The Better Man (Chicago Sisters)

by Amy Vastine

  “He talked to this guy. He’s been talking about this guy ever since he left the restaurant.”

  “He’s been talking?”

  Emma nodded. “To Lucy, to me, to Mom and Dad.”

  “Mom and Dad are here?” Kendall fumbled with the hanger.

  “He talked to them on the phone.” Emma waved a dismissive hand. “But still, this is amazing. This guy is the miracle you’ve been waiting for.”

  Kendall couldn’t think in terms of miracles; she could only focus on the facts. Simon had been talking all afternoon. Talking like a normal kid. Talking to whoever would listen. Perhaps meeting Max had unlocked something inside him. She followed her sister down the hall and into the family room where Simon and Lucy were hanging out and talking.

  “Do you think Max likes Halloween?” Simon asked, drawing on one of the many papers strewn all over the coffee table. Just hearing his voice made tears prick at the corner of Kendall’s eyes.

  “Probably. I mean, who doesn’t like Halloween?” Lucy answered.

  “Yeah, I bet he does.” His tongue poked out between his lips as he focused his attention on the drawing.

  Kendall tried to compose herself. She couldn’t overreact or all would be lost. Psychologist #2 had been very clear about not showing too much excitement when Simon spoke to someone other than her. He had a hard enough time managing his own feelings—he couldn’t deal with hers, as well.

  “Hey guys,” she said, stepping farther into the room.

  Simon’s head lifted and his eyes brightened. “Hi, Mommy. Does Max like Halloween?”

  She let herself appreciate the sound of his voice, so clear and sure, then tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “I’ll have to ask him tomorrow.”

  “Good idea.” Simon returned to his picture. “But maybe I can ask. I want to go to work with you tomorrow.” He didn’t bother to check his mother’s reaction.

  Internally, Kendall cursed a couple of times. Of course he wanted to go to work instead of school. One step forward, two steps back. School was ready to kick him out because he couldn’t talk or make it through the day there. Now he was talking, but only because of Max, who would be his new reason to avoid school.

  Lucy shook her head ever so slightly. Her expression was one of support for being firm. Emma was the soft, overwhelmingly compassionate one. She seemed more sorry for them than anything. She’d tell Kendall to let Simon skip school if it meant getting him to open up more. Wasn’t that what Kendall needed him to do more than anything? Maybe if he spent a little more time around Max, he’d really come out of his shell and none of the problems would exist any longer.

  Lucy could see her crumbling. “What if Aunt Emma brings you over there tomorrow after school,” she suggested. “But only if you make it through the whole day. That sounds like a good plan, right, K?”

  Kendall nodded. “I’m sure Max would tell you anything you wanted to know if he hears you went to school for the whole day.”

  Simon didn’t like this condition one bit. “My tummy hurts and everybody at school hates me. I don’t want to go.”

  Emma sat down next to him on the floor and wrapped an arm around him. She would most definitely give in. “Aw, buddy, that’s not true. Who could hate someone as awesome as you?”

  Kendall made eye contact with Lucy, who gave her sister all the moral support she could without saying a word.

  “That’s the deal, take it or leave it,” Kendall said. “Go to school and Aunt Emma will bring you by the restaurant. Don’t go to school, you and Aunt Emma stay home all day.” It was a risky offer. He could easily choose to stay home, and there was no guarantee that time with Max was a big enough reward.

  The little boy contemplated his choices. He went back to his drawing and took his time, carefully coloring in the spaces he needed to fill. Wait him out, wait him out, Kendall told herself. She had to let him reason this out on his own.

  The kitchen timer went off, breaking the silence. Lucy popped up. “That’s me. Dinner’s almost ready!”

  As much as Kendall dreaded making dinner after such a long day, eating something Lucy cooked was hazardous to her taste buds. She glared at Emma, who would have none of it.

  “Don’t look at me like that. She was already whipping something up when I got here.”

  “When you say she was whipping up ‘something,’ can you be more specific? Did it resemble some kind of real food?”

  “I was trying to figure it out when she dropped the you-know-what bomb on me. After that, I couldn’t think straight.”

  Kendall could tell she was exhausted and stressed. Her sister was kind enough to make her and Simon dinner, and she was feeling nothing but ungrateful. She needed to suck it up. Dinner was likely some organic, nondairy, gluten-free mystery concoction, but she was going to clean her plate.

  “I can talk to Max if I go to school in the morning?” Simon asked, finally ready to make his choice.

  “If you go to school all day,” Kendall clarified. She had to be specific; he would take advantage of any loophole.

  Simon’s bottom lip jutted out at her catch. “Fine.” He began to pick up his markers and place them in their bin.

  “Dinner’s ready!” Lucy shouted from the kitchen.

  “Don’t set a place for me. I’m not staying,” Emma said as she stood up. “Wish I could, but I have that thing, so I need to get home.”

  Kendall mouthed the word liar.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow after school, bud.” Emma ruffled Simon’s hair. “I can’t wait to meet Max.” She smiled at her frowning sister as she grabbed her purse.

