“When Karson comes,” I told him, twirling the pearl bracelet around and around my wrist, “Patterson comes. So, even though Karson doesn’t know who Patterson really is, it’s real father-mother-child … and Michelle.”
Westley crossed into the breakfast nook, then took a seat by me. “How do you know all this?”
“Did Michelle not talk to you at all, Wes? When she was here?”
Hurt—or was it disappointment—slid across his features, then disappeared. “Sure, we talked.” He shrugged. “Mostly about her new obsession with crooner music—she has a small stack of Sinatra CDs, did you know that? I never thought I could know so much about Frank Sinatra or his music.”
“Yes, I noticed. At least it’s not hip-hop.” I waited for Westley to continue, but when he didn’t, I asked, “Anything else? Did she talk to you about anything else?”
Again, he shrugged. “Yeah. We also talked about pre-med and how she’s learning to drive in Atlanta traffic but will probably live with Cindie one more year before transferring to the dorms.”
One more year. I shook my head in disbelief. “Well, apparently Cindie felt the need to tell her everything. All about the affair—you know, so ‘she won’t make the same mistakes.’” I air-quoted the words.
“How long had it been going on? The affair. Did she say?”
“Oh yes … started nearly as soon as she got to Dekalb.”
Westley pointed to me in a siege of victory. “Didn’t I tell you? Years ago, didn’t I tell you? I knew she was sleeping with a married man. I said it, didn’t I?”
I grabbed his finger and squeezed. “I don’t quite see why you’re so happy about this, Wes. This is not a game or a sporting event where you get to be the winner. Cindie is not a good example for her.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“Because, what she’s telling her by example,” I continued, ignoring him, “is that she can sleep with a married man, fool another into thinking a child is his, get married, get a divorce, get the first man back, and somehow, all will work out in the end.” I took a breath. “I am genuinely concerned about our daughter.”
Westley’s brows drew together. “Is that what she did? Fool Kyle into thinking—?”
I sighed in defeat. Apparently, he was missing the point and to shine light on that fact would only aggravate the wound. “That’s what she said … Cindie, I mean. She told Michelle the whole gruesome story in full, cinematic details. I’m surprised she didn’t pull out a video diary.”
“Ali …”
I grabbed my coffee mug and took it to the sink. “I know. That’s low, even for me.”
“Especially for you … you’re better than that.”
I turned to him. “Am I? Because right now I want to pick up the phone, call Cindie, and scream every vile thing I’m thinking about her.”
“Get in line.”
“And so does DiAnn,” I added, speaking confidently now of a sister-in-law who had, since March, become my friend. My ally. We talked every day as soon as we got to work. Sometimes in the afternoons as well.
Westley laughed. “I can just bet.”
“And don’t get me started on Ro-Bay and Miss Justine.”
My husband nodded. “I know. Miss Justine offered to pay for any and all legal costs—including investigators—if I’d wanted to fight Cindie over this.”
I returned to the table and sat. “You never told me that.” And neither had she.
“No point.”
“Honestly, Wes …”
“What good would it have done, Ali? Cindie had guilted Michelle into moving up there. You know it. I know it. Poor pitiful Cindie, lost without her daughter … her son … her husband. The only thing she somehow has going for her is her job and, I swear, I don’t know how she’s doing that. Probably sleeping with the boss there, too.”
I’d not thought of that, though, somehow, I doubted it. “If she were, I’m sure she would have told Michelle by now.”
Westley stood, leaving his coffee mug on the table. “I’ve gotta finish getting ready.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Allison,” he said, using my full name, which startled me. I looked up at him. “We did good with Michelle,” he said. “Mostly you. Those seeds you planted didn’t fall into unfertile soil. So this much I know—she’ll be fine.”
I leaned back against the chair, my head resting against my husband’s abdomen and his hand moved to cup my face. “From your lips to God’s ears …”
“We’ve got to trust in that.” He tilted my face up. “She’ll be fine. If nothing else, a year with Cindie juxtaposed with a childhood spent with us will convince her that she wants to grow up to be like her mother. And I mean you, sweetheart. Her real mother.”
