A Sweetbrook Family (You, Me & the Kids)

by DeStefano, Anna

  And he’d pushed her too hard for the details he needed to help Becky at school, making Amy even more defensive. But he took his responsibility to care for the children of Sweetbrook seriously. And that included Becky, even if she was returning to Atlanta soon. Especially now that he’d learned more about the troubles hounding both the girl and her mother. Something about their situation added up to more than just a bad divorce, poor parenting choices and a rebellious ten-year-old.

  He and Amy may have lost touch after the fight he’d initiated about Richard. They might be little more than passing acquaintances now, estranged friends that were getting on each other’s nerves. And he had enough problems of his own. But he was sticking close to Amy until they found her daughter. And then he was going to do whatever he could to help.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AMY WAS OUT OF THE Range Rover as soon as they’d rolled to a stop. She heard the emergency brake set, then Josh fell into step beside her as they made their way across the farmland they’d run through as kids.

  “Someone’s up there.” Josh squinted up at the tree house, shielding his eyes from the setting sun.

  Amy strained to see inside the fort. The structure sagged in places, warped with age. Its roof had been patched, and the chunks of wood nailed to the tree to serve as a ladder were a crooked mess.

  “Becky!” Amy called as she sprinted to the base of the tree.

  A rustling sound was the only response.

  “Becky, honey. Your grandmother called. You’ve got her worried sick.” Amy reached for the rickety step just above her head, prepared to scale the tree in her suit and stockings if her daughter refused to come down.

  More shuffling sounds came, but nothing else.

  Josh stepped behind her, giving the piece of wood she was clinging to a firm shove. It twisted in her grasp. “I don’t know if these old steps are sturdy enough for an adult.”

  “Maybe not for you.” She kicked off her heels and placed her foot on the wooden block closest to the ground. She pulled on the step above her and started to climb. “Becky, I’m coming up.”

  “Stay away from me,” a child shouted down to them. It was a young boy’s voice. “Leave me alone!”

  “Daniel?” Josh called as she hopped back to the ground. “Daniel, is Becky Reese up there with you?”

  “No!” An adorable little boy with sandy-blond hair and bright-green eyes poked his head out of the tree fort’s door. The scowl on his face spoke to Amy of loss and loneliness. “Leave me alone.”

  “Daniel, come down here,” Josh sputtered. “It’s time to head home for dinner.”

  Amy’s phone rang. She turned from the tree, leaving Josh to deal with his nephew.

  “Mama? She’s—”

  “She just came home, honey.” Gwen sighed in relief. “She won’t say where she’s been, but she’s back in her room. I’m going to try and get her to eat a little something.”

  “Oh, good.” Amy covered her eyes with a hand that was shaking almost as much as her voice. “I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

  “…I’m not coming down,” Daniel was shouting as Amy approached the tree once more. “And you can’t make me.”

  “I’m coming up there,” Josh replied.

  “I said stay away from me,” Daniel yelled back. “This is my tree, not yours. I hate you! And I’m not going back to that house again, ever!”

  Josh scaled the first few steps, his motions effortlessly coordinated despite his size. Before Amy knew what she was doing, she’d grabbed his pant leg.

  “Don’t, Josh. You’re scaring him.”

  She should stay out of this. She should ask for a ride back to her car, focus on her own problems and leave Josh to his. But the fear in Daniel’s angry voice was turning her knees to jelly, and she couldn’t walk away.

  “I can’t leave him up there.” Josh jumped back to the ground, his face all rough edges and at-the-end-of-his-rope frustration. “I can’t let him keep fighting me like this,” he said, lowering his voice so his nephew couldn’t hear. “Daniel has to start trusting me, before it’s too late. Before his father gets here, and I have no way to keep the man out of our lives.”

  Amy motioned for Josh to follow her away from the tree and out of Daniel’s earshot. “I heard your social worker say Daniel was warming up to you. What good’s going to come out of you climbing up there and dragging him home kicking and screaming?”

  “And you weren’t going to force Becky to come home if you found her here?”

  “We’re not talking about me and Becky,” Amy countered reasonably, even as her own demons swam closer to the surface, threatening with memories of feeling powerless and trapped the way Daniel felt right now. “We’re talking about a scared, possibly abused kid who doesn’t need one more person forcing him to do something, just because they’re bigger and stronger…and they can hurt you in ways you never dreamed of…ways that no one else will know, because words don’t leave marks…. And you’d never dare talk with anyone about it, because who’d believe you….”

  Breathlessness consumed her as it always did when she looked back. Fear she’d never completely outrun crept closer. She tried to clear her throat, to ease the lump of emotion.

