Learning at 40 (Lakeside Cottage Book 2)

by L. B. Dunbar

  “I don’t have your watch. I gave it to the boys to return to you.”

  “You gave my watch to seven-year-olds?” I huff. “Not likely.” I sound like a child myself as I blow on my lips like some damn cartoon character. I’m losing control of my emotions, this conversation, and my grip on reality.

  “Just tell me the truth,” I yell, and River stares at me.

  “His name was Dennis Quincy. He owned Quincy Grocer, and he died of an inoperable brain tumor.”

  “Quincy Grocer? Like the entire company?” Sweat beads across my forehead. I recognize the name Quincy Grocer all too well. They own hundreds of mega-grocery stores throughout Michigan and parts of the Midwest, think Target in scale, and my father was their accountant until he embezzled from them.

  “He has three grown children who are complete assholes like you’re being, but he wasn’t an idyllic father either. He’d done his damage, and at the end of his advanced life, he wanted redemption. He needed kindness and compassion, and I gave that to him. I didn’t judge him or accuse him of things, and I certainly didn’t steal from him. He left me this house in his will as a gift, a dying wish, in gratitude for being his nurse through the last year of his life. I’m not saying I deserve a house for being a decent human being, but I’m damn well working to keep it. And you’re on private property, so get off.” Her tone brooks no further argument. There’s no negotiation or compromise. I cast the accusations.

  “River, I—” She holds up her hand to stop me.

  “And not that it’s any of your business, but he wasn’t my husband. He was a lonely old man who befriended me. And before you take your thoughts one step into the gutter, I did not fuck him for this house. I was doing my job, which I lost because of dicks like you.” She’s practically screaming at me at this point. “If you have further arguments with my property rights, you can contact my lawyer.”

  With that, she karate chops my elbow, forcing me to bend my arm, thus freeing the door from my hand, and she slams it in my face.

  + + +

  “Holy fuck,” Mason says to me as I wander up to his room above the garage. “Her husband was the man your father stole all that money from?” As if things could get worse in the past twenty-four hours, the knife in my chest cuts deeper. The surprise on Mason’s face does not compare to the shame I feel.

  “She says he wasn’t her husband. He was . . . a patient.” I don’t even think it’s legal for patients to will items to nursing staff, but it happens, and it typically lands in court when it does.

  “Do you believe her?” Mason asks, and I stare back at him. My first instinct says, of course, I believe her. Why would she lie to me? But in the back of my head is a phrase about liars and cheaters and people who steal things, and I just don’t know what to think.

  “I don’t know,” I say out loud.

  “Do your boys have your watch?”

  I’d been so stunned by the turn of the argument I hadn’t gone to them. I shake my head in response.

  “What would she have to gain by not telling you?” Mason asks, and I’m wondering the same thing. Why hadn’t she told me about this patient—his condition, his position in the company, and their marital status? It didn’t make sense.

  “Unless she knew who I was,” I say without answering Mason directly. “Unless she knew I was the son of the SOB who stole from Quincy.”

  Mason narrows his eyes. “And how would that benefit her? Getting revenge on you for your father’s crime twenty-seven years ago? For a man she only met a few years ago? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “How do you know it was only a few years ago?”

  Mason shrugs. “How long can a man live with an inoperable brain tumor?”

  Probably not more than two or three at the most, if I had to guess. It’s been three years, she said about when she last had sex. She also said she didn’t fuck him for the house.

  I feel sick.

  She’d have no motive in seeking revenge on me. She’s been very reassuring that my father’s sins do not reflect on me. She wanted to know more details about my dad yesterday, but I’m the one who shut down. I’m the one who has flown off the handle and accused her of something he’d done—theft.

  Swiping both hands over my face, I stare back at Mason. “I fucked this up.”

  “I’d say pretty much.” Mason sadly agrees with me while nodding.

  “Oh my God, what did I do?”