“Oh, Westley …”
“Hey,” he said, now squatting so that we were at eye level. “There’s something I want you to know.”
“What?”
“I didn’t marry you because of Michelle, Ali. I want you to believe that.”
“I know—”
“Because I don’t think I ever really, truly told you. I married you because I loved you. Love you. Stroke of luck for me that you came along, sure, but Michelle or not, I would have proposed to you that day. And I’m sorry—I always have been—that I didn’t tell you the truth sooner. That you may have felt like I trapped you. I was young and scared and desperate.”
My brow raised.
“Not desperate. Well, maybe a little.” He smiled. “But you—you took it—you took me—on the chin. Every bit of it and every bit of me. I don’t deserve you and I never will, but Michelle did and does and always will. And you’ve been the best, the absolute best mother.” He stood, then leaned down and kissed me, his lips soft and warm. His breath sweet with coffee. “I love you. And I love my daughter and the life we’ve made here.”
“Then why don’t you make her come home?” I asked, feeling as warmed by his words as confused by my own desires of loving her and wanting her with us.
“Because the last thing I want for her is to feel pressure from me.” His eyes softened. “From us. I won’t do that to her. I love her too much.”
I stood then. Turned. Wrapped my arms around him, pressing into him, begging for the strength only he could give. “I love you, too.” I burrowed my nose into the flesh of his neck, tears burning my eyes. This man … this man … whom I’d given so much of my life to. This man who had given so much to me. I’d never understand it, really. What draws one person to another in such a way that we feel we cannot go on, one without the other? From the moment he’d called me on the phone, having looked up my name in the phone book, and asked me out, I had been his and he had been mine. For all his faults—and for all of mine—there had been nothing I wanted in life or out of it that didn’t include him.
I squeezed my eyes and kissed his neck. Once. Twice. Thinking, for the briefest of seconds, that the only difference in Cindie and me was that she had fallen into temptation with a married man and that I, a married woman, had nearly done the same with Biff. The very idea made me shudder in both disgust and gratitude that Miss Justine had given me such a good talking to.
Oh, Miss Justine! A woman I could never put in the same category as Cindie, and yet …
“How is it,” I began, then stopped in my unsurety. Did I want to share what was in my heart?
“Hmm?” Westley asked, his voice low and tender.
“How is it that our lives can be so affected by the decisions of others?”
He stepped back. Ran a finger down my nose and allowed it to rest on my lips before I kissed it. “What do you mean?”
“I mean … do you ever think about it? Cindie decided to sleep with her professor, and then when she found out she was pregnant, and, well, you know … the whole Kyle thing. And, in the end, her decisions led to us losing Michelle—”
“We haven’t lost her.”
“I know, but …” I said, my voice now stronger in the light of my grandmother’s directive. Raise
your radish, Allison. Raise it high … This will not kick you down.
There was more, of course. More I couldn’t tell him. Would never tell him. We had all made our decisions. Westley’s not to marry Cindie. Mine to marry Westley. Cindie and Patterson’s to ignore the bonds of the wedding vows he’d spoken with his wife. Hers to drag Kyle into her deception. Even Miss Justine’s decision to share with me about her relationship with Biff’s father had placed consequences on my own decisions. All of this had left a mark on Westley. But, in his way, he’d gone on about life as though this was just another wave to ski over.
“But?”
I shook my head. No. These were my thoughts and only mine. Not to be shared. Not even to be mulled over. Not too long, anyway. “Nothing,” I finally answered, glancing at the digital clock on the stove with a nod. “We’ve gotta get going.”
Westley glanced at his watch as I stepped away from him. “Man …”
I started out of the kitchen and was nearly to the first step of the staircase when Westley called my name. I turned toward where he stood at the kitchen door, keys dangling from the fingertips of one hand. “Yeah?”
