“Her lawyer?” Parker scoffed. “Clearly you don’t know my wife or the position she’s put herself in. Her lawyer is one of a fleet that I keep on retainer. I talk to the man every day. Now put Selena on the phone.”
Oliver gently squeezed her fingers. “Her lawyer is my lawyer now. Let yours know to expect our filing to turn over all records pertaining to the divorce.”
“And just who the hell are you?”
“I’m Camille’s father.” And the satisfaction of saying it out loud, whether it was true or not, felt right.
“Okay,” Selena said to Brad. “We’ll see you tonight.”
She finished her call and slipped to her feet, wrapped in her mother’s quilt. She grabbed her clothes and walked silently down the hall, presumably to her room.
“I’m the only father that little girl has ever known,” Parker growled. “I wanted to adopt her.”
“Before or after you decided to bang everything that moves all over Manhattan, and who the hell knows where else? Selena and Camille are out of your life. Get used to it. And tell your lawyers to strap themselves in. Mine are about to make sure Selena is compensated for the years she spent trying to make a marriage to someone like you work. She won’t be asking for child support. She won’t need it. But don’t think that means you’re off the hook for the way you stomped all over her heart. Stop harassing her. End this, man. You’re just embarrassing yourself.”
Oliver thumbed the call closed, Parker still fuming on the other end.
Selena had returned, fully dressed in jeans and a loose sweatshirt, her face looking freshly washed. She’d heard the last of what he’d said to her husband.
“You won’t have to deal with him again,” Oliver promised.
“Because you’re going to take care of it?” She passed him his phone and held her hand out for hers. “Another project for you to add to your list?”
“Because you’re going to take care of it by allowing me to help.” He pocketed his phone. “We’re not kids any longer, Selena. You’re clearly capable of managing your life and your choices. You were when we were teenagers, too. You’ve always been smart enough to take a friend’s offer of support, if it will get an asshole like Parker permanently out of your daughter’s life.”
“A friend?”
“That’s what you said. Friends at least? I’ll give you my lawyer’s number. What you do with it is up to you. Or you can trust me to contact the firm on your behalf.”
“As my daughter’s father?” Selena’s voice broke. She pressed her fingers to her lips. She swallowed before continuing. “Why did you tell Parker that?”
“Because I want to be.” More than Oliver could have believed. “And even if she’s Brad’s, I still want to be in her life, helping you both any way I can. Trust me on that, if nothing else.”
Selena folded the quilt she’d returned with and laid it on the arm of the couch. She was so close. Her beauty, her heart, her capacity to keep loving fiercely, the way she loved Camille unconditionally, no matter how hard life knocked her around.
And Oliver wanted it all.
“I should give Travis a break,” he said.
“Yeah. I . . . I need to get back to Camille.”
She reached for Oliver first—thank God. It had been killing him, wondering if she ever would again. He held her, her head pressed to his heart.
“Thank you,” she said. “For making being done with Parker possible. I can’t imagine how much it’s going to cost. The hospital and now your lawyer.”
Oliver massaged her nape. Her hair curled madly, silky soft through his fingers. “The money isn’t important. You’ll be free. That’s what matters. You matter to me.”
“You matter to me, too.” She pushed away to stand on her own.
But did he matter enough? Would she give him a chance to make sense of all the things he still had to? She reached for the purse she’d set on the coffee table and scooped up her keys.
“We’re on with Brad and Dru?” he asked.
“Brad said they’d swing by the hospital after ten or so, meet us at Camille’s room if that works for you.”
“I’ll be there.”
Facing the rest of the day without Selena would be excruciating. But he was going to move his truck next door and out of her car’s way. This time he wouldn’t push her for more than she was ready to handle.
“Thanks again for what you did this morning for Marsha and Joe. You and Belinda standing up for them with Family Services could make all the difference in Teddy’s placement.”
“Your parents and their kids are lucky to have you back.”
He inhaled. “I’m the lucky one.”
