More betterer.
She wanted to pull her arm free and run away screaming, but then… she really wanted ice cream, and so.
They wandered down the pier arm in arm in arm past summer concession stands that were still boarded up and little shops that would be open in a few weeks to cater to the tourists that flocked to Heartswell Harbour once the weather was warmer. There were a few small restaurants, a bookstore and a flower shop on one side of the small street opposite the pier where a lighthouse surveyed the town like a sentinel. There was a dingy building tucked away in the corner of the main street looking like it was perched on the wharf pilings just waiting for high tide to come and take it away. It was an ancient sailor’s bar waiting for a pirate.
The Century Club. Lucy read the faded sign hanging like an amputated limb from the front of the building. Several big men stood in front of the bar under a cloud of cigarette smoke. Lucy tore her gaze away. She could smell whiskey in the air, and she was afraid all it would take was a smile and a nod from one of the bar flies and she would be all over some whiskey-stained bar stool before you could say Jack Daniels. She could feel Dorian watching her from the corner of his eye.
“Can you see around corners with that thing?” she asked, regretting it the moment she saw the hurt flash across his face. She was a horrible person; it was irrefutable. “Stop watching me.”
“I’m just looking,” he said, seeming to suck up her rudeness without letting it sting him. “And no, but I do have eyes in the back of my head.”
They stood in front of the bookstore windows. Lucy was surprised to see the display was a collection of Vanessa Ryder novels, stacked and arranged with roses interspersed between and around the novels on a flowing bolt of red silk softly gleaming like it was alive. There were at least twenty novels on display, all showing covers of beautiful women and strong men in various poses of intimacy and closeness.
“These are yours,” Lucy said in awe. It was an impressive collection, each novel looking professional and intriguing. Lucy recognized several covers that graced her mother’s reading pile. “I had no idea you wrote so many.”
He shrugged.
“Been doing it for years now. It’s just a hobby, just for fun,” he said.
“It looks like more than a hobby,” she said, nodding at the piles of books. “Why the pen name?”
He looked at her sideways.
“Seriously?” he asked. “You think it would help my street cred if everyone knew me as the cop who writes romance novels?”
“You have street cred?” she asked, laughing. “Like, in da hood?”
Ida tugged on Dorian’s hand, growing tired of the conversation.
“Ice cream, Dowian?”
There was a commotion outside the Century Club across the road. Lucy glanced over just in time to see a woman stumble out of the doors to the bar, one of the men catching her right before she fell. He helped her to stand upright, laughing as she pawed at him to get her balance. The woman brayed with laughter, throwing her arms wide and lolling into the arms of her rescuer.
Lucy gasped.
It was Connie.
Her eyes flew to Dorian who registered the woman’s identity at exactly the same moment as Lucy. She watched his face cloud over with a fierce scowl that made her believe his street cred was alive and well. He turned Ida away from the spectacle of her mother, talking loudly to her as he urged her down the street promising ice cream with a serious discussion of possible flavours. Lucy stood facing the bookstore, Dorian’s books fading behind the reflection of the Century Club that Lucy could see in the window.
She watched, aghast, as Connie continued to tumble raggedly into the men, laughing and calling out nonsense that Lucy couldn’t make out. She looked rumpled and haggard, as the men passed her from one to the other like a tarnished penny, useless and unnecessary.
“That’s me,” Lucy whispered, focussing on her own reflection distorted in the old rippled glass. She turned and saw Dorian looking back at her as he shepherded Ida toward the ice cream store and away from her mother.
She looked at Connie again, getting into a car with several other people all equally dishevelled and loud. It was a party, at two o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon.
Lucy threw those kinds of parties on a regular basis, but there was only ever one guest. One guest and one ghost.
She began to walk down the sidewalk toward Dorian and Ida as the car roared away down the road. Dorian waved to her and took Ida through the doors of the shop, leaving Lucy to follow. Dog tugged on his leash, tongue lolling as he seemed to sense treats on the horizon.
