Kids on the Doorstep

by Kimberly Van Meter

  “That’s what I was thinking. But you know it might be good for you, too.”

  She looked at him sharply, her fine-boned features narrowing in suspicion. “Why me? There’s nothing wrong with me. I don’t need to talk to anyone.”

  “That’s where our opinions differ. You’re pretty mad at your mom. I think it might help to talk to someone about it.”

  She snorted. “How’s that supposed to help? Is this her idea? Did she put you up to this?”

  He shook his head solemnly. “No. The blame falls squarely on my shoulders.”

  Alexis turned away, her gaze finding the scenery again. “Well, I don’t want to. Taylor and Chloe can go. I don’t need it. Just send Renee away and everything will be fine. I can take care of my sisters and you. We don’t need her, anyway. I can’t believe I actually told her she should marry you.” She laughed, but that sound coming out of her small mouth was harsh and unforgiving, and John had his answer even if it wasn’t something she was going to agree with. “She should just leave. Everyone would be happier.”

  “You think so?” he asked, though he knew the opposite to be true simply by the sad quiver in her stiff upper lip. “Well, we’ll have to see what happens. In the meantime, I think you ought to consider what I said.”

  She shot him a dark glare but remained quiet. Something told him her silence wasn’t voluntary. He had a feeling if she’d tried to say anything the tremble in her voice would reveal far more than she was comfortable sharing.

  He knew that anger, how it mixed with fear and longing to jumble a young mind. As often as he’d gone to bed every night hating his father for leaving like the coward he was, there were times when he was ashamed to admit he would’ve done anything to be relieved of the burden he carried for his mom and brother. He rubbed his chin absently. He’d been a teenager when their dad flew the coop. It was a lifetime ago but he remembered the anger…the same anger he felt radiating from the little girl across the seat from him. But there was something else he remembered and this part was probably the same thing that was tripping Alexis up, too—as much as he’d hated his father, a part of him had still loved him. Just like Alexis loved her mother. No matter how hard she tried not to.

  RENEE WENT VERY STILL. “You think my girls need…professional help?” Badmotherbadmotherbadmother—the damning words were all she heard in her head no matter how she tried to remain calm and rational. Her shoulders tensed but she tried a disarming smile as she continued to clean the kitchen after that night’s dinner. “Well, maybe when we get settled somewhere else I’ll look into it,” she offered with a shrug. “But for now…I think we all have our hands full with just getting through this weird custody…uh, situation.”

  “You won’t.” His knowing comment almost made her drop the bowl in her hand. Carefully placing it on the counter, she turned to face him. His tanned face, creased at the corners of his eyes from too much time spent in the sun, scanned her own and she felt ridiculously exposed. The man saw too much and that was dangerous.

  He continued softly, “You’re just saying what you think I want to hear.”

  “So? What difference does it make? My girls are not your concern. I appreciate your suggestion but I don’t agree with you. All my girls need is to get out of here and back to a normal life.”

  He stood abruptly. “A normal life? Is that what they had with you?”

  God, no, but she wasn’t going to admit to that. It was going to be different this time around. She lifted her chin. “I’m their family. Not you. I decide what they need. And what they need is something less…uncertain.”

  He expelled a short, annoyed breath. “All you know is uncertainty. If you don’t know what it’s like to be stable how are you supposed to give it to the girls? What’s your plan if you get custody back? What then? Just pack them in the car, close your eyes and let your finger drop on a map?”

  “And what if I did?” She shot back, hating that he’d struck a raw, very tender nerve. She didn’t know where they would go but at least they’d be together and that’s what counted, right? She threw the dish towel to the counter and closed the distance between them. “And what do you mean if I get custody back? It’s a matter of time before the judge comes to his senses and I get my girls.”

  “You’re not going to drag those girls around while you try to figure out what to be when you grow up. They have stability here. And you’re ignoring a very serious issue because of your own damn insecurities.”

