Clean Slate

by Holley Trent

  That was news to Ben. He hadn’t heard anything about Louis moving out of his ancestral home. Jerry would have told him for sure. “Is there something wrong with the house?” he asked as the server delivered their food.

  Louis waited until she’d left to respond. He twiddled the corner of his napkin between his fingers, and Ben watched, wondering if that’s whom Jerry had inherited his napkin fidgeting from. “I guess I’ll just be honest since folks’ll figure it out at the wedding, anyway.”

  Ben looked at his mother and found her eyes riveted on his father’s moving hands. He gave her foot a nudge beneath the table.

  She looked up and smiled at him—an I’m okay smile—before turning her attention to her quiche.

  “I moved out of the house,” Louis said, turning his gaze pointedly to Ben. “Kate and I separated last year. As soon as we come to a reasonable settlement, we’re getting divorced. At first she moved out to the beach house, but then she decided that wasn’t grand enough, so she moved back in, and I moved into a hotel room.”

  Ben whistled low. “So, what? She wants the house? To what end?”

  Moeder scoffed. “There’s only one end. Revenge. She wants what she thinks will hurt the most to take.” She twirled her fork between her fingers and narrowed her eyes to tight lines. “And you’re going to give it to her?”

  Louis shrugged and brought his coffee to his lips. “It’s just a house.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Yes, I do. So what? Some dead ancestors will roll over in their graves at the transfer? It’d be worth it to get rid of her. To pacify her.”

  Ben cringed. He knew Kate was a battle-ax. Hell, she was one of the few women he’d ever met who he’d heartily endorse as a real-life, actual bitch, but Louis had been married to her that long. Why shake things up now?

  “What’s really going on?” he asked his father.

  Something that looked remarkably similar to defeat marred his father’s tired face for a brief moment, but Louis smoothed it away. “Kate escalated her claim around six months ago when I told her it no uncertain terms that I’d made the wrong decision.”

  “About what?”

  He scoffed and raked his hand through his thick, salt-and-pepper hair. “Where to start? What you don’t understand…” He shifted his gaze to Moeder. “Either of you, is what was happening in my world when we met.” For a moment, he paused to attend to his club sandwich.

  Moeder pushed the pepper shaker across the tabletop.

  He grabbed it before it reached the edge. “You remember I take pepper on my sandwiches?” There was a hint of incredulity in his voice.

  She shrugged and forked off a bit of her quiche. “You pepper everything.”

  A smile formed at the corner of his lips. It was small, but obviously heartfelt. He continued the customization of his sandwich. “Anyhow, back then I was young and was just starting out at the firm. I’d been dating Kate on and off from the time we graduated from college. We got reacquainted at a cocktail party and I learned my boss was her father.”

  “Ah,” Ben said around a mouthful of his salad. He could see where the backstory was going, even if he didn’t necessarily condone the ending.

  “When I met your mother…” He nodded toward Moeder.

  She looked up, eyes wide, anticipatory.

  “Kate and I were in an off period. She wanted to get married and I wasn’t ready for that. At least not with her, I didn’t think. I was young, you know? Barely twenty-five, and I got sent to Belgium to work with this factory on cutting costs and maybe utilizing some outsourcing. Right around the time Jerry was conceived, Kate was being extremely demanding about us reconciling. Her father put his weight behind it, so I buckled and gave her a ring.” He laughed and it was a dry, bitter laugh. Ben didn’t see the humor, either.

  “I didn’t want to marry her. I figured that out for certain right around the engagement party when she told me in no uncertain terms she’d never have children—that she’d never do that to her body.”

  Moeder stilled her fork, and glanced down at her small chest.

  Ben nudged her foot under the table again.

  She shifted her gaze to the sidewalk outside, instead.

  “I couldn’t back out without losing my job, and it was damned good job for a twenty-five-year-old, right? So, we got married and I didn’t say anything to Clara. I just kept coming by. And when Jerry was around one, I—”

  “I think we know that part.” Ben dropped his napkin onto his food and pushed back from the table. He wasn’t hungry anymore. “But what I don’t understand is why you changed his name?”

