by Lisa Wingate
But he didn’t.
“Good-bye, Zach,” I whispered, an ache starting in the deepest part of me and spreading through my body, burning away hope like flash fuel, gone in an instant, leaving everything hollow and blackened. “Thanks for understanding.”
“The thing is, Lindsey …” Turning from me, he gathered the reins, and I knew he was leaving. This was it. The end. “I don’t understand.”
TWENTY-ONE
SYDNEY SPENT THE NIGHT IN THE DOWNSTAIRS BEDROOM WITH ME. I was glad when, after an impromptu supper of sandwiches, she was too tired to chatter on about horses anymore. I helped her shampoo her hair and dress in one of my old T-shirts, then sent her off to bed while I washed out her clothes and swimsuit in the tub. Hopefully in the morning Laura would show up with something else for her to wear.
When I came out of the bathroom, Geoff was waiting with the box of old clothes Pop had sent along. He smelled like sweat and fish water—a little like the dog, actually. “Night,” he said, making it clear that he didn’t want to talk after his bath, which was fine, because I didn’t either.
With Sydney safely tucked away, my mind turned to the scene with Zach. It replayed in my head over and over, the picture becoming sharper each time, like a movie coming into focus. The tragic ending, the classic black moment, getting darker and darker and darker. Only this wasn’t a movie. This was real life. No magic solution would leap out of some director’s imagination and save us from reality. Zach was going to return to his life, and I was going to return to mine, and the past few days would be nothing more than a memory that didn’t really fit anywhere. Life would go on in a million tiny ways, just as it had before I’d come to Texas.
So why did I feel as if I were suffocating on the thought of returning to my normal routine? I had the one thing I wanted more than anything else in the world. I had my daughter back with me, safe. Why wasn’t that enough? Being her mom, raising her and seeing her safely through her childhood was my reason for everything, my mission. My calling.
Yet, lying there in the dark, her body curled against mine, I felt more alone than I’d ever been in my life. Tears seeped beneath my lashes, and I rolled away from her, burying my face in the pillow so she wouldn’t hear me crying on her first night home.
When I fell asleep it was deep and dreamless, and in the morning I awoke to the sound of something hard clomping on the stairs. Dragging one eye open, I lifted my head, then let it fall back, waiting for the room—and the realities of the day—to come into focus.
Sydney dashed in searching for something, checked the closet and under the bed, then headed for the door again.
“Hold it,” I said, blinking the grog from my eyes. “What in the world have you got on?” She looked like a miniature Annie Oakley, wearing a hot-pink Western shirt with a baby-doll-pink yoke and fringe under the arms. She had matching pants, with fringe in a horseshoe shape around the rear end and down the legs, and big bell-bottoms that flared over pointy-toed white-and-gold cowboy boots, straight out of the 1970s. She’d completed the outfit with a tooled leather belt to hold up the pants, and a huge belt buckle that read MICKEY MOUSE CLUB. I blinked again, trying not to laugh. “Where did you get all that stuff?”
“In the box that Pop gave us. He said some of it was Jocelyn’s when she was a little girl.” Bracing her hands on her hips, she twirled around, displaying the latest in hoedown fashion. “Isn’t it totally cool?”
“Totally,” I replied, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. “With that outfit, you definitely need braids.” Her hair was hanging around her face in long cornrows from her having slept on it wet. “Run out to the car and get a couple of your hair bands from the glove compartment, and I’ll fix it for you. Pink ones would be good.”
“The dog’s got my pink ones.” Crossing her arms over her slim chest, she tapped a boot on the floor and pretended to be miffed. “Those were my favorites, too.”
I felt my lips tugging into a smile. Sydney loved to make people laugh. She had a great sense of humor, which, as much as I hated to admit it, she got from her father. “I guess you could ask for them back.”
Her nose crinkled on one side, and her mouth twisted into a grimace that revealed the missing front tooth. “Eeeewww!” she squealed, then spun around and dashed for the car.
By the time I’d put on my sneakers and found my hairbrush, she was back, carrying two purple fliggies with glittery Powerpuff Girls orbs on the ends. It felt good, sitting beside her on the bed, brushing her long hair, enjoying a quiet morning moment. Just like the old days.