  The memory of Richard’s belittling words, condescending verbal blows, still had the power to turn her into the kind of weak female she’d sworn she’d never be again. She’d promised herself she’d be brave from now on. Undaunted in the face of challenges, like her mother. Instead, here she had the chance to help a scared little boy, and she was turning into a hand-wringing coward.

  Josh brushed at the bangs hanging in her eyes. Alarm bells sounded at the sensation of being touched, clamoring for her to run. To find a safe place where pain couldn’t find her.

  When she flinched, he dropped his hand to his side.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” He glanced up at the tree, then back at her.

  He knew.

  He knew how much she had in common with his sister, and she had only herself to blame. She’d all but told him that Richard was no better than Melanie’s ex. He’d no doubt filled in the rest of the story with his own imagination.

  “Talk about what?” Resignation dripped from every one of her words. “How I let my husband convince me I was worthless without him? That I was lucky he’d married me, ’cause no one else would ever want me? That he was the only security I’d ever know, and if I didn’t do what he wanted, he’d—”

  Stop it right there, Amy.

  She swallowed. The truth was too awful to say. Too awful to watch Josh hear.

  “You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to.” The compassion in his eyes held the hard edge of anger she’d seen only once before, when he’d tried to warn her she was making a mistake expecting Richard and his money to make her happy. “You can tell me whatever you want, but you don’t have to.”

  “No, I… You…” Surprisingly, some of the panic eased at the thought of Josh being willing to listen. Not that she was so far gone that she’d consider rambling further. She’d already said too much. “Just believe me when I say I understand a little of what Daniel may be feeling. Please, let me try talking to him.”

  After the stunt she’d pulled back at Josh’s house, she knew she didn’t deserve his trust. But she couldn’t bear the thought of what Daniel must be suffering. That the pain eating at her might be wreaking the same kind of havoc on a defenseless child. She was a grown-up, and she’d made her
mistakes. She would deal with the consequences. But Daniel didn’t deserve any of this.

  “Please,” she begged. “If you’re right about what happened to Melanie and your nephew, it may help him to talk with someone who understands what that can be like.”

  Josh’s expression was unreadable as he absorbed all she’d said. And all she hadn’t. He had a world of questions, she could tell. But instead of asking for the details she couldn’t bring herself to give him, he offered a sad imitation of the smile that had once dazzled her.

  “Okay.” He shifted his gaze up to the tree house. “Give it a shot. You couldn’t do any more damage than I already have.”

  * * *

  “DANIEL?” AMY ASKED, hanging on to the rickety steps that wound up the side of the tree. “I’m a friend of your uncle’s. Is it okay if I come up?”

  “Be careful,” Josh cautioned from below.

  She could hear him shuffling back and forth, waiting no doubt for her to plummet to the ground when the splintery wood she was clinging to gave out. He’d catch her if she fell. Amy was confident of it. The only thing that worried her was the damage she’d do when she landed on his head.

  Holding on for dear life to the wooden floor of the tree house a few inches above her head, she ignored the stinging in her fingers and made a pact with herself not to look down.

  Don’t be such a baby.

  She pulled herself up and peeked through the surprisingly small door. “Can I come in before I make a pancake out of your uncle Josh? My arms are so tired I’m not sure I can climb back down right now.”

  The little boy scowled at her from where he sat huddled in the far corner of the wooden fort. His knees were pulled to his chin. His arms hugged his legs close. Golden light filtered through the patchy, hole-ridden roof. Comic books littered the floor around him.

  “This is my tree house,” he said, eyeing her precarious hold at the edge of the fort.

  “Well, not technically.” She gave up on waiting for an invitation, mostly because she could no longer feel her fingertips.

  Squeezing through the square opening was an experience. Feeling the bark from the tree finish shredding what was left of her panty hose added to the moment. Yanking her nonregulation tree-climbing skirt back into place, she tried to wipe the worst of the grime from her hands.

  She took in the sight of her four-foot-five host, read the defensiveness he wore like armor, and knew in an instant the indirect approach was her only shot. She stood up, having to stoop to avoid hitting her head, and turned her back while she flexed her stinging hands. Silence filled the tree house as she searched the shadows, scanning the walls for something she hadn’t thought about for years.

  “Aha!” She gave Daniel her friendliest smile and waved for him to join her. “Have you seen this? The original owners left their names on the wall over here. So I guess you could say you’re only borrowing the tree fort.”

  The little boy’s squint suggested she’d lost her mind. But her smile continued to challenge him, and with a glare he joined her and read the words she pointed to.

  The Sweetbrook Kids Club. Josh White and Amy Loar, Proprietors.

  “I think your uncle and I were about your age when we built this place.”

  “But you could barely climb up here.” The kid’s total disbelief made her laugh.

  “Yeah, when I hop in the shower later tonight, the scrapes up and down my shins will be all the reminder I need that I’m an old lady now.” She shrugged. “But it’s worth it if I can help your uncle get you to come down from this tree.”

