All right, it wasn’t like a jigsaw puzzle at all, but there was a way that worked best, and she liked figuring out what it was.
“Henry,” she told the dog, “I don’t hate what I do. Huh. That’s a relief.”
The day was warming up, and they were headed back to Dakota’s. She’d go over and help Evan at the theater, and she’d . . . be there.
She’d heard all the reserve in him when she’d told him the process server was on his way. Surely that was anxiety over the next steps, not Evan hesitating to cut April out of his and Gracie’s life, like Joan had thought. One thing about Evan—he was sure. He thought it, he planned it, and he got it done.
So why hadn’t he done this? Did he still want April? Evan was loyal. And April was the mother of his child. She knew how fiercely he loved.
She wanted to run, or to swim. But she needed to wait with Evan. And she was only here for five more days. She needed to do what she could.
Her phone rang in her purse, and she pulled it out. Her mom.
Adult. You are an adult. “Hi, Mom,” she said. “How are you?”
“Hello, sweetie,” her mother said, and Beth’s shoulders lost a little of their tension. “I was wondering if you wanted to come for dinner tonight. Your father’s going to barbecue, and we’ll eat out on the deck.”
If Beth was changing, and she devoutly hoped she was, her mom was having to change, too, or at least adjust to Beth’s changes. That took time and practice, and she had time. Five days. “I have plans,” she began, “but I can—”
“Please, honey,” her mother said. “Once you go back to Portland, we’ll hardly see you.”
“Yes, but—”
“Besides,” Michelle said, “we’re having a few people over, and you’d be so helpful. I can’t believe how much growth we’re seeing in Wild Horse, and all so fast. It’s the resort, of course, but it’s beyond that, and not just football players. There’s a developer in town checking out the lake, in fact. Very exciting.”
“I’m not sure that’s great,” Beth said. “But—”
“Oh, it’s not what you’re thinking. Not ticky-tacky little houses. Very high-end. Custom homes. Vacation homes, of course, but think what that will do for the tax base, for the library and the schools. He’ll be here tonight, in fact. You’ll see for yourself.”
“Wait.” Beth was walking faster, Henry trotting at her side. “Is this developer young, by any chance?”
“Of course not,” her mother said. “That’s never a first career. How could it be?” Good. Phew. But her mother went on. “He’s forty, I’d say, although he’s certainly fit enough to be younger. He runs races on trails, he says, which is another reason I wanted you to come. You can talk to him about all that. Get him enthusiastic.”
“Uh-huh. Is his wife coming too?”
“Oh, he’s not married. Divorced, I think. No children, which is always a good thing, so much less complicated. Anyway, thirty is the new twenty. A man’s barely started to settle down by then. Not like your father was. For nowadays, forty’s perfect. He’s finished with all that and ready to make a commitment and have those babies with you. And I just thought of something. Why don’t you invite Blake and Dakota? There’s nothing like a little star power, is there? They’d be company for you, too, since I can hear you thinking I’m setting you up. Of course not.”
“Wait. Mom. You’re going in too many directions.” She’d reached Dakota’s house, and she took Henry inside, unfastened his leash, and hung it up while he headed for his water dish. “First, why don’t you invite Blake and Dakota? Why would I invite them to your house?”
“To be honest, darling, Dakota doesn’t seem to feel comfortable with our crowd. I’m sure I see why, but there you are. And Blake won’t come without her. I thought since you two are such good friends now—”
“You can’t have it both ways, Mom.” Beth slipped off her sandals and wiggled her toes. “Either she’s good enough or she’s not. You might even have to make a choice. Dakota or Melody Farnsworth. I don’t think they like each other.”
“People need to get over these silly feuds,” her mother said. “Anyone can be civil for an evening. For heaven’s sake. If you don’t want to invite them, don’t. But please come and help me with Brett. I get the feeling he thinks we’re a tiny bit unsophisticated.”