His family had welcomed him home, no matter how much he’d put them through. And Selena had loved Oliver just now, like she never wanted to let him go. That’s what he’d hold on to until tonight.
Things were still in chaos. But there had to be a path to making all of it work—for his family and Selena and Camille and himself. He’d come up with the right solution for everyone. He was certain of it.
As long as Selena found her way to trusting her heart.
And trusting him, one more time.
Chapter Twenty-One
Camille wanted to go home.
She wanted her Mommy.
She wanted to go back to when she’d been at the Dixons’ with her mom and Oliver and Grammy. And she wanted not to have asked what she had. And she really, really wanted not to have gotten sick. She’d snuck just one cracker when she’d been helping with Teddy. She’d been hungry after playing outside, and she’d thought it was okay this time. It was Mrs. Dixon’s house, and Mrs. Dixon’s cookies were okay.
She liked helping with Teddy. She did not like having allergies. Or being in trouble. She shouldn’t be in trouble because she’d wanted to know the truth about if she had another family. But she was. She just knew she was. Look at everything she’d made go wrong, because she’d gone over to the Dixons’ house. Now she might not ever be able to help with Teddy again before she and Mommy moved.
Grammy walked into Camille’s hospital room and smiled, not as if she was mad at all.
“How are we doing in here?” She kissed Camille’s cheek. She smoothed where a needle was still stuck in Camille’s hand, attached to a tube that had a bag at the other end, hanging beside her bed. “Does it still sting?”
“A little.”
Camille had woken up a few times before. Sometimes her Mommy had been there. Sometimes Grammy. But this was the first time Camille had felt like she was getting better, the way everyone kept saying she was—even though people had kept telling her to rest.
“Can we go home now?” she asked.
“Tomorrow, honey. But once your Mommy and I get you home, I’m going to pamper you with the biggest bubble bath I can make.”
Camille liked bubbles. Grammy liked them, too, though Mommy hadn’t believed it until Grammy had shown Mommy and Camille the bottles of bubble bath she kept in her bathroom. Bubbles always cheered Grammy up, she’d said, and made her feel special. She’d shared every kind of bubbles she had with Camille, and she’d even bought Camille a special bottle all her own—a Hello Kitty bottle, and the bubbles smelled like flowers.
If Grammy was going to make Camille a special bubble bath when they got home, Camille couldn’t be in too much trouble for asking Oliver what she had.
“I didn’t water my flowers this morning,” she said.
The ones right under her window that needed water every day. Except today, she’d played out back all morning instead, and her flowers had to be really thirsty.
“Please,” she begged. “I want to water them. I won’t do anything else. I’ll stay in bed. But I want to go home.”
“I’ll take care of your forget-me-nots in a little bit.” Grammy smiled. “Once your mommy’s back and I can slip out.”
“Am I in a lot of trouble?” Camille asked. Then before Grammy could answer, she said, “I didn’t mean to eat Teddy’
s crackers, it just happened. He handed me one, and I was hungry and . . . I won’t go over to the Dixons’ again, if Mommy’s mad and doesn’t want me to. But why doesn’t she want them to be my family? What’s so bad about them? Or about Oliver being my . . .”
Camille didn’t say daddy.
She tried again, but she couldn’t.
Grammy sat on the bed next to her. She pulled up the tulip quilt she’d wrapped Camille in before she and Mommy had brought Camille to the hospital. Camille had taken it outside to play that morning. Grammy had brought it back after they left the Dixons. Camille looked at her favorite quilt now, and it made her sad instead of happy.
“Your mom’s got a lot to think about,” her grammy said.
Grammy sounded sad, too, no matter how glad she said she was that Camille was okay. Something must be really wrong.
“Your mommy doesn’t think the Dixons and Oliver are bad,” Grammy insisted. “And you’re not in trouble.”
“Going next door by myself was wrong.” Camille’s stomach felt gross again. “And I shouldn’t have snuck up front last night and listened to you and Mommy talk. But . . .”
