“I heard about your mom,” she was saying. Maybe she hadn’t caught the bitterness. “I was really sorry.”
“Yeah. Thanks. I mean, it’s a long time ago, now, but it was rough on Dad. They were good together. After she died, he told me I should go follow my dream. Insisted on it, really, and it was as if I’d been shot out of a cannon. I went to L.A., I worked so hard. Fringe theater, bit parts, extras, walk-ons, wearing sweaty rubber costumes in shopping malls to promote toothpaste and energy drinks. The day I had my first line in a TV commercial, I was walking on air.”
She laughed. “What was the line? Do you remember? I’d love to know!”
“That’s easy.” He was totally distracted by the delight on her face. “Wow.”
“Wow? Um… Do you mean…”
His turn to laugh. “Sorry, I mean that was the line. The word, I should say. Wow. But it, plus some of the other stuff, was enough to get me a decent agent, and then things almost started to happen.”
She made a sympathetic face. “Only almost.”
“It’s such a tough game.”
“Oh, I’m sure!”
“A heck of a lot of people would have killed to get as close as I did.” He told her about the audition callbacks for the crime drama, and the other guy getting the role.
“That show is still running!” she said.
“It is. Although he’s left it now, and gone on to bigger and better things, as the whole world knows.”
“That could have been you.”
“Don’t let myself think about that too much. Anyhow, that was around the time I met the girls’ mother.” He couldn’t say her name. It was stupid, but he just couldn’t. It was Victoria, and he never ever said it out loud, or even thought it, if he could help it.
Some day, Holly and Maddie would want to know, and he guessed he would manage to make it cross his lips at that point, but for now, no thanks. “Part of me wishes that it had never happened.”
Mary Jane made another sympathetic noise. Her eyes were really lovely at the moment, all large and shining with empathy, and such a bright clear greenish-blue. She was way too nice. Way too nice for him. Way too nice for what he had to give, and what he would need to ask in return.
Focus, Joe. Tell her properly. Do her that favor, at least.
“She was just like me, trying to make it in L.A. She’d done some modeling in New York and I didn’t know it at the time but she was deep into drugs there. She was incredibly young when she started her modeling career, sixteen, out of her depth, living away from her family, full of herself. So beautiful. Incredibly, stunningly beautiful.”
Mary Jane nodded.
“What some people call black Irish,” he told her. “Dark hair and dark eyes and fair skin.”
“Like that Irish band, the Corrs.”
“In coloring, like the Corrs, very much. She was twenty-two when we met, fresh and stunning, and I was twenty-six.”
“How did it happen? That you met, I mean?”
“Oh, pure chance. In a diner. We smiled at each other, started talking. I had no idea. Her parents had stepped in, got her off the drugs, helped her to set herself up on the West Coast so she could switch from modeling to acting. They thought the change would help, and it did for a while. When we met she was clean, but I had no idea about the battle to get to that point, or how easily she would tip back over the line. I thought she was as driven as I was, but it was a different kind of drive. Just a wildness. She was crazy hungry for life. For squeezing every drop out of it, she always said, but her interpretation of that was so destructive. Half the time when she was out—networking, I thought, trying to be seen, going to openings—she was actually scoring and using and partying while the buzz lasted.”
He stopped and gathered his breath, hoping he wasn’t taking too long over this. He wanted Mary Jane to understand as completely as she could. Why was that? Why did it seem important? She was still listening—she was the kind of woman who listened with her whole soul—but if the girls got bored in the pool, they could easily interrupt.
He kept going. “But the drug use was only intermittent at that point because she was getting auditions, still some modeling. It kept her focused that first year. It gave her a reason to at least try to stay strong. It let me think I knew what was happening in our relationship, even though I didn’t at all. Then came the pregnancy.”
Mary Jane looked…shocked? Was that it? She said in an odd tone, “She wasn’t happy about it?”