“I like the way you do it,” she said, closing her eyes and leaning into my hand. “Whitney pulls too hard and it hurts sometimes, but she knows all kinds of cool French braids.” Sitting up straight again, she flicked a glance at me and added self-consciously, “But I like the way you do it best.”
Finishing the first braid, I rested my hands before starting on the second. For an instant I imagined all the weight on those small shoulders—two families, divided love, torn loyalties, guilt, and a desperate need to make everyone happy. “Sydney,” I said softly, resting my chin on her head and hugging her, “it’s OK for you to love Whitney, and it’s OK for you to love your dad. There are going to be different things for you to like about each of the special people in your life. You don’t have to be afraid that you’re hurting me by having feelings for them, all right?”
“All right.” Gazing thoughtfully toward the window, she sighed as I started on the second braid. “Mommy, it’d be better if you—” Springing suddenly from the bed, she dragged me, holding the end of the braid, across the room. “Pop’s here!” she squealed. “Pop’s here to go fishing.”
“Hold still.” Finishing her hair, I fastened the fliggie as Sydney vibrated in place. “There. Done,” I said, glancing reluctantly out the window. If I let Sydney go fishing now, next she’d want the horseback riding lesson. With Zach.
Sydney beat me to the punch. “And, after that, can I go ride the horse, Mommy? Pleeeease, please, please?”
“Honey, I—” Pop honked the horn outside. “We’ll see how the day goes.”
To Sydney, of course, that was almost as good as a yes. “Oh-kay!” she chirped, and bounded toward the door, the Powerpuff Girls fliggies bouncing in strange contrast to the retro cowgirl outfit. I hurried after her into the living room.
Geoff was sitting at the kitchen table, gaping sleepily toward the front door, which was hanging open in the wake of Hurricane Sydney. “What was that?”
“Anybody’s guess.” I leaned out the door as Pop stole my daughter and the dog, without even asking. Waving out the truck window, he took off, not stopping to tell me where they were going or how long they’d be.
“Great,” I muttered. Barely sunrise, and the day was already filling up with complications. One of whom was sitting at the kitchen table. I turned to face him. “Geoff, we need to—” My mouth fell open on the word talk, and a puff of laughter blew past my lips. He was wearing a red checked 1960s Western shirt with big blue-and-silver flowers on the yoke, and a pair Roy Rogers jeans with three-inch cuffs at the bottom. He looked like a cross between Howdy Doody and Mr. Green Jeans. “Been shopping in Pop’s box?”
Geoff rolled his eyes. “It was the only thing that fit. My shorts are still wet from last night, and my shirt smells pretty rank, so it was this or nothing.”
“Good choice,” I said, motioning to the clothes.
We stood for a moment rebuilding our defenses after the rare moment of levity. Geoff picked a plop of dried-up grits off the table, and I leaned against the door frame with my arms crossed.
Rubbing his head, he looked exhausted despite the night’s sleep. “Can we have a little breakfast before we start ripping each other apart?” he said finally. “I need some coffee.”
“All right,” I agreed, determined to be more diplomatic than yesterday, when I’d lost it down by the river. “I’ve got oatmeal, toast, bagels, and instant grits.”
He
shrugged, like it didn’t matter what he ate. “Bagel, I guess.” He stared out the window while I toasted bagels and poured coffee, then brought everything to the table. We ate in silence, then sat looking into our coffee mugs like some magical answer might appear there.
“I heard what you said to Sydney in the bedroom,” Geoff said finally, his attention still focused on his cup. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” I replied, trying not to sound grudging. “This is a difficult situation, but I don’t want her to struggle with it any more than she already has. I don’t want her to feel guilty for loving you … or Whitney.”
Geoff collapsed like a scarecrow falling off the pole. His head fell into his hands, and he spoke into the tabletop. “I really screwed up this time.”
