Blame it on Cupid

by Jennifer Greene

  A rare grin. “I told you that parent-teacher conference’d be boring.”

  “It wasn’t boring. I didn’t mind sitting and listening to everybody telling me how bright you are. Speaking of which…if you’re so darned smart, don’t you think you could teach me one of those games?”

  The grin faded. “Look. You don’t like this kind of stuff. You don’t have to pretend.”

  “I’m not pretending! I just never learned how to play games like these. You could show me, couldn’t you? Like one of those world-building games you like so much?”

  Charlie sighed, as if no child in the universe could have enough patience to survive such an outlandish adult request. “We need two computers. I could bring my laptop to the den, and you could use the spare system in there.”

  For Merry, the whole project was akin to forcing down Brussels sprouts—but man, she tried. She knuckled down, determined to sit in front of the monitor for as long as it took. Smiling. But whatever engaged Charlene about trying to take down Thal’s kingdom over Dunphi’s—or whatever the purpose was—completely eluded her.

  “I think you’re finally getting it,” Charlene said.

  Merry almost gasped. That was high praise. Of course, they’d been at it since three, and it was past six by then. “You getting hungry for dinner?”

  “Yeah…when we get done with the game, okay?”

  Merry didn’t say, what if that’s never? What if I’m stuck doing this forever and it never, never ends? But then, out of the blue, the screen went black.

  “What’d you do?” Charlie demanded immediately.

  “I didn’t do anything. That I know of. Your screen went black, too?”

  Charlie raised her eyes to the ceiling. “You must have done something.”

  “Well. Maybe I did, but if so, I don’t know what. Just tell me what to do—” Merry started to say, only Charlene abruptly shrieked.

  “Stop that! Don’t push any more buttons! Don’t do anything!”

  “I won’t. I won’t. But, Charlie, I couldn’t seriously have wrecked a whole computer by touching a wrong button, could I?”

  “Just don’t touch anything else. Not your computer. Not mine. Nothing. You just—” Charlie pointed the royal finger. “Go. To the kitchen. Out, out, out.”

  All right. So the new attempt at bonding hadn’t exactly worked out, but Merry figured—like any other debacle—that it could be turned around. You just had to keep upbeat, keep trying, find your sense of humor, keep the spirit up.

  Right?

  “I can help,” Merry rushed in. “I’ll fix it. Whatever went wrong, I’ll fix it. Or get it fixed. Don’t worry about a thing! Really, Charlie—”

  She didn’t mean to touch the computer again. Really. Hers or Charlene’s. It was when she bounced out of her chair that she accidentally lost her balance. Her elbow seemed to crash down, which would have been fine if all she’d hit was the desk. But no, her elbow had to collide with the keyboard.

  “Merry!” Charlene yelped. “For God’s sake, you gave me the blue screen of death now!”

  “What’s the blue screen of death? What? What?”

  Naturally, the phone chose that chaotic moment to ring. Truthfully, the land line might have jangled a couple of times, because it was hard to hear over Charlene’s yelling at her. At that precise moment, truth to tell, Merry was kind of happy over the chaos. She realized most normal adults wouldn’t consider a temper tantrum in a kid to be a super sign, but Charlene was always so well-behaved, so contained, so quiet. Except for that one fight at school, the girl was darn near perfect, so a little yelling and normal kid behavior seemed reassuring to Merry.

  But when Charlene sprang up to answer the phone, Merry abruptly remembered the building number of no-answer calls. She said quickly, “Charlie, let me get that. I’d rather you didn’t answer, because lately there’d been some really odd calls—”

  Only by then it was too late. Charlie had already yanked the receiver to her ear, and stormed off with the receiver glued to her ear.

  Merry hoped it was just a friend who’d called Charl—even though the kids tended to use cells over land lines. But she thought it’d be another sign of normalcy if Charlene whined to her friends about the witless, disgusting grown-up in her life. What good was childhood if you were happy all the time, right?

  So she didn’t worry when Charlene took off with the phone, just assumed the child wanted some privacy. Only a couple minutes passed before she was back to drop the phone back in its cradle.