  “You accused the woman you love of stealing from you, and then you all but called her a gold digger, implying she fucked an old guy for a house.” Mason makes a face that tightens his jaw and strains his neck muscles. I close my eyes.

  “I need to go back there and apologize.” I was always entering her yard to either offer apologies or express gratitude. Today, I’d done neither. Quickly, I stand, racing out the door and skipping down the stairs two at a time. Stepping out onto the drive, my boys are drawing with chalk on the concrete.

  “Trevor. Oliver. Have you seen my watch?” Had I asked them this question before? Had I asked them a second time?

  “It’s in your suitcase,” Trevor offers without hesitation.

  “My suitcase?” I question. I’ve looked in my bag a thousand times.

  “Yeah. The little pocket on the front.” I stare at Trevor as he moves his hand to explain the pouch in relation to the bigger bag. The pocket isn’t large enough for anything other than a wallet or a . . . Fuck. I never put things in there.

  “It’s like a secret flap,” Oliver says. “A good place for hidden treasure.”

  My eyes close, and I tip my head to the heavens before glancing back at them.

  “Boys. Think very carefully. Did River give the watch to you?” Why would she give it to seven-year-old children?

  Trevor shrugs like he can’t remember, but Oliver speaks as he draws a giant X on the driveway. “Miss River was going to work. You were out running. She said she thought you might miss it, and she was trusting us to put it in a special place where you would find it, and no one else would see it.”

  She’d given them a treasure to bury, and they did as she asked. She had unconditional faith in them at seven years of age, and I’d had no faith in her. Idiot. I stare at my boys, especially Trevor. River’s trust might have meant something to him even at such a young age. She asked, and they obliged. They’d been doing it since the day they met her. They respected her, so they abided by her rules, and I’d just obliterated all of that.

  Not for them, for me.

  + + +

  Me: Where are you?

  I don’t really expect her to respond, not after the way I acted, but it’s after midnight, our typical meetup time, and I’m pacing in her backyard. She hasn’t answered my calls, having left her house hours earlier than her typical time for work, and she hasn’t replied to a single text during her eight-hour shift.

  By twelve thirty, I’m beside myself. By one in the morning, I’m thinking she isn’t coming home. Either way, I make myself comfortable on the chaise lounge on the cool August night and wait. She has to work the later shift tomorrow as well. She’ll be here eventually.

  The quiet of the night and the darkness offer reflection. As much as I’d love to wait for River in her yard, she’s made it very clear to me again—this is her property. I have no boundaries when it comes to her, but I should. I don’t need her calling the police on me, which I rightfully deserve. I’ve barged onto this land more than once, and my eyes wander to the house.

  It’s only a house, Ben used to tell me. Home is where your heart is. It’s such a fucking cheesy thing to say, but I consider the words for the first time ever. I’d left my heart in this house when I thought it was a home. Ironically, my heart seems to still be in the same place as I’ve given it to the woman who currently owns this house. This time, it isn’t my father who lost the right to this place. It’s all on me.

  I still can’t believe I saw my dad yesterday afternoon. What was he doing here? Why was he here? He shouldn’t be in
the area. Hell, he shouldn’t even be in the state of Michigan as far as I was concerned. He didn’t have a right to return. And did he actually work there? The T-shirt advertising Robbyn’s River Adventures was enough of a hint that he did. My father, the former accountant, the ex-convict, was working at some canoe rental place.

  Fuck my life. I tip back my head and stare up at the sky as memories flip through my mind one after another of this house, this yard, my family. Barbecues and summer nights. Snow forts and sleds. The laughter. The eventual pain. Nothing made sense.

  Near two a.m., I give up and retreat across the yard, returning to Anna’s with my head hung in defeat. I’ve paid either Calvin or Bryce every night to listen for my boys, and I wonder if that makes me a terrible father. I’d asked River what she thinks, putting words to her thoughts.

  You think I’m a shit dad, don’t you?