I blinked, taken aback. Never, ever, had I heard Geoff admit such a thing without quickly adding that it wasn’t his fault. Sitting there crumpled over the table, he looked like a broken man. “Listen, Geoff, I don’t know what’s going on between you and Whitney, and I don’t need to know. It’s your business. But it’s not healthy for Sydney to be involved in it, emotionally or otherwise. I want to take her home for the rest of the summer. When you’ve got it straightened out, with Whitney or without her, you can come back and tell Sydney how things are going to be.”
Geoff shook his head, his fingers combing into his shaggy brown hair. “I don’t know how things are going to be. I can’t predict that.”
“You have to,” I insisted. “She can’t live her life spending summers with the stepmom-slash-girlfriend of the month, while you go to work. If you want to be in her life, you have to be in her life. You have to take care of her, spend time with her, provide her with a consistent, predictable environment that doesn’t include domestic disputes and trips to some foreign airport in a police car.” The words rolled out of me like water through a dam, and once I’d started, I couldn’t stop.
Geoff sank lower into his hands, his head drooping between his shoulder blades. “You’re right. She should go home with you. She should be with you. I shouldn’t have taken her away.” The words I’d longed to hear, but now I realized they were wrong. Now that he didn’t have Whitney to fall back on, now that his life was a mess and the pressure was on, he wanted to drop Sydney back in my hands like an unwanted puppy, while he limped off to lick his wounds in some far corner of the world. I could hear it in his voice, see it in his posture and the way he shifted toward the door—he was bailing out, and he wasn’t coming back.
“You cannot abandon Sydney again, Geoff,” I said, gripping the edge of the table, my eyes burning and my heart pounding. “It’s time to grow up and think about someone other than yourself. She’s been waiting all her life for you to notice her, to pay attention to her, to want her. She needs her father. She needs you to love her.”
“I do love her.” His words melted into a sob that shook his shoulders. “But I’ve screwed everything up. I don’t know how to do the whole domestic thing. I need to just go somewhere, be by myself where I can’t hurt anybody. I’m not good for Sydney, and I’m not good for Whitney.”
Slamming a hand on the table, I stood up so fast that my chair fell over and slapped against the floor like thunder. Geoff jerked upright. “Then figure out how to be better. For heaven’s sake, Geoff, for once in your life, step up to the plate. Do the right thing. Grow up!” Throwing my hands into the air, I turned around and headed for the door. As I jerked it open, he sobbed out two little words that both explained things, and made the situation much, much worse.
“Whitney’s pregnant.”
“Great,” I spat, pausing with my fingers on the latch. “That’s just great.” Slamming the door on Geoff and his revelation, I crossed the porch and started running.
I ran until I couldn’t breathe, until all the anger, and pain, and anxiety were gone, and I didn’t feel anything but aching muscles and burning lungs. Standing in the middle of the road, I doubled over with my hands on my knees, gulping in huge gasps of air. I stayed there for a long time, trying to catch my breath, waiting for the whirling in my brain to stop. When my body had finally recovered, I sat down on an uprooted tree beside the road and tried to think. What now? What did I say to Geoff now? I could only imagine how Whitney must be feeling.
No. I knew how Whitney was feeling. Abandoned. Betrayed. Desperate. I pictured her newly pregnant, finding out that Geoff didn’t want to be a father. He must have confessed that fact to her. Why else would she have left?
I had to go back and talk to Geoff. Somehow I had to convince him not to repeat the mistakes he had made with Sydney and me. He had to see that this baby would need him, would yearn for him, just as Sydney had all these years. He had to know that Whitney would end up broken and afraid and bitter. He couldn’t do it again. He couldn’t run out on Sydney or this new baby.
Taking a deep breath, I stood up and started walking toward the cabin.
The rattle of tires on gravel stopped me before I reached the bend above the river. Zach, I thought, with an instant of hopeful euphoria that crashed back to earth like a paper airplane with crumpled wings. I wanted it to be him, in spite of everything. I wanted him to beg me to stay, convince me I could trust him with my daughter, tell me that the bridge between here and town had washed out, and I couldn’t leave. Not today. Not ever.
I wanted him to rage with me about the fact that Geoff was going to run off to God knew where and leave not only my daughter, but also an unborn baby behind, fatherless.
But then, Zach would understand that all too well, wouldn’t he?
