid-gut. “Please tell me you’re not tossing in the towel because of what happened between us last night. That was my fault. I’m an utter cad, who apparently has so little self-control, he takes advantage of a woman who is emotionally fragile and—”

  She held up a hand. A bare hand. “No. That’s not why I’m upset. I wish you were my only unplanned problem. This is much, much worse.” The word unplanned set off his radar.

  “I threw up this morning. My stomach has been a little off for a few days. I blamed it on the travel, strange water, nerves… Remember what I told you about trying every sort of tea on the market? And why?” He remembered. Morning sickness. “What about the flu? This is winter. Lots of germs around.”

  “I don’t have a fever. In fact, my stomach is a lot better now. That’s how it was when I was pregnant with the girls. Nausea every morning but once I tossed my cookies, I’d be okay.”

  “You think there’s a chance you might be pregnant,” he said, to be absolutely clear. “How?”

  She gave him a “Well, duh” look.

  “Wh-who?”

  She wouldn’t meet his gaze. “It was just the once. Over Christmas. He wanted to spend time with the girls. Brought them home from Midnight mass. We had a couple of glasses of wine.” She shook her head. “I knew it was a mistake when it happened.”

  “Because you had unprotected sex?”

  She shook her head. “No. God, no. We used a condom. He complained about it, but I said he was either safe or sorry.”

  The image in William’s head was not flattering. Picturing this guy in bed, making love with the woman William had come to care for—oh, hell, admit it, had a major crush on—was disquieting, to say the least. “Then, how could you be pregnant?”

  “Bad luck? Operator error? The worst timing in the world? I don’t know. I can’t explain it. But I’m pretty sure I hate myself more than I thought possible.”

  He dropped to a squat and removed his gloves. Her fingers were nearly blue they were so cold. He chafed them gently between his hands. “Where are Hailey and Miranda?”

  “Cal took them to Rapid City for some kind of big celebration. I was thinking about walking into town to buy an over-the-counter test.”

  He did a quick calculation in his head. “It’s probably too soon to know
for sure, isn’t it?” he said, still a bit baffled that something like this could have happened. If her ex was such a jerk—the man had threatened to kill her, right?—how could she sleep with him?

  “Sex was the one part of our marriage that worked pretty effortlessly,” she said, apparently hearing his unasked question. “But I was determined not to have any more children with Bruce. I’ve been on the pill since Hailey was a month old. Until my E.R. visit last summer. My primary care doctor suggested I go off it to rule out problems with my ovaries.”

  With her husband out of the picture, she’d be safe. He got that. But she had condoms. She must have been planning to become sexually active at some point. He got that, too. But why with the bastard she was divorcing? That, he didn’t understand.

  Daria took a deep breath, grateful beyond measure that the queasiness she’d experienced earlier was gone. She felt almost normal. Freezing cold, but… She suddenly gripped William’s hands fiercely. “I wonder if I’m losing my mind. When I was throwing up, the one clear thought going through my head was ‘Bruce won. I’ll have to go back to him now.’”

  “No, Daria. Don’t say that. You can’t.”

  “I lost a lot of blood when Hailey was born. Even with a transfusion, I was so exhausted I could barely sit up to nurse her. How could I handle two kids and an infant on my own?”

  “You ask for help. But not from the person who wants to control you.” He spoke with such fierceness and conviction she had to look at him. “A baby only ups the stakes.”

  She suddenly understood that he wasn’t talking about Bruce. “What do you mean?”

  “The police never let this out, but Bianca was six months pregnant when she died. She kept it a secret from everyone, even me. I think she knew how vulnerable it would make her. In Ocho’s eyes, she became his possession times two.”

  He looked her straight in the eyes. “You can’t go back to him. He threatened your life.”

  She knew that. In fact, she’d been copying the voice message tape to give a copy to William when she’d become ill. Maybe her volatile stomach was the product of nerves, not pregnancy.

  Before she could reassure him, he pushed to his feet and started pacing. “Your ex knows you’re a good mother. He wouldn’t hesitate to use your maternal devotion against you as leverage. Say you went back to him and managed to stick it out another five years until this new baby—if you’re even pregnant—” he added pointedly, “is Hailey’s age. What would you accomplish other than indoctrinating another kid to the sort of spousal abuse that might perpetuate into another generation?”

  His words were tough, his tone bleak. She wondered if this was the sort of speech he regretted not giving Bianca. Such a good, good man. She jumped up and hugged him with all her strength, burying her face against his shoulder to breathe in the smell of him.

  He wrapped his arms around her, too, and they stood there in the icy garden, like a modern-day Julie Christie and Omar Sharif. Until the sound of a car turning into Cal’s drive made them step apart.

  Daria turned. She didn’t recognize the late model sedan creeping slowly ahead, but even in silhouette against the bright sunlight she could identify the driver. Bruce.

  Her stomach clenched again as acid flooded the empty space. “Brace yourself,” she whispered, clutching the sleeve of William’s coat to keep her knees from buckling. “That devil you were alluding to has arrived.”

  William glanced over his shoulder as Bruce got out of the car. He stepped around her so he would be the first person Bruce encountered.

  Bruce advanced like a boxer prepping for a match, his bare hands tensing and releasing as if deciding whether or not to swing first and ask questions later. His suit and wool topcoat suggested he’d taken a plane straight from the capitol.

  “So, there is a man,” he said, his hand flipping outward in a gesture of disdain. “I figured there had to be. You don’t have the balls to do this on your own, do you, Daria?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING here, Bruce?”

