The Bridesmaid Wore Sneakers

by Cynthia Thomason

  He leaned close to her ear. “Hope you don’t mind about the gift for Wes. I couldn’t resist. It says it’s for a third grade level, but he’s so smart, I figured he’d get something out of it at his age.”

  “I’m sure he will. Thank you.”

  “Liam, come on.” Wesley was growing impatient.

  “You can get started with him. I’ll finish dinner,” Jude said. “I don’t have much in the way of alcohol here, but I can serve up a beer at least.”

  “That would be great.” Liam sat next to Wes, and Jude twisted the cap off a Budweiser and brought it to him. He took a long swallow and settled back against the cushion. “Okay, Wes, let’s start with the first page, all about the Milky Way.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Jude had supper on the table. Thick stew, hot biscuits and crisp salad. The simple meal exceeded even her expectations, and Liam wolfed down his portion as if stew were his favorite dish in the world. Halfway through, Wesley thanked Liam for coming over. “Mom hardly ever cooks,” he said. “You’ll have to come over every night.”

  Liam laughed. Jude felt her cheeks warm. “There’s a reason I don’t cook much, Wesley. And you know what it is.”

  “Yeah. She’s not very good at it.”

  Jude ruffled his hair in pretended anger. “Whose cooking would you rather eat? Mine or Rosie’s?”

  Wesley pumped his fist in the air. “Rosie’s!”

  “Then don’t complain, or you can do the dishes.”

  As expected, that suggestion was met with round eyes and a shocked expression. “After I clean up, we can get started on the foundation’s books,” she said to Liam. “Wes...”

  “Thanks again for the present, Liam.” Wes smiled.

  “That reminds me,” Liam said. “I was able to pick up three tickets to the Shafran Planetarium for this Sunday. They are having a show geared to kids, and I thought you both would like to go.”

  “A real planetarium?” Wes said.

  “Yes, indeed. With an auditorium and telescopes and people who can tell you all sorts of things about the sky.”

  Wesley looked up at Jude with pleading eyes that had always been able to convince her of almost anything. “We can go, can’t we, Mom?”

  The last thing Jude wanted was to disappoint Wesley, but she hadn’t made up her mind about Liam yet. And even more significant was her growing desire for her instincts about Liam to be totally wrong. She was becoming more comfortable with him every minute. Could Carrie be right? Could Liam symbolize a new beginning for Jude? She was letting her imagination cloud her common sense. “I don’t know for sure, honey. Let me—”

  She never finished her evasive answer. A knock on the door interrupted her. “Who could that be?”

  A call came from the stair landing. “Jude, it’s Dad. Can I come in?”

  “Grandpa!” Again Wesley rushed to open the door.

  Martin came inside. “Whose car is that outside? I didn’t recognize... Oh, it’s you, Liam.”

  “Yes, Dr. Foster, it’s me.”

  Did Jude sense a furtive glance pass between her father and Liam? Good grief, she hoped her father hadn’t talked him into coming tonight. A simple dance was one thing, but coercing a guy into a romance was entirely another!

  “I came up to have a talk with my daughter,” Martin said.

  “We were just about to go over the financial records for the foundation,” Liam said. “Maybe you could come back later.”

  Whoa! Liam practically telling her father what to do. Strange. Jude sensed tenseness in the room. Why were her father and Liam giving each other suggestive glances?

  “I think I’d like to get this over with, Liam,” her father said. “I’ve waited too long as it is.”

  “What’s so urgent?” Jude asked. “Should Liam leave?”

  “No. This concerns him, too.”

  Jude looked at first one, then the other of the men. Liam avoided her gaze by staring at the floor. Her father’s eyes were steely and determined. She didn’t like the way this conversation was headed. And she definitely believed her father and Liam had a connection she didn’t know about. If her father was trying to fix her up as if she were a hard-luck case, she was going to be mortified.

  “Wesley, please take your book into your room and read it in there,” she said.

  He hugged the gift to his chest. “I don’t want to.”

  “Do it anyway.” When he’d left the room, Jude approached her father first. “What’s this about, Dad?”

  “You’re a man of your word, Liam,” Martin said. “You didn’t tell her, and I appreciate that.”

  Jude shot a glance at Liam. “Didn’t tell me what?” Suddenly she felt as if all her misgivings were coming true. Liam hadn’t been straight with her, and her father was using him to offset the grief of the last five years.

  “I wanted to,” he answered. “I would have told you myself. I was about to...”

  “Well, someone better tell me now.”

  Martin gestured toward the sofa. “Honey, sit down.”

  “No, thank you. I’ll stand.”

  “Okay.” Martin took a deep breath. “You know I love you, Jude. At times, you and I have seemed at opposite ends of important issues. And in some ways, your life has had more challenges than the other girls’.”

  “We’re not going to talk about me dropping out of college again, are we, Dad?”

  “No. I’ve made my peace with that. I just mean that you’ve always been a fighter. You believe what you believe and the rest of the world had better get out of your way. Sometimes I admit I didn’t understand that fierceness in you.”

