Wood U (Carved Hearts #4)

by L. G. Pace III

  Her cheeks were flushed, and when she spoke it was with an icy tone.

  “So that’s it? You blame me for your father’s choices? Is that how it’s going to be?”

  “No, mom,” I replied. “Unlike you, dad owns his mistakes. He has plenty of them; don’t get me wrong. But at least he admits that he screwed up. And he isn’t the only one who made mistakes. You were the homemaker. Doesn’t that mean that you should have been paying off our bills? Putting money away for a rainy day? Economizing? Because I don’t remember any of that. Did it ever occur to you that if you’d done your job we might have been okay? That when dad hit a slump, he wouldn’t have had to be out on the road almost every day of the year just to keep you in the style to which you were accustomed? Because it sure as hell has occurred to me.”

  She put a hand over her mouth, stifling sobs as she collapsed into her chair. The girl in me reveled at this. Mostly, I just felt sick. This was the woman who wiped my tears, held my hand when I was scared, kept me safe until I was an adult. She wasn’t perfect; but she was my mother, and I loved her. Kneeling in front of her, I pulled her into an embrace. She put up token resistance, then fell against me, sobbing into my shoulder. It took a few minutes for her to calm down, and by the time she did, I knew what I needed to say to her.

  “Mom?” I waited until she looked up into my eyes. “I love you very much. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I know you went through a lot. I don’t want you to think that I’m ungrateful. But I want both my mom and dad in my life, and I need you to be supportive, not tear me down. There’s plenty of people waiting in line to do that.”

  My lungs hurt, and my hamstrings were killing me. After my conversation with my mother, I had to move, and there was no better backdrop than the great outdoors. The incredible majesty of the mountains helped to counterbalance running in higher altitudes and helped distract me a little from how much it was currently kicking my ass.

  As cathartic as it had been to finally tell my mom off, it hadn’t solved much. Though I felt like I’d turned some sort of a corner, it felt like little more than a coming-of-age moment that I should have had years ago. Standing up for myself was so long overdue that I didn’t even feel victorious. It just left me feeling hollow…empty…and lonelier than ever.

  As I turned down the next block, I thought long and hard about the way I’d treated both of my parents. How I’d lashed out at them for the pain they’d caused me and each other all those years ago. So far, I was the only person who hadn’t had to answer to anyone for the way I’d failed to cope. This realization stopped me in my tracks. I pondered this as I paced back and forth, trying to catch my breath in the thin air.

  I’d spent so much time and effort trying to safeguard myself from feeling too deeply and losing control that I wasn’t living any kind of life. But realizing this truth and changing it were two drastically different things. I knew I needed to let go, not entirely like my father with his drugs and my mother with her spending; but I had to ease up on the reigns, or I’d never be close to anyone. I had to take a few chances.

  And I knew just where I wanted to start.

  Finding the nearest park bench, I pulled out my phone, and with The Rockies as my witness, I dialed Mac Hildebrandt’s number. My heart felt like it was blocking my windpipe, and I was trembling all over as I listened to it ring.

  “Hey.” The immediate warmth I heard in his deep voice made me put a hand over my mouth to stifle the sob that nearly escaped me. Completely unprepared for my intense reaction, I inhaled deeply through my nostrils as I tried to get it together.

  “Kelly?” he asked. He sounded as if he was worried that we had a bad connection. I released a shaky breath and plunged forward.

  “Hi.” I said, sounding all wispy and artificial.

  “What’s wrong?” Blatant alarm altered his normally rich tone.

  “I just missed hearing your voice; that’s all.” It wasn’t entirely false, but it was a lot more honesty than I’d intended. I heard him exhale and feared he’d hang up before I could say what I needed to say.

  “Look, Sugar—” he started, but I’d come this far and I had to get it all out. Everything.

  “Mac,” I interrupted. “I’m so sorry. I know you think I’m the biggest bitch, but I never meant to cause trouble for you and M.J.”

  “Kelly, I know—” he murmured, but I wasn’t done.