“You wanted to know.” Grammy rubbed her arm. “There’s so much that you need to know. And you have every right to want to.”
“I like the Dixons. They’re fun. And they’re so big, and they’d want me, Oliver said. And I want Oliver, if he’s my . . .”
Daddy.
“Would it be so bad,” Camille asked, “for me to belong to Oliver and his family?” Camille sat up in the bed, squeezing Grammy’s quilt close. “I like it next door. I like it with you and Mommy at your house. And playing in your yard and staying in Mommy’s room . . . But I like the Dixons, too. And they like me. Teddy and Fin and Lisa and everyone. I know they do.” She hoped they did. “Would it be so bad, to want to be part of them, too?”
Grammy looked at her for a long time, like Grammy looked at Mommy a lot—when Mommy thought Grammy was going to be mad, but Camille thought Grammy was just trying not to say the wrong thing. “I don’t think having more family in your life is ever a bad thing.”
“Really?”
Grammy nodded. “Even if sometimes family makes us angry or scared.”
“Like I was this morning? And Mommy, too?”
Grammy nodded again. “Family, real family, is never a bad thing, no matter how it happens into your life.” She smoothed her hand over one of the tulips her mommy’s mommy had sewn a long, long time ago. “Do you know why this is my favorite quilt?”
“’Cause it’s pretty, and your grammy made it?”
Camille’s grammy brushed her hand wider, across the colors and prints that made the different flowers and pieces of the quilt. Everything was white and pink, or something close to white and pink. The pieces were all different shapes, but they were so pretty together.
Her grammy had told her, when she’d let Camille pick the quilt from the stack in her bedroom closet, that some of the pieces had come from worn-out clothes and even the sacks people used to sell stuff in, like corn and beans and things. And Grammy’s grammy had cut it all up into different shapes and sizes, when people stopped using their old things. She’d made the quilt out of stuff that would have been thrown away.
Grammy smiled. “Families are like quilts, honey. All kinds of people, coming together, sometimes from all kinds of places. Just look at how different your mommy and me are now. How long we’ve lived without each other—most of your life. But we’re still family, right? You and me and your mom.”
Camille nodded.
“All families,” Grammy said, “even the ones with different parts that don’t look like they’d fit together, can be beautiful—if you put enough work into them. And once you get the work right, like my grammy did with this quilt—because she knew all the different-shaped pieces would make lovely flowers for me—what you create can be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.”
“It’s so pretty.” Camille brushed her hand over the quilt, just like Grammy.
“Some people think quilts look messy,” Grammy said. “But a good quilt, if it’s strong enough, will last forever. And more than anything else, that’s why this one’s my favorite. My grandmother made it a long time ago, and it’s been used a lot. I used to drag it all over the place, the same as you do. And look how beautiful it still is. It’s still strong, even if it’s not perfect anymore. And now I get to share it with you. Because our family’s turned out to be strong, too, honey. No matter how different your mommy and I are, I get to share my flowers and my bubble bath with you. And your mommy’s old room in my house. And the town I love so much. It’s all even more special to me now.”
“Because you love me so much, too?”
“I love you and your mommy both, sweetie. I’m so glad to have you in Chandlerville with me. That’s why I wanted you to have this quilt. I want you to think of me every time you use it. Just like when I see it, I think of my grammy.”
“I . . . I can keep it?”
“It’s yours now.”
Because Camille and her mommy were still going to leave?
“Do you . . .” Camille couldn’t stop herself from asking again. “Do you think the Dixons would be glad to have me, too?”
Oliver had said they would.
“Of course we’re happy to have you as part of our family,” a voice said from the doorway.
Mrs. Dixon was standing there.
And so was Camille’s mommy.
“I brought you a visitor,” Mommy said. She was smiling like Grammy had—like Camille wasn’t really in trouble at all. “Are you feeling up for it?”
Camille stared as Mommy sat next to her, while Mrs. Dixon stood next to Grammy.