He could only be honest. Pointless being anything else. “Neither of us was. It was the last thing we were ready for, especially when we found out it was twins. We went around and around for months, considering our options. I was trying to put money together, trying to get acting work. I thought if either of us could get some kind of a break—a movie or a series—we’d have money pouring in, could do the whole Hollywood nanny thing. We’d look like Brad and Angelina. People would love us.” He shook his head. “Sounds naive now. Was naive. Anyhow…”
“It didn’t happen,” Mary Jane filled in gently. He didn’t know what she was really thinking, at this point. Maybe she gave everyone this kind of attention when they talked.
“Didn’t happen,” he repeated. “We had the girls, and it was hard. They were born two months early. They were pretty healthy and strong, only in the hospital for a few days, thank goodness, but when they came home they didn’t sleep, they cried all the time for weeks and weeks, we had no money, because the birth and the hospital stay cost so much, and I think their mom was using again within a couple of months of the birth as an escape. She couldn’t take her career tanking. That was a huge part of it. She’d been told over and over that she was a star since she was about fourteen, and suddenly there was no one saying that anymore. The addiction problem spiraled down incredibly fast. You have no idea. Or perhaps you do. If you’ve seen it close up…”
“I haven’t. I’ve led a very sheltered life.” His gaze caught for a moment on the ghost of a wry smile, and he sensed some regret, and some self-recrimination.
“You’re lucky,” he told her bluntly, seeing no need for her to apologize for being sheltered. For being normal. “We split up. I didn’t really know about the relapse into drug use at that point. Definitely not the extent of it. So again I’ve been telling this wrong, because you’re going to think I let her take the girls when I knew she was using.”
Careful, Joe! Careful what you let her believe…
“No, I wouldn’t—”
“Don’t. It’s okay. We split up because we were just wrong together, and it turned out the only thing that ever made the relationship work was the fact that we were two beautiful people trying to get famous.” He stopped. “You can say ouch again, if you want. Two beautiful people trying to get famous. Doesn’t that sound great? Doesn’t it sound meaningful? It wasn’t beautiful. It was ugly.”
“Ouch,” she answered obediently.
“Thanks,” he said, and then he just couldn’t stand the honesty in those eyes of hers. The confession came out blunt and abrupt and full of the usual guilt. “It’s not true when I said I didn’t know she was using after the girls were born. I accused her of it, but she denied it point-blank and I believed her. Wanted to believe her. Told myself I believed her.” He got down to the real truth at last and hated himself for it. “I pretended to myself that I believed her. See? Shoot! This is where I ask myself what the hell? What was I doing? What was I thinking? Just what…the…hell?”
“Don’t.” She had that caring, stricken look on her face again, and Maddie and Holly were splashing and happy, oblivious in the pool.
“You don’t know.” Again, her level of care almost made him angry, because he didn’t deserve it. “I wanted to believe her, against the evidence, because I wanted my life back! That’s the truth. I loved the girls. Of course I did. But it was hard, and she was their mother, and the mother gets the babies when two people split up that soon after the birth.”
“How old were th
ey?”
“Three months. Still pretty small. And I let her have them. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
“What about her parents?”
“They were on my side. Still are. They gave her so much love. The generous kind. The tough kind. The practical kind. None of it helped. In the end, they had to step back. They’re in Louisiana now, where their other two kids are, and their other grandchildren—all doing well, which is great—so it’s hard to see them often, but we’re in touch a lot.”
“So you said the girls were with their mother when they were three months old?”
“Yes, but by the time they were five months old she was living with her dealer—Don’t!” he interrupted himself, way too quick and harsh, but he couldn’t let her keep doing the sounds of sympathy and understanding, and the heartfelt looking at him with her big, lovely, blue-green eyes. They kept saying this to each other.
Don’t.
Warning each other away from the wrong response.
“Don’t say anything nice, Mary Jane. Please. Don’t let me off the hook.”
