Building a Family

by M. K. Stelmack

  “What? No. Here, I’m making tea.” Connie popped to her feet and pumped water into the kettle, then set it alight on the stove. The blue flame glowed an eerie comfort. “You’ve had two kids, Lindsay, you can’t expect your weight—”

  “Shari had three, and look at her. Not a pound heavier. I’ve gone up three sizes. Three! Can you blame him?”

  “Yes, I can,” Connie said truthfully. “Cheating is no excuse.”

  Lindsay’s voice broke. “Then tell me, Connie, why? You did it. With Ben. Why?”

  Connie froze, her ears—her every cell—tuned to the movements at the back of the RV. Please, please, Ben, don’t hear that. Please. “I had...excuses, too.”

  Lindsay snorted, a wet sound of tears and shaky breathing. “Excuses? Is that all there is? No deeper meaning? Does he—he love her? Did he tell you that?”

  “Uh, Lindsay, there is something you should probably know.”

  Lindsay looked at Connie, her eyes wide and wet, forehead rippled with hurt.

  In a burst, Connie said, “Luke learned Shari was having an affair because she wanted a divorce. He and Derek talked about it over at Smooth Sailing. He just didn’t realize that she was having an affair with Derek.”

  There was a long silence, a huge well of silence that Connie had no idea how to fill. Lindsay finally let drop two words. “I see.”

  “The thing is, I think the affair is over. Luke said a few weeks back that he and Shari were going to try to rebuild their marriage over the next few months, so what you saw today might be about the past and not what’s going on today.”

  “They may have moved on, but Derek hasn’t,” Lindsay summed up.

  Connie couldn’t argue. A broken heart wasn’t healed through more lies. “I’m sorry. I tried to tell you at your office after the Valentine’s Day dinner, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I hoped it would work out, and then when I found out that the affair was over, it seemed it had. I am sorry.”

  If Lindsay had slapped her across the face Connie would’ve understood. Instead, Lindsay did a wavy sort of shrug and smile. “It’s okay, Connie. It’s not your responsibility to solve everybody’s problems.”

  Wow. She was forgiven. If only the names on the list were as easy to obtain forgiveness from.

  “I don’t want to look at him,” Lindsay blurted. “I don’t even want to be in the same house—why do you think I’m here?”

  The kettle whistling saved Connie from answering. While she made tea, she fought with herself. She knew a thing or two about people escaping from their problems. After she and Ben had broken up, he’d disappeared for seventeen days. No one had any idea where he’d gone. After day nine, Seth had contacted Paul at the police department. Paul hadn’t instigated a search because Ben was an adult, and a man whose girlfriend had dumped him.

  When Ben had returned, he’d been thinner, quieter. To this day, nobody knew where he’d gone. Connie had learned all this through word-of-mouth because he’d never come to her. She’d never had to witness how much she’d hurt Ben. Sitting now with Lindsay, it hit her. Left her breathless at the sheer breadth and audacity of her cruelty.

  “I am so sorry, Lindsay,” Connie said again, bringing the mugs of tea over. “I can’t understand how much Derek has hurt you. I do understand that whatever his reason, the fact that now he knows that he has hurt you and still doesn’t come to you, that’s doubly cruel.”

  Connie could still remember the breathless quality of Ben’s one phone conversation with her. To confirm with her what he’d seen. The long silence, the extended breaths, like he was coming up for air after diving deep with each of his questions, with each of her answers.

  “What should I do?” Lindsay whispered. “Where do I go?”

  Ben had run away, but Lindsay with her two kids couldn’t. From her purse, Connie fished out her house keys. She made a plan as she talked. “Here. My house keys. Crash on my bed. Pajamas are in the top drawer of the dresser. I’ve got a spare toothbrush somewhere in the bathroom drawers. Ariel might wake up.” Connie had agreed to let her go to the house after an entire day of her sullenness. Ben had driven her back not an hour ago. “I’ll send her a text saying that it’s okay. I will tell Derek that you’re not coming home tonight, and that he needs to be home with the kids.”