“That’s why he’s nice to me,” she thought, understanding blossoming in a dark flower of shame right under her breastbone. “To help with Ida. To watch Ida when he can’t. He’s just trying to save me, since he can’t save her mother.”
Dog leaned against her, agreeing.
She didn’t stop to think that her reasoning was faulty, because everything was faulty.
“Won’t he be pissed when he realizes he can’t save me, either?” she asked Dog, tugging on his leash until he gave up on the ice cream and followed her to the truck.
Nineteen
She wasn’t sleeping. Again.
Not drinking seemed to go hand in hand with not sleeping, which left her feeling hungover in the mornings, which was at least something she was used to.
She wasn’t used to sober.
Thoughts crowded into her head at night when she should have been drunk so she wouldn’t have to think the thoughts, but… not doing that anymore. It had become a mantra.
Not doing that anymore.
So far, it was working.
The thoughts made it hard though. Thoughts of Jeff. Thoughts of their life together, and how their whole relationship was built on drinking.
It had just seemed so normal. Drinking was fun.
Until.
Thoughts of losing her job. Showing up drunk at school months after the accident. The shame of staggering out of the school, with the police taking her home to sleep it off. Which she did for months. Sleep, drink, sleep.
Now she couldn’t sleep, and it seemed ironically appropriate.
She lay on the library floor, Dog tucked companionably under her arm snoring lightly and twitching like he was chasing goats. Her thoughts floated randomly in the air above her body, circling like vultures. She let them pick and tear at her as the night wore on, revelling in the pain she refused to drown, hoping that somehow if she refused to drink them away, they would grow tired of the waiting.
This inkling of life beyond grief was new to her, and she could only glimpse it sideways if she was to see it at all. Didn’t she deserve to suffer forever? Wasn’t that the deal?
She was beginning to see she had made that deal at the bottom of a bottle.
It was Dorian who made her think there might be another way.
Dorian and Ida.
She breathed in deeply, the smell of dog and musty schoolbooks tickled her nose. She was afraid of holding thoughts of Dorian too close. She didn’t trust the warmth of those thoughts, like they were blankets with holes in them. Holes that she had made and would rip open the minute she got too comfortable.
Not doing that anymore.
She was just climbing to her feet, deciding to give bed a try when headlights flooded the library, causing her to blink and shield her eyes. There was a car in the parking lot. In the middle of the night.
The headlights died and she could make out a dark figure reaching into the back seat. It was the cruiser.
A police car at four am.
Her heart turned to ice in her chest with a powerful sense of deja vu.
She almost turned left to the girl’s washroom in her rising panic as memories of the night it all ended washed over her. Cops in the yard. The knock on the door. The words that changed everything.
“Not doing that anymore,” she whispered fiercely, forcing her steps to turn toward the entryway.
She
opened the door just as Dorian arrived on the top step, holding a sleeping Ida in his arms, her little knapsack slung over his shoulder. His face was bleak and drawn, and he paused for a moment before nodding grimly at her and walking into the building. She stepped aside, placing her hand on his arm as he passed her.
“Take her to my bed,” she whispered, closing the door and leading him down the hall.
She shook off the blanket and folded down the sheets for him. He gently laid the child on the bed, smoothing her hair off her face as she snuggled into the pillow with a soft cry. Lucy stood and watched, feeling tears flow down her cheeks at the utter tenderness of the big man as he knelt by the bed. She took the knapsack from him and sat it on the floor, Ida’s favorite tutu peeking out from the top.
Ida startled and half sat up, her eyes unfocused and afraid. She sobbed and turned into his arms.
“It’s all right, princess,” Dorian hushed. “It’s all okay. You’re safe, darlin’. I love you.”
He rocked the tiny body for a few minutes until she softened and sighed, then he laid her carefully back onto the bed. He tucked the blankets around her, then sat back on his heels, lowering his hands to his knees and sighing deeply.