  “I’m a total fuck up, and I went about things totally backwards. I never thought for one second that you were neglecting him. I would have handled things a hell of a lot better if it weren’t for fucking Paula! She took a picture of us at Fixe and shared it all over the internet and I thought I was going to lose my job—”

  “What?” he blurted, but I plundered right on without so much as a pause.

  “She got into trouble instead of me, but I freaked out and ditched you at my place, and now you probably hate me. I miss you, and I’m a total dick, and I’m so sorry.” Now that I’d said it all, and so badly, I finally took a breath. I realized that he’d fallen silent, and my skin started to crawl as I worried that he’d hung up on me.

  “Are you still there?” I whispered, feeling like an idiot.

  Then, as if he were standing directly beside me whispering in my ear, I heard the deep rumble of his voice. “I’m still here.”

  I waited. I wanted to fill the silence, but it wasn’t mine to fill.

  “Kelly…” My name sounded reverent rolling off his tongue. I’d always hated my nickname, though Kelly was a vast improvement over my given name. Hearing Mac say it suddenly made it a hell of a lot more appealing. “I tried to call you.”

  “I know. I didn’t hear the phone…” I could hear all sorts of ruckus in the background wherever he was, and it suddenly occurred to me that he hadn’t just been sitting around waiting for me to call. “You’re out with someone.”

  “Yeah…” he responded, his reluctance to admit it to me obvious.

  “I shouldn’t have ambushed you,” I hurried to backpedal. “I’ll let you get back to your date.”

  He laughed good-naturedly, and I wasn’t sure whether to be angry or comforted by the sound.

  “Kelly, just stop,” he insisted. His placating delivery was like a chiffon throw around me, and I perked up immediately. “I’m at Chuck E Cheese with M.J. One of his classmates is having a birthday party. I’m staring down a six-foot, four-inch furry rat as we speak.”

  I laughed, and the tension just seemed to flow out of my body.

  “The party’s over at seven.” His anxious words sounded rich like honey. “We’ll be home by about seven forty-five if you want to come over.”

  “Oh,” I sighed, wishing like hell it was a possibility. “No, I can’t.”

  “Junior sleeps like a log and he’s going to be out the second his head hits the pillow tonight, guaranteed.” He sounded emphatic, and I was a willing mark for his sales-pitch. “I need to see you, Sugar.”

  “I’m in Colorado,” I admitted. “Visiting my mom.”

  “Fuck.” He muttered under his breath. “When are you coming home?”

  Mom and I spent the next few days going through her scrap books. It’s what she wanted to do, but it also opened the door for me to ask a lot of lingering questions. She swore she hadn’t been seeing Dad’s boss before his disappearance. She claimed it started the day we went to see him at the office, and I decided I believed her. The timing of their relationship had been a festering point of contention that I was glad to let rest.

  When we got to my senior pictures in her latest scrapbook, I burst out laughing at the dated fashions and hair.

  Mom smiled. “You were always so pretty, Raquel. You really did get the best of both of us.”

  I surveyed my mother over the open scrapbook on my lap and was surprised to see her wistful expression looked genuine. “Then why did you harp on me about my skin all the time? You slapped me when I gained ten pounds and told me I looked like I was pregnant.”

 
Though I said these things without any of the animosity I’d felt at the time, she started crying again. Only this time, her tears weren’t loud and showy.

  “I hoped you’d forget those things.” She took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. “I was always so jealous of how you looked. I’ve always struggled with my weight, and your dad was a beanpole. You were always like him. When you started eating junk, I worried for you. My mom always beat it into me that my looks were everything…my only valuable commodity, really. I’m sorry if I passed all of that onto you. I guess we’re all just products of our childhoods.”

  I never knew my father’s parents. They both died long before I was born. He was ten years older than my mother, and they’d met at the country club where my mother’s parents were members. She was from Chicago, but we’d rarely gone to visit. My mother’s folks sent me birthday cards and called on occasion, but we visited them very sporadically, and it was always a very formal affair. I was too young to remember much about them. Not having Grandmas and Grandpas in my life was always a sore spot for me as a kid. I envied my friends who went to grandmas for the holidays. From the expression on Mom’s face, I had a feeling I was better for missing the experience.