  “This overview of my personality still isn’t making any sense.” She looked to Liam for explanation. He nodded slowly but didn’t speak.

  “Here it is in a nutshell, Jude,” Martin said. “Thanks to all the spending you’ve been doing for the foundation, I’ve been taking some serious hits to my bank balances lately. I hired Liam to straighten out this mess with the books. I thought he could sort through all the projects and eliminate the ones that are a drain to the bank account, my bank account especially.”

  Certain words stuck in Jude’s head. “Hired. Eliminate.”

  “Drain to the bank account.”

  She backed away from her father and took a deep breath to fill her lungs for what she was about to say. “You hired him? A complete stranger is supposed to make decisions about a foundation that I started on my own years ago?”

  “He’s not a stranger,” Martin said. “He’s Lawrence Manning’s son, and Lawrence has always been a good friend. Liam came very well recommended...”

  “Great,” Jude said. “Just not by me.” Betrayal clawed at her stomach. “How could you do that, Dad? This foundation was the only thing that kept me going after Paul died.”

  “That’s part of the problem, honey. You’ve allowed the foundation to occupy the emptiness in your life.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said.

  “Is it? You’re much stronger than you give yourself credit for, Jude. You had Wesley, and you’ve always been a good mother.”

  “I love Wesley, and I loved Paul. And I was doing something worthwhile. How can that be a bad thing? We’ve helped people, Dad. The community depends on us.”

  “I know that, but the spending has gotten out of hand. Besides you and the survivor money you put in, who was your biggest donor, Jude?” Martin asked. “Who gave you the start-up money to get the foundation off the ground?”

  “You know the answer to that. You did. You said at the time that you were happy to help me.”

  “I was. I would have done anything to take away some of that grief that seemed to eat away more of your soul every day. Fifty thousand was a small price to pay to see you involved in something that took your min
d off the loss. And you’re right. A lot of good has come from your help to the community.”

  She shook her head. If her father truly believed what he was saying, then why did he hire an outsider to clean up what he obviously thought was her mess? Weren’t they a family?

  “And now you’re sorry you funded me?” she said.

  “No, now I’m sorry I keep funding you. The foundation was a great experiment at first, but it has grown beyond the ability to be funded by donations. There just aren’t enough of them.”

  She tried to keep her mind clear, to concentrate on something other than her father’s revelation. He’d just called her life’s work an experiment, as if it could be tossed aside as a miserable failure. “Then why not talk to me? Why didn’t you sit down with me and discuss the problems?”

  “I tried, Jude. Remember last Christmas when I wanted you to turn in that wreck of a pickup truck and get a new vehicle? I pointed out that too much money was going for the wrong things, that you should pay yourself a decent salary.” He nodded toward the front door. “In the parking lot right now is the same beat-up old truck. And a couple of months ago, I showed you the bills I received in my mailbox from the feed store. I asked you why the foundation hadn’t paid them, and your answer was the same as always. ‘We’re a little short this month. I’ll pay you back.’”

  She dropped her forehead into her hand. The conversation was typical of many they’d had. And now that she really listened, she knew her father was keeping the foundation afloat. Unfortunately she’d come to depend on her father’s help more than she realized.

  “I didn’t know a few hundred dollars was about to break you, Dad,” she said as tears came to her eyes. She knew that was a snarky thing to say, but she couldn’t help herself. She’d never heard her father complain to her sisters about money. But of course they weren’t so indebted to him.

  “That’s not the point.” He scowled. “And, believe me, it’s a lot more than a few hundred. This is a pattern that’s developing. It’s been five years. This foundation should be viable by now. You should be meeting expenses and paying your bills.” Martin sighed. “Bottom line, Jude, you should have learned how to control the money. You should have said no to a few of these projects.”

  Jude didn’t care about money. She lived in a converted apartment. She kept personal spending to a minimum, all sensible ways to live, she’d believed. And she was grateful for her father’s support, but she hadn’t looked at her money management, or lack of it, from his point of view. “Maybe you’re right,” she admitted. “I have been taking advantage of your generosity, but that doesn’t excuse you for hiring this...”

  She had glanced at Liam a few times since her father had started talking, but now she really looked at him with narrowed eyes, tight lips. He met her gaze until some other part of the room seemed to draw his attention. Was he embarrassed? Did he feel guilty? She felt a little part of her heart break knowing that the thoughts she’d had about him earlier were proving true. He wasn’t just the nice guy she’d hoped he was. And Carrie had been completely wrong. He wasn’t interested in her, and this wasn’t a new beginning.

  “...This Wharton School graduate,” she finished as if Liam had been educated at the university from hell. The words that came from her lips were bitter. “He’s not family, Dad. His father may be a friend of yours, but Liam isn’t. As far as the foundation goes, he’s nobody. And yet you somehow convinced him to work his way into my affairs, into my house, into my son’s life...”

  “That’s not true, Jude,” Liam said. Finally he’d spoken up.

  She shut him down with a simple warning. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “I know I should have talked to you, Jude,” Martin said. “But you and I have never talked easily, not like...” He stopped, looked down.

