Trailer Park Heart

by Higginson, Rachel

  “His middle name?”

  “Yeah. It concerns me you named him after your mom. Give me hope you didn’t completely lose your mind.”

  “Be nice to my mom.”

  He shrugged. Again. “Is it Maxine, Ruby? Max Maxine.”

  Ignoring his joke, I blurted, “He doesn’t have one.” The lie fell out of my mouth before I could stop it.

  “He doesn’t have a middle name?”

  “No.”

  “His name is Max Dawson?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Stop judging me. God, Levi, what’s it to you what his middle name is?” My anger was defensive and obvious. I reminded my body to play it cool, but I couldn’t help but rip my hands away from him and take a step back. Obvious much, Ruby? I would have rolled my eyes at myself if Levi would have given me a break and stopped glaring at me.

  But when he did, he made everything so much worse. “Max, is that true? You don’t have a middle name?”

  He raised his eyebrows and stopped jumping over puddles in order to ask, “What’s a middle name?”

  A big breath of relief wanted to push out of my chest, but I held it back.

  Levi smiled at him. “What’s the name your mom calls you when she’s mad at you? Like my mom always yells at me, Levi Richard Cole. And then I know I’m in big trouble because she used all three of my names.”

  Max laughed at Levi’s dramatic story and then thought about what I called him when I was angry. Finally, he admitted, “Maxwell. She always calls me Maxwell.” Before I could totally relax though, he shook his finger at the ground and said in a voice I could only imagine was a high-pitched impression of mine, “Stop that right this second, Maxwell Dane Dawson.”

  Levi’s gaze snapped upward and found mine immediately.

  “It was my grandfather’s name,” I rushed to say. “Dane. It’s my grandfather’s name.”

  That wasn’t true. My grandfather’s name was Dave. Dane was Logan’s middle name. It was a fact I knew from Spanish 1. I’d always loved the name. I thought it had sounded strong and sophisticated. It was a gift I’d wanted to give my son from his father.

  “You just lied to me,” Levi stated impatiently.

  My face flushed, and I desperately wanted to crawl into a hole and shrivel into a Ruby raisin. “Why do you even care? It’s weird you want to know his middle name. I’m allowed to protect my son from nosy strangers.”

  He stood there staring at me, obviously chewing over my accusations. His face was an unreadable mask, emotions flickering too quickly for me to grasp any of them. Finally, he asked, “Your mom’s dad?”

  “Yeah. He was around when I was little,” I explained, settling more comfortably in the truth part of the lie. “He meant a lot to me.”

  “That’s Logan’s middle name.”

  “I know,” I whispered, still unable to look at him.

  “If you knew, why didn’t you just tell me?”

  I looked to my left, desperate to break Levi’s intent gaze. “Your brother and I were friends once upon a time. I know you miss him. I just… it felt too weird to say his name out loud.”

  He nodded, accepting my answer. His focus traveled back to Max. “I’ll bring a real lightsaber next time for you, Max. Or at least the movies. I’ll show you the awesomeness that is Luke Skywalker.”

  “Okay!” Max answered with a huge smile on his face. “Next time.”

  It was everything I could do not to kick Levi in the shins and throw Max in our double wide, locking every single window and door possible.

  Something shifted in Levi. It wasn’t like he relaxed, but he mellowed somehow, or at least pretended to. His grin was all easy going and friendly, but I saw the stern set of his jaw and the feral power shimmering beneath the surface. He might have been able to see right through me, but I saw him too.

  “Bye, Max,” he said casually. Turning to me, he pinned me in place with an expression that was the opposite of how he looked at Max. It was fire and brimstone and keen intuition. I wanted to point out to him that I knew he wasn’t as relaxed as he put on, that I was right, that he couldn’t hide from me either. But I didn’t say a word. I wasn’t going to feed the fire of his suspicions. Or admit that I couldn’t stop watching him, not even after all these years. “See you later, Ruby,” he bit out, all pretense of polite conversation gone. “Don’t forget to talk to RJ.”