“Didn’t Candy tell you, then?” Beth sat on the worn couch—the couch where Evan had rocked her world a few days earlier—crossed her ankles on the sturdy, scarred coffee table, and enjoyed looking at her absolutely inappropriate ankle bracelet. “I’m not available. Partner-wise. Or dinner-wise, for that matter. I’m seeing Evan tonight. And Dakota and Blake aren’t available, either. Because, as it happens, they’re babysitting.”
Silence for a moment, and then her mother said, “Let’s have lunch. I can’t talk to you on the phone.”
“I can’t, Mom. Actually, I really can’t. I need to go help Evan at the theater. Painting.” She headed into the bedroom, unsnapping her jeans along the way. “Maybe tomorrow?”
“Candy told me she saw you two at Busano’s,” her mother said. “I’d be worried, except that you are going back to Portland, and whatever’s been going on with you, you have too much good sense, so I’m sure this is some sort of fling.”
Beth pulled the jeans off and folded them. How did she answer that? It was true. Her mother was still talking. “I’m sure we’ve all had daydreams about some . . . some rodeo cowboy, but we don’t end up with him. And for good reason. The more similar a couple’s background is, the more compatible they are.”
“Statistically. But you know what they say. ‘Lies, damn lies, and statistics.’ Besides, how similar were you and Dad?”
“That was different. We had the same interests.”
“Well, so do Evan and I.”
A faint snort. “What, demolition derbies? Crushing beer cans on your forehead?”
“Right, Mom.” Beth never got mad, but she was mad now. “I’m hanging up.”
“Wait. All right, that was uncalled for. I let my sense of humor get the better of me. All right, then. If he’s so appropriate, bring him along. He has a baby, though, Candy said. And you can hang up on me, but that’s another red flag. Men who’ve fathered children with their girlfriends who they’re not with anymore.”
“Except that the girlfriend’s long gone, and Evan’s still here. With the baby.”
“Oh. Really.” She’d actually shut her mother up.
“Yes, really. And the reason I need to spend today with him is that he’s trying to get sole custody, and it’s making him nervous that she’ll decide to come back and fight him for it.”
“How old is the baby?”
“Eight months. A little girl. Gracie.”
“And her mother left?”
“Yep. She sure did. When Gracie was three weeks old. So you see, Evan’s not crushing beer cans on his forehead. He’s fixing up his house and building his company and giving his little girl her bath. And dancing with me on the dock, which I’m also sure you heard about, and which was one of the most wonderful moments of my life. Thirty might be the new twenty, but Evan didn’t get the memo. He’s all grown up.”
Silence for a moment. “Darling, I’m hearing infatuation. I’m sure he seems wonderful right now, but . . .”
“But what?”
“But you’re leaving.”
“Portland is seven hours away.” She’d never said it. She’d never let herself think it. But she did now.
“Right, then,” her mother said. “Then come to dinner. Bring him. Bring the baby, too. It’s casual. It’s a barbecue.”
He didn’t want to come. That was putting it mildly.
“What’s the point?” he asked Beth, who was in her overalls again, and joining him on the scaffold again, too. There was no flirting today, though. He was too wound up for that. He—or Beth—had set a train in motion, and trains could be destructive.
Only one way to deal with that. Work.
It might not make anything better, but at least you got the job done.
“Distraction?” she suggested, like she was reading his mind. “It’s bound to be tense enough out there to take your mind off April. Anyway, you wanted to dance with me on the dock in front of the Farnsworths. Maybe I want something like that too. And before you say anything, I’ll just point out that you also wanted to, ah, let me know that whoever either of us is in this town, that’s not who I am when I’m in your bed.”
“Yeah, thanks for reminding me.”
She glanced at him sidelong and said, “Maybe I didn’t mention that I didn’t hate that. Maybe I’m just fine with making that statement out of bed, too. Maybe we both have a point to make.”
He didn’t exactly hate that idea. “Gracie, though? Dakota said they’d babysit. All night long.”
She hesitated. Why was that? “Wouldn’t it be interesting, though,” she said slowly, “to see what would happen if we brought her? Aren’t you at least a little bit curious?”
