“Checked in? I didn’t exactly think you were on the roster to check in with.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Last time I checked, you were house hunting…again…with Paige. You know, because she didn’t like the shape of your kitchen sink. She much prefers an extra half inch on the side that holds the soap dispenser.”
“Okay, okay, I get it. You’re sore about Paige.”
“Sore? No, I’m not sore. I am accepting.”
“Accepting?” He wiped his mouth and chewed on the side so he could articulate better. “What are you accepting?”
“That you, by voluntary choice of company, are no longer on the roster. It is dwindling by the second. You’re with Paige, which by default drops you. Maggie was…what am I saying? There is no roster. It’s gone…ripped to shreds…gone with the wind. Liz and I text, at most. I haven’t seen her forever. She’s dating internationally now it seems.”
“The roster is gone?” His eyes popped and his mouth hung down. “Tell me it isn’t so. The roster is my hood, my comrades, my Sunday meal ticket. I thought this was just a fad. We’d get back to coming over here and eating the good stuff that made it okay to eat Vienna sausages and cereal all the other days. Because Sunday I’d live again! Assure me this is just a break, a pause in programming?”
“A break? Carter! Maggie and Michael are on skid row, you and Paige are…whatever, and Liz is pretty much chasing anything that smells like Old Spice and can lift a car off the ground. The Sunday meals are over.”
His brow scrunched. “Can we find new friends? Ones without issues?”
I laughed. “Good luck. And what are you saying? I am not inviting Paige, Carter. I told you when you hooked back up with her. I can do a lot in the name of friendship, but she’s my threshold.”
“Okay, okay.” He took a deep breath and helped me pour out some rice to my plate. “Just so you know, Paige is off my roster.” His tone lowered, making it hard to hear him.
“Paige is off your roster? What happened? I thought she was out tonight. Doing whatever with whomever can tolerate her. That’s why you were able to come over. Off your roster?” I sat down on the sofa, holding my plate in mid-air.
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to talk about it. I just mentioned it so you’d know.”
“Don’t want to talk about it? Seriously? That’s like saying you just heard the president is declaring war, but he’d follow up with the details of who and for what after Christmas.” I slapped him on the shoulder. “Tell me the details, Carter. What happened? Did she…” I wanted to say dump you, but I refrained. “Did she give you a reason?”
“Sarah Keller, I don’t want to talk about it. Give me a few days. I’m hungover a bit about it.”
“Okay.” I sat back on the cushion, waiting a second before diving into the chicken and broccoli. Carter and Paige quits? It’s not as if I didn’t see it coming, but I thought she’d wait until the house was purchased and she made him throw out his collectibles again—he liked vintage Star Wars characters. Yes, he even owns a cookie jar in the shape of Darth Vader.
“Now tell me what the SOS was to Liz. You never SOS.”
I ate a perfectly blended bite of rice, chicken, and stalk and thought about how I’d tell him my ordeal, or whether I’d tell him anything at all. I loved talking to the guy, but sometimes it hurt afterwards. Like after pouring out my heart, answering all the right questions, I never got a prize afterward. A dental exam, if you will. That even comes with a prize. Fill a cavity, pick a plastic ring from the cardboard box. I hated those rings, anyway: they always broke by the next day.
“I don’t know. I’m still kinda hungover from it. Let’s just watch something. I’ve got Gilmore Girls streaming.”
“Gilmore Girls? No way. Turn it on wrestling.”
He grabbed the remote, and I lunged for it, crushing my shirt into my plate. “Look what you made me do.”
He looked down at my stained shirt and quickly looked away. “You might wanna change that.”
“Yeah, well, don’t you put on wrestling when I do.”
“Say, when does our little Rosie come back? I miss her taking my sides on this.” He yelled so I could hear him from my room.
“I talked with her this morning. Aunt Heidi said they’ll get into the airport around four tomorrow. I can’t wait.”
I came back into the room with a new shirt. Carter was sitting on the sofa, his empty plate on the table, and he was scanning the channels for something other than girl stuff.