  She gasped and took a faltering step backward, her eyes stinging as surely as if he’d backhanded her. “How dare—”

  With the quick movement of a rattler striking, he jerked her to him, his grasp rough but his eyes held a tender caress that stopped the breath in her chest. “Woman, stop thinking of only yourself. Those girls need you to be their mama…not their friend or buddy. And they need professional help.” He held her tightly, his mouth compressed to a hard line but her stomach twisted in confusion when her own lips parted as if in invitation. He pulled away slowly. “They need their mama to do what’s right for them. Even if it doesn’t feel good and damn near breaks your heart to do it.”

  The tears that sprang to her eyes a second ago slipped down her cheeks and she swallowed convulsively. “What if the counselor makes them hate me even more? I left them. What kind of mother am I?” Self-loathing curdled in her stomach and her mouth suddenly hungered for the smooth, liquid anesthetic of a shot of Jack Daniel’s. For a split second, she could nearly taste it at the back of her throat. Horrified, she sprang from John’s arms and immediately put a good distance between them. “I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  Can’t feel anything for you. Can’t let anyone else into my girls’ heads. Can’t forgive myself for leaving them in that situation. Oh, God…can’t deal…

  “Renee?” John’s soft voice pierced her heart clean through and she took a step back as he took one forward. “Wait…”

  She put her hands up, stopping him with a whisper. “No.” Shaking her head, she backed away. She had to get away from him, from the feeling in her chest, from the ache in her heart. It was too much.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS John and Renee kept their distance from one another, both preferring to keep what had happened between them locked in the privacy of their memories. They made polite, stilted conversation for the girls’ sake until John felt ready to jump out of his skin.

  Sitting across from her at the dinner table, Gladys seated to his left while the girls filled the rest of the empty seats around them, John wondered if this was what hell felt like.

  Gladys tucked into her lasagna with gusto, proving that something as small as surgery couldn’t put a damper on her appetite, and John pretended not to notice the furtive glances Renee sent his way when she thought he wasn’t paying attention. What a right mess he’d made of things, he groused silently, shoveling a large bite into his mouth before he was tempted to let the words percolating in his brain fly. He didn’t know much about recovery or the process or even what it entailed aside from avoiding whatever it was that put you in that situation in the first place, but he did know that Renee was acting like a fool about this counselor business. Now was no time to start acting selfish but that’s exactly what she was doing.

  “John? Did you hear me?” Gladys broke into his turbulent thoughts. She frowned. “You’re as friendly as a winter bear right now. What’s got you all twisted up tonight?”

  He shot an accusatory glare Renee’s way but his gaze slid away before Gladys could call him on it. He shook his head and stuffed another bite in his mouth, speaking around the cheese burning his tongue, “Nothing. Just hungry.”

  Gladys eyed him speculatively but let it go for Taylor, as usual, filled the silence with her chatter until she’d exhausted all her pent-up news for the day. Chloe giggled as Taylor slumped against her chair with a melodramatic sigh and declared, “Yep. Mrs. H. says learnin’ is hard work and it must be true ’cuz I’
m exhausted. May I be excused, Mr. John?” She let loose a yawn and rubbed her bleary eyes. “I think I better hit the haysack.”

  “It’s hit the hay, dumb-dumb,” Alexis muttered, earning a frown from Renee that she completely ignored as John nodded. “C’mon, I’ll get your bath ready.”

  Chloe and Taylor slid from their chairs ready to follow their sister when Renee stood and intervened. “I’ll get their baths ready, Alexis. You go ahead and finish your homework.”

  “I’ll do it after their baths.”

  Renee placed her napkin down with a gentle, restrained movement that mirrored the subtle pull of her lips as she tried asserting her authority again. “No. I want to help the girls. Go on. Please don’t argue with me.”

  Alexis looked to John or Gladys for help and when neither seemed ready to back her up, she lifted her chin and threw a “whatever” over her shoulder before disappearing from the room in an angry huff.