“I do love you,” he said. “There was never anyone for me but you and never will be—start to finish.”
My heart smiled until it reached my face. “I love you, too.”
Summer 2006
Westley
A lot had happened to them in a dozen years, him and his wife. Four years ago, they’d celebrated a quarter century together while several of their loved ones surrounded them, raising their glasses in a champagne toast. Michelle—Dr. Hamilton now—had arrived the day before along with her husband, Sturgill, but sans their twins, Charity and Faith, who’d recently turned three. Julie and Dean had come. Paul and DiAnn. Surprising them had been the arrival of his sister Heather and her husband Nathaniel. They’d moved a decade ago to Iowa, of all places, where they bought a farm. Westley kept waiting for Nate to plow up his corn and replace it with a baseball field, but so far, he hadn’t.
Friends, such as Trev and Marilyn along with several others they’d acquired over the years, heralded a cheer to the next twenty-five, which left Westley to wonder if they’d live to see it. He doubted it, not with his ticker and his inability to follow much of what the doctor ordered. Medical people were like that; never listening to their doctors or their own bodies. At least he’d quit smoking after they’d married. So, there was that.
Yes, a lot had changed. He owned several of the drugstores that had comprised Miss Justine’s empire. Not all of them, but a few, scattered about the towns in their part of the world. Miss Justine had seen to that in her will. Losing her to God, even with its benefits, had been one of the hardest seasons in his life. But she had died at the spry age of ninety-four, he reminded himself. Elderly, but still active and vivacious in her wit. She’d slipped away during the night, her head resting against a satin pillowcase. Ro-Bay had found her first thing on a Monday morning, when the floors needed mopping.
Allison had taken it hard, perhaps harder than when her own mother died a few years later. Unexpectedly, of course—she was only seventy-two—but so much of life tended to come unplanned and unwelcomed, he’d come to realize. Thankfully, both of his parents were still kicking, although they’d slowed down considerably and stopped driving across the state for any reason whatsoever.
The past two years had skipped by. Michelle and Sturgill bought a home in North Carolina after East Coast Medical & Research—a new state-of-the-art center in Wilmington—accepted her application as one of their prestigious research physicians within the field of gynecology. Ali had bemoaned the fact that they were “so far away,” but Westley had been grateful that the move had, at the very least, removed Michelle from such proximity to Cindie.
Now, he was at a pharmaceutical convention held in Charlotte, which had given him an excuse to visit his daughter and her family, not to mention to peek at the research center.
“I’m still upset Mom couldn’t come,” Michelle told him after she met him in the expansive and gleaming lobby where air conditioning brought blessed relief from the oppressive heat outside.
“Me, too,” he said with a smile. “But she chose to wait when I told her I was driving to Charlotte instead of flying.” He shrugged. “Don’t worry. She’s staying busy while I’m away.”
“Doing?”
“She and Ro-Bay planned to do some canning and—okay—I think your mother wasn’t totally upset about having some time to herself.”
Michelle laughed. “You don’t think she has a boyfriend, do you?”
“Ro-Bay?” he teased. “Nah …”
“Dad,” Michelle said with a laugh, then led him to a group of elevators where she pushed the UP button while Westley studied his daughter.
“You look nice,” he said, admiring her.
Michelle blushed. “Dad.”
“You do. Very professional. Hair pulled back. Stylish slacks and top. Lab coat with your name stitched in navy blue so nice there …” He pointed. “Mom will be proud when I tell her.”
She shook her head as the door opened and they stepped in. “Y’all are still coming in a couple of months for the girls’ birthday, right?” She pushed the floor button and the doors closed.
“We wouldn’t miss it. And we want to thank you for having the girls so close to Thanksgiving.”
Michelle dropped her hands into her lab coat pockets. “Aren’t you funny? Hey, Dad, I was thinking we could go to lunch after I give you the tour. The food here’s good but if you want to find a nearby restaurant …”
Having never had hospital food he liked or enjoyed, he opted for the nearby restaurant.