  Lindsay didn’t take the keys right away, and when she did, her fingers were ice-cold.

  Just then there were shouts from outside. The floor of the RV shook as Ben shot past. “Luke and Derek. Fighting.”

  * * *

  OUTSIDE IN THE parking lot, Luke and Derek were facing off. As Connie wove between the vehicles toward them, Lindsay in tow behind her, she spotted Shari nearby between two cars, shivering in her dress. Ben slowed his steps as he approached his buddies and leaned against a parked SUV.

  Luke was in his suit jacket, collar unbuttoned but solid on his feet. Derek had no suit jacket, a beer bottle in hand, and was unsteady on his feet. Connie could have knocked him over with a push of her finger.

  Still, he was stupid enough to argue with his best friend and the husband of the woman he had cheated with. “You always have to have everything your way, don’t you, Luke? You can’t stand losing, can you?”

  “Why don’t you go home?” Luke said. A good question.

  “How can I? No vehicle. Lindsay took it.” Derek clearly hadn’t seen his wife, and in fairness it was dark except for what light came from a couple of streetlights.

  “Then where were you planning to go with Shari if you didn’t have a vehicle?” Luke said, his voice low and way too calm. It was never a good idea to reason with someone who was drunk, especially one you were angry with. Connie glanced at the front doors. Stay away, Seth.

  “He just wanted to talk,” Shari said.

  Luke kept his eyes on Derek. “Shari, enough. This is between friends.” The last word was a low hiss.

  Luke and Derek were heading for a fight. Connie started toward Ben. Her movement must have caught Derek’s eye.

  “Hey, that you, Connie? Yeah, you. Hey, can I join your club? What is it? Cheaters-on-the-Go? I’m good for it. I got a witness, eh, Shari? You and me. Yeah, we can sponsor each other. Whaddaya think?”

  Shari’s opinion on the matter was never heard because Luke let fly with a hard right. Derek fell onto the hood of a nearby car. Beside Connie, Lindsay gasped. Connie glanced over at Ben, who hadn’t moved from his comfortable spot against a SUV. Shari gave a little shriek and rushed to restrain Luke. Not a good idea.

  He whirled on her. “What? You don’t think he deserved that? You don’t want me to hurt him? Whose side are you on?”

  Luke made for Derek again. Thankfully Ben stepped between the two men. He lifted Derek by the shoulders off the hood.

  “Let me get him out of your sight, Luke,” Ben said, and then gave Derek a shake. “Derek. Your keys. Give them to me.”

  Derek tried to shake off Ben, looking like a blind guy beating off a buzzing insect. “I don’t need to—”

  Lindsay stepped forward. “Here, take mine.” With shaking fingers, she unwound a key from her chain and handed it to Ben. She and Derek avoided eye contact. Lindsay spun away and ran. Connie let her go and darted to help Ben swing open the passenger-side door of Derek’s SUV. Together they shoved the wasted Derek into the passenger seat.

  Ben moved to Luke’s side, put a hand on his shoulder and said so low that only Connie standing close could hear. “I know where you’re at. Let me put some distance between the two of you. Okay?”

  Yes, unfortunately, Ben would know.

  Luke gave a quick nod.

  Ben was reversing Derek’s vehicle when Connie suddenly remembered something Lindsay had said and chased after him. He stopped. “Derek and Lindsay’s babysitter. You might need to drive her home. Or better yet, maybe ask if she can stay over because Derek will be in no shape tomorrow morni
ng. Lindsay is crashing at the house for the night.”

  “I heard.”

  And from the emotion in his eyes, she realized he’d heard more through the thin, particle board walls of the RV than just the conversation about the babysitter.

  “Ben, I—”

  He slowly reversed the SUV. “I’ll see you back here.”

  She turned to find Luke and Shari staring at her. Probably because otherwise they might have to acknowledge each other.

  Connie searched her brain for anything remotely fitting to say. “I’m going to check on the kids.”

  By the time she got them settled, Luke and Shari had long cleared out.

  Seth met her at the door. “I was coming to find you and Ben.”

  “He’s just driving Derek home.”