  “No promises,” I mumbled, barely holding myself up under the weight of his glare. My organs and bones started shrinking inside me, my courage wilting, my tenacity packing up and fleeing town.

  His eyes narrowed into a furious scowl. “Probably doesn’t matter. Not even RJ can save your lying ass now.”

  He sauntered off like he hadn’t just threatened me or turned my entire world upside down. I watched his retreating form as the casual aloofness settled in his shoulders. I didn’t know whether to tackle him, drag him back to my place and keep him captive for the next twelve years or shrug him off and stop giving into my paranoia.

  There was no way he could have figured it out.

  No way.

  My secret was still safe.

  My son was still untouchable.

  There was just no evidence for Levi to find. There weren’t even whispers or popular speculation to support his unspoken theory. I hadn’t said a word to anybody in seven years. And I certainly wasn’t going to give Levi the satisfaction of spilling my soul now. No matter what he thought he knew, he didn’t know anything. Not a damn thing.

  Not a damn thing, I repeated to my heart that hadn’t gotten the message it was okay to relax now.

  Max smiled at me. “Is Dane my name?”

  Letting out a resigned sigh, I said, “Yep. Maxwell Dane Dawson. That’s your whole name.”

  His grin stretched. “I like it.”

  Tears welled in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. “I like it too.”

  “I like that guy,” he chirped happily. “He’s funny.”

  On that we disagreed. There was absolutely nothing funny about Levi or his sudden reappearance and meddling in my life. His attempted resurrection of the past would bring serious trouble into my otherwise serene, if not mildly struggling, existence. He needed to back off and find someone else to bother. I planned to talk to RJ all right, planned to give him the go ahead for the surgical removal of Levi’s balls.

  I led the way back to our home while Max continued to jump over puddles and swing his make-believe lightsaber. We finished the night with a supper of microwave popcorn and banana splits while we watched a Netflix new release. Not my finest parenting moment, but necessary therapy all the same. Max loved it. And my frayed nerves and panicked heart felt temporarily soothed.

  Still, I couldn’t shake the realization that Levi Cole was going to cause me trouble. I should have known. I should have even expected it, given our tumultuous past. And yet hope and seven years of separation had given me the false impression he had moved on.

  No, that was a lie. And I couldn’t lie to myself.

  It was the kiss. That damn kiss from all those years ago. It had made me believe he cared about me, that he wanted something more than to pick on me.

  I had been wrong.

  He wasn’t done picking on me or picking apart the careful life I’d carved out for myself and my son. And if I didn’t nip this in the bud, he was going to continue picking on me until everything unraveled. In the worst way.

  11

  Crafty Coercion

  “Welcome!” Jamie squealed as she flung the front door open for us. “We’re so excited you’re here!” Harper half-hid behind her long legs, smiling at Max. She reached one hand out and waved at him and I decided she was maybe the cutest thing on the entire planet with her soft brown ringlet curls and perfectly pert nose—after Max, of course.

  “Hi,” I said, distinctly less enthusiastically. True to her word, Jamie had invited us over to work on party favors and crafts for the Halloween party at the end of the m
onth.

  Jamie was taking her role as room mom seriously. She was determined to give the kids the “best party experience they’ll have their entire elementary career.” It felt a little extreme to me, but I wanted a fun party for Max and I was too much of a pushover to suggest putting on the brakes.

  To be totally honest, I was also hunting for some gossip. It had been two weeks since Levi had come out to my neck of the woods looking for trouble. Okay, maybe he hadn’t been looking for trouble per se. But he’d caused plenty anyway.

  I’d been so worked up over his unsaid accusations that I was having legitimate panic attacks by Monday. And then he’d strolled into the diner that morning, giving RJ and me the stink eye and his back. But all of that was apparently for naught. Chrissy, another waitress, had ended up waiting on him and he hadn’t bothered me once. Or since.

  Okay, that’s not entirely true. I had been doing my best to ignore him. But other than a few refills of coffee, he hadn’t suggested dinner or rekindling a stupid old nonexistent flame or Max’s middle name.