“Okay. Sorry.” Her cheeks had gone pink.
“And don’t apologize. And ignore me biting your head off. Please. If you can.”
“Trying.”
“Thanks. Anyhow… Don’t know how old they were when she moved in with her pimp. Nine months? By then I knew I had to get them back, get them away, give them a future and a father who was worth something. But it wasn’t that easy. I started a law degree. That was what kept me in California for so long, even once I had sole custody. I waited to graduate, which I did this past May.”
“Oh, wow. Congratulations!”
“Thanks.” He couldn’t see it as a big deal. He’d done it for the girls, because he’d failed them when they were babies. “Took me six years to get through the degree, part-time. Came back here as soon as I could after that, to be closer to Dad and my brothers, and just to protect the girls. Taking the New York bar exam soon. Don’t know if I’ll pass,” he admitted truthfully. He wasn’t getting as much time to study for it as he needed.
“You will,” she said. Of course she said that. He could see the belief shining in her eyes, and it almost made him cry. She had no reason to show such faith. He wasn’t worth it, was he? Thinking back on how he’d let the girls down after their birth always made him doubt himself until he was raw with it.
“So the law degree helped me understand the court battle. Which was horrible. And long. And expensive. I’m not going to give you the blow-by-blow. I can’t. It’s all a tangle, can’t even remember, there were so many ugly steps in the whole saga.”
“They never see her?”
“Nope. There was a supervised-access arrangement for a while, but she violated that so many times, she lost it in the end, and I wasn’t sorry. In fact I pushed for it. If you could see her… She looks like what she is. What she’s become. You wouldn’t believe she could ever have been a model. It’s— Yeah. I’m not letting the girls anywhere near that. I still have nightmares about their safety. You know that horrible kind where you’re running and running but can’t move, or you’re trapped somewhere. I’ve dreamed I lost them in airports, or that they’re running across a railroad track and there’s a train bearing down on them and I’m trying to warn them and my voice won’t work.”
“Oh, Joe!” She was doing it again. She wasn’t anywhere near as beautiful as the girls’ mother had once been—not many women were—but right at this moment she looked to Joe like the loveliest woman in the world because of the emotion in her eyes and the hope in her heart and the clear health in her body and skin and hair, when he still had images of the girls’ mother’s raddled and bone-skinny and prematurely aged appearance in his mind.
Wait a minute, though. Hope in her heart? Hope for what?
Yes, okay, he could see it. He knew. He’d thought about this just last night at dinner. He’d been a player long enough. She liked him. She was pulling toward him like a magnet, and quite possibly she didn’t even know it.
Don’t do this, Mary Jane, he wanted to tell her.
She was too nice and too generous. He liked her too much to give her the automatic come-on that once would have been second nature to him, to say yes to the unconscious invitation in her eyes. Those days seemed like a lifetime ago.
Well, they were a lifetime ago. Maddie and Holly’s lifetime.
In the seven years since their birth and his split from their mother, he’d had—didn’t take long to work it out—exactly one girlfriend.
Five years ago.
She’d lasted for three months of his working around the clock, his battles to find the right child care, his late nights falling asleep over law books, his dropping everything for the next painful round of family court appearances, before she’d had enough of his life and they’d called it quits.
He was a player? Really?
It suddenly occurred to him that he’d totally forgotten how, it was so long ago and he was such a different person now. Anything and everything he thought he saw in Mary Jane’s eyes might be a complete figment of his desperate and celibate imagination, a sad throwback to his long-gone high school popularity.
Catching himself just in time, he didn’t lift the hand that had been poised to reach out and touch her. He didn’t give her the slow, deliberate smile that had once worked so well. He wanted to jeer at himself for even thinking about it.
All that feeling in Mary Jane’s eyes was because of the girls, not him, and that was just the way it should be.
For the new, improved Joe Capelli—the Joe he was now, not the Joe he’d been seven, ten, sixteen years ago— everything, always, was all about the girls.
