Love on Mimosa Lane (A Seasons of the Heart Novel)

by Anna DeStefano

  He drank again.

  Law shook his head, recalling the endless list of other misfires and off-schedule details Vic had come into McC’s to good-naturedly rant about over the last few months. “Landscapers. Can’t live with ’em. Can’t—”

  “Shoot ’em?” Vic pulled off his Atlanta Braves baseball cap and rubbed his hair back from his eyes. “It’s no big deal. They’re just plants that no one will notice.”

  “No one except for Julia.”

  “So my job’s to make sure her pretty border shrubs show up and are installed without another hitch.”

  “Except there’s always another hitch.”

  “Hell, hitch is my middle name.” Vic took another swallow. “But come later tonight, I’ll be sleeping like a baby for the first time since I took the gig. And Friday, I’m taking my bonus and my wife on a long weekend down to the beach.” He held his mug up in a salute. “It’s all good.”

  Law envied the other man his confidence, his contentment, and his plans, even though Vic had been frustrated beyond bearing more than once on this project. The end of his troubles in sight, Vic was looking past the crazy afternoon ahead, and forward to the good things waiting on the other side.

  Law couldn’t remember the last time tomorrow had loomed before him with that kind of optimism attached.

  “Crystal will have your Reuben out in just a few.” He kept his tone conversational, when he felt like pouring a drink for himself and finding a silent corner to stew over everything that had happened at school yesterday, and since.

  The impulse to use alcohol to cope with problems would always be there, even though he’d been sober since before his daughter’s birth. He’d never again give in to it. But that hadn’t stopped Libby—a recovering alcoholic herself—from using his past against him to convince a judge to award her primary custody of their child.

  No one in Chandlerville knew she’d been the one who’d fallen off the wagon the year before they’d moved here. Law’s reluctantly reaching out to his brother, asking Dan to hook him up with the job at McC’s and a house Law and Libby could lease, had been Law’s last-ditch attempt to support his wife’s recovery and give their marriage a final chance. She’d begged him for the change. He’d done it for her, for his daughter, for them, even though he’d happily have gone the rest of his life without dealing with his family. And then he’d refused to make her blip in sobriety an issue during their divorce, against his low-rent lawyer’s advice.

  Not that either concession had earned him Libby’s goodwill.

  After making a complete disaster out of the world Chloe’d been born into, he was willing to live his life under a microscope and let people in town think what they would of him, rather than publicly challenging Libby’s accusations. Chloe’s finally having some peace at home was all he cared about now. But that wasn’t going to happen until his ex-wife stopped demanding more—more that he owed her, while Libby refused to lift a finger to help herself.

  His mind veered toward images of a true fighter, toward thoughts of Kristen and the voice mail she’d left a few hours ago. All she’d said was to call her back, most likely about yesterday. He had no idea how things were going with Fin, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Chloe had been giving him the silent treatment since last night, Libby was still giving him hell, and he shouldn’t be wanting Kristen to continue contacting him about anything.

  Except he did.

  He thought about her genuine concern for his child and Fin, and her seemingly sincere belief that Law was a good guy despite the bad rep Libby had worked so hard to hang on him. And heaven help them all, he really, really wanted to listen to Kristen’s voice mail again and return her call and see her again. Touch her again.

  “Can’t believe how hot it still is outside.” Vic took another sip of his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s November, man. It’s just wrong to be thinking of running the air-conditioning in a few weeks, when my wife’s got half her family over for Thanksgiving. The kitchen will be going full-steam. If this weather doesn’t break, the house will be like a sauna.”

  Law had an unwanted flash of how the holiday season would likely go for him. The prospect didn’t improve his mood.

  His and Libby’s newly minted custody agreement said they were to share Chloe for the holidays, alternating Thanksgiving and Christmas. But Libby was already complaining. She’d been dropping hints, mostly when Chloe was around to hear, that her daughter should be able to spend both holidays in her own home. Law would either have to put his foot down and force his ex to abide by the judge’s ruling, dragging their daughter into yet another melodrama, or he’d cave, and let Chloe have Thanksgiving and Christmas with Libby, while he cooled his heels in his empty apartment.