  “Not like you’ve always been able to talk to Alex, right, Dad? Alex, who brought home awards and listened to every word you said.”

  “Alex had her problems, too, but you’re two different people, even though I love you both the same.”

  Jude exhaled. She didn’t question that her father loved her.

  Martin continued. “I knew you wouldn’t appreciate anyone trying to take the reins just as I knew you probably wouldn’t take my criticism with an open mind. I just wanted Liam to find ways to put the foundation back on track, to save some money. I wanted him to earn your trust and then make suggestions.”

  A bitter laugh came from her throat. There was that word—trust. Next to love, trust was the most important quality in a good marriage. Trust was the basis of all good friendships, business relationships. Trust was everything, and Jude, who had lived the last five years determined never to be taken in by it again, had almost faltered with Liam. “Well, good news, Dad. He almost did.”

  Wesley returned at that moment. “Everyone sounds mad,” he said. “Can I come out now?”

  Jude looked out the window. “It’s still light. You can go down and fill the horses’ water buckets and make sure there’s water in the goats’ trough.”

  “But Johnny Ray isn’t here to help.”

  “Grandpa will help you.” She fixed a stern stare at her father, daring him to refuse.

  After a moment, he took Wesley’s jacket from the hook and handed it to him. He’d never removed his own. “Put this on, Wes. We’ve got work to do.”

  When just she and Liam were in the room, Jude took several deep breaths while she gathered her thoughts. Then she turned to face him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  LIAM HADN’T MOVED. He’d stood by the dining table when Martin came in, and he stood there still. Jude didn’t know what to make of him. With his tie off and his sleeves rolled up, he looked less like perfection. In fact, he looked drained, defeated. And Jude had no sympathy for him.

  She hated herself for nearly succumbing to the same mistake she’d made so often in her life. Her trust issues had begun with the boy who’d talked her into jumping from a tree house into pine needles because “the needles would cushion her fall.” A broken arm had taught her a valuable lesson. Or the “friend” who convinced her the day she got her driver’s license that the police never clocked cars on Route 21. “Open her up,” he’d told Jude. Her father had made her work off the entire two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar speeding ticket.

  Her mother was right. Being too trusting along with being fearless was a bad combination.

  She moved toward Liam. “How much is he paying you?” she asked.

  “Jude...”

  “How much?”

  “Two hundred dollars an hour.”

  “Impressive. Let’s see how that works out. You were here about three hours on Monday. With drive time to the radio station on Wednesday, that’s another two hours.” She stopped, stared at him. “Do you charge extra for convincing your subject that you will be fair and unbiased?”

  “Jude, come on...”

  “Wait, I’m not done with my calculations. I have trouble with numbers, remember?” She began pacing in a small circle. “Then there’s tonight. Another two hours. Wow, Liam, you’ve racked up a whopping fourteen hundred dollars so far.”

  He exhaled. “I’m not billing your father for tonight or Wednesday. Those visits were my idea.”

  “How nice. So, tell me, how did this little charade get started in the first place?”

  “The first I heard about it was at the wedding. My father asked me to listen to what your father needed. I was more or less pressured into helping your dad because of the long friendship between the two. But I didn’t mind taking a look at your books because getting people out of financial messes is what I do, and I’m darn good at it.”

  “So you’ve told me a number of times. And you agreed to the secrecy, the whole thing?”

  “I was against the deception from the start. I told your father that, but
he convinced me that you wouldn’t listen to him, and anyway he wasn’t comfortable taking this role with you. He felt you would benefit from professional, not fatherly, advice.”

  “Advice like ‘Watch out, Jude, or your foundation will go belly-up by the new year.’”

  He grimaced. “I already admitted that was an exaggeration, but if your dad withdraws his support, and nothing changes, your days of keeping the foundation afloat are numbered. That’s the truth.”

  “My father wouldn’t withdraw his support. Now that I know how he feels, I’ll pinch a few more pennies, work harder at paying the foundation’s bills.”

  “Jude, that’s fine, a good start, but you need someone with a financial background to step in. We’re talking about a substantial sum of money here.”

  She tapped her finger against her bottom lip. “Here’s how I see it, Liam. My father believes you’re a financial genius, and maybe you are. But I believe you’re just a fancy hatchet man who will take it upon himself to see which projects the foundation continues to support and which ones will be left out in the cold.”

  “I don’t appreciate the terminology, but yes, I will make suggestions. Just with the little time I’ve spent looking at your books, I’ve uncovered some serious trouble spots. You’ve got too many projects going on. Caring for that menagerie in the barnyard is eating away ridiculous amounts of money. If you don’t curb the spending, those goats will never make it to Central America.”

  Jude thought of Paul and her eyes burned. She felt them fill with unshed tears again, but not from missing him. This time she wanted to cry because she’d disappointed him—and herself. For five years, she had carried the burden of trying to make things right with her dead husband. She’d almost hated him for deserting her, for dying on her after begging her to trust him. What kind of wife had those feelings? The foundation had become a way to redeem herself.