Lucy knelt beside him.
Ida’s gentle breathing filled the space in the room and Lucy’s heart finally began to slow. She touched Dorian’s hand tentatively, and he turned his face to hers. His eyes were hollow and filled with torment. Without thinking, she wrapped her arms around his big shoulders and pressed against him, holding his head to her chest as she stroked his hair.
“Whatever it is,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”
He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her onto his lap, burying his face in her neck. They sat in the silent school room, rocking each other and listening to Ida sleep.
“I had to arrest Connie,” he muttered into her hair. “She was driving. Drunk. Again.”
His voice turned hard and bitter. “She’d left Ida alone in the house. I found her curled up in her closet with all the blankets from her bed and her stuffed animals, wide awake and all alone at four in the morning. No child should live like that.”
Lucy pulled back to look him in the face. Even in the shadow of the darkness she could see the angry lines of his mouth.
“I should have known. I should have taken her car from her weeks ago,” he said. “This is her second offence. She could have killed someone.”
Lucy braced his head between her hands, overwhelmed with the hoarse intensity of his voice.
“It’s not your fault, Dorian,” she said. “You didn’t put the bottle in her hand, and you didn’t put her behind the wheel.”
Words she had heard before. Words that had held no meaning to her in the ravages of her grief. Words that suddenly bore the weight of truth and redemption.
“She’ll go to jail this time,” he said.
Lucy caught her breath.
Jail.
Ida.
“I had to,” he spoke so quietly she could barely hear him. “I had no choice. She gave me no choice.”
His face begged for understanding and her heart yearned to ease his suffering. He had done the right thing, even though it was the hardest. This was his life, the law and his family. How do you choose one over the other without condemning yourself?
“Ida?” she asked, sliding off his lap and tugging his hands ‘til he stood up. They walked to the doorway of the classroom, speaking easier without fear of waking the sleeping child. She didn’t let go of his hands. They were warm and strong and alive in hers.
“I need your help,” he said, looking down into her eyes. “I’m going to apply for custody. It won’t be quick, and I’ll need Connie’s agreement which she may not want to give, but I will not see that little girl go into foster care.”
He gripped her fingers tightly and she nodded.
“Anything,” the words came from a place so deep inside her heart she didn’t recognize them as her own. “I will do anything to help you.”
“Can she stay here, with you, when I’m working?” he asked. She was already nodding and smiling, a feeling of strength flooding into her whole being. “I work nights sometimes, and I can’t have her living alone with me, a man, even though we’re related until the paperwork is done. I need to you be… kind of a chaperone, I guess. Just until I get the formalities taken care of.”
“Yes,” she said. “She can stay as long as you like.”
He paused, looking at his shoes and then up to her eyes with an intense seriousness in his eyes.
“You have to be sober, Lucy,” he said. “You have to be.”
She blinked, wanting to feel outrage, wanting to feel defensive but instead feeling a quiet steadiness in her heart and in her voice.
“Not doing that anymore,” she said.
He brought his hand up to her neck and stroked his thumb down her chin. He lowered his head to hers, pausing a hair’s breadth from her lips. She reached up and sealed the kiss, gently, tentatively.
He ran his hands behind her head and pressed her to him, deepening the kiss with a strength that left her breathless. She buried her hands in his hair, rising onto her toes to press more fully against him.
They ended the kiss. He pulled back, his pulse hammering against her hand as she covered it over his heart.
“That was better than whiskey,” she said, her voice deep in the quiet schoolhouse.
“I would stay and fill your cup,” he whispered, kissing her lightly on the brow, “but my night isn’t over. I’ll come back in the morning. Connie’s in the cell at the depot and I’ve got paperwork to start and a serious conversation to have with her.”
She stood by the window and watched him drive away, the taillights fading down the road just as the very first blush of dawn began to rise over the river. Dog had crawled up beside Ida in the bed and she lay with her arm thrown lightly over his shaggy form.