  “At least you won’t be freezing your butt off doing your day job this winter,” he consoled Vic. “That’s not such a bad trade-off for wearing Bermuda shorts while you fake being up for things like turkey and cranberries.”

  His customer chuckled. “Plus when the kids and their cousins get on our nerves, we can toss ’em outside without worrying about anyone catching cold.”

  “Now you’re talking…” Law poured himself a glass of seltzer, thinking how much he’d love to spend all of Thanksgiving outside with his daughter, playing the game they both enjoyed.

  When he’d first discovered soccer, at about the same age as Chloe was now, he’d found something else in life that he was good at besides getting on his parents’ nerves playing his guitar and drums at all hours of the day and night. That fresh taste of freedom, no matter how much the adults in his world continued to try to control him, had been a godsend. And even though music was now no longer an option, the sport that had saved him, the same way as composing and performing his own songs once had, was still his. Every winter or summer day he got to head outside and lose himself in kicking a ball around, especially when he was doing it with his kid, was one more than he deserved.

  But had his and Chloe’s time together, just the two of them on the practice field, made a difference at all to his daughter? Chloe no longer wanted anything to do with the sport.

  Vic threw back a handful of peanuts from the bowl Law had placed in front of him. “Yeah. I guess there could be worse things than living in paradise.”

  Paradise…

  The word seemed to hang in the air around them.

  Law’s memories served up another image of Kristen, decked out in yesterday’s pale blue pantsuit, so professional it made him long to see what she looked like bedraggled and out of control. Then he pictured Fin’s face, the boy looking up at Law with a desperate mixture of panic and excitement at the thought of joining a soccer team he wasn’t supposed to have cared about playing on. Then of Libby, and then his parents, and all the times they’d made sure Law knew just how little he’d accomplished with his life.

  Law drained the last of his seltzer, wishing for about the tenth time that day that it was something stronger. He’d done his time for the reckless mistakes he’d made in his twenties. He’d never again give the family of his childhood or his ex-wife the power to mess with him to the point that he’d screw up his future by thinking he needed alcohol to deal with them.

  His hand was reaching for the whiskey, and he was pouring two fingers into a shot glass, before he realized what he was doing and stopped himself. The shock of it had his ears ringing, numbness spreading through him. He pushed the booze away. He braced his hands on the oak bar on either side of the glass and stared at the amber liquid inside.

  Thank God Vic had lost interest in their conversation. He was enjoying the lunch Crystal had brought out from the kitchen, fully engrossed in whatever was on the flat-screen hanging on the wall above Law’s head. All while Law’s mouth was watering for a taste of the escape that awaited him at the bottom of a bottle.

  Well, hell.

  Every sponsor had warned him
that working in a bar was off-the-charts risky for a man who could never take another drink, or he’d relapse back to the lifestyle that had already ruined him once. But bartending was the only job Law had ever held down and done well. And when he’d finished serving his time, it was the only job an ex-con college dropout like him could find that paid enough, with tips, to support his family.

  It wasn’t as if he’d started out planning to do this forever. He’d thought a time or two about going back to school. But he barely made enough as it was to cover the bills. And besides, serving alcohol to a million people wouldn’t be enough to tempt him. He’d had a secret weapon these past eight years that every one of his well-intentioned mentors had underestimated.

  He’d had Chloe.

  His daughter was his second chance. Parenting her and doing it right had gotten him through the rest. It would keep getting him through whatever he had to do. He could give up anything, he’d discovered, as long as he saw Chloe’s life become everything it should be—even if it meant no longer having her with him every day, now that he and Libby were done. Compared to being what he should be for his child, surrounding himself with all the temptation in the world didn’t have a shot in hell of screwing him up.