  Kendall held out her hand to help Simon to his feet. She gave him a kiss on top of the head. “Let’s go eat, huh?”

  “I’ll go to school, but I’m not eating Aunt Lulu’s dinner,” Simon said quietly but firmly.

  Kendall smiled and shook her head. “Et tu, Simon? Et tu?” She couldn’t really complain. He’d get peanut butter and jelly if it meant he’d go to school the next day. That was an easy deal to make.

  * * *

  KENDALL PULLED THE covers up under Simon’s chin, making sure he was tucked in tight.

  “Love you,” she whispered before giving him a kiss good-night.

  “I love you more,” he replied quietly.

  Switching off his bedside lamp, she smiled. “Impossible.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Trust me, someday when you have kids, you’ll know just how impossible it is. Now, get some sleep.” She paused at his door and blew him one more kiss. When she was his age, she had no idea she could love someone as much as she loved him. Forget about to the moon and back. Kendall’s love for Simon was infinite.

  She padded down the stairs and found Lucy drying and putting away the dishes. The small kitchen was her favorite room in the house. It reminded her of the one in the house where she grew up.

  The kitchen was where all the big and little events happened. Everyone used to crowd around the small table at dinnertime and talk about their day. Their dad would share funny stories about what happened on the construction site, Lucy would try to rally everyone to take up her latest cause, and Emma and their mom would discuss how they were going to save the world. It was at that same table that she told her parents she was engaged and, a few years later, that she was pregnant. Her mom was standing in the kitchen when she called Kendall to tell her they had found a lump, and they celebrated around the table when the news came back that the cancer was gone.

  Life-changing moments could happen in a kitchen like this one.

  Trevor would have hated it. He would have wanted granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. He liked an open floor plan so he could see the television in the family room from the kitchen table. They were so different in so many ways, she and Trevor. It had bee
n the differences that drew her to him in the first place, but it had also been their differences that pushed him away and made him choose to go back to Afghanistan.

  “You don’t have to do that. The least I can do is the dishes.” She took the damp dish rag out of her sister’s hand, needing the distraction from her thoughts. Her heart felt as though it was being pinched.

  “I’m used to cleaning up after myself, it’s no big deal.”

  “Well, I’m used to cleaning up after myself, so let me finish. You’ve helped me enough today. At this rate, I’ll never be able to pay you back.”

  Lucy knocked her hip against her sister’s. “That isn’t the way our family works and you know it. You don’t owe me anything. You’re my little sister and Simon’s my only nephew until Emma marries a rich doctor and has those two perfect children she’s sure will never fight, cry or ever do any wrong.”

  Kendall laughed. Emma had her entire life mapped out. She not only knew where she wanted to be in a year, she had a five-, ten-, even a twenty-year plan. “Emma usually gets what she wants.”

  “Our sister has been very lucky. I just hope when something finally doesn’t go her way, she survives.” Lucy was a realist. She’d been through enough to know life wasn’t always easy and could be more than a little unfair.

  “She’s tough. And knowing her, she’ll plan her way out of any setback.”

  Lucy smiled for the briefest of moments. “Speaking of setbacks...what are you going to do if using Max as a reward backfires and Simon has a major one?”

  Kendall opened up the cabinet to put away the drinking glasses and sighed. “Seriously? You were the one who came up with this brilliant idea in the first place.”

  “I could see you were about to let him skip school. I had to think fast,” Lucy said in her defense. “That doesn’t change the fact that you need to consider this some more.”

  “Do I have to think about it tonight? Can I just enjoy the fact that he talked to you and Emma and Mom and Dad for one night?”

  “What do you really know about him except that he looks like Trevor and works at the restaurant?”

  “Not a lot.” She tried to think as she put the last dish away. “He’s originally from California. He’s passionate about his work. He likes to be in control, and I’m guessing he’s very good at what he does.”

  “He sounds like you,” Lucy said with a chuckle. “What do you really know about him, though?”

  “He has a son. He moved to Chicago to be closer to him. So, he can’t be that bad.”

  “Right,” Lucy drawled. “Because only decent, God-fearing people are allowed to have children.” She began to pace around the small room. “Why does his kid live in Chicago if he was in California? Is he married? Was he married? If he’s divorced, why? Did she leave him? Did he leave her? Did he cheat?”

  “Stop!” Kendall shouted a little louder than she intended to. She threw the dish rag on the counter and pressed her hand against her forehead, hoping that would somehow hinder the headache she could feel coming from turning into a migraine. “Okay, I get it. Just stop.”

  Lucy stood still in front of her sister. “I’m not trying to make you mad. I’m trying to make you cautious. I know part of you thinks this is just me and my trust issues, and you would be right, but you should have trust issues. You have to be sure about this guy before you let him spend too much time around Simon. You’re going to finish this job and never see the guy again. And then what?”

  Kendall had more trust issues than Lucy would ever know. She had no plans to let Simon get too attached to Max. She hadn’t expected Simon to respond this way to meeting him.

  “The school wants to have a meeting to talk about sending Simon to a private school for kids with problems.”