“Science experiment, that the idea?”
She smiled. “Social science? We could leave earlier, too, if it was her bedtime, and take her over to Blake’s then, if you still wanted the, ah, whole night. Self-limiting. Also . . .” She stopped, and she wasn’t flirting now.
“What? Go on and say it. We’ve been out there on that thin ice for a while now, hanging onto each other for support. What the hell. Go on.”
She studied his face, and she took it seriously. But then, Beth took most things seriously. “You’re right. I need you tonight, and that’s the truth. For a guy who doesn’t say much, you sure do understand a lot.”
He understood one thing. That having a woman think you were strong made you want to be stronger. “Maybe I’ll even understand whatever it is you aren’t telling me, too, if you go ahead and tell me.”
“Just that it would . . . help me. You don’t owe me anything. Of course you don’t. But I’m trying to do something new here, and it’s not easy. You’re the . . . the proof. Bringing you, I mean. And there’s something else, too. Maybe it’s not fair of me to say, or to count on, but knowing you’re strong enough for anything—when you’re with me, I feel stronger, too, because I know you’ll never back down and you’ll never run.”
There she went again. And there was that pressure in his chest, too. “You’re right,” he said. “I’ll never run, and I’ll be there as long as you need me. Pick you up when? Or do you want to drive?”
“No,” she said. “I want you to. Please. Six-thirty. And thank you.”
They were eating lunch together, sitting on that bench by the lake and sharing his sandwiches, when she got the call.
“Right,” she said. “Thanks for letting me know.”
That didn’t tell him much, but her body language did. She hung up, and he didn’t ask. He just looked at her, the bite of sandwich going down like lead.
She finally said, “Her parents refused service.”
It was hard to ask. He asked anyway. “Did they say anything?”
“They said she wasn’t living there, and they didn’t know where she was. The process server says that the first part might be true, but he didn’t believe the second one. And in his job, they tend to know.”
“So what do we do?”
“Serve by publication. Four weeks of legal notices in a newspaper here and one in Spokane Valley, since her parents’ home is her last known address.”
“Four weeks.” It sounded like four months. He wanted this done. “And then what?”
“And then Joan can get a hearing scheduled.”
“Which could be months more down the road, I’m guessing.”
“Yes. But if you don’t start now, it’ll be that same amount of time, plus however long you wait. And the fact that she’s in another state—that makes any request for shared custody trickier for her. She’s the one who put that distance between you.”
“She’s the one who left.”
“And that matters, but like I said—family reunification.”
“What family? Family isn’t making a baby. Family’s taking care of it. And she never did it.”
“Never? Even at the beginning?”
“I’m not sure.” Here it was, the worst thing, the thing he’d tried not to see. “All I know is that Gracie always seemed to be crying when I came home from work, and it seemed . . . wrong. Half the time, April would be crying too. I thought it was—you know. Postpartum depression. I looked it up.”
“Maybe it was.” Beth hesitated, then said, “She can’t have been a terrible person, or you wouldn’t have loved her. But she doesn’t sound like a strong one.”
“No. Both of those.” He shoved his sandwich back in his lunchbox. He’d be hungry later. Just not now.
Beth had been right, though, about one thing. Going to dinner at her parents’ house was a distraction. And maybe he was feeling better anyway by the time he was buttoning himself into another white shirt for another evening out with Beth. Not to mention a whole night working on that list of hers.
April wasn’t at her parents’? Well, great. She’d moved on, and she hadn’t come back for Gracie. That told its own story. He’d always wondered what those legal notices were all about. If anybody ever read those things in their tiny type or responded to them, he’d be pretty damn surprised. If a month went by with no response? He showed up in court with Gracie and no April, and Gracie was officially his. Job done.
Beth was right. This was better. The only way you got a job done was to start it.
And then there was that other thing. Walking through the front door of the Schaefers’ spectacular lake house without ringing the doorbell. This time, he wasn’t carrying a paint can, and nobody would be writing him a check. The Schaefers might not like it—he hoped they didn’t, in fact—but he felt great about it.