Chapter Seven
Holly and Maddie were getting cold, Mary Jane could see.
The sun had started to dip behind the trees, leaving the pool in dappled shade, and even though the water was warmed several degrees by the solar pool heater they’d installed on the restaurant roof a few months ago, it wasn’t enough to compensate for the chill of the breeze on the girls’ wet skin every time they clambered out of the water in order to jump back in.
Their new friends were about to leave, also, giving a last wave as they went through the gate, wrapped in their colorful towels.
“Time to get them home,” Joe said.
“Yes, before their lips turn from purple to blue.”
“Is that the direction it goes?” he joked. “Is blue colder than purple?” It was a little forced.
He’d shared a huge amount, been incredibly honest, made himself very, very vulnerable, and he was probably regretting it. People often did.
Mary Jane was.
Or, no, regretting was too strong. More like second-guessing, wondering about the things she’d said in reply, the reactions she’d shown. Did he realize what a powerful story it was, and what a vivid picture he’d painted? Did he know how much she’d been able to read between the lines? How much it said about his tenacity and determination and care? About his self-condemnation? And did he know he’d never once spoken Holly and Maddie’s mother’s name?
That, she suspected he did. It seemed like a deliberate avoidance, as if the sound of the syllables was too painful, and Mary Jane understood this. She’d spent quite some time not being able to say the word Alex, and had come up with all sorts of alternatives in her head, to keep her mind off the subject.
She could say it now.
Alex, Alex, Alex. There! No power to hurt, or to catapult her back into the past.
She thought that, for Joe, everything must still be a lot more fresh and raw, a lot more painful, since he’d had so much more to deal with.
“Blue is definitely colder,” she said, deliberately trying to keep it light.
“Time to get out, girls,” he called to them, and they did so at once, causing him to observe, “I think you’re right. Blue is colder, because their lips have transitioned fully to blue now, and they’re not arguing.”
“Would they like s
ome hot chocolate to warm them up before you head home? I can easily fix them some, up in the kitchen.”
She thought he’d say no, but when he looked at them shivering in their towels, he nodded. “It would help, if it’s really not too much trouble. They’ll have to get dressed. Back in the office, where they put on their swimsuits before?”
“No, just come upstairs. It’s a four-bedroom apartment. They can use a bedroom or bathroom.”
“Better be the bathroom. They’re still pretty wet.”
The girls darted across in their bare feet, still wrapped tightly in their towels and still shivering. They left wet footprints on the hardwood stairs, just the way Mary Jane and Lee and Daisy used to do when they were kids, and then, after instructions from Joe, they disappeared into the bathroom to get dressed, along with the backpacks where they’d placed their clothes, while Joe followed Mary Jane into the kitchen.
Into the kitchen that she’d grown up with and that had always seemed quite spacious, but was now suddenly far too small.
She turned her back to him. Well, it was the natural thing to do, rummaging in the pantry for the container of drinking chocolate powder which she began to fear was just a figment of her imagination. Had they run out? She found it at last, all the way in the back, and even turned up an unopened packet of mini pink and white marshmallows, then had to turn away from Joe again to get the milk out of the fridge.
She poured it into two mugs, incredibly selfconscious about the way he was watching her, leaning one shoulder against the corner of the fridge, not speaking very much, and making her heart beat faster just by being there.
“Thanks for this,” he said gruffly. “For all of it. The camp arrangement. Listening to me. Taking care of the girls.”
“No problem, honestly.”
Or if it was a problem, not in the way he thought. Something seemed to have switched on inside her, a warmth she’d lost in recent years. She’d hated that—hated the steely thread of bitterness that seemed to have replaced it.
Silence again, while his eyes followed her movements as she came to put the milk away. He had to shift position, which he did in a heavy way that told her he was tired. Wrung-out, probably, after all that he’d said out by the pool.
It Began with a Crush (The Cherry Sisters) Page 8