  “Yeah, Derek was knocking one back every time I saw him tonight. Not like him.”

  “Didn’t Alexi tell you?”

  Seth frowned.

  Shoot, what was she doing, on their wedding day, making it seem as if there were secrets between the bride and groom? She rushed on, “Oh, never mind. I mean, ask Alexi. Look, it’s not important for you to worry about on your wedding day, okay? Trust me.”

  Seth’s frown deepened into skepticism.

  “Fair enough. Just ask Alexi or Ben about it, but don’t do it tonight, okay? Please.”

  Alexi opened the doors to the hall, still beautiful after all these hours. Seth regarded his wife. “Yeah, not tonight.”

  Then he gave Connie something she couldn’t remember getting from him in years. A smile. A soft, conspiratorial smile like when they were kids and had found a way to get out of trouble. Or into it.

  Seth took his bride’s hand and they stepped into the hall. Alexi glanced over her shoulder. “Are the kids okay?”

  Connie gave a little wave. “Yep. All good. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

  As Seth and Alexi moved away, Connie let out a long, pent-up breath. If there was one good thing to have come from this day, it was that she had given Seth a string of beautiful memories. Time to get out her pencil sharpener.

  * * *

  “GET DEREK HOME SAFELY?”

  Connie’s question came at half-past three in the morning as she and Ben walked across the now-empty parking lot to the RV. All Ben wanted to do right now was fall flat on his back and snore his face off.

  “I got him home,” he said, not wanting to commit to the “safely” part because it probably hadn’t been entirely safe to pitch the cheating jerk over the arm of the couch and leave him there.

  Where a streetlight cut an orangey chunk from the dark parking lot, Connie placed her hand on his arm and tugged him to a stop. “Ben, after all that’s happened today, especially with Luke and Derek, I think you should know something.”

  It couldn’t be good because she was gnawing on her lip. “When I was talking with Lindsay, it came up. About you and me, about how I had cheated on you. She remembered that.”

  Ben didn’t need the reminder. Somehow the whole town had learned what had happened, and when he returned from his trip to hell and back, all his buddies had wanted to take him out for a beer and bad-mouth the woman he still loved.

  “I didn’t realize until talking to her how humiliating it must have been for you that your friends knew the reason behind us splitting up. I didn’t say a word, you have to believe that, but I can see how it must’ve hurt.”

  She bowed her head, her blond hair taking on a weird brassy glow under the streetlight. “The thing is, what you saw with me and the other guy was nothing. Nothing happened between us. I—I didn’t ever cheat on you.”

  He’d promised himself that he would never give up on her again. No matter what. Until right now, when he wanted to walk away fast and far. Or crawl away. That anybody had been preferable to him was cruel enough. But nobody? “Why?”

  She lifted her head, frowning. “I thought you’d be relieved that there was nothing behind what everyone said, even though—even though I’d not stopped the rumors.”

  “Like I’d care what other people thought. I don’t get why you made it all up.”

  “Because there was no other way.”

  “No other way? Maybe try telling me you wanted out? I mean, what kind of person pretends to cheat?”

  “Someone,” she said softly but with no hesitation, “whose boyfriend won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

  Yes, he remembered her clutching his shirtfront, begging him to leave her, but always when she was drunk and not in her right mind. “Are you saying that the drinking, the partying...it was deliberate? To get rid of me?” It couldn’t be.

  Her face twisted, the same beautiful face that had smiled at him in the church, that had looked so...hopeful. “Some,” she whispered. “Some of it was me wanting out. Some of it was you not letting me out. I didn’t know what else to do. Even when I was bad, bad, bad, you behaved like I was something else entirely. You could never see me for who I really was.”

  “You could never see yourself for who you really are,” he replied. She was shivering without a coat. He shrugged off his suit jacket and reached out to put it around her shoulders.

  She backhanded the jacket to the ground. “This! This is what I’m talking about. Me being cold is my problem. I could’ve put on a coat but I didn’t, so how about you let me suffer the consequences? If I was so stupid as to drink all those years ago why wouldn’t you just kick my butt to the curb? Why did you go out and buy a freaking engagement ring?”