Lucy lay down gently beside Ida, snuggling under the blanket as the little girl curled up against her, smelling of strawberries and dirty toes. Lucy closed her eyes. Ida’s gentle breathing lulled her to sleep.
Twenty
The sound of sensible Irish shoes on parquet flooring dragged Lucy from sleep. After a mostly sleepless night and a kiss that was looping on repeat inside her brain, she decided the footsteps were a bad dream. She wasn’t getting out of bed, despite the glow of sunlight behind her closed lids.
“I’ve called ninety times now, ye ninny!”
Alliteration.
Even in the deepest depth of her unwillingness to be awake, she recognized alliteration floating in the air over her head.
“Lord love a lousy leper, look at ye!”
“Mumsy?” Lucy cringed. Why Mumsy? Why now?
“Aye, ye might Mumsy me, mighten-ye?”
“Mums… not now. I’m just barely waking up, here.”
“Ye’re drunk. Daft and drunk and who does this child belong to?”
Child?
“Am not drunk, thank you very much,” Lucy sat up and looked blearily at her mother. Mumsy sniffed, frowned, and then seemed to accept the truth of Lucy’s sobriety.
“Humph,” Mumsy humph-ed as only an Irish matriarch could humph. It was a sound that conveyed approval, affection and a grudging smidgeon of respect. It warmed Lucy’s heart.
She felt little feet pressing against her back from under the covers.
“Ida, is that you?”
There was a shuffling. And a clucking.
“Hi.”
It was Ida.
With the chicken.
Lucy was at a loss to understand how the chicken had entered the picture, and the bed, but she felt life was moving at lightning speed and she only had enough early morning resources to deal with one thing at a time.
Ida was in her bed because her mother was in jail.
Lucy rolled over and looked at Ida, who blinked back at her with tired eyes.
“You all right, little Warrior?” she whispered.
“I miss my mom.” Tears welled in her eyes and her little chin trembled. Lucy tugged the blankets over their heads so they were inside a cocoon. She touched Ida’s nose with her finger.
“Your mom loves you, picklehead,” Lucy smiled, willing her words to be true.
“I’m not a pickle,” Ida sniffled, half a grin dancing across her face.
“Would you like to hang out here with me and Dog for a while?” Lucy wasn’t sure how to have this conversation. What if the child said no?
“And Wilma?”
Um.
“Who’s Wilma?”
“Do-wian’s cat.” Ida was perking up and Lucy worried that the menagerie was growing.
“I don’t know how Dog feels about cats,” she said.
“Dog loves them.” Ida nodded knowledgeably.
“Then Wilma is invited too.” Lucy, magnanimous in the morning. “But I won’t be responsible if Kentucky kicks up a fuss. You know how he feels about sharing you.”
Ida smiled. A real smile which banished a bit of the haunted look in her eyes.
There was grumbling from the outside world and Ida pulled back the covers and sat up, eyeing Mumsy cautiously.
“Ida, honey… this is Mumsy.” Lucy closed her eyes. She preferred an eyes closed approach to this moment. A goat was one thing, but she couldn’t predict Mumsy’s reaction to a child popping out of the covers like the surprise in a box of popcorn.
“We don’t sleep with chickens, child,” Mumsy frowned, but her voice was gentle. Lucy recognized that voice, even though it was a distant memory. “Hens have homes in hen houses.”
“Kentucky is a boy,” Ida said. “He ain’t a hen, he’s a rooster.”
“So that makes it alright, then?” Mumsy smiled. Ida nodded and Lucy sensed she had just witnessed the creation of a beautiful new friendship.
As if this momentary lapse into emotionalism had irked her, Mumsy began shuffling amongst the clutter in the room. Lucy wanted to talk to Mums about Ida, about taking care of her and helping her deal with what she was going to learn about her mother, but Mumsy seemed intent of banishing dust, debris and sleep from every corner of the school.
Love on the Rocks: A Heartswell Harbour Romance Page 11