  Merry, in the kitchen by then, turned around to ask her a question about dinner, and was startled at the sudden change in Charlene’s expression. Something was wrong. Her face suddenly looked as if it’d been dusted with chalk and she slumped down in the far kitchen chair. Subdued as a whipped puppy, she said, “Don’t sweat the computer stuff, I’ll take care of it.”

  “Who called?”

  “Nobody. Just a wrong number.” Those soft-fierce eyes suddenly blazed on hers. “I need to concentrate on the computer stuff. I can’t talk right now. I’ll fix it. Just let me alone for a while.”

  “I was the one who screwed it up—”

  “Shit happens, Merry.”

  “I know, I know, but I’m the one who—” And then she remembered that she was the guardian. “Hey. No saying ‘shit.’ Not in this house.”

  “My dad said the F word all the time.”

  “So’d my dad. But it still doesn’t sell well in Peoria.”

  “Peoria? Huh?”

  “Just try not to say the damn s or f words, all right?”

  “Sheesh. All right.”

  Tarnation. She’d annoyed the kid again. Charlene didn’t stomp back to the den in a huff because Charlene didn’t do huffs. She just walked back into the den and closed the door.

  Merry figured she’d wait her out. In the meantime, she’d scare up something to eat, and hopefully Charlene would be more willing to talk by the time they were sitting together at dinner.

  JACK DIPPED THE RAG INTO the can of stain, and then slowly rubbed the color into the naked wood. He’d always loved working with wood. A good piece of wood was a lot like having a lover. Rub her just right, and she glowed. Rub against the grain and you’d get a splinter. Just like with a woman, you always paid if you went too fast. But prepare her carefully, then give her the right rubdown, the right finish, and you could turn a plain-Jane into something gorgeous.

  At that point, unfortunately, the whole metaphor broke down.

  Wood couldn’t talk to you, and for damn sure it couldn’t get your rocks off.

  Voices raised from the other room, making Jack lift his head. He’d told the boys they could have friends over. Since he was stuck commuting them back and forth to school this week, he didn’t mind commuting a few spares. That was the theory…but the minute he’d granted the concession, he knew the theory was a huge, huge mistake.

  Four teenage boys could destroy exponentially faster and more destructively than two. And that was when they were getting along.

  He cracked open the door to the shop—not just to listen for sounds of destruction and breaking glass. But to eavesdrop on Cooper. There was a long period of fatherhood when Jack felt respecting his kids’ privacy was the only ethical and honorable choice. But that was then.

  He’d been a father too long to oversweat the ethics business. If eavesdropping netted him information on what was troubling his son, he’d eavesdrop—or whatever else he had to do.

  So far the dialogue in the other room, however loud, had been limited to Turbo Miatas, screaming chickens, belly tellies, an argument about whether one lone brain cell could think, Brandy Penny’s tit size, NASCAR, and who was getting their drivers’ license first.

  Jack had just dunked the rag back in the stain when he heard a quiet knock at the back door—almost so quiet he was unsure if he’d imagined it. A moment later, though, he saw Charlene’s nose pressed against the glass pane, and quickly motioned her inside.

 
“Hi, Mr. Mackinnon.” Her voice was easy and friendly, as if she visited him every night in her pajamas and her daddy’s big navy blue robe past ten. On a school night.

  “Hey, Charlene. What’s up?”

  “I just needed to ask you something, if it’s okay.”

  “Sure it’s okay,” he said, although just like that, bumblebees started buzzing in his pulse. “Problems next door?”

  “Nothing too weird. Merry crashed both our computers. Not a good idea to let her near anything with a plug.” Charlie edged forward, located a stool on the far side of the shop, and perched there. “And then last Thursday, it was really cold when I got home from school. You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because. She paid the bill. Only she didn’t call the guy to refill the tank. She didn’t know that if you didn’t refill the tank, there’d be no oil for the furnace, you know?” Charlie sighed.

  Jack had to hide a grin. “I just don’t think our Merry’s going to make a technical or mechanical whiz kid, you know?”

  “I know. I try to be patient. She can’t help it.”