  All accounts were that slight in particular had really devastated his mother. There she was, pregnant again with the son of a man who didn’t want her, and he paid her the ultimate insult by stripping the name she’d chosen name from the child.

  Louis balked. “I was fine with his name. And my parents, oh shit, my parents.” He scraped his hair from his forehead again. “They were over the moon, even given what the situation was. I mean, I just took him and didn’t even clear it with Kate. I just took him because I wanted him. And what was she going to do? Tell me no, that I couldn’t have my son? Changing his name from Louis to Jeremiah was a concession. She didn’t want people to know he was mine. For years, people outside the family thought he was adopted. The blond never went away.”

  He dragged the sugar canister across the tabletop and poured a few teaspoons into his cooling beverage. As he stirred his coffee, he continued. “Ben, I always knew about you, but by then had already fucked things spectacularly and I couldn’t have seen you if I wanted to. Kate basically had me by the dick. I tried to do right by you both, with sending the money and—”

  “What money?” Moeder interrupted. Emotion radiated off her in waves, and Ben wanted to fucking applaud.

  Good for her. Let it out.

  Louis threaded his brows. “The money. I set it up through the lawyer. There was supposed to be an account for you to draw on for clothes or tuition or whatever. He would just transfer it from my bank account to yours.”

  Arms crossed over her chest, fingers tense around her arms, she shook with anger. “I did it alone. Raised him.”

  He put up his hands in a pacifying gesture. “I know. I don’t dispute that, Clara, but I did send the money…I…” He leaned his chair onto its back legs and stared at the ceiling. “All this time, and you thought I didn’t care.”

  Ben didn’t know what to think. Yeah, things had been tight growing up, but he never went without anything. His mother just worked harder, more hours, begged, scraped, saved, hustled—she did what needed doing. She had to. She shouldn’t have had to.

  “Not to put too fine a point on this, but…where’s the money?” Ben asked.

  Louis put his chair flat against the floor again and shook his head. “I don’t know. I used one lawyer to draw up the papers to take Jerry, and this second one was one Kate—” He sagged in his seat, face gone ashen. “Kate.” He started shaking his head and couldn’t stop. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Ben.”

  Ben stared at his napkin, and that compulsion to rip it to bits overtook him, so he did. What could he possibly say?

  “How much money are you saying is gone?” Moeder queried.

  Louis closed his eyes and moved his lips as he seemed to do some silent calculations in his head. When he opened his eyes again, he scoffed. “With interest, probably enough money to sink a canoe if it were all in hundred dollar bills. Some of it came from my parents. They left you some money, Ben. They knew, and now I know Kate did, too.”

  “Well, then,” Moeder said blithely. “Sounds like you’ve already bought your house back if you can prove it.” She forked some food into her mouth and chewed, expression suddenly cheerful.

  Ben raised an eyebrow. What in the hell was going through her mind?

  Louis seemed equally perplexed, because now he just stared at the woman as if he hadn’t really seen her there. As
if he finally realized who was in front of him.

  She was going to make him pay.

  Good for her.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  All day long, Daisy squirmed through her mother’s incessant questioning, but part of her expected it. From the moment she’d pushed her feet into her shoes when leaving Ben, the sense of dread had built in her gut and had essentially exploded on impact the moment she stepped into the barn.

  During the drive over, she thought she’d come up with the perfect idea for the men’s soap. The turnaround would be tight, but she couldn’t even give it her attention until Nikki signed off on the thing. The scheme was just so out there—so unusual—no way would Nikki let it fly. So, when Nikki called her back into her office for a discreet tête-à-tête, Daisy had stalled and said she’d narrowed her list down to three contenders.

  She scoffed.

  If only she had three. Talk about putting all her eggs in one basket!

  She tried to tune Momma out, and laid premium soaps due to a boutique into a cushioned box.

