“You never stopped caring, Law, no matter how many times you might have tried. Trust me, I know what it looks like when a person cares only about himself. That’s not you. No matter what’s happened in the past”—and Kristen didn’t give a damn about his prison sentence or the mistakes he’d made before he’d grown up enough to make something more for himself—“you’re a good man doing right by his daughter and his ex-wife. You’re fighting a hell of a lot harder to do right by both of them than a lot of people would.”
She paused, expecting him to say something, needing him to in a pathetic way she despised. When he didn’t, she accepted that it was time to bow out. It was past time. But he seemed so alone, standing there as if her words had fractured something inside him. He couldn’t seem to move now. So Kristen did, toward the parking lot.
She slowed on her way past him, holding herself still for the few seconds it took to say, “I think you’re amazing, too. If you ever need to talk with someone who has just as hard a time trusting her feelings as you do yours, give me a call.”
“You’re late,” Libby bitched, after opening the door to Law and Dan and Chloe. “My daughter’s supposed to be returned to me by eight on Thursday nights so I can deprogram her and get her ready for school the next day. I’ve had dinner waiting for almost an hour, since you forced me to come home without her.”
“She ate at Walter and Julia’s place,” Law said.
“And let’s discuss why she’s an hour late getting home,” Dan said, “namely because you were in no condition to drive her yourself.”
“Because you refused to let me.” Libby gave Law’s brother a scathing once-over, her attempt to charm him history.
Dan looked as angry and ready to take someone apart as he had around back at Pockets, before he’d driven Libby home. He’d insisted on following Law and Chloe back over to Libby’s, after Law had found Chloe inside and tried to speak with her about what had happened, not that she’d said a word in return. Dan had wanted to be there when Law dropped his daughter off at the house, in case there was another altercation and Law needed a witness. Law’s easygoing, never-step-a-toe-over-the-line older brother, who’d given Law space since helping him relocate his family to Chandlerville, had looked ready to fight it out if Law resisted.
He looked even more eager to do violence now.
Law gritted his teeth. He kept his own temper under control for his daughter’s sake. How could Libby have started drinking again? How could he not have noticed?
“Whatever you do when you’re alone is up to you,” Dan said to Libby. “But from here on out, what you do with my niece is my business, too. This is the final straw. You’re out of control. Knock it off, or—”
“Or what?” Libby tilted her head. She reached out, her fingers smoothing provocatively over Dan’s half-undone necktie, more in control of herself than she’d been at Pockets, but still too bold, too brash, too reckless—exactly the way she’d been when she and Law first hooked up.
Dan took a queasy step away from her.
“Or we’ll find a family court judge,” Law said for his brother, “who’s more inclined to see reason than the one your lawyer’s dug up.”
We.
The word slammed into him. From the stunned look on Dan’s face, he’d been rocked by it, too.
“I’ll be in my room doing homework,” Chloe muttered.
She didn’t hug Law or Libby or say good-bye to her uncle. She slipped away too quickly for anyone to stop her. She looked so fiercely fragile, Law was afraid to reach for her. Not that Libby had made an effort to even acknowledge their child. She never seemed to these days, unless she was in public and she was playing for the crowd.
She and Chloe had been close once. Even though Libby and Law had never quite fit, Libby had loved her daughter the best she could. She’d petted and pampered her and dressed her like a doll and wanted to do every girly thing with Chloe that Law could afford for them to do—to compensate, Law eventually realized, for everything Libby had missed with her own single mother, who’d gotten pregnant as a teenager, too, and had worked herself to death to support her child on her own.
Libby had tried to give Chloe the kind of motherly love Libby had never known. But then she’d relapsed back into her disease, and her world became dominated by a constant need for attention and reassurance. She’d promised the move here was the answer. Chandlerville was a beautiful place where she’d never thought someone who’d grown up in a trailer park could live, she said. It had been exactly what she’d needed to get right and stay that way for the daughter she loved with all her heart.
When was Law going to learn that the only person Libby would ever care about with all her heart was Libby?
Law caught a whiff of mint or mouthwash or breath spray, or whatever she’d used to freshen up, likely as soon as she’d heard his truck and Dan’s Mercedes turn into the driveway. It hadn’t been enough to mask the lingering notes of vodka on her breath.
Had she had more to drink since she’d gotten home? She sounded more in control now. Law had no legal grounds to challenge her or to try to keep Chloe with him. All he could do was leave his daughter in his ex-wife’s care and trust Libby to do the right thing. It was killing him.
Dan looked worried, too. Libby had never been reckless with Chloe’s safety. But her erratic behavior over the last year, which Law had thought was about their marriage ending…Had it been about this? How long had she been drinking without anyone knowing?
“Are you going to be okay with her?” he asked Libby.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked, fiddling with the dangling gold hoops hanging from her ears and determined to behave as if nothing had happened.
“I’ll let you two sort this out,” Dan said. “I’ll be in the driveway when you’re done.”
“Have you been drinking all day?” Law asked, once his brother was gone.
“What I do with my days away from being a full-time single mother is none of your business.”