“I’m so sorry, Cricket.” Mommy kissed Camille on the forehead. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you the truth, and you had to hear me and Grammy talking about the Dixons and Oliver, instead of me talking to you myself.”
“But I shouldn’t have snuck next door. I shouldn’t have eaten one of Teddy’s crackers. I thought it would be okay,” she said to Mrs. Dixon. “Because your cookies are okay. But I should have asked first. I shouldn’t have come over to your house at all.”
“Yes,” Mommy said. “You should have. You should have gotten to know them a long time ago, as soon as Mr. and Mrs. Dixon wanted us to visit. You wanted to go, and I said no, because . . .”
Camille picked at the biggest flower on her quilt.
Because her mommy was sad. That’s what was wrong. It’s what had been wrong for a long time. Camille wanted Oliver to be her daddy, and his family to be her family. But she wanted her mommy to be happy more than anything. More than staying at Grammy’s. More than being a Dixon.
“I won’t go back next door.” She crushed a flower in her hand. “If you don’t want me to, I won’t want the Dixons to be my family. I won’t visit them anymore or play with Teddy and the other kids or see Oliver. I won’t want them to be my family ever again.”
“But they are your family,” her mommy said.
“They . . . they are?”
Mommy smiled. “And I’m very glad they are. I shouldn’t have kept them from you. I shouldn’t have made you afraid of talking to me about it. You shouldn’t be afraid of any of this, Camille.”
Camille looked up at Mrs. Dixon, wondering if she was glad, too. She checked with her grammy to see if it was really okay.
“This must be a lot to take in.” Mrs. Dixon sat on the edge of the bed. “You must have tons of questions.”
Camille couldn’t think of any of her questions anymore. The Dixons were really hers. All of them different. All of them together. Like everyone sitting around Camille now.
Mommy had said once that she looked a lot like her daddy. The granddaddy Camille had never met. Grammy was smaller, with blonde hair and blue eyes like Camille had sometimes wanted, though Grammy had said Camille’s green eyes were prettier. Mrs. Dixon had red hair, and lots of white hair, too, and really white skin. And t
hey were all Camille’s, Mommy was saying. Like the tulip quilt—different things, but they were so pretty when you put them together.
“I get to be in your family,” she asked Mrs. Dixon, “no matter who my daddy turns out to be?”
Mrs. Dixon looked tired, and maybe like she might be sad a little, too. But it must be a happy kind of sad, ’cause she was smiling.
“Always, Camille. Joe and I have lots of kids who come from lots of different places and mommies and daddies. And that’s never stopped us from loving any of them as much as they’d let us. We already think of you as our granddaughter. Joe’s in the hospital, too. And he heard you weren’t feeling well, and he wants me to hurry back and tell him how you’re doing. He’d love to see you, now that he’s getting his new room and the doctors will let kids in before long. Do you think you’d like to visit your grandpa one day soon?”
Camille held on to her quilt, the way she had that morning, staring out her bedroom window and wishing she understood everything she’d heard her mommy and grammy saying. And then she’d dragged it outside, so she could be close enough to the Dixon house to sneak over. And now she was hugging it and wanting to hug Mrs. Dixon, too.
And then she was in Mrs. Dixon’s arms, and Mrs. Dixon was holding her like Grammy always did. Like she wanted to keep Camille with her always.
“Can I?” Camille asked her mommy, still hugging Mrs. Dixon. “Can I go visit my grandpa soon?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Selena had stayed with Camille until her daughter fell asleep, Bear in her arms, tucked in beneath her quilt, dreaming happy family dreams.
Belinda and Marsha had slipped away a half hour ago, leaving Selena to read to her daughter about Alice’s adventures finding her way home. Selena’s baby had finally run out of questions to ask about the Dixons and Joe and Marsha and Oliver. Answers Selena couldn’t fully wrap her head around yet. Not all of them. So she’d kept telling Camille that everything was going to be okay. Just like Oliver had promised Selena when they were teenagers, and again just a few days ago.
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