  At least it hadn’t before today.

  In a lot of ways, his job had become a daily reminder of the new life he’d claimed. Every drink he served someone else and didn’t take himself was a victory—proof that he could do this for his little girl. Every night he fell asleep sober and free of the haze that had engulfed his world around the time Chloe was conceived—even a bitch of a night like the last few—gave him another day to look forward to. Another day that his daughter was the unforgettable melody of his life.

  The door from the parking lot swung open. Sunlight pierced the bar’s dim interior. Walter Davis strolled in, exuding friendly excitement.

  “How the hell are ya, Law?” He stretched his hand across the bar to shake Law’s, and then slapped Vic on the back. “How much is lunch costing me today?”

  Vic took a bite of his Reuben and grunted as he chewed. “Not as much as the big gaping holes in those flower beds will cost you in curb appeal, if I’m not back on the site in half an hour to supervise the last of the landscaping going in.”

  Walter settled onto the stool beside his foreman and grabbed a fistful of peanuts. “You’re golden, as long as by the time we cut the ribbon on the front door and let in the masses who are showing up for free food and fun, Julia’s dwarf nandina are perky and thriving and brimming with berries, smiling at everyone like they’ve been living there their whole lives.”

  “You want your usual?” Law reached for a glass, while Vic got busy finishing up his lunch. At Walter’s nod, Law scooped up some ice, filled the glass with it and Dr Pepper from the fountain, and handed Walter his soft drink.

  “I sure do appreciate you and Rick hanging up the flyers about the opening.” Walter smiled, the way he’d been smiling for months—since he and one of his Mimosa Lane neighbors, architect Brian Perry, first designed the new bowling center from the skeleton of a deserted strip mall everyone in Chandlerville had given up for lost. “It means a lot, the way you two have talked up tonight’s opening to folks. I’ve heard from a lot of your regulars. You tell your boss I’ll be sure to return the favor and send as much business your way as I can.”

  “We’ve been happy to do it, Walter.” Rick had initially balked at displaying one of the flyers Walter had circulated to businesses all over town, but Law had talked him around to it.

  “Tell Rick his ads are welcome anytime he wants something up at the bowling center. I’ll link over to the bar from the website, too, once we have the page fully designed.”

  “I’d be surprised if he doesn’t show up tonight with something he’ll want you to hang.”

  “I hope he does. Julia and I want this to be a community place. Pockets belongs to everyone. That’s the idea, at least.”

  It was an amazing concept, from a man who not too long ago—just this last April—had been one of the few McC’s regulars Law had ever found himself concerned about.

  Chandlerville wasn’t the kind of place where locals drowned their sorrows every night. Not like some of the dives Law had worked in early on, when he and Libby and Chloe had lived in a string of small towns in southern Virginia.

  Before he’d pimped his estranged older brother for the connections Law had needed to make the move to Chandlerville, it had been an almost nightly ritual for him to finagle people’s car keys from them and call a cab, because they were unsafe and unaware, and he wasn’t about to let them out of his sight until they couldn’t hurt themselves or anyone else. Folks around here tended to mind their limits a bit better. But a lot of people in town had been through a lot of loss recently, and loss could do bad things to good people like Walter.

  The man had taken January’s shooting at the elementary school hard. Walter had personally known most of the kids and families involved, and he’d dealt with his grief by drinking. Over the course of just a few months, he’d ruined his reputation at his big-time downtown Atlanta accounting firm, alienated his own kids, and had nearly broken up his marriage.

  Now he was in AA. He was running a one-man accounting service out of his home that was by all accounts thriving. And Pockets, his dream come true, had become a reality lightning fast, thanks to a silent partner and financial backer Brian Perry had hooked him up with. Walter’s entire family was involved in bringing the place to life.

  “Everyone’s dying to see what you’ve done,” Law said. “You’ve worked your butt off making tonight happen. You’ll have to let me know how it goes.”

