Waltz This Way (v1.1)

by Dakota Cassidy

  The interior had her catching her breath. Even in the dark, she could see the outlines of two small benches built into the wall of the tree house, polished and shiny. The moonlight streaming in from the window with actual Plexiglas cast a golden hue on the interior that bounced off the walls, creating a world all its own on the planked wood walls. There was a round table made of knotty pine meant for a child in the middle of the small floor, positioned by the benches with a book on it.

  Mel slid in and found she couldn’t totally stand up, so she inched over to the bench and grabbed a seat, marveling at the craftsmanship that had so apparently gone into this tree house. Her eyes caught the title of the book on the table— The Forensic Science of C. S. I.

  “Nate’s,” Drew said, sliding a plate with flan toward her with two forks. He dropped a Thermos on the floor of the tree house and pulled two disposable cups out of his jacket pocket before angling himself upward and into the interior.

  “Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine. He asked to go to my sister’s with his cousins for a sleepover.”

  “This,” Mel said, spreading her arms out with a smile, “is amazing. It’s like a dollhouse.”

  “Don’t let Nate hear you say that,” he warned. “We don’t need no one callin’ this a stinkin’ dollhouse. This is a man-cave, complete with manlike things, including a refrigerator that, if you run an electrical cord to the house, can be plugged in.”

  “Who built this? It’s got the most unbelievable little details to it. For instance, the coat rack— the knobs on it look like kitchen cabinet handles. And the floor is linoleum, isn’t it?”

  Drew popped open a drawer just beneath his feet to pull out a candle just before sliding in beside her. He lit the candle, illuminating the small space, then threw an arm around the back of the bench.

  It was small, making their seating a close one. His thigh pressed against hers was warm, leaving her skin tingling. “I built this when I was thirteen.”

  “You made this?”

  “Cavemen are good with their hands.”

  “You designed it?”

  “Your tone, it saddens me. Why so surprised?”

  She shrugged, eyeing the creamy dollop of flan on the plate.

  “Because when you said handyman … I guess. Never mind. I don’t know what I thought, but this is incredible. When did you build it again?”

  Drew scooped some flan up, pressing the spoon to her lips. “When I was thirteen. Nate and I remodeled it a few years ago so he could have somewhere to hang out. That’s how I found out the only thing keeping him from being the postman’s kid is our love of accuracy when measuring. Otherwise, he’s not interested in building anything but maybe the next atomic bomb.”

  Mel laughed, savoring the sugary goodness of the flan. Taking the spoon from his hand, she dragged it through the dessert and fed him some in return. “He’s so brilliant it scares me. That has to be tough for a parent.”

  Drew smacked his lips in appreciation. “You mean when the parent isn’t as smart as the kid?”

  “Yeah,” she said on a teasing grin, licking the spoon, shivering at the intimacy of putting something in her mouth that had just been in Drew’s. “Where did that come from anyway? Is Myriam a secret member of Mensa?”

  His chest expanded with a sigh. “Actually, Sherry’s the genius.”

  Mel kept her face placid, though internally, she couldn’t help but be saddened by so much potential left to pickle in alcohol. “I see.”

  “You can ask, you know.”

  “And you can tell. But only when you’re ready.”

  Drew settled in, leaning his head on his hand. “Sherry was an artist. She had a successful gallery in the city. Unlike Nate, it took her a long time to come to terms with her genius. She struggled in school. You know, the typical stuff when you’re smarter than everyone else. Instead of burying herself in a book, she acted out, did some really stupid things: dabbled in drugs, pills, played a lot of hooky. She was part of the artsy crowd.”

  There was a familiarity in Drew’s reference to Sherry’s high school days. “So you knew her in school?”

  He nodded, dragging the spoon through the now forgotten flan.

  “We both grew up here in Riverbend, knew each other in high school a little, but we didn’t reconnect until well after we’d graduated. It took her a long time to get her act together, well into her early twenties, but when she did, she enrolled in college and she was on the fast track— a real superstar. We met again at our tenth high school reunion when we were twenty-eight. I had a fairly successful contracting business at the time. We got married within the year, had Nate, and then almost five years later, everything went to shit.”