  God, how many things can I accuse her of in one argument? I realize I’m projecting my own insecurities on her. I’m turning into a terrible father in my own way, just like mine.

  As I enter the house, the plan is to head directly upstairs to my room. I can vigilantly watch River’s yard from there. But I see a soft glow coming from the kitchen area and cross the entryway.

  Anna sits on a stool at the large island, holding a mug of something in her hands.

  “You’re up late,” I say, startling her. As she turns to me, her eyes are puffy. Her face red.

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  Stepping up to the counter, I help myself to the stool next to her.

  “Calvin?” When River showed the movie in her yard, the older boys were absent. Not that I was in a frame of mind to thoroughly pay attention, but the previous year the boys attended everything we did as a group.

  “He’s growing up, caught between a boy and a man. We’re going to have our ups and downs. Right now, it’s a down. He isn’t speaking to me.” The corner of her mouth weakly quirks. “But he will when he needs something like gas money or his laundry done.” Her jest is half-hearted, but she knows him best. And I know he’s a good kid. He’ll circle back to her because he loves his mom. He’s just missing his dad.

  “How was your rendezvous?” Her voice attempts to tease me, but she doesn’t have the heart for it. I guess she knows I’ve been sneaking out of the house every night.

  “It didn’t happen. We had a fight.” Was it an argument? Or was it all one-sided? My accusations. My crime. I don’t have the bandwidth in my brain to even mention the appearance of my father to Anna.

  She turns to face me, giving me a sympathetic look. While I expect her to tell me River and I will work it out, she doesn’t.

  “There’s a misconception that Ben and I never fought. We came across as the perfect couple to everyone, right?” She swipes a hand through her long dark hair, but it falls back into place around her face when she releases it. “But Ben and I weren’t perfect.”

  From the outside looking in, it might have often seemed like they were the ideal couple. In reality, they were like many couples, and being part of their inner circle of friends, I’d known of some troubles. Finances. Sex. The top two things that cause divorce. Ben would say those issues ebb and flow through all marriages, making Anna and Ben not extraordinary, but just ordinary people. Ordinary as a couple.

  “He was such a great man,” I mutter, staring down at the countertop. “Ben knew how to be a husband and a father.”

  Anna turns her head to look at me, but I don’t look up. “Zack, there’s no manual. Ben didn’t know how to be those things any more than I knew how to be a wife or mother. I knew I wanted those things, but I didn’t really know how to be them until I was each in their own right.”

  “I was a shit husband.”

  “Don’t say that. You were with the wrong woman.”

  “We fought all the time.”

  “Fighting is normal.” Anna sighs. “It’s how you handle those fights, though. Pick your battles. Apologize if you were wrong. Listen to the other side. You don’t have to agree on everything. It’s called compromise.”

  My forehead lowers for my clasped hands as my arms brace on the counter. “I’m terrible at it.”

  “I don’t think so,” Anna says beside me. “You’ve just never had to do it. You bulldoze into a situation and take over. You did this with your mom, and you did it with Jeanine. You married her because you thought you had to. You stayed with her because of the boys.”

  I tip my head still on my hands and stare at Anna. “What do you mean I did it with my mom?”

  “You thought you were the new man of the house. With Noah off to college almost immediately after everything happened, you thought it was your responsibility to take care of your mother.”

  I slowly sit up. Had I done that? “I was only fifteen,” I defend.

  “Exactly. It wasn’t your place to take over. You just did.” My mother had never worked a day in her life, so I got a job. I worked throughout high school, applied for loans for college, and continued to work when I could. Anna’s dad gave Mom the loan to set her up, but I paid it off.

  “What do you know about my marriage?” I’m not stupid enough to think Ben never told Anna things I’d told him, but I still couldn’t imagine them wasting time discussing my situation.

  “You were afraid to walk out of that marriage. Afraid you’d be a disappointment like your dad had been.”

  “It was more than a disappointment,” I huff.