  “Preteens,” Gladys quipped as if teenage hormones were to blame for Alexis’s attitude. She helped herself to another garlic bread as she said cheerfully, “Well, look at the bright side, you only have seven more years before she returns to normal. Not so bad if you ask me. Although I never had kids of my own so who am I to judge?”

  Gladys chuckled at her statement and took a big bite.

  “Maybe you ought to go easy on the bread and butter, Gladys,” John said, more than a little alarmed at the way Gladys was eating without regard to her doctor’s orders. “You trying to clog another artery?”

  “You hush. I don’t tell you how to eat now do I?”

  “I didn’t have a triple bypass,” he commented wryly, watching as Renee put her plate away and walked from the room with the little girls’ hands tucked into her own. She wore a smile but John sensed the pain it was hiding. The situation with Alexis was killing her but she was too damn stubborn to ask for help. Even from a professional.

  As soon as Renee was out of earshot Gladys dropped the innocent chatter and pinned John with a look that made him squirm in spite of the fact that he was a grown adult.

  “What’s going on with you two?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s a line of bullshit if I ever heard one. I may be old but I’m not blind. There’s definitely something going on and I want to know what it is.”

  He stood and took his and Gladys’s plate to the sink even as she protested that she wasn’t finished. He arched one brow at her. “I’m not going to watch you put yourself into an early grave with a second helping of lasagna.”

  “Fine. But you’re not going to stop me from having a cookie. Bring me one, if you please.”

  He sighed and selected the smallest on the plate. Handing it to her, he leaned against the counter. “I think Renee and the girls should see a counselor,” he admitted slowly, looking up to catch Gladys’s reaction. Hell, maybe Renee was right and he ought to leave well enough alone between them but as Gladys, a woman he trusted above all others nodded her head in understanding, he felt a weight drop from his shoulders. “What happened to them…it’s left its mark. I think it’s more than Renee can handle.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Wait a minute…“What do you mean perhaps? I thought you agreed with me.”

  “Johnny-boy, you always were a smart one but you have a lot to learn about how a woman thinks, especially a mother.”

  “What makes you say that?” He tried not to be offended but his ego felt a little tweaked.

  Gladys smoothed the crumbs from the surface of the oak table into her palm and rose to deposit them into the trash. “You can’t possibly imagine the guilt that woman is feeling about what her girls went through. From the outside looking in it’s easy to assume that she’s being selfish for not wanting to send her girls to a shrink. But think of things from her side of the door. Would you want someone to know your private hurts and humiliations and be judged for them?”

  “It’s not about her.” He wanted to snap but somehow kept his voice calm. “It’s about the girls. They need help.”

  “I don’t disagree with you. But she’s not ready to take that step with them and it’ll have to be together or they’ll just get in each other’s way. She needs to believe that she’s a good mother before she can let someone else come in and start poking the tender spots. You understand?”

  “Sort of,” he admitted. “So what should I do? I can’t just sit by and watch as Chloe continues to scream at night and Taylor is terrified that her daddy is going to show up and take them away and Alexis…she’s so angry. I don’t want her to grow up with that inside her. It can warp your mind.”

  Gladys’s warm gaze told him she understood that he spoke of something he knew well and she loved him for his sacrifice. “I don’t want that for her,” he finished quietly.

  “I know. But you can’t make Renee be the person you want her to be unless she’s ready to go there herself. Give her time. She’s scared and trying desperately to make things right. Just help her get there.”

  He didn’t know how to do something halfway. Either he was in or he was out. And he knew there was no kidding himself that he was starting to think of Renee in more ways than just the mother of Gladys’s wards. He was starting to think of the girls as more than just temporary roommates. And a part of him hated it. His life had been turned upside and inside out that rainy night and he didn’t know how to make it right again. A sinking feeling in his gut told him that making it right had nothing to do with emptying his house of his guests.

  And he was man enough to admit that scared the shit out of him. He was a bachelor for a reason. He was surly, cantankerous, a plain grouch on the best of days. Animals were the only ones who didn’t seem to hold any of those traits against him.