I finished eating my food and we watched a couple episodes of Big Bang Theory. All the while, I’m staring at him when he’s not looking, and I’m thinking why God puts him on my sofa every time I have a problem. The last time was when I was having issues with Jeffrey Smith’s mom. She thought I was targeting her son when I brought him in the office to discuss the fall in his grades. She yelled at me in the hall, during class changes, and I felt rotten all evening. Not that I was wrong, but she was hateful. Said things like what did I know about marriage problems in a house, I was born in a broken family, and still had one now with no father for my child. Seemed she was going through a divorce and Jeffrey was smack-dab in the middle. Carter was in a meeting and didn’t hear the entire beatdown, but came to my rescue that evening. He brought ice cream and let me cry on his shoulder about not having the resources of conventional family to help these kids. He was amazing. And we never did figure out who took Mrs. Smith’s trashcans from the curb that night and rolled them down the hill. She lives a street over from mine, and someone put a sign on them, asking whoever’s they were to remove them so cars could turn the curve.
I stacked the plates and carried them to the kitchen. When I walked back to the living room, he was standing. “Wanna go outside? I need some fresh air.”
“Sure.”
I walked out and breathed in the fresh air. All the noise from next door was finally quiet. All the construction trucks were gone, and the street was quiet. Probably everyone was inside, eating dinner. Although I did hear some kids giggling outside, maybe three houses down. I took a seat on the porch swing and grabbed the throw pillow, hugging it to my stomach. He let out a noise when he sat down—sort of like an old person who was dropping their bones on a chair after making a stride across the room.
“How’s that hangover?” he said quietly, pushing off on the concrete so we could begin swinging.
“Still there. Yours?”
“Fuzzy mouth, light sensitivity, and semi-headache.”
“I hate when that happens. Must’ve been a doozy.”
“Tell me yours, and I might tell you mine.”
I closed my eyes and smelled the petunias I had planted in a nearby pot. There was a slight breeze in the air tonight.
“I went back to Charleston for the weekend.”
“Ahh.”
“Yeah, and I sort of got caught stalking my ex. For what reason, I have no idea. Lunacy? Just wanting to feel more like a loser? You name it—I have no clue what parked my sorry butt outside his house.”
He stopped swinging. “Oh my gosh! Don’t tell me it was him who caught you?”
“Yep. Right there in my little plastic-smelling rental car.”
He grabbed his mouth. “And?”
“And he invited me inside, where I made him an omelet because his lunch burned. Then he invited me for a drink, in which he flew me to Maine, where we got stuck and had to stay the night. In which he made a pass at me, I said no, then we got home, picked up his daughter, who by the way still remembers and likes me possibly as much as I do her, then we awkwardly said good-bye on his porch, and now I’m here. With you. Rocking.”
He turned facing the street again, possibly digesting all that rolled out of my mouth.
“Wow.”
I stared straight ahead. “Wow.”
“He made a pass at you?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes.”
“In which you said no?”
“Correct.”
“Cool.”
“Cool? Did you just say cool?”
“Yeah. Why?” He turned to face me again. “Wait a minute. You sent an SOS to Liz. Does that mean you wish you would’ve done something else with him? And why are you stalking him exactly? I thought you left on bad terms? So bad that that’s why you have Rose and no one knows.”
“Well, I did. He lied about who he had a relationship with—who the mother of his child was. For goodness’ sake, I didn’t even think she was his legitimate child. It was all a lie. She was introduced to me as his niece. And the crazy lady who accosted me at his house—aka, Sophie’s mother—was never going to get a hold of any child of mine.”
“I don’t understand. He chose her over you? I mean, when she came back, he was like, ‘So long, Sarah, this is my crazy baby momma, and I’m choosing her?’ So he didn’t love you? Why was he with you then?”
“I don’t know if he loved me. I want to believe he did. And technically, he thought his ex was gone. Until she returned, that is. And then it was ugly. Divorce ugly. There was a lot more. I’m sparing you all the Amityville details.” Not really, but it sounded like not so much a big deal the way it was coming out.