  “You were ashamed of him, and what happened and how it ultimately affected your life, but from that point on . . . you bulldozed. You weren’t ever going to be in a position of no money, no home, or a broken family. No matter what.”

  Weakly, my mouth curves at Anna’s assessment. “You do know me well.”

  “There’s a bonus to being shy and quiet.” Anna certainly was that as a child and teenager, but she came into her own with Ben. There’s a saying that a couple can be the yin and yang of one another, drawing out the missing pieces, complementing the other half. Ben pulled Anna out of her shell. She kept him balanced. “It allowed me to listen and observe.”

  She smiles softly at me. “You’re a good man, Zack Weller. River knows it. In fact, she said it when we went out for margaritas and manicures.”

  “What else did she say?” I sound like a desperate teen. Does she like me? What did she say about me?

  “She said she thought you were lost.”

  I am, and for some reason, I think of the Lost Boys and Neverland and pirate ships floating through the sky. It might be that the boys made me watch Peter Pan earlier tonight, but there’s someone who grounds those little boys and focuses on Peter. A mother figure in her own right. A girl who is smart, witty, and kind.

  River is my Wendy, and I need her.

  “She also believed you’d get there. You needed practice. Like I said, Ben didn’t know how to be a father. It took practice.”

  Like anything, it takes practice. River was referring to my flirting abilities when she said that, but fatherhood could fall on the list as well.

  Softly, I chuckle. “Is that why you have three children?”

  “The first is the rehearsal child.” She winks at me with a swollen lid.

  “What does that say about me, then, if I had two at once?”

  “Maybe you needed double the practice?” Her voice lifts before a more genuine smile graces her face.

  “Seriously, how is Calvin?”

  “He’s sad and confused and hurt and stubborn, like his father.” Her smile remains, but she glances down at her mug. “He’ll get there, wherever there is, eventually. We all will.” Anna turns to me. “And so will you.”

  “I feel like I don’t know where I’m going anymore or what I’m doing. I have the law practice and my partners, and I’ve added Four Points. But then I’ve lost Jeanine, which, let’s face it, wasn’t a loss, and I have the boys to navigate.”

  “Navigate,” Anna repeats the word. “In some ways, navigate implies learning.” Spo
ken like the teacher she is. “But I think the best thing you can give those boys is love, Zack. Unconditional. Unwavering. It’s hard work at times, like my standoff with Calvin. The rewards are in the small stuff. I’ve seen Oliver come to you for affection, and you’ve been more willing to offer it. I see Trevor hovering closer to you. They just want your attention, Zack. Your time. You work too hard.” She pauses. “Sometimes on the wrong stuff.”

  You make time for love, River told me.

  Anna isn’t wrong either. I’ve known for a while that my work was my escape. I didn’t want to face my home life until it imploded. Maybe my own father felt the same way. He couldn’t face the disappointment or the pressure he thought my mother put on him to be like the McCaryn family. He couldn’t face his own failures, so he kept at it, working harder to find the means, but only dug the hole deeper. He gambled, eventually embezzled, and went to jail.

  I don’t want the consequences of Jeanine and me to cause such damage to my boys. They need their mother, or perhaps just a mother. A mother figure who cares for them with trust, respect, and kindness.

  “I messed up with River,” I admit. “I overreacted. Or reacted. I . . . bulldozed.” My lids close, and Anna’s hand touches my hair, comforting me like the mother she is.

  “Then fill in the ditch, Zack. Plant some flowers, as Ben’s father used to say.”

  I softly chuckle. “What was that saying Mr. Kulis had?”

  “You seed. You plant. You grow. You harvest.”

  “Yeah.” I guffaw. “Ben had his own thing last year. Live. Love. Loss. Learn.”

  “It’s a cycle,” Anna states.

  “That’s exactly what he said.” My head lifts, knowing the two of them might not have been perfect, but they were perfectly in sync with one another.