  Since that was all the kid said, Jack started to relax, crouched back down to rub stain into the underside of the shelf. But then he realized, she’d shut up. And she was still sitting there like a miniature Green Beret, tense and waiting.

  “What was the thing you wanted to ask me?”

  “It was a hypothetical.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s a pretty scary hypothetical. That’s why I needed to ask you. Just you. I wouldn’t bother you otherwise, Mr. Mackinnon. Honest.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Well…this is the thing. Let’s say…I have a hypothetical friend. And this hypothetical friend got a phone call, okay?”

  Jack kept rubbing, but he’d stopped paying any attention to the wood project. The joking look on Charlene’s face had completely disappeared. “Okay.”

  “And the voice on the other end of that hypothetical phone call said, ‘I don’t know who that bitch is that you’re living with—’Mr. Mackinnon, I just said ‘bitch’ because the woman on the phone used that word. Hypothetically. I wasn’t trying to be—”

  “Honey, I don’t care what words the woman used. Just tell me what else was said.”

  “Hypothetically.”

  “Okay! Hypothetically!”

  “She was pretty…weird. Hypothetically. Kind of angry sounding. I said, ‘who is this?’ And hypothetically, she said, ‘I’m your mother. Not that bitch. She doesn’t have any right to live in that house. You’re my daughter. Not hers.’ And then she hung up. Hypothetically.” Hot tears welled in Charlie’s eyes, although they didn’t fall. “I hated the phone call. I got all scared and shook up. Hypothetically.”

  Jack tossed down the rag and aimed for the sink and solvent, wanting the stain off his hands lickety split. “It would have shaken me up, too. Did you tell Merry?”

  “That’s just it. I don’t want to tell Merry. She’ll get all upset. I don’t want her to know. But what if that woman was my mother? Hypothetically. Could she make me go with her? Could she take me away? I mean, she didn’t call and say, ‘Hi, I’m your mother and I’ve missed you all these years.’ Like she was someone I could want to know. Or could have wanted to be my mother. Instead, she just started out with the bitch talk. And when I got into bed and tried to sleep, I got scared that maybe she’d hurt Merry. Or take me. And then I couldn’t sleep. And I have to get back, because Merry might realize I’m gone. But I was hoping you could tell me what to do.”

  Oh, yeah, Jack thought. He needed this on a Tuesday night. With four teenagers in the house, he couldn’t leave—even for a few minutes, not if he valued his property or his sanity. He also couldn’t leave Charlene to cope with this problem alone—even though it was none of his business. And he couldn’t get any further involved with Merry, without suffering “guilt times three.”

  My God. Trying to be a cold-blooded man who minded his own business and quit getting suckered into other peoples’ lives was a full-time job. Didn’t he learn anything from his ex-wife? When you were nice, women—especially women—took you for a doormat. Stomped all over you. Usually in heels.

  But this particular female had fuzzy orange slippers and her daddy’s soft dark eyes. He said, “Of course I’ll tell you what to do, short stuff. Quit worrying. We’ll take care of this.”

  She brightened up immediately, heaving a sigh of relief that was bigger than she was.

  Which was nice, Jack thought. Except the hero hat she’d just given him weighed damn heavy, considering he didn’t have a clue how to make this right or what to do. Worse yet, he needed to figure both those things out. Pronto.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE SOUND WAS BARELY audible. If Merry didn’t know better, she’d think someone was hurling peppercorns at her bedroom window. She probably wouldn’t have heard it at all if she’d been asleep, but since she was lying there, already suffering nail-biting insomnia, she was more than happy to climb out of bed and check it out.

  Talk about a reason to wake up fast.

  It was almost as good as a fantasy, finding Jack in the moonlight. He was dressed all in black, dark sweatshirt and pants, scowling up a storm—and balancing precariously with one booted foot on the basement sill just below her bedroom window.

  When she lifted the window, he started heaving himself up—but not before hissing in a disgruntled tone, “I’m too damned old to be pulling shenanigans like this. Particularly after midnight. At my age.”