  Two days ago, I nearly ran into him at the Piggly Wiggly, but I’d ducked into the frozen foods section and stocked up on corn and peas. When I left, I saw him sitting in his truck and as I walked by, I caught his eye. For a second it looked like he was going to jump down and come talk to me, but he didn’t.

  I’d managed to load my groceries in my car and drive away. There had been a weird pain in my heart and a nauseous flip in my stomach, but I chalked up all those ridiculous emotions to fear.

  Jamie had texted last night to ask if I’d like to get together this afternoon. It was Saturday and Max and I didn’t have any exciting plans, so I hoped this would take my mind off obsessing about Levi Cole and his silent allegations.

  Or maybe Jamie would have something interesting to share.

  God, I wanted to slap my hand to my forehead and groan. I was like an addict.

  I blamed this town. And the environment I was brought up in. It wasn’t my fault I was like this.

  I cleared my throat, annoyed at my internal self. “Thanks for having us over,” I told Jamie, pushing past the mental issue mountains in my head and focusing on the present.

  “Of course!” she beamed. “Jason has a bunch of guys over for the game. Harper and I needed more estrogen to balance things out.”

  “Oh, I hope we’re not interrupting.”

  She waved me into her opulent foyer. Trendy tile and an iron chandelier overhead accented her soft gray walls decorated with a mixture of pictures of their beautiful family and interesting art pieces. It was like stepping into a magazine ad for Restoration Hardware. “Don’t even worry about them. They’re in the basement with all the finger foods they could want. We have a wet bar down there and Jason ordered a keg. I doubt any of them will surface before dark.”

  I laughed. “That sounds amazing.”

  She nodded somberly. “Oh, to be male and spoiled rotten.” She winked at me and I felt genuine kindness for this girl I had previously judged so hard. Maybe she wasn’t the faded beauty queen I’d pegged her as. She led me into the kitchen where a gigantic island was covered in orange and black Halloween supplies with fuzzy purple piles thrown in sporadically. It was such a shocking contradiction from her perfectly styled foyer that I tripped a little and kicked Max in his heel. “Sorry for the mess,” she murmured. “I went a little overboard.”

  That was an understatement. It looked like Halloween had thrown up in here. I laughed nervously. “It’ll be good. Better to have too much.” Not that I had ever known what too much looked like. Or what we would do with all of the craft supplies. It was just one party, for one classroom. Unless she planned to decorate the entire school building, we wouldn’t need half of these things.

  She gave me a wobbly smile. “Sure.” She turned to Harper and said, “Why don’t you take Max in the back yard and show him the playset.”

  Max looked at me, making sure it was okay. In our neighborhood he wasn’t allowed to play outside unless I was with him. I ruffled his hair and smiled reassuringly. “It’s okay, buddy. Go ahead.”

  Harper took Max’s hand and tugged him after her. “Come on!” she ordered.

  I watched after him as he weaved his way through their nice house, afraid he was going to bump into a coffee table or something and I would have to figure out how to pay for a three-hundred-dollar knickknack.

  “It’s fenced,” Jamie offered quickly, sensing my discomfort. “They can’t get out. Jason just finished building the playset. It’s a little extravagant if you ask me, but he got a deal on lumber and built it himself, so he wanted to do it right.” She rolled her eyes, but there was a sweetness to it. “He can’t help himself. When it comes to Harper, he wants to give her the entire world.”

  A pain burst through my chest and I rubbed absently at the aching spot over my breastbone. I didn’t miss Logan in the obvious sense of the word. It wasn’t like I thought I’d lost this great love of my life. But for Max’s sake, sometimes it was hard to stomach his absence.

  He would have been a good dad.

  It wasn’t fair to Max that all he had was me. Logan could have given him things like backyard playsets and homes with fences. I would never be able to afford that stuff.

  And at the same time I missed Logan, I was also glad he wasn’t in the picture. As hard as it was to be a single parent, I couldn’t imagine sharing Max with anyone. I couldn’t imagine losing him to the Cole world and having to explain why they lived like that and I lived like… I did.

  It was another reason I’d never said anything, why I’d always held this secret so close to the vest.