  “I came to take our daughters home, you psycho kidnapper. Where are they?”

  Daria looked skyward for help. “You agreed that Miranda and Hailey could accompany me to my grandfather’s if Cal needed me. My lawyer has it in writing. What is the problem, Bruce?”

  “The problem, Daria, is your witch of a lawyer dropping the divorce bomb in my lap the minute you leave. Plus, there’s the whole manner of how you left. On the sly. Without telling anyone your grandfather was sick or even that you were leaving. Which leads me to believe that Cal is healthy as a horse and you’re not planning on coming back. So, I’m here to make sure that you do. Where are the girls?”

  Daria’s mind was racing. She knew without a doubt William was right about keeping her pregnancy fears a secret for the time being. The last thing she wanted to do was add fuel to this contentious fire.

  “They’re with Cal. He’s feeling a bit better.”

  Bruce’s scowl made it clear that their absence had ruined his plan for a big, emotional reunion. “And just who the hell are you?” he asked, giving William the once-over.

  Daria tried to step in front of William to shield him, but he wouldn’t let her.

  “William Hughes,” he answered, smoothly slipping one arm through Daria’s so they presented a united front.

  Bruce did a double take. “Oh, my, an accent. How bloody civilized,” he said snidely. He took a step closer—well within swinging distance. “Listen, William, that’s my wife you’re acting so chummy with. Here in America we take it kinda personal when someone tries to steal something that doesn’t belong to him. We usually call the cops, and when there’s a foreigner involved that means the INS starts asking for green cards. You got one?”

  Daria’s nausea returned. William, deported? His business, his friends, his home was here. Could that happen? Did Bruce possess the clout? If not, he probably knew the right people who could pull the right strings. “Bruce. Leave him alone. This is about us, not William. He’s a friend. There’s nothing going on between us.”

  Bruce glanced at William’s rental van. “That your ride? You’re what? A delivery boy? Fine, then beat it. My wife and I have things to discuss.”

  Daria stomped her foot, realizing suddenly that her toes were nearly frozen. A violent shiver passed through her body. “You and I are separated, Bruce, soon to be divorced. I am not your wife.”

  “You’re shivering,” William said, touching her cheek. “Hypothermia is a dangerous thing. You need to go inside. Now.”

  “F— Yes,” Bruce said, shuffling a bit. “Why the hell would anybody want to live in this climate? I hate snow.”

  “Then go home,” Daria pleaded. Her toes were starting to sting. The thought of warming her hands in front of her grandfather’s fire took over her brain, making it difficult to focus on what the two men were saying.

  Bruce was posturing like one of those showy male birds on the science network the girls liked to watch. “Who do you think you’re dealing with, Daria? Some pussy-whipped slob who’s gonna sit on his thumbs while you do exactly what you want with our daughters? Hell, no. Get in the house and pack. There’s a return flight out of this crappy ass hellhole in five hours, and we’re going to be on it. All of us.”

  “Forcing a person to go somewhere they don’t want to go is called kidnapping,” William said, pulling his phone from his pocket. “Do I need to call the police?”

  “Does this Podunk town even have police?” Bruce replied sarcastically.

  “Stop it, you two. I’m freezing. I need to go inside. I’d like you both to leave.”

  Bruce laughed outright, and William looked concerned—and a little hurt. She was suddenly completely fed up with the drama, with her choices, her mistakes and her options. She marched past William to Bruce. “I never thought I’d need a restraining order, but maybe I was wrong.”

  His face crumpled, his bluster vanished. “I didn’t come here to hurt you, Daria. Yes, ok
ay, maybe I wanted to do that—at first. I got drunk and said some things I shouldn’t have, but I was just blowing off steam. You know that, don’t you? We don’t need outsiders to figure this out. We need to do what’s right for our girls. Together.” He nodded toward William. “Alone.”

  William took a step closer. “With bullies, plan A is always divide and conquer. Don’t listen to him, Daria.”

  Her head was throbbing, her feet hurt and her teeth were chattering. “There’s a coffee shop called The Tidbiscuit on Main Street. I’ll meet you there in ten minutes, Bruce. That’s the best offer you’re going to get today. I strongly suggest you take it.”

  “Will he be there?”

  She shook her head. “No. William has a plane to catch.”

  Bruce checked his watch. “Ten minutes. Doesn’t leave you much time for a quickie, English Boy.” He gave William a blistering look then started toward his rental car. “Don’t be late, Daria. You know how much I hate waiting.”

  Once he was gone, Daria grabbed William’s hand and headed toward the house. “I’m so sorry you had to witness that. God, what you must think of me. Drama queen. Hopeless basket case.”

  He opened the door and pulled her inside, then wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tight. He kissed her, too—not as passionately as the night before, but fast and hard, befitting their frozen skin. “We’re like a pair of ice pops.”

  She wanted to collapse, cry and throw up, but she refused to do any of those things. She was a big girl and she was finally taking charge of her life. That meant making tough choices and doing difficult things on her own.

  She stepped out of his arms, shed her coat and walked to the wood-burning stove at the opposite side of the room. As she warmed her icy hands, she told him, “Thank you for your support today. I mean it. I don’t want to think what might have happened if Bruce had shown up first.” She shook her head. “I definitely over-reacted this morning.”

  He remained near the door but never took his gaze off her. “Does that mean you’re not going back to him?”