  Walter nodded, but he looked puzzled. “You’re not coming?” he asked. “Chloe’s going to love the games and prizes we’ve got planned for the kids. Or is she with Libby this afternoon?”

  “Nope, I’ve got her after school for one more afternoon. I’m only doing a half shift here until three. I don’t drop her at her mother’s until eight. But—”

  “Then bring her over. She’ll know lots of people there, and you can meet a few more folks besides the ones who wander in here or hang out at the park.”

  Walter took a sip of his soda. He glanced down to the counter in front of Law. He zeroed in on the untouched shot glass of whiskey.

  “That’s what we’re trying to make happen,” he said. “Julia and I want people to have somewhere to hang out and relax and hook up with friends and families, on their way to and from all the stress that we spend most of our time chasing every day. We want to give folks a chance to decompress from the stuff that drives them crazy.”

  Law dumped the whiskey down the drain and set the bar glass in the open dishwasher with enough force to leave it rocking back and forth on the rack. Decompressing. Relaxing. What did that feel like—besides drunk, or running on the soccer field until he was too exhausted to feel anything at all?

  Walter nodded, even though Law hadn’t said a thing. “I know Dan and Charlotte are coming with Sally.”

  At the mention of his brother, Law flipped the dishwasher door closed and turned his back on Walter and Vic to towel down the counter. He didn’t need this. He was already sorting through enough emotional backwash today. He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. His head felt like it was going to explode.

  Estranged was too mild a word for his complicated relationship with his big brother. He and Dan had been tight once, maybe, when they’d been kids and before their parents, their father mostly, had decided to pit them against each other, with Law forever falling short of Dan’s example. By the time Dan and then Law had headed to Duke for college—Law on a soccer scholarship that had quickly dried up because he’d been partying too hard to get his butt to practice, and Dan on their parents’ dime, because he was prelaw and their dad couldn’t have been prouder—Law hadn’t wanted anything to do with his perfect brother or their aggressively disappro
ving parents.

  Then, despite Dan’s repeated attempts to get him to straighten up, Law had gotten himself cut from the team, then booted from school because of grades—after which their parents had been sure to point out during Law’s last phone call home that they’d been expecting him to screw up all along. He always did. He always would. They were washing their hands of him.

  Dan, on his way to law school, had tried to keep in touch. But Law and Libby had been drinking most every day and night by then. They’d moved to Virginia to live in a rattletrap trailer in a mobile home park. They were traveling with his band, recklessly indulging in mind-bending excess that had felt like freedom. Meanwhile Dan kept busting his ass making grades, eventually marrying Charlotte, a perfect girl from another perfect family like theirs, who’d been so much more acceptable to their parents than Libby would have been. Law had been invited to the wedding. Stupidly, selfishly, drunkenly, he’d burned that bridge, too, and refused to go.

  That had turned out to be the weekend the unthinkable had happened to him and Libby. Law had been jolted out of his adolescent, self-destructive bitterness over his lot in life. By then he’d made certain that except for his new wife, whom he’d married only because she was pregnant, he’d been utterly alone in the world.

  He’d gone first to jail and then to prison because the prosecutor had been dead set on making an example out of his case and the previous DUIs he’d racked up, establishing a clear pattern of recklessness. His powerful lawyer father had offered to broker a deal with the DA if Law promised to shape up, go back to school, and devote the rest of his life to becoming a carbon copy of Dan. When Law had refused, their parents had gladly left him at the mercy of his inexperienced, court-appointed public defender—interceding only to ensure Law served his eighteen months in minimum-security.

  Law hadn’t spoken to his mother and father since, and he’d reached out to Dan, an established Atlanta lawyer now, only out of desperation—hoping the years of silence between them hadn’t obliterated the loyalty Dan had once felt. Dan had come through. He and Law had reconnected, if you could call being distant, civil acquaintances living on opposite ends of the same small town connecting. But the damage had been done.