Turning around, I watched the approaching vehicle, feeling a twinge of disappointment that it wasn’t his. The pickup coming up the road was Collie’s San Saline newspaper vehicle, with my sister at the wheel. Her blond hair waved a cheerful hello as she pulled alongside me.
“Out jogging?” Raising one brow and lowering the other, she surveyed my outfit. “In … your pajamas?”
I glanced down and realized I wasn’t even dressed. “Things got a little … close in the cabin.” Walking around the truck, I climbed in.
“You mean you and Goeff had a fight,” Laura interpreted.
“A little one.” Sighing, I brushed sweaty strands of hair from my face and rested my head against the seat.
Laura grimaced playfully. “Do I need to come help hide the body?”
I rubbed my eyes until they hurt. Until I couldn’t see anything but flashes of color and light behind my eyelids. “God. What a mess.”
“It can’t be that bad,” she soothed.
I nodded into my hand. Yes, it can. Sydney’s going to have a half sister or half brother she’ll probably never know, her father’s about to dump her, and I’m in love with a man I can’t possibly stay with. How’s that for bad?
“Whitney’s pregnant. That’s what his marital breakup was about. Geoff’s about to have another baby he doesn’t want. Sydney’s been telling me all summer about Whitney’s treatments at some New Age infertility clinic down there. Now she’s pregnant, and Geoff hadn’t planned on that actually happening. He wants to cut and run. That’s why he brought Sydney back to me. He’s ready to take the easy way out, bail on the fatherhood thing and jet off to parts unknown.” The truck swayed around a curve, and I felt sick. “It’ll devastate Sydney.”
“Talk to him. Make him understand how much is at stake here,” Laura urged, sliding her hand down my arm and clasping my fingers. “Come on. Where’s my got-it-undercontrol sis?”
“Lost.” The word trembled into the air in a sigh of resignation. “Lost, lost, lost.”
“No, you’re not.” Stopping the truck, Laura put it in park.
“I don’t know where to go from here.” None of the roads seemed to lead to happiness. Nothing seemed right.
“You don’t have to go anywhere,” Laura said softly. “Stay a while. Take some time to work things out with Geoff. Let Sydney ride horses and have a little fun. You and I and Collie can check out all the tearooms within a hundred
miles, and I’ll even go to antique malls with you.” She shook my fingers to see if I was listening. “Stay.”
Pulling my hand away from my face, I turned to her. “I can’t stay. You know I can’t stay. I have to get out of here.”
“Why?” she pleaded. “Jocelyn said the cabin—”
“It’s not the cabin. You know it’s not the cabin.” My voice boomed through the car, and Laura sat back, slapped by the vibration. “I can’t do this whole vacation-romance thing with Zach, not in front of Sydney. I know you and Collie had some kind of scheme going here, but it’s not going to work. I can’t involve Sydney in a half-baked love affair with some guy I barely know.”
Laura huffed an irritated breath. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Lindsey.” Her lips pinched together, telling me we were about to degenerate into a sister-fight. “Sydney’s already involved. The whole thing was her idea.”
Blinking, I jerked away from her. “What?” I couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. “What do you mean, her idea?”
“It was her idea,” Laura repeated, raising a hand palm first, like she was going to serve up the truth because I was too stupid to figure it out. “This was the brainchild of your eight-year-old daughter. The one who understands a whole lot more than you think. The one who sees that you have your life wrapped around hers so tightly that neither of you can breathe. When she knew she was leaving for the summer, she e-mailed Collie and me and told us to do something with you.”
“Do something?” I stammered, trying to grasp what Laura was saying.
“Yes. Do something.” Laura was through mollycoddling me. “ ‘You’ve got to do something with Mom,’ that’s what she said. ‘She needs somebody so she won’t be alone all the times I’m gone.’ For heaven’s sake, Lindsey, your daughter feels guilty about having friends, going on sleepovers, spending time with her father, because when she’s gone, you’re alone. She sees that you don’t have anyone but her, and she wants you to have a life.”
“She is my life!” I sobbed, threading my arms around myself and rocking back and forth in my seat as the world turned upside down.