  “Daisy, you’re all over the place.” Momma wagged her finger in Daisy’s direction. “Liz said you ain’t been going home and you’re not turning up to work on time, so what’s the deal? What’s going on with you, girl?”

  Daisy stretched clear tape over the inner box’s flaps, saying nothing.

  “Answer me.”

  Daisy stilled the tape dispenser and sighed. “Momma, I have three bosses and you’re not one of them. Quit nagging me.”

  Momma’s jaw dropped open, and a sound of abject disgust sounded from her throat. “Who are you? That don’t sound like my Daisy. My sweet little girl. My girl don’t talk back like that. Are you on some kind of drugs?”

  Funny. Accusing me of using drugs and yet was completely oblivious to Barry being loaded a good thirty-five percent of the time.

  Daisy bent to the floor, and picked up a long, flat box. She constructed it without once looking at her mother. “I’m twenty-seven, Momma. When you were twenty-seven, you were living with Nanna.”

  “When I was twenty-seven, I had a ten-year-old,” she retorted. “I was mature.”

  “Mm-hmm. I count my blessings every day that Barry never managed to knock me up in those few years we were married, since I’m so immature and all.”

  Momma narrowed her eyes. “I bet you were taking birth control on the sly.”

  “Yep.”

  She’d felt guilty about it in the past, but even being so young, she’d known that Barry wouldn’t make much of a father.

  “Women like you are the ones who make it so damn hard for the rest of us,” Momma said. “He was a good man, Daisy. You’re not gonna do no better.”

  Daisy opened her mouth to rebut, but the squeeze of fingers on her shoulder prompted her to look up at Ben striding down the aisle. “Hi,” she said when he winked.

  “Hello, liefje.” He continued down the aisle toward Jerry’s workstation.

  Liefje.

  Daisy wiped her grin away and resumed her work.

  Momma cleared her throat, and Daisy looked up at her.

  “What?”

  “Don’t be getting your hopes up. He don’t want you. That’s how all them European men are. Real flirty.”

  “Yes, Momma.” Daisy rolled her eyes and resumed her packaging. Arguing was pointless. Momma would never. Daisy’s father had bounced before she was born, and all of Momma’s prospects since then had been liars, cheats, or indigent. The indigent ones wouldn’t have been so bad, but the fact they were lazy as well and really looking more for a handout than a romance pushed them into the realm of losers.

  Momma had always given her relationships her all, and took them in stride when they didn’t work out, but there was a tinge of desperation about her need to be with someone all the time. What was wrong with being single? For Momma, having a man claim her as his woman meant she was worth something.

  Daisy never wanted to be in that place again. When she had belonged to someone, she’d felt worthless.

  She could do bad all by herself. Seemed preferable.

  She looked over her shoulder, down the aisle, as the tall blonds moved.

  Jerry stood, concern marked on his face, and followed Ben into Nikki’s office.

  What’s going on? Is it Trinity?

  Daisy scanned the room and found the petite chemist in the far corner scanning a shelf of supplies.

  If not her, then who? Or what?

  A moment later, the men emerged from the office and split in two directions. Ben headed toward the exit—and toward Daisy—and Jerry made a beeline for Trinity. Ben paused next to Daisy’s worktable. He opened his mouth to speak, but cast his gaze over at Momma. He gave Momma a friendly wave, then leaned in close to Daisy’s ear.

  “Say no aloud, but I expect to see you at the house for dinner at six. I don’t see enough of you.”

  Shit. I have so much to do. I should say no for real, but…maybe just a couple of hours. By the time we’re done with dinner, the barn should be cleared out and I can get back to work.

  She shook her head and said, “No.”

  “Thanks,” he said with a mock salute right as Jerry caught up. They left together.

  “What’d he want?” Momma asked. She gave Daisy a hard stare over the top frame of her reading glasses.

  Daisy had never been good at making up lies on the spot, so she went with the first whooper she could come up with. “He left something personal on the bus after the amusement park trip. Wanted to know if I’d by chance seen it.”