  “Went to shit?”

  “Yep, right after Sherry killed her brother.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Dear Divorce Journal,

  So, this entry is a much more pleasant addition.

  Tree houses. Yay!

  Mel didn’t even try to hide her gasp of horror. “Killed him?”

  Drew shook his head. “Technically, she didn’t kill him. But she thinks she did. Back then she was what they call a ‘functional alcoholic.’ Somebody who’s built up a tolerance and doesn’t exhibit the typical signs of inebriation. After Nate was born and as her gallery grew more successful, the pressure to stay on top got harder, but Sherry liked the finer things in life, and she was willing to do whatever it took to keep wearing Gucci and Prada. Growing up poor gives you a different perspective on things, I guess. Either way, the pressure was intense and she coped by drinking.”

  Mel’s surprise was matched only by the almost-ugly tone Drew displayed when he mentioned Sherry’s love of materialistic things.

  “Funny, I figured a caveman like you would think Gucci was a pre-scription sleep aide,” she teased.

  Drew chucked her under the chin. “Such a comedienne. I know all the designer labels and then some. Being married to Sherry was a lesson in all things overpriced. Because of her, we had the best of everything.”

  “And ‘everything’ isn’t important to you?”

  “Family is important. Sitting together at the same table for dinner, even just at McDonald’s, is important. Do I really need a pair of shoes that cost three thousand dollars because they have some guy’s French name on them when I can have a pair that’s just as good for fifty?”

  Mel gave that some thought. “Clearly, you’re not a woman,” she joked.

  “Clearly,” he said with a rueful smile.

  Mel licked the spoon. “So back to your story. Did you know about her drinking?”

  “Not at first. Days went by where we didn’t see each other except in passing due to the nature of her ambition. We’d begun to lose touch in our marriage. She traveled a lot, art shows, acquisitions for the gallery. She was in high demand for shows. For a while, we were even bicoastal while she opened a gallery in L. A., something I hated. The more money she made, the greedier she got and the less we saw of her. But we had lots of nice things …”

  Mel again heard that snide tone to his voice in reference to all of their “nice things,” and it made her pause at his almost vehement aversion to them. “So she liked nice things and she had the power to buy them. Is that a bad thing?”

  The lines of his face grew hard. “It is when that’s all that’s important to you. That and your booze and pills.”

  Mel winced, afraid to approach that angle any further. “So back to how Sherry became so out of control.”

  “I didn’t realize how out of touch we were until Christmas Eve. She’d always been moody, but I chalked it up to her creativity.”

  Mel took exception to that statement. She was creative, but she was anything but moody. “So everyone who’s creative is a brooding artist in your mind?”

  He eyed her. “Maybe not everyone. Anyway, I didn’t see the signs of her drinking until a holiday party just before everything went to hell. She threw back eight or ten drinks without even blinking
that night while I nursed one scotch and soda. Not a slurred word or single stumble out of her.”

  “So she was drinking heavily when she was away, then?”

  “That’s my guess. Looking back, I think I just didn’t want to acknowledge there was a problem. I always chalked her odd mood swings up to her artistic nature. She could be temperamental and sensitive on the best of days, and I’d had a taste of some of that going into our relationship. But as she became more imbalanced, it never occurred to me that she drank like that all the time. At the gallery, in the apartment she had in L. A., when she was driving Nate to pre-school,” he gritted the last words from between clenched teeth.

  Turning to face her, he captured Mel’s gaze. “She hid it well. If I’d known— really understood …” His words held such remorse that Mel found her hand straying to his, reaching out to tuck hers into it.

  If there was one thing about Drew she knew was real, it was his sense of family. “Had you really understood, I think you would have done whatever you could to help her.”