  “Well, you can’t. So why don’t you leave?”

  “Because if I do, your uncle is coming up here. And something tells me that’s not exactly what you want.”

  She sat as gracefully as she could, given her attire, and began leafing through the X-Men comic book she found on the floor beside her. Actually, most of the superheroes gracing the covers scattered all over the place were of the mutant variety.

  Daniel hesitated. The care with which he sat beside her, far enough away that she couldn’t quite reach him, tore at her heart.

  “The X-Men are cool,” she said. She was still going for casual, but not so casual she sounded like a nutty adult trying to talk like a kid. “Are they your favorite?”

  “They’re okay.” Daniel began gathering the rest of the comics into his lap. “Reading them’s just something to do.”

  “Reading’s good.” She looked up. “Especially when you need to be alone. Is that why you come up here all the time?”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Nothing.” She handed over the copy she held, knowing more about it than she ever thought she’d be discussing with anyone, least of all a ten-year-old. “Except maybe I know a little about not wanting to be who you have to be every day. It’s hard to fit in when you don’t feel like you belong. Kind of like the mutants who became X-Men, so they’d finally be able to help people instead of feeling like outcasts.”

  Daniel blinked at the stranger who’d invaded his tree house.

  Correction, he told himself. This was his uncle’s tree house. And from what the lady had said, she was the Amy who’d scribbled her name on the wall beside his uncle’s—a million years ago. He glanced down at his comics, at the pictures of heroes who didn’t belong anywhere.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I’m Amy Loar.” She stretched out her hand.

  Like he was going to shake it or something.

  When he just stared, she dropped it back into her lap. “I’m Becky Reese’s mother.”

  He snorted and flipped open the comic on top of the pile. “Your daughter’s a pain.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard.” The woman had a sad smile, like the smiles he’d seen on his mother’s face after they’d run out of money and had to move to Sweetbrook. “But Becky’s not like that. She’s going through a rough time.”

  “She hates you, you know.” Maybe that would get her out of his tree.

  “Becky hates the world right now.” The lady sounded like she was trying not to cry. His own eyes started to sting. “Because she’s been hurt. Not as bad as you, but she’s hurting a lot just the same.”

  And there it was. That look, just like all the others who thought they knew him.

  “Man! My uncle can’t wait to tell the whole world how screwed up my life is.”

  And now, thanks to his uncle, Daniel had to put up with the look in his one safe place in this town.

  “Your uncle didn’t tell me anything,” she explained. “I overheard something I shouldn’t have, so don’t blame him. He’s very worried about you.”

  “So he sent you up here?” Daniel crumpled the comics between his fists, wishing he could squash the memories. “What, now I need a new shrink because I like to sit alone in a tree house and read comic books, instead of acting like I’m happy all the time?”

  “I’m not a therapist.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I asked your uncle if I could talk to you.” She leaned forward and laid a hand on his arm. “I thought I might be able to help.”

  He jerked out of her reach. An ugly tear slipped free, and he wiped it away with a shrug of his shoulder. “You can’t even take care of your own kid.”

  “I’m trying.” She brushed at the bits of bark on her skirt. “I’m trying as hard as I can.”

  Suddenly, it was Daniel who wanted to touch her and make it all better. I
nstead, he scooted farther away.

  I’m trying as hard as I can.

  “So what does any of that have to do with me?” he demanded, his voice as mean as he could make it.

  She sighed and swallowed hard, as if she were eating some of the burned green beans his uncle had fixed as part of last week’s healthy food kick.

  “Daniel, I know…” her hand moved toward him again, but she pulled it back before she touched him “…I know what it’s like to be hurt by someone who’s supposed to love you. I know what it’s like to feel like you can’t trust anyone.”

  He was on his feet in an instant, dizzy with the need to run. The determination not to remember, not to feel the pain anymore.

  The comics slammed against the wood beside her head before he realized he’d thrown them.

  “Get out of my tree house!”

  The tears were coming again. Tears always came with the memories. He couldn’t let her see him cry. He never let anyone see him cry.

  “Daniel…” She stood again, and he moved away so quickly he banged into the wall.

  There were tears in her eyes, too. And there was something new in her expression.

  Understanding.

  “Leave me alone!” He didn’t want to be understood.

  She was too close. The memories were too close….

  He edged around her until he could crawl through the door, refusing to think of anything at all anymore. He’d never shimmied down the ladder faster. He’d never cared so little about the splinters the broken steps were leaving in his fingers. He hit the ground at a dead run and barreled into his uncle.

  “Are you okay?” The man’s hands caught him by the shoulders.

  His uncle had really big, really strong hands.

  Daniel should have been terrified. Instead…he almost wished those hands would pull him closer.