Henry ran into the house behind them and took off around the corner, ready to spread the love in that way only a dog could, and Beth said, “Here. Let’s put Gracie’s stuff in my bedroom. Escape route.”
“Except you won’t be going out the window,” he said. “I’m going to miss that. That was hot as hell. Catching you. You on the back of my bike.” He sighed. “Oh, yeah.”
She laughed, sounding breathless, and took him up the stairs, down the hall, and through the door of a room he’d been in exactly once. When he’d painted it.
“Same color,” he said, setting Gracie’s diaper bag on the bed. The walls were painted the palest ice-blue, a color he’d chosen after having Michelle tell him the look she wanted. Michelle, not Beth, and that was pretty damn weird.
All the furniture was the same, too, from the sleigh bed on down. A white comforter that looked like a cloud, an ice-blue bed skirt, and the piece de resistance. An elaborate white ceramic . . . thing . . . like a queen would have, fastened to wall near the ceiling, with gauzy white fabric draped from it and gathered in folds around the head of the bed.
Not that that was all. You also had your crown molding, your filmy white window curtains, and your crystal chandelier. It was a room for a princess, and then there were the matching pieces. Bedside tables, dresser, dressing table with mirror and padded stool, and crystal wall sconces. Let’s just say you didn’t see a lot of bedrooms like it in a doublewide.
Beth looked around and sighed. “Yeah. Clearly, my mom wanted a different child.”
“You saying your apartment now doesn’t have a crown hanging from the ceiling?” Evan asked, starting to smile.
“Nope. I’ve found out my taste is pretty nearly Spartan. Clean, that’s the word. But look. Gracie likes it.”
Evan was still holding Gracie in her baby seat, and when he checked her out, it was true. She was staring at the crown like she was getting ready to practice her one-clicking. “I’ll do it for you if you make me,” he told his daughter, “but I’m going on record here and saying it’s not my favorite.”
“Gracie could be a girly girl,” Beth said. “What with the bunnies and the
ponies and the butterflies and all. What are you going to do then?”
He sighed. “Sucker for women. That’s me.”
Beth laughed again, and he smiled at her and thought, Not so bad. He took Gracie out of her baby seat, Beth picked it up, and they went downstairs. Through a living room Evan remembered just fine, an enormous multi-sided thing that extended over the lake so far, it was like being on an island. Past a grand piano that gleamed with about ten coats of black varnish, and on through one of multiple sliding doors onto the ultimate entertainment deck. A good fifteen feet wide, with angles that gave you a view of almost all of Wild Horse Lake, and featuring three separate seating groups in addition to an outdoor dining set that was nicer than anything in his house.
All of it was only stuff, he reminded himself, just like Beth’s parents and everybody else here were only people. He didn’t work for any of them, and he didn’t need to. And if he knew his face was at its most inscrutable? There was power in that, too. He wasn’t twenty-four anymore, and he was done sneaking around.
It was a nice thought while it lasted.
“Hi, honey,” Michelle Schaefer said to her daughter. Her face was still as unlined as Beth’s, her hair the same mix of colors that Beth’s had been before her latest walk on the wild side, and the resemblance disconcerted Evan, to say the least. “But oh, my goodness, your beautiful hair. What have you done?”
Beth put her arm through Evan’s and said, “I don’t know. What do you think, Evan? What have I done?”
She smelled like her usual vanilla and roses, and he pressed his arm a little closer to his body to keep her hand there and said, “Experimented, that’s what. Gone a little wild on your vacation, maybe.” He may have had a thought that went something like, That answer your question, Michelle? Yeah, your little girl might be having some adventures. Exactly like before.
Maybe he should feel bad about that thought. He didn’t. Beth loved his tough side, he was enjoying the hell out of making her love it, and it was nobody else’s business. Besides, that was more or less why she’d brought him along. To provide contrast, let’s say.
No Kind of Hero (Portland Devils Book 2) Page 23