  “Shortly after that party, everything blew up. She began to forget things, miss appointments with buyers. One day, she forgot to pick Nate up from a birthday party while I was in Kentucky on business. Thank God for Myriam. She was who tipped me off that there was a problem. When Sherry finally came home, she was pretty sloshed. She tried to take Nate for ice cream at three in the morning. Myriam called me hysterical, and I immediately demanded Sherry seek help, for all the good it did me. From that point on, everything happened so fast …”

  The flan sat in her stomach like lead while she silently allowed Drew the time to gather his thoughts and finish.

  “What I didn’t know was Sherry was falling apart. Her gallery was sinking without her there to give it direction. Her painting was suffering. Her entire career was on the line. Not to mention, she’d endangered Nate, and still, she chose to drink.” He all but spat the words.

  “Alcoholism is a horrible disease, Drew,” Mel consoled, the backs of her eyes stinging with unshed tears.

  “Don’t I know it. Sherry’s brother intervened on my behalf. He’d come in from L. A. to help with a half-assed attempt at an intervention of sorts. The plan was to get Sherry to go to rehab. Instead, Martin ended up dead.”

  A shudder ran along her spine. “And I’m sensing you feel partially responsible for that?”

  Folding her hands into his, he bowed his head. “You bet I do. At this point, my business was falling apart. I was afraid to leave Sherry alone with Nate, and I was worn out from trying to keep track of her. I lost countless contracts because I was so wrapped up in what Sherry needed. Everything I did was based on what kind of mood Sherry was in at any given time. I needed help. So I put all that money she made to good use and hired a nanny to keep an eye on Nate when I couldn’t be around. My family wasn’t happy about a stranger caring for Nate, but they had lives and jobs at the time, and when Sherry and I got married, we moved to New York. I couldn’t ask them to come into Westchester every time Sherry snuck off to drink.”

  Her heart wrenched for the small boy she’d seen in the pictures lining Selena’s walls. Smiling, cherubic, pulling a wagon, wearing a pumpkin costume at Halloween. “So you hired someone to look after Nate so you could work,” she prompted.

  His face was grim in the moonlight. “Yes, and Elsa was terrific. She went above and beyond the call of duty where Sherry was concerned. Anyway, this went on for several months while Sherry sunk deeper and deeper. She’d gone from a functioning alcoholic to a total train wreck. I called Martin, her brother, for help. The day he flew in, Sherry took off while I was at work. Elsa was under strict orders not to interfere with Sherry’s comings and goings— it only made her angry, and I didn’t want Elsa hurt or Nate exposed to any more of her brand of crazy. According to Elsa, Sherry was still gone when she left. Martin let Elsa go home early, and he was playing with Nate when he had a heart attack. I came home that night to cop cars and Nate, usually easygoing and quiet even at five, completely hysterical.”

  Mel closed her eyes and gulped. “Does he remember it?”

  “He was who called 911.”

  Mel felt a sting of pride that even at such a young age, Nate was so brave. “Even then he was a genius.”

  Drew’s eyes were far away, reliving whatever horror he’d seen that night. “But what he saw … his recounting of that night is that Sherry came home and she smelled ‘yucky.’ She and Martin got into a fight about why he’d come in from L. A. She accused him of ambushing her with my help. Nate’s words were, ‘Mommy and Uncle Martin had a big fight. She told him she didn’t need help, and he got really mad. Then his face turned red and he fell down.’ Sherry was so drunk, she passed out, and Nate called 911.”

  Tears stung her eyes. “Poor Nate.”

  “Sherry probably could have saved her brother had she been sober. After that, and her refusal to admit she had a problem or get help after the first couple of bouts with rehab, I was done. I took Nate to a therapist and filed for divorce.”

  “And you won custody.”

  “You bet I did. If I’d had to leave the country, there was no way she was getting her hands on Nate. She didn’t fight me very hard about it either. She was too busy wallowing in her guilt over Martin’s death and her booze.”

  “But she still has the right to see him? How can that be?” Mel found herself disgusted all over again on Nate’s behalf. Why should he be subjected to such cruelty time and again when it could be avoided?