“I see. But why the SOS? Why are you holed up in your house watching mind-numbing episodes of a single-mom show? This is so not like you.”
“I don’t know. I guess I was feeling some things. Some feelings—stupid feelings.” I pulled at my neck. “I got caught up in the whole family dynamics that were going on in Charleston. Sam, the finished backyard, Sophie, cooking and caring for her. I even sort of liked the weird neighbors, in a run-away-if-you-see-them sort of way. Them, and their food trolley.”
His brow wrinkled. “Okay. So you don’t have Sam, and your backyard is iffy, but you have Rose. That’s the most important thing to remember.”
“And exactly why I’ll never have Sam.”
“Then you want Sam?”
“I can never tell him about Rose. It doesn’t matter. But then, after talking to Maggie, I’ll never have anyone now anyway.”
“What did she say to you? I didn’t realize she was talking to you again. Did you call her for advice?”
“Not exactly. She called for advice from me. She went out on a date, and she was having all these thoughts…and truths about things, and how life would be with another man, and boy was it hitting the nail on the head about me.”
“How?”
“Just that finding another man at this stage…when Rose is five…is a crap shoot. It’s complicated. Will the guy feel slighted if Rose and I laugh at an inside joke? Will I get ticked if he calls her out for doing something bad? Will he love the next child, who, might I add, will be his legitimate child, more than Rose? There’s so many layers. Layers I never considered. Because I was delusional to think I’d fall in love with a single guy who would naturally adopt Rose, because he was stinking crazy about her, and all his family would open their hearts to us, and we’d never be alone again. It would be just like a Hallmark commercial, where people—strangers—would cry when they heard our story and see the love oozing from us, and then wonder how we were ever not a family.”
“You are some kind of overthinking, Sarah Keller.”
“I have to be. It’s Rose we’re talking about. And people just don’t blend anymore.”
“The Brady Bunch proves you wrong.”
I pushed his shoulder and shook my head.
“So you plan to never tell Rose about her biological dad? And then you’ll stay single forever because some theoretical guy could one day theoretically say something offhand to Rose, you’ll recall he’s not her real dad, and then should you ever have another baby, Rose will be locked up in the attic, shunned due to missing DNA, and dark clouds will follow you wherever you go?”
“You catch on quick. It’s a sad destiny. And I don’t even own an attic! Just a little area where pink insulation is stuffed inside the rafters. I had to look before I bought the house. Mysterious holes in my ceiling pose a problem.”
He began swinging us again, his face changing from disbelief to calm.
“Okay, now you.”
“Now me what?”
“The deal was, I show you mine, you show me yours. You know, that misery loves company thing? Tell me about Paige. How is it that you escaped your ankle monitor and made it to my house?”
He held up his ankle. “See here, no ankle bracelet. I came without strings.”
“So she’s at her mom’s? Waiting for you to pick her up, equipped with her favorite pint of ice cream and lotion to rub her feet while eating it?”
“I want to get back to you for a second, shall we?”
“No. You’re hedging. Tell me where Paige is. Did you finally flip and she’s tied up in the kitchen she always complains about? Because I know she knows I picked out the paint color. And she hates me, so naturally she hates the kitchen.”
“She doesn’t mind the paint color.”
“But she hates me?” I knew it; he just had to tell me, and then I wouldn’t feel weird about giving her the eye when I was unfortunate enough to see her in public.
“Sarah, stop. I want you to answer a question.”
“Fine, what? But don’t think I’m letting this one go, Carter.”
He repositioned himself, tucking in his leg and looking at me. “What would you do if Sam called you—”
“He’s already done that.”
“What did he want?”
“I don’t know. I sent it to voicemail, and he didn’t leave one. But then I felt bad, because it could’ve been about Sophie and I said I’d check on her and haven’t. I’m sort of scared to.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to talk to Sam.”
“What if he answered, said he enjoyed having you there, and wants you to come back…permanently?”