“It is if it hurts our daughter. You can’t drink, Libby.”
“I had one drink, Law. I’m not drunk. And I wasn’t the one cozying up to Chloe’s assistant principal in front of the entire town.”
“I was talking to Kristen. That was all.”
“Kristen?” Libby mimicked. “That’s Ms. Hemmings to you from now on, buddy, if you know what’s good for you.”
Before, he’d have ignored her over-the-top threat, the way he ignored ninety-five percent of her rants. Now…He’d ignored too much. He’d refused to deal with Libby for too long. And in her warped reality, that neglect had given her more reason to up the stakes, until she’d finally grabbed his attention.
“This evening was supposed to be a treat for Chloe,” he said. “She deserves to have a normal, fun time with her friends. We all do. It’s been a hard couple of years. That’s my fault as much as yours. But I need you to take care of yourself, so you can look out for our daughter when she’s with you.”
“I do look out for her, every day. I’m the custodial parent. I’m the one who’s involved in her life, not you. Don’t act like you’ve ever understood what either of us needed. You never cared.”
He rubbed a hand across his forehead.
Before tonight, Libby’s accusation might have taken another bite out of him. He’d let her low opinion of his attempts to be a husband and a father hurt for a long time—the same as he’d once let his parents convince him that he was a lousy son and brother and student, and whatever else he’d tried to do right to please them. But Libby’s hatred didn’t hit its mark tonight. Tonight there was another, softer, kinder voice in his head, helping him push his ex’s selfishness back where it belonged—onto her shoulders.
You never stopped caring, Law…I know what it looks like when a person cares only about himself. That’s not you.
And maybe if he’d believed that s
ooner, if he’d stopped fighting long-dead battles from his past before now, he could have kept his own family from becoming as broken as the ones he and Libby had fled.
“How could I let us get here?” he asked himself. “All I wanted was for Chloe—”
“Here…” It wasn’t a good look for his ex—the sneer that sliced across her face. “You mean me walking up to a social gathering and finding my husband flirting with another woman while our daughter watches from the other side of the room?”
“Ex-husband,” he reminded her, the rage he’d been controlling for hours spilling out. “I’m not dating Kristen, Libby. I was talking to her in a public place. I’m not angling to date her or any other woman. But even if I was, that’s my business. Not yours. Get your own life together and stop obsessing about mine. Pathetic and needy were never your most attractive features.”
On cue, tears welled in her eyes. A chorus of a down-on-your-luck gambling song came to mind while he watched her try to make him feel like a bastard for telling it like it was.
He stood there for close to a minute, watching her make a fool of herself. She must have realized she was getting nowhere. She blinked back her play for sympathy. She crossed her arms over the chest she’d already gotten another man to augment by the time Law met her.
“You’re a loser, Law Beaumont.” She looked so proud each time she said it. This time she was speaking so loudly there was no chance Chloe wouldn’t overhear in her room, unless she had on her earphones. “With all your connections in this town and the money you could access from your family, we could have been swimming in the best circles for years. We could have been happy, like folks who live over near your brother on Mimosa Lane.”
“I came to Chandlerville to give us a better life. I didn’t give a damn about my brother’s money or his lifestyle. I still don’t.”
“If you cared about us, you would have. You’d have gotten us the same things.”
“I cared.” And now he knew that at least one other person in town believed that. Kristen’s admiration back at Pockets had felt solid. Real. So real it was helping him see himself clearly, maybe for the first time since he was a kid. “I’ve always cared.”
“Never enough,” his ex said. “You never cared enough.”
“Nothing’s ever enough for you. A better place to live. Better things my money couldn’t buy. Better friends and activities for Chloe, even if she didn’t want them. None of it was enough. But that’s on you now, not me. You’re the one who told me to get out.”
She’d expected him to crawl back, begging her to try again. They both knew it wasn’t because she’d wanted him, as much as she’d wanted to keep her claws in someone she thought she could manipulate into getting her even more.
Her eyes filled with real tears this time. “If I have a drink every now and then to get through this—my ex-husband not giving enough of a damn to fight for his family—that’s my business. You and your brother stay out of my life, Law. Nothing that happens here matters to you anymore, remember?”
Law looked around the house. He thought of his one-bedroom dive half a mile away, and he smiled. His place was small. He slept on the couch the nights his daughter stayed over. But it was peaceful. He and Chloe were happy there, when he had her to himself. She’d realize that eventually and stop blaming him for the divorce, no matter how long Libby kept shrieking about it.
“I may be a loser to you,” he said to the soulless woman who’d once held his heart, back when he’d valued himself so little. “But I’m a good parent. And you’re going to be one from here out. Be the mother my daughter deserves, Libby. I hope you’re hearing me. I didn’t make a scene back at the bowling center, for Chloe’s sake. I don’t want to upset her. But I’ve trusted you with her. That’s the only reason I didn’t fight you on the terms of the divorce. Don’t push me now, or I’ll push back, and Chloe will just have to be upset about it for a while until I fix this myself.”
“Fix what?” Libby laughed. “Fix me? No one’s going to believe you over me. I don’t care how much you kiss up to your perfect Ms. Hemmings.”