  Yeah, but let’s be honest, when was the last time you felt satisfied with just a one-way conversation held in the barn with a horse’s hoof between your palms?

  It’s been awhile, he admitted to himself and bit back the sigh that wanted to follow. That put him in a bit of a predicament that he didn’t know the answer to but he knew it had Renee written all over it.

  RENEE TUCKED HER YOUNGEST daughters into bed, trying not to let Alexis’s attitude douse the joy that giving the girls their bath had created. Such a simple thing but God, she’d missed it. Singing “Oh, I wish I were a little bar of soap” with the girls as they giggled and splashed, washing their beautiful blond hair and then gently combing out the snarls gave her a peace she hadn’t felt in a long time. Except for the fact that Alexis refused to look at her and when she did spear a glance her way, it was black with open resentment. Renee couldn’t help but shrink away from that stark emotion, hating the echo of John’s words in her memory.

  She needs a counselor. So do you.

  He was wrong. Her girls didn’t need a head doctor. Just time to see that she’d changed. She risked a warm smile Alexis’s way and was instantly rebuffed as Alexis turned, giving Renee her back.

  “Alexis…” she whispered. “I love you.”

  In return, Renee received silence. She swallowed and vowed not to give up.

  ALEXIS SAT ACROSS FROM the woman at the table and nerves made her tummy ache. The woman was from social services. She smiled a lot and scribbled notes on her little pad but Alexis knew things were not going well. At least not by Alexis’s way of thinking. Renee was winning. At this rate, she’d have them packed up and gone within the hour if this kept up and Alexis was not going anywhere with her mother.

  “Alexis, how are you enjoying your new school?” she asked.

  “I love it,” she answered eagerly, putting as much emphasis on the words as possible. Shooting Renee a dark look she added, “It’s a better school than any of the schools I’ve ever been to.”

  “Oh? Have you been in a lot of schools?” she asked.

  Alexis nodded. “Oh, yes. My parents didn’t like to stick around one place too long. I guess right about when the bill collectors started calling is when we’d split. Isn’t that right, Rene
e?” She looked innocently at her mother who was gaping at her in shock. Take that and choke on it, she thought smugly.

  Renee colored and took a moment to clear her throat before defending herself. “We made a few mistakes here and there but I’m so glad Alexis has finally found a school she enjoys. That’s all that matters.”

  Ms. Thin As A Pencil scribbled something down and Alexis desperately wanted to read what she’d written. Hopefully, it was something along the lines of “Terrible mother. Give permanent custody to John Murphy.” But Alexis was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen without a little nudging, which she was plenty happy to provide.

  “Do you always call your mother by her name?”

  Renee jumped in before Alexis could answer. “Only recently. Things have been a little bumpy between us but we’re working on it, aren’t we, sweetheart? Before all this happened we were very close, Lexie and I. She was my little helper.”

  Alexis ignored Renee and gave Ms. Social Services a sad nod. “Well, someone had to pick up the booze bottles in the morning and get the babies breakfast ’cuz she and Daddy sure as heck weren’t going to do it. Remember that time you slept all day and Chloe got a really bad diaper rash ’cuz you let her sit in a poopy diaper all day? I would’ve changed her but we were out of diapers.”

  Renee paled and her mouth compressed to a fine, tight line, so much so that Alexis wasn’t quite sure if she was going to be able to get the words out but she did. Barely.

  “Alexis, that’s enough. Ms. Nagle doesn’t want to hear about things that happened in the past. She wants to hear about how well we’re all doing now.”

  “You’re right. Things are so much better now that Daddy is gone and you’re no longer our mother.” She turned to Ms. Nagle who was watching the scene unfold with alarm and pleaded with the woman. “Don’t give us back to her. She doesn’t want us. She just doesn’t want Mr. John to have us because she’s jealous that we’re finally happy and she’s not. I hate her and if you send us back I will run away and no one will never find me! I promise!”