  “What?” Lucy’s green eyes went wide.

  “When I picked him up at school, the principal said they don’t think he can go there anymore if he doesn’t start making some progress,” she confessed as she leaned against the counter.

  Lucy seemed shocked. “Do you think he needs to go to some special school?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want him to need to go to a special school. I want him to talk and not to be afraid.”

  Her sister placed a hand on her shoulder. “Of course you do.”

  “I’m going to be cautious when it comes to Max, but I have to see where this goes. I can’t ignore what happened today.”

  Lucy nodded in agreement. If Max was the key to bringing Simon back to the world of the talking, then Kendall needed to get to know him—fast.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  KENDALL AND OWEN were acting really weird. First, they’d invited Max to lunch. Then, they’d taken turns interrogating him. For some reason, the two of them were interested in his entire life history. They wanted to know what clique he belonged to when he was in high school, where he went to college, if he’d been in a fraternity, if he’d ever been arrested, if he owned or rented. It felt a little like he was applying for a mortgage or something.

  “What about you two? How did you become business partners?” Max asked, trying to shift the conversation away from himself. He had nothing else to eat. He had taken huge bites of his sandwich in hopes that the questions would stop if he had food in his mouth. They hadn’t.

  “We met at design school,” Owen answered, but quickly went back to his questions. “Do you have any hobbies or weird fetishes?”

  “Owen!” Thankfully, it was Kendall who called him out on crossing the line.

  “Too much?” he asked her. She pinched the bridge of her nose and nodded.

  “What’s with the twenty questions?” If they ever asked him to lunch again, he’d have to invite Wayne along.

  Kendall jabbed her fork into the salad she’d been ignoring and took her first bite.

  “We’re just trying to get to know you,” Owen said. Now Kendall was the one using food to avoid conversation.

  Getting to know him. Yeah, right.

  Owen’s phone rang and when he answered it, he greeted the caller in another language. He stood up, excusing himself.

  “Must be his mother. He only speaks Korean when he talks to his mom,” Kendall explained, still picking at her lunch.

  Max watched her. Now that it was just the two of them, he felt much less intimidated. She had really long eyelashes that weren’t covered in black gunk. Kendall didn’t hide behind a lot of makeup—she didn’t need to. Max liked that she probably woke up looking the same as she did any other time of day. There was something refreshing about that.

  “So, you got any hobbies or weird fetishes I should know about?” he asked.

  Her smile made her cheekbones more pronounced. “Owen gets a little carried away, but he’s harmless, I promise,” she said instead of answering the question.

  “You two met in design school and started KO Designs right after?”

  “No. I ended up getting married and followed my husband out to Virginia where he started his Marine Corps training. That eventually led us to North Carolina, where I had Simon. Owen’s the one who stuck with design. He got a job at a big firm in the city, learned so much more than we did in school, built an excellent reputation as an up-and-comer. Being a mother was my only job until...”

  “Until?” As soon as the word came out of his mouth, Max felt like an idiot. “Until you lost your husband. Sorry. That was dumb of me.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Kendall shook it off. “After Trevor died, I moved back here to Chicago to be near my family. I reconnected with Owen, who was already thinking about starting his own company. When he heard I was moving back, he offered to take me on as his partner. I actually tried to talk him out of it.”

  “Why?”

  “Why in the world would he want to take on not only a grieving widow but a single mother who never g
ot further than design school? Making me a partner was a huge risk, considering all he’d done to build his reputation.”

  “But here you are, a year later, doing great. He must have known something you didn’t.”

  “I’m surviving,” she said humbly. “Mostly thanks to my parents, my sisters and Owen. I certainly couldn’t have done any of it alone. Plus, I’ve had to tell myself more than once that Simon needs a mother, not a basket case.”

  “You never come across like a basket case.” Her ability to take control of her life after being widowed was impressive. Maybe she had some help, but something told him that it had more to do with who she was. She was the one who had to support the two of them and be present in Simon’s life. She had been wise enough to know she had to come back here to give her son some needed stability. “You’re a good mother.”

  Kendall shook her head as if she wasn’t so sure. Her face flushed and she set down her fork. “Sometimes I wonder.”

  “I know a good one when I see one. I was raised by a single mom who didn’t always make the best choices. Sometimes her desire to be whoever she wanted to be at the moment took a backseat to what I needed. You always put Simon first.”

  “Would you consider yourself a good father?” she asked, eyes wide with curiosity.

  Of all the questions she could ask. Max would have rather answered the weird fetish question. Was he a good father? No. Did he want to be? Yes. That had to count for something. “I’m working on it. I think I could be.”

  “I appreciate your honesty,” she said with an encouraging smile. “It takes a strong man to admit he’s not perfect.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, call me Superman.”

  Owen returned and slid back into the booth next to his partner. “Well, well. Sounds like things got interesting while I was away.”

  Both Kendall and Max fell into a fit of laughter. Max eased back into his seat. His shoulders relaxed and his smile remained. Maybe he was making some friends. Wayne would be happy.