“I wasn’t...” He rocked back on his heels, remembering just how much more of Kristen he’d wanted to kiss. “We were talking.”
“Is that what you call drooling all over her?”
“Leave Kristen out of our problems.”
“So you can slide right into her big-girl panties?”
Law shoved down the instant image that came to mind of how amazing Kristen would look in her panties…and just her panties.
“Stop it,” he said. “Stop drinking. Stop dumping your problems on me. Stop all of this for good, and find something else to do with your life besides torching mine, before someone gets hurt.”
“Well, we’re the experts on hurting ourselves and anyone else who gets in our way. Aren’t we, my love?”
“That’s enough.”
It was always between them.
The accident and the damage that night had done to them. For the last nine years—and especially for the six months just after the collision, when the other driver had been in rehab learning how to walk again—that night had haunted Law, and Libby knew that. Throwing it in his face was her final low blow whenever they fought. It was his greatest regret, and she seemed to enjoy hurting him with it.
“It’s not going to work anymore,” he said, the same moment that he realized it was true.
No matter what’s happened in the past, you’re a good man…
“I’ve done my damnedest to make up for my mistakes,” he said. “Now you’re going to do the same. Stay sober. Get yourself into rehab, if that’s what you need. Our daughter’s paid enough for the disaster we’ve made of our marriage. I’m not going to see her hurt anymore.”
He started down the driveway, not waiting for a response.
“She’s my daughter,” Libby yelled after him. “And don’t you forget it. You’re the one who’s hurting her, Law. You’re the one who’s screwing this up, not me. You’re always screwing up. You hear me!”
Law kept walking.
His brother, true to his word, was leaning against Law’s truck, waiting. Dan’s rumpled lawyer’s suit looked comically out of place framed by the dust and battered dents that came with Law’s less sophisticated lifestyle.
“So,” Dan said. “That went well.”
Law laughed.
What was he going to do but laugh? He was a desperate man. Only it didn’t feel as desperate as it had other nights, walking back to his truck after dropping Chloe off and knowing it would be days before he saw her again. This time he wasn’t alone, and that felt good—even if not being alone meant dealing with his brother’s sudden determination to ignore the Keep Out sign Law had hung on his personal life since moving to Chandlerville.
“How high’s the water?” Dan asked. “Is it over your head? Because I know you, whether you think I do or not. When you’re spoiling for a fight, you come out swinging, and you don’t take prisoners. You wanted Mom and Dad off your back, and they haven’t been in your life for close to a decade. You wanted me gone from having a chance to help you, and every new check I tried to send Libby once you were paroled came back uncashed. If you wanted this divorce mess with Libby over, you’d have handled her by now. So, what gives?”
Law laughed again, a shorter, angrier sound. His brother was pulling a tiger’s tail. He had to know it. Which meant he was raring for battle.
They’d always been about the same size, intimidating the hell out of most people at first sight. But Law’s big brother was the calmer, more reasonable one, always trying to mediate the conflict between Law and their parents. Law had never known him to be a confrontational kind of guy. Then again, he hadn’t really known Dan in a long time.
“The water’s right at my head,” Law said. “It’s nothing I haven’t handled before.”
Dan shook
his head. “You don’t really believe that, or you wouldn’t be standing here. We haven’t shared more than two or three words at a time since your parole, even though you live three miles away from me and drop your kid off at my house to play with Sally at least once a month. If everything’s fine, why are you still talking to me?”
“I’m doing the best I can.”
“Tell me you’re done with letting Libby use you as a doormat because you think you deserve it. Tell me Dad and Mom didn’t screw you up that badly.”
Law glared back. “What do you know about it?”
“What do I know about it?” Dan squared off, his hands on his hips, his well-muscled biceps bulging beneath his Brooks Brothers or whatever dress shirt. “I lived it, the same as you. You left me, blamed me, the same as you did them. And all I’d ever done was try to be a brother to you, no matter how much they seemed to want us to hate each other, thinking that would make us stronger men or something. But I never gave up, Law. Hell, when Mom and Dad washed their hands of your life, and your baby came along while you were in prison and they still didn’t step up and help, I sent money to Libby to get her through until you came home. I’d hoped that you’d see that I wasn’t the enemy. No matter what you said the last time I saw you, I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to try to do something. But as soon as you got out and saw my first letter in the mailbox, I was out of your life all over again.”
“You’re damn straight you were. I didn’t need your money then, and I don’t need it now.”
“It’s not about the money, damn it! Or the strings I pulled to help you get set up here. I wanted to help my brother. I wanted to help you. I still do. I knew things had to be rotten with you and Libby, especially after you’d sobered up and realized what you’d married. I’ve always known. But I kept my distance, hoping you’d come find me one day. And you did. But strangers was all you wanted us to be, still, no matter how much you needed me. Or how much I might have needed you…I’ve had my own problems, man. My family hasn’t been on the best footing this year. And it’s not like I had Mom and Dad to depend on, either. Where were you when I needed my brother?”
Love on Mimosa Lane (A Seasons of the Heart Novel) Page 12