  “Well, then. Why are you?” she asked, although truthfully she was charmed. Whoever got the fairy tale come to life, with the knight climbing heights to save her? Of course she didn’t need saving. And this particular knight almost got stuck in the window—his shoulders were uncomfortably wide for a double-hung window. Thankfully, there was some squish room.

  “Because…I needed to talk to you. About something that wouldn’t wait.” He hopped in on one foot, angled the other leg in, closed the window, and then almost got tangled in a trap of lingerie straps on the chair. It wasn’t her fault. She’d have vacuumed and dusted and cleaned up if she’d known she was going to entertain a guy after midnight on a weeknight, but as it was, she wasn’t apologizing for her lingerie messes. And he was still talking anyway. “I had to wait until the boys were asleep. And then until I was sure Charlene was asleep, too. And I can’t believe I’m sneaking around like a kid myself—this is crazy. Speaking of which, why in God’s name are you sleeping in this crammed, small spare room instead of the master bedroom?”

  “Because we’re not touching Charles’s stuff right now. Until Charlene is ready.” Apparently they were going to speak in whispers. And not turn on a light. Still, she could see his tousled hair in the drift of moonlight from the window, see him standing there, tall and hands-on-hips rattled, trying to catch his breath. She’d never seen him rattled before.

  “That’s silly, Merry. You’re entitled to some space, for heaven’s sake.”

  Like he’d come here to talk about her choice of sleeping rooms? Right. She sank on the lumpy couch bed, sitting cross-legged. “It probably is silly. As far as her dad’s things, I just want to cater to her. But I could have moved upstairs. I just didn’t want her sleeping down on this floor alone. And I didn’t care.” She wanted to shake her head like a puppy, see if she could clear the muzzy space between her ears. She couldn’t seem to stop feeling charmed by his climbing in the window, just like the knight in Rapunzel.

  “Well…” Suddenly he seemed to get serious, pushing a hand through his hair. He started pacing, immediately stopped when his foot collided with something silky and feminine. On a new note of panic, he plunked a hip on the foot of her bed. “Look…Merry—”

  “Oh, no.” She got it suddenly. An unpleasant flash. The obvious reason he must have come over in a panic like this.

  “Oh, no—what?”

  “Listen, Jack,” she said in a rush. “Sometimes kids put impossible
demands on you. You know how it is. Didn’t you do it when you were little? Ask an adult to keep a secret, to keep a confidence—?”

  Even in the shadows, she could see Jack visibly start to relax. “Whew. You already know what I was coming to talk to you about.”

  She nodded, thinking of Cooper. “But I swear, I was going to tell you as soon as I had a chance. I just haven’t caught you alone since the night…” She hesitated.

  “The night we made love.”

  Maybe he’d caught his breath, but suddenly she couldn’t catch hers. Her heart had replayed their lovemaking endless times already. And with him on her bed, in the dark, no matter how fully clothed he was…suddenly those memories were between them softer than stardust and smiles.

  “You’ve had your boys there nonstop. And I couldn’t bring up the secret with the boys around,” she said.

  He suddenly cocked his head and said slowly, “Wait a minute.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “This conversation isn’t making any sense. You’re saying exactly what I came to say. That I was going to tell you the so-called ‘secret,’ but I just hadn’t had a chance, because I couldn’t talk about it when any of the kids could have overheard.” He shoved a hand through his hair again. “My head’s going in circles as if I’d had too much to drink. When I haven’t had a thing.”

  “I didn’t think you had,” she assured him.

  But Jack looked even more confused. “I mean it, though. I came to tell you that I’d felt put on the spot. About keeping the secret. About trying to be honest with the kid, valuing the confidence. But believing you needed to know about the situation.”

  “Well, I do know the situation, Jack. Because Cooper told me—”

  “Huh? How the hell did Cooper know about her mother?”

  “Huh? What mother?” Merry had initially felt self-conscious, wearing nothing but an old camisole and underpants. If the atmosphere were romantic, she’d rather be in satin tap pants and a push-up bra with lace. But since it wasn’t, she’d just as soon be wearing concealing sweats, like he was. Now, though, she forgot that self-consciousness and started looking as confused as he did. “I feel like we’re talking in circles.”