  “What was it?”

  “Momma, don’t pry. I don’t tell other people’s secrets.”

  “You used to tell me everything.”

  And look where that got me.

  * * *

  Daisy actually slipped out of work a little early, drove home to Edenton to shower and change, and arrived at Jerry and Trinity’s house just after six. Even after pulling up her parking brake and shutting off the engine, she gripped the steering wheel and stared.

  Perhaps they’d already started eating. Walking in late would be awkward, maybe. She briefly considered backing out and planning to give her regrets the next day. She’d say she got held up at the barn doing last-minute packaging for that big order.

  Too late. Ben appeared in the side door, and made a Well, come on! gesture at her.

  She bared her teeth in a grin and took one last look at her hair in the rearview mirror.

  Jesus.

  She patted down the lumps and sighed her resignation.

  Maybe I’ll cut it short like Trinity’s used to be.

  The idea actually put a bit of pep in her step as she spanned the small distance between the driveway and the door. It wasn’t that she hated her hair. She liked the red. She liked the curls. The amount of hair was the problem. She never really did anything with it beyond stuffing it beneath a variety of hats or patting it all into a shamefully sloppy braid.

  She stepped into the kitchen, resolved, and already feeling a few pounds lighter.

  Ben wrapped an arm around her waist and gave her a little squeeze. “I guess sneaking away didn’t turn you into a pumpkin,” he said.

  She shrugged as he led her to the center island where someone had already gotten into the sauce and left the caps off. Fruity stuff. She figured the culprit was Trinity.

  Clara gave her a little wave from the stove.

  “We’re running on Thys Time,” Ben explained. “When we say six, we really mean six-thirty…and even that’s being overly optimistic.” He winked. “We’ve discovered Jerry has the Thys time management gene as well. Poor guy.”

  Daisy squinted down at Trinity’s sangria as she pondered his words. Jerry did always seem to stumble into the Monday morning meeting with dripping wet hair and a scowl on his face. He must have got where he needed to and when he needed to due to Trinity. That woman was absolutely anal about time management.

  “I guess it won’t be the bride holding up the start of the wedd
ing this time, huh?” Daisy asked.

  At the mention of the wedding, Clara turned around and pressed her fists against her hips. She wore a frown, so Daisy braced herself for whatever came next. “The wedding. Why not go?”

  Daisy opened her mouth then closed it. She could see how Clara would be a bit offended. After all, it was her son’s wedding. People wanted their children to be liked. Normal people, anyway. At her own wedding, Momma had snuck people onto the invitation list whom she thought would deliver the most expensive gifts, and many of them were people Daisy, much less Momma, had never had a conversation with. The mayor’s family. The guy who owned the country club. The woman who owned the boutique on Broad Street. None of them came, of course. Daisy had invited only a few close friends, and most of those were her bridesmaids.

  “It’s not the wedding itself I take issue with,” she said finally. “It’s the reception.”

  “Afraid to get hit by the—” She snapped her fingers and grimaced. With a grunt, she shook her head and looked to Ben. “What is…with the flowers?”

  “Bouquet?”

  She nodded and turned her gaze back to Daisy. “Yes, the bouquet.”

  “No,” Daisy said. “I’m more concerned about the venue staff than the festivities. My ex-husband is a line cook at the country club.”

  Clara gave her a long blink. “You think…” She punched her palm with the opposite fist.

  “I don’t know. He’s…”

  Ben gave her shoulder a squeeze, and she looked up to find him smirking.

  “What?”

  “Is he larger than me?”

  Daisy shook her head.

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “You shouldn’t have to be prepared to. We can avoid an altercation altogether by me not being there.” She shrugged. “It’s not that serious.”

  His smile waned but he didn’t push. Neither did Clara.

  They all sat down to beef dish Ben said was called carbonade flamande: thick chunks of tender beef served with a sweet and sour onion broth and hearty root vegetables. Crispy fries were mounded on the side.