“I’ve already touched on that. I told him my life was here now. And whatever happened in the past is a memory. He’s seeing someone, anyway. It’s not like a steady thing, but she pops in off travel and they do whatever. Sophie isn’t a fan, but she evidently leaves earrings on windowsills, so it’s something.”
He sat back. “You’re not over him.”
I slapped his shoulder. “I am.”
“Are not.”
“Am, too. Why would you say that?”
“Because I can see it in your body language. You’re not over him. And that’s fine. A little complicated with the fact of Rose, but it’s fine. I wasn’t over Paige.”
“Wasn’t, or aren’t?”
“Oh no, trust me, I’m over her.”
I sat on the edge of the swing, mouth half-open, staring at him. “Okay, Mr. Williams, spill it. Why are you professing such a monstrous declaration? Where is Paige McAfee hidden? Don’t worry, I’ll give you a head start if the police come poking around, asking questions.”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure where she’s at.”
“Does Liz know about this? She didn’t tell me anything when I spoke with her earlier. Oh my goodness.”
“I didn’t exactly hire a skywriter to announce we were over. As a matter of fact.” He stroked his chin. “Maybe I should have.”
My toes tingled. Currents of electricity shot through my arms. Was he really over Paige? Nah, she just did something mean, as usual, and now he was licking his wounds. They’d be back together. She was nearby, waiting in a bar of twenty sailors, for however long it usually took for Carter to forgive her whatever, and then she’d pop in again, like acne, right before a hot date.
I slid back and stretched my legs forward. “Okay, it’s no big deal. You don’t want to talk about how you spilled her favorite cologne, and now she’s on a warpath, shopping at Macy’s—that’s fine.”
He chuckled. “Okay.”
I sat up and lunged at him, wadding his shirt in my hands. “You better tell me about the cologne, Carter. Now.”
He looked at me. His smile turned to serious. I unclenched his shirt and sat back. That
was weird. Did he just look at my lips? My heart began to speed up, like your car does when you see that yellow light and you just want to make it before it turns red.
He wiped his hands on his dress pants. “We were house shopping, and out of nowhere, she turns to me and says, ‘I’m not into it.’” He did the air quotes thing.
“She does know you’ve bought two houses in the past five years, doesn’t she? And they’re both in the same zip code.”
He smirked. “Yeah, she knows.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. I won’t interrupt.”
He cleared his throat and adjusted the collar on his shirt. “And so anyway, she accused me of not loving her. And you know Paige—if you waver on giving your opinion about condiments, she swears you hate her food and doesn’t cook for the next week. Then you’re saddled with going to Mac’s for dinner every night.”
“Yeah, I speak Paige very well. She even had the gym teacher crying when we were in school. She said she made her feel alienated because she didn’t choose her as team captain. It was a riot. The poor woman actually believed Paige went home and obsessed about it.”
“She has a knack.” He took a deep breath and stretched.
“Okay, so you’re at the house and she turns to you and says that stupid stuff. Then what?”
“I realize it isn’t stupid stuff.”
I swallowed. “Huh?”
“I mean, she’s back, right? And I’m happy because, like you, I imagine the kids, the backyard, me with a grilling apron, making burgers for the winners of the Little League baseball game, and then she comes through my daydream and she’s fussing at me about why I left the cake on the table, and now she doesn’t know whether flies have landed on it and she can’t possibly serve it to guests. Or some nonsense. Maybe I didn’t put a scented thingamabob in the dryer, who knows, and then I think, ‘I don’t want this.’ With her, you know?” He turns to me. “I want the 850 series grill with the chrome buttons, and…”
I smacked him on the shoulder. “Okay, okay.”
He straightened. It was difficult for him to be serious for more than sixty seconds. He only went longer when he was commanding a meeting in a boardroom. It was actually a turn-on. No one-liners, no two-liners with a knee slap—just him, his serious face, a few waves of his manly hands to get the point across, and his very erect posture, pulling at the top knot of his tie occasionally.
Pursuing Sarah (Sarah Series Book 2) Page 21