  His jacket lay flat on the ground with twisted sleeves. He bent and picked it up. “Because I loved you. I still—”

  Connie screamed, a piercing cry in the still night. “So what? I love you, too. I love you, I love you, I love you.” She whirled away and strode off, her stiletto heels clacking on the asphalt, then suddenly she spun back. “But that doesn’t mean I want to be with you. Or marry you. Right now, actually, it means the exact opposite.”

  Ben didn’t know what to do. The love of his life had just confessed her love for him and yet—yet she didn’t want to be with him. Had explained, in fact, that he had driven her to drink in his blind refusal to give her the freedom she had pleaded for.

  He slipped on the jacket. A tiny rock was caught in the shoulder fabric. “Why,” he said, shaking the jacket shoulder, “didn’t you pack up and go? You lived in my house. Why didn’t you leave me?”

  She pressed her fingers to her temples. “Would you have let me go, Ben? Would you have left me alone? Or would you have chased me, wanting to know how to make it better?”

  He would have come for her. Met with her at her work. Like he did now. Insisted he drive her home. Like now. Told her again he loved her and wanted her back. Like now. The tiny rock was biting into his skin. He dropped his hands from the lapels.

  She understood his silence, as she’d understood them all. “Yeah, exactly. The only way out was to replace you. What other choice did I have?”

  He didn’t answer. He had turned her into a cheater. A fake cheater, as it happened, but the effect had been the same. She had been shamed before her family, her friends, before an entire gossipy community. All because he believed he couldn’t live without her.

  Still couldn’t, really.

  He was no better than a stalker.

  The ring was a thing of desperation, not love.

  He was sick and broken. Not her.

  “Okay,” he whispered, “okay. I understand.” Then, his lips and heart barely moving, he gave her what he could. “I withdraw my offer of marriage.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  SLEEP FOR CONNIE had been more like getting punched out. Now she was coming to, ringed by four young faces firing questions at her head. Four shining examples of why singlehood was the good life.

  The original plan—conceived a week ago when she’d been upright, in a quiet kitc
hen and with a coffee in hand—had been for her and the kids to have breakfast in the RV as a kind of campout. And because Ben was supposed to have crashed with her and the kids, he would’ve been there to help.

  Except he’d gone back to his place last night.

  She’d agreed that was for the best.

  She needed coffee. A whole plantation of it.

  Which, after enlisting the kids to hunt, she discovered she’d forgotten to pack.

  “You’re still in your dress, Auntie Connie,” Callie noted.

  “It looks like a piece of wrinkled sky,” Bryn said. Kinda poetic for a nine-year-old.

  She’d have to settle for the tea she’d made for Lindsay last night. Last night when—

  She slammed the cupboard door on the tea. “Change of plan. We’re driving to my house to get me some coffee before I eat you all for breakfast.”

  “We’re going to drive the RV?”

  “Do we wear seat belts?”

  “Can we open the windows?”

  “Do you know how to drive this?”

  Connie navigated the house on wheels through the quiet Sunday streets, pulling it to a stuttering stop behind a strange car parked outside the house.

  Oh, right, Lindsay. Ben would’ve given Lindsay her car key after dropping Derek off. “Okay, kids,” she said, standing like a tour guide to face them. “Remember Lindsay from the RV last night? She stayed here at the house. Now, she might be up or she might be asleep. Whichever, just let her be.”

  “Do we say ‘hello’?”

  “Why is she at your house?”

  “Is she homeless?”

  “What’s for breakfast?”

  “Will Ariel be up?”

  In answer to the last question: Connie hoped not. With the kids, Ariel was like a spooked cat. She disappeared at the first sight of them, not surfacing until all was quiet. With any luck, both Lindsay and Ariel were sleeping—or, after the kids broke loose inside, at least pretending to sleep.

  Luck turned out to be manic-depressive. On the upside, there was the soul-soothing, smell of fresh coffee, which she rushed to get to in the kitchen. On the downside, in the kitchen was Ariel scowling at Lindsay for the apparent crime of making small talk.