  What if Max went over to their side and never wanted to come back?

  “That’s sweet,” I managed to say to Jamie.

  She smiled dreamily beyond my head and then seemed to snap out of it. “Should we get started?”

  I frowned at the mess on the kitchen island again. “I’m afraid.”

  She tipped her head back and laughed at my joke. “Me too.”

  Two hours later, my back hurt and my neck had a serious crick in it, but I’d managed to recreate cartoonish versions of Frankenstein, a witch, a pumpkin, a mummy, a ghost, a black cat and a zombie on thirty different soup cans. Plus, I’d painted a pumpkin pyramid on the bean bag toss board. They weren’t half bad.

  “I didn’t know you were such an artist,” Jamie said, admiring my work. “These look awesome!”

  I brushed hair out of my eyes with the back of my hand, still wielding my paintbrush. “Yeah, they turned out okay. I used to paint a lot in high school, I just haven’t had time since Max.”

  I expected her to say something about my teen pregnancy, but she smiled in empathy instead. “I know what you mean. Harper is constant. I don’t even remember what I like to do that doesn’t involve Disney princesses or playing Barbies.”

  “Right? Or apps. I think I spend half my life navigating all the different free games he downloads on my phone.”

  “I was just saying that to Jason! I told him, we just need to hand over our credit card and let Harper pay for apps that aren’t crap. Anything to end the madness.”

  A door opened somewhere nearby and socked feet padded our way. Jamie looked up and smiled that same dreamy smile again.

  “What are you saying about me?” Jason demanded.

  I half-turned around on my bar stool to wave awkwardly at him. Suddenly I felt like I’d been caught somewhere I didn’t belong. Like I was seventeen again and Jamie had invited me over to break into the liquor cabinet, but her parents had shown up mid-heist.

  Logically, I knew it wasn’t the same thing, nor would I get into trouble for being in a house the owner had invited me into. But I couldn’t shake the vibe that I didn’t belong.

  It was like when I was driving through town and the sheriff pulled up next to me. I always had to double check my seatbelt and turn down the radio. Like he was going to arrest me for being an irrationally paranoid person.

  “H
ey, Ruby,” Jason said, smiling kindly.

  I was surprised he knew my name. “Hey.”

  “You’re covered in paint,” a deeper voice said from behind him.

  I turned fully around and found Levi standing just inside the kitchen, his shoulder perched against the wide arched entrance to the kitchen. Seeing him there, without shoes on, dressed in faded blue jeans and a worn Nebraska Cornhuskers t-shirt, he somehow managed to steal my breath and send my heart into a flurry of nervous skipping.

  “What’s up, Cole?” Jamie chirped. “How are the boys doing?”

  She meant the Huskers. Both Jason and Levi grumbled something unhappily without giving an actual answer. I wondered what kind of husband Jason was when it came to the pride and joy of Nebraska. Did he shrug off a loss like a rational thinking human being? Or did he sulk and pout about it for the entire week?

  He walked around the island and rubbed Jamie’s shoulders, kissing her temple tenderly. He seemed like one of the good ones.

  “Where are the kids?” he asked.

  “Watching a movie,” Jamie answered. “Sufficiently sugared.”

  “Max is probably passed out by now,” I murmured, brushing at my forehead again, self-conscious about the paint now. “He’s not used to so many snacks.”

  “Oh, god,” Jason groaned. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those gluten-free, non-dairy, granola moms.”

  Shaking my head, I said, “I think granola has gluten.”

  Jason made a face. “You know what I mean.” Taking a few backward steps, he added, “I’m going to go check on the kids. Make sure that Max kid has his hands where I can see them.” He winked at me, letting me know he was kidding.

  “See, I told you he was completely unmanageable when it comes to Harper.” Jamie laughed, following after him.

  Levi and I were left alone and suddenly the gigantic open space of their house felt tiny. This kitchen, that was the same size as my entire home, felt too small to take a breath, let alone hold both Levi and me.

  “Did you do those?” he asked before I could jump down from my stool and flee. Sorry Max, find your own way home!