  “Here’s one you might like. This one has your dad in it.” She handed me a small scrap book that looked brand new. I opened it to the page she’d place-marked, and the photo took my breath away.

  “You loved that swimsuit. You never wanted to take it off.” She beamed, and the flood of images that accompanied the photo were more than I was prepared to deal with. The swimsuit was red, with white polka dots. I looked to be about four years old. My mother sat beside me, and on the other end of the photograph was my father, looking much younger and less weathered by the hands of time.

  Memories flickered like an old pull chain light coming to life. Orange Creamsicles, the smell of saltwater, and Daddy singing me to sleep with the song “San Antonio Rose.” I remembered Mommy’s laugh, as light and airy as a spring rain as she helped me build sandcastles. My memories weren’t all rainbows and sunshine, but it didn’t mean there weren’t a few that were exactly that.

  A large fold mark marred the center of the picture, and I ran my finger down it slowly, understanding all of the symbolism associated with the crease. I understood why my mother had folded him out of the picture for so many years, but I was grateful that as angry as she’d been, she’d never stopped to take scissors to it.

  “I’m sorry,” Mom said, seeing my distress at the scarred photo. “For a long, long time, I couldn’t look at him. Not even in a photograph.”

  “He told me about this. The swimsuit. But I didn’t remember,” I mused, studying the photograph closely. I looked at the couple smiling at each other over my tiny head, and wondered if they knew then what they know now, if they’d have bothered having me at all.

  “You were pretty little,” she offered, turning the page for me to see a few more photos of my dad that had somehow managed to survive throughout the years. Me on the piano bench with Dad (I looked to be about ten), me near the picture window with my father, wearing a crown of flowers on my head.

  “I don’t remember any of these,” I admitted, feeling a bit mystified. Mom nodded sheepishly.

  “I boxed them all up. I destroyed the rest of the pictures he was in. Had a little bonfire one night after you told me not to talk to you about your dad. Do you remember that?”

  I nodded. In her grief, Mom had taken to venting to me about him and all the problems his leaving had caused us. She’d tell me details I had no business knowing as a kid. It was hard to hear those things about him, though I was as angry at him as she was. Finally, I blew up at her one day and yelled at her to not talk about my dad like that. She’d clammed up after that, though it hadn’t stopped the occasional snide comment.

  “This is about all that’s left.” She glanced at me nervously. “I’m sorry, hon. I should have saved them all for you. Hindsight is always clear as crystal, know what I mean?”

  “Can I have these?” I cradled the scrapbook close to my chest, as if she might decide to snatch it from me and hurry off to the fireplace.

  “Of course you can. I made it for you.” She gave me a little side hug, and for the first time since my father had resurfaced, I had a real sense that my own version of “family” was coming together.

  I KNEW THAT showing up at the airport was a ballsy move. Kelly would either be overjoyed to see me, or she would think I was a stalker and tell me to get lost for good. Honestly, I hadn’t really planned on being there. She’d told me when her flight was coming in, and I planned to make myself available that night in case she wanted to go out. My plan was to play it cool, let her come to me, and try to retain some of my dignity. That plan got all shot to shit that morning when I got out of bed.

  MJ was with his mom, and Patty had been on her best behavior lately. She’d even taken him down to Schlitterbahn, a nearby water park. They’d caravanned down with her sister’s family, which was the most ambitious Patty had been when it came to doing something M.J. was interested in since he’d been born. The way she’d been acting, I was starting to think we were turning a corner with her bullshit antics.

  Since I had the day to myself, I’d planned on taking my bike out for a long ride in the country. But it wasn’t what I really wanted to do. Knowing when and where Kelly would be sealed the deal. I realized that without even trying, she’d wrapped me around her little finger the night I’d spoiled her blind date with the Rhinestone Cowboy. Once I acknowledged this truth, a sense of calm came over me.