  “She has the right as long as it’s supervised. Her showing up here like she did tonight is something she’s done more times than I can count. I do what I always do. Notify my lawyer who notifies the courts and then charges me two hundred and fifty bucks an hour to tell me she has every right to see Nate as long as it’s supervised.”

  “But why don’t you file a restraining order— or call the police when she shows up? Isn’t there a law about drunk and disorderly?”

  Drew’s hands clenched into fists, his face visibly torn between Nate’s love for his mother and his own sense of duty to his son.

  “Because Nate loves her, Mel. Because he’s never anywhere without someone with him who can prevent her from taking him, and he knows better than to get into a car with her— ever. She’s his mother. I don’t have the heart to make this any worse for him by throwing Sherry in jail. But that we have all these rules about his visitation with her and precautions he has to take, like always carrying his cell phone to dial 911 if she tries to convince him to go somewhere with her, makes me want to wring Sherry’s neck. No kid should have to search his mother’s house to see if she’s got a bottle of vodka hidden somewhere like he’s some jailor.”

  Mel sat in cold disbelief. What a huge burden for a twelve-year-old. “I can’t think of any other word for this than ‘horrible.’ But he does love her. I can see it.” She paused, cocking her head. But what about Drew? “What about your contracting business?”

  Regret shone in his eyes. “It was a shambles when all was said and done. I’d neglected it for so long, borrowed against it to send Sherry to rehab, and then the economy tanked and here I am, Westmeyer’s version of Tim the Toolman Taylor.” He joked, but Mel heard lingering resentment.

  “So are you still angry with her? She didn’t just lose everything. You and Nate did, too.”

  “Well, I still have Nate, but I’m past it now. All of the expensive furniture and ridiculously pricey art we had meant nothing to me. I’m a simple guy who needs a bed and a refrigerator. I did everything I could think of to help her when we were married, but jeopardizing Nate was too far. Though, I am resentful where Nate’s concerned. I won’t allow anyone to speak ill of Sherry in front of him, but I’d like to wring her neck because of what having her for a mother does to him.”

  “To fall so far …”

  “She lost everything, and even more ironic? I pay her alimony—which is just booze money to her. Watching that decline was brutal for me, but for Nate, it was ex
cruciating. There was a time when Sherry was as devoted as any mother, and Nate being Nate, remembers it.”

  Mel’s sigh was shaky. Now she recognized she’d gone too far.

  “First, I apologize for laying into you about your lack of hope where Sherry’s concerned. I understand why it seems hopeless. After hearing that, I feel hopeless. Still, I’m convinced there’s always hope, and you shouldn’t take that away from Nate, keeping a realistic slant on it. It should be for him to decide when he’s given up on her. As long as he’s not in danger, taking that from him would be unfair, but I’m sorry I spoke up before I knew the details. Second, I’m not going to tell you not to blame yourself for your brother-in-law’s death because I can see it’s pointless. But for the record, you can’t be everywhere, Drew. It sounds like you had people who relied on you for their livings.”

  “If I’d gotten home an hour earlier …”

  “ ‘If’ is a huge word, one that can be applied to almost anything. If I’d pursued my dream instead of marrying Stan, maybe I wouldn’t be a candidate for world’s most pathetic ex-trophy wife. But I didn’t. And here I am. I don’t want to diminish your tragedy by comparing it to something as frivolous as my former lifestyle, but you get the meaning.”

  His mood lightened like someone had turned on a light switch.

  Drew moved in closer to her, pulling her back against his chest and wrapping his arms around her waist. “Do you like where you are?”

  “You mean right now? Or in general?”

  He let his chin rest on the top of her head. “Right this very second.”

  Mel grinned, adjusting to the sense of contentment she felt in Drew’s arms. “Well, it beats being on fire.”

  “You’re not on fire?” He sounded surprised.

  “Should I be?”

  Turning her around to face him, he smiled. “Because if you’re not on fire, I’m not doing my job,” he muttered before hauling her to him and cupping either side of her face. He dipped his head, taking her mouth in a demanding kiss.