“I know the perfect place,” she told him. “Soul food …”
“I like it already.”
She escorted him down a polished hallway in blinding shades of white to a set of double doors that glided open after she swiped her ID card. The lab was typical, although clearly new. For the next half hour, Westley smiled a lot and shook hands with his daughter’s coworkers. Along the way, as they walked through the maze of countertops and medical supplies, Michelle explained the work her team was doing in the field of infertility. “It’s exciting stuff, Dad,” she said, then slid out of her lab coat and hung it on a hook inside her office.
“I’m impressed,” he said, meaning it. He was even more impressed with the number of awards displayed along the bookshelves. Despite her beginnings, his daughter had done well.
“Hey, guys,” she told her team as they returned to the lab. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
He ventured to ask about Cindie over massive plates of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a mound of green beans. “Talk to her much?”
“Rarely,” she admitted, then reached for her glass of sweet iced tea.
“Is there a problem?”
“I’m not going to say a problem. But, it’s the drama, Dad. Seriously. Now that Karson is eighteen and heading off to Georgia in the fall and Patterson has finally had enough of her, she does nothing but gripe and moan.” Michelle waved her fork in the air for effect.
“How is Karson?”
She smiled. “He’s good. He figured out about Patterson, which didn’t go well. Fortunately, he had good parents in Kyle and his wife. Otherwise … if it had been only Cindie and Patterson … gah …”
“Cindie’s a mess. Even when it looked like she wasn’t, she was.”
“I’ve tried to talk to her …”
He stabbed his beans that glistened from being cooked in fat. “About?”
Her eyes widened. “Everything. Her drinking. The dramatics. Finding God, even.” She shook her head and her jaw flexed. “To which she replied, ‘Why? Is he lost?’”
“Ouch.”
“I also suggested seeing a doctor who can really help her and not these jokers she’s gone to.” Michelle’s eyes misted, then, with a blink, cleared. “Not to mention her incessant need for a man in her life … seriously, I don’t k
now why you ever …” Michelle reached for her glass again but dropped her hand on the table, eyes wide. “Sorry. That was unkind.”
An unaccustomed rush of emotion pushed through him and he bristled. “Michelle,” he finally said. “Look … We both know that Cindie is your biological mother and Ali is—”
“My mom.”
He nodded. “Your mom. Yes. But, Cindie was—is—a mess, yes, but at one time she was just a little girl whose world got stomped on. A little girl who grew up to be very beautiful. You look so much like her, you know.”
“I know.”
“She just … well, I think her dad leaving the family that way really did a number on her and then, well, you know … Lettie Mae …”
Michelle laughed then. Easily. Freely. “Heavens. Lettie Mae …” She picked up her chicken leg and bit into it, chewed, and swallowed. “That’s another thing, Dad. When Lettie Mae died, you’d think Cindie had lost her best friend the way she carried on. You and I both know how it really was.”
“Listen, I never wanted you influenced by Cindie, which is why I saw Trev as quickly as I could about getting custody. I wanted Ali and me to raise you. But I also didn’t want you to feel sliced down the middle when Cindie brought up living with her, which is why I let you decide. You were wise enough. Always had been. But, I felt that—I still feel that—your mom and I were the better option.”
His daughter’s brow shot up. “The best.”
Westley nodded. “Maybe so.”
“Definitely so.”
“I’ll take that. Anyway, I don’t want you to ever think that—even though—and I’m just being honest here—even though Cindie and I were pretty wasted the night you were conceived—”
Michelle feigned shock. “Dad … you don’t mean it.”
He chuckled. “Like you didn’t know.”
She laughed again. “I know. Trust me. Cindie gave me every detail one night when she’d had way too much sake with her Japanese takeout.”
He shook his head. “Well … I want you to know that you were loved. From the get-go. And I also want you to know that Cindie … she loves you, too, Michelle.”
Dust Page 35