  So it really wasn’t surprising when I found myself in the short term parking at the Austin Airport. I wandered inside and checked the board. I’d arrived just in time; Kelly’s plane had just landed and she was probably waiting at the baggage carousel. I hurried to catch her.

  I came through the crowd just as she was about to grab her bag off the belt, and I snatched it up and away from her. Turning toward me with fiery eyes, she froze when she realized it was me who’d taken her suitcase. Her face lit up in surprise and joy. She dropped her purse and carry-on and rushed toward me, fusing her lips to mine with such possessive ferocity that I nearly fell over. I carefully released her suitcase and wrapped my arms around her tiny frame, savoring the familiar taste and scent of her. When she finally let me up for air, her arms remained around my neck, as if she was afraid I’d get away from her again if she did.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” she purred, then her eyes went wide and shifty. “Did you bring M.J. with you?”

  “Nope, he’s off with his mom,” I said, running my thumb across her delicious lips. She visibly relaxed, and it felt as if she was melting into me. “You got me all to yourself. Wanna go out?”

  “No.” She replied, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “I’d like to stay in, if it’s all the same to you.”

  She followed me back to my place, and we spent the day testing the tensile strength of most of the furniture in my house. The faces she made while we were in the throes made it hard for me to hold back sometimes. Hell, just being in the same room with her constantly gave me wood.

  One piece of furniture didn’t survive our sex marathon, but I assured Kelly it’d be better than new when I was done with it. She laughed, a genuine, jubilant sound, and when she nestled down into my arms, I didn’t want to give her up.

  She told me all about the incident with the nosy secretary and Principal Higgins, and though the entire story pissed me off, I laughed at the Principal’s reaction.

  “I still can’t be in the office for more than a few minutes at a time because I don’t trust myself not to do something evil to Paula,” she said, and I couldn’t help but chuckle. She was about as ferocious as Bambi, but it was fun to watch her all riled up.

  She talked a little about her visit with her mom, and I was surprised to hear that that relationship was just as questionable, but far more complicated than the one with Francis. I laughed my ass off when she told me about the two
of them having it out in the spa. After what Joe had told me about her jumping Francis’s shit at the shop, this occurrence really didn’t surprise me.

  “You’re a little spitfire, Sugar,” I mused, brushing her silky hair out of the way so that I could look into those amazing eyes of hers. “Ya gonna punish me if I piss you off?”

  “You want me to?” Her lip curled coyly, and I was turned on all over again.

  We spent the next couple of hours arguing over whether to watch American Ninja Warrior or Downton Abbey. She teased me when she found salad and freshly squeezed orange juice in my fridge, but I refused to serve it to her. I ordered Armadillo Eggs and ribs and teased her until she ate some. Later that night before we drifted off, Kelly told me she would only stay over when M.J. wasn’t home. As she put it, “We don’t want to confuse him. This is our business, and we need to try to keep it private.”

  It was a thoroughly tiring and satisfying weekend. By the time I went to pick up MJ the following afternoon, Kelly had me feeling like a teenager again. Junior was all happy chatter about his time with his mother, and Patty was almost friendly to me. For the first time in a long-ass stretch, everything in my world seemed right.

  As the night wore on, and after I got Junior into the bathtub, doubt slowly crept in. Kelly was a complicated, worldly woman, and I was just a redneck from Texas. It seemed like it would only be a matter of time before she’d wise up and give me “the talk.” My buddies and I had all been on the receiving end of “the talk” at one time or another. Well, maybe not Joe, but everyone else I knew. The “it’s not you; it’s me” talk. It was usually the result of a woman realizing that she could do so much better than you.

  Weeks passed and “the talk” never came, though we had plenty of stressful situations that could have triggered it. Our first big shitshow happened a couple of weeks later on Mason’s and my birthday weekend. Kelly was staying at my place. With her dad living across the hall from her, she didn’t want any of us subjected to an awkward, walk-of-shame-style encounter.