Oliver sat in Belinda’s recliner. “You’re a good mom, Selena. And I can understand why you felt you had to do what you did seven years ago. But a part of you must realize the positive influence my parents could have on Camille’s life.”
“You don’t know anything about me.” Selena smiled, as if that sad fact comforted her. “And I know your parents are good people, Oliver. I just don’t know how my daughter would react to finding out about them, only to have us move away again. And not upsetting her life any more than I already have is all I can let matter to me now.”
This Selena was stronger, he realized, than the girl who’d been so terrified of losing him. Stronger and potentially even more self-destructive than she’d been as a teenager, when she’d been trying to protect only herself from him.
“What’s happened to you?” he let slip out.
Selena shrugged, when she should be telling him to go to hell for judging her. “I’ve grown up, the hard way.”
“You’re giving up on my family without letting us prove we could be good for Camille.”
“I’ve learned a lot about second chances. The number one thing? That this is my life, my chance, my mistakes to make and make up for. It’s my responsibility to do the best I can for my daughter. She deserves that from me. And she’ll have it.”
“I don’t doubt she will. But why the hell does it have to be just you?”
“Because I’m all she’s ever had,” Selena continued, reasonable and calm while he could feel his blood begin to simmer again. “Because she’s not yours or your family’s to worry about. Not yet. Not until I’m sure it’s the right time. I wish I had a different answer that would make things easier. But I don’t. And don’t think I haven’t lain awake nights since coming back, wanting to talk it all through with someone. Get it out in the open. Make this right.”
“Then make it right.”
Selena shook her head. “Once we open that Pandora’s box, there’s no backing things up, regardless of what we discover. And springing a father Camille’s never met on her at this point in her life, when we’re not staying in town for any longer than it takes me to come up with the money to move again, would only confuse her more.”
Confuse Camille, Oliver wondered, or Selena?
It was a believable speech, fiercely delivered. Selena hadn’t so much as blinked while she’d spoken. She’d barely taken in air. But he’d just had her in his arms, felt her needing him the same bottomless way as when they’d been lovers. And she was wound so tightly now she seemed to be holding herself together by sheer grit.
“I’m not asking you to do anything you and Camille aren’t ready for.”
“Sure you are.”
“I want to do what’s best for everyone involved.”
“By forcing your way into my daughter’s life?”
“By talking with you about our mutual problem.”
“Camille’s no one’s problem.”
“Someone’s her father, Selena. Assuming you’re sure she’s not your ex’s.”
“Parker came along after I already knew I was pregnant.”
Oliver stared into his empty glass. “Does Camille know that?”
Selena nodded. “She’s always called him Parker. I’ve been honest from the start that he wasn’t her birth father. That her only blood family was a grandmother she’d never met before we moved in here.”
Oliver swallowed the reflex to argue the point on his parents’ behalf.
“I . . .” He tried to think of a gentler way to say it and couldn’t, when he’d smooth-talked countless skeptical CIOs into giving him their business. “I take my responsibilities seriously these days, Selena.”
“Me too. And Camille’s my responsibility.”
Which in her mind meant that the both of them were completely beyond his reach. “Your daughter’s my family, too.”
“You don’t know that.”
“If she’s not your ex’s, she’s either mine or Brad’s.” Another possibility struck him. “Could she be someone else’s?”
Selena choked as she sipped her lemonade. “Could you be more of a jackass?”
He let out the breath he’d been holding, relieved, grateful. “Then she’s either my daughter or my niece.” He slipped to the edge of the recliner. “Is it so hard to believe that that could matter to me?”
She went to put down her glass and missed the edge of Belinda’s scarred coffee table. She cursed and caught it before it could crash to the hardwood. But liquid drenched her arm, her dress, and the floor.
Oliver leaped forward and took the glass from her. He handed her the fresh handkerchief he’d slipped into his pocket that morning. She looked at the pressed white square, at his wrinkled jeans. Then she was gazing straight into his eyes, connecting again, crushing him with the mixture of home and loneliness he saw there. And her determination not to feel this . . . whatever this was between them.
She mopped up the table and then herself.
“You carry a handkerchief?” she sputtered, like she was accusing him of something. “Of course you do.”
He let her clean up, let her settle. He took in all of her, as if it were the last time. Smooth features, solemn eyes, and a guarded soul that he still felt tangled up in, whether either of them liked it or not.
“You really were hoping,” he said, “that no one would catch on.”
She handed him the soaked handkerchief. “I told Belinda we’d be in town for only a few weeks. There have been some complications.”
“Like what?”
When she clammed up again, she finally succeeded in pissing him off. He gave himself credit for not exploding and scaring her or the sick little girl sleeping in a bedroom down the hall. But, complications?
“We’re going to deal with this,” he said. “If you’d just listen—”
“I have listened. I listened when your brother came by school this morning, to try to get me to see reason. But—”
“Travis?” Damn it.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know. And don’t think it helps your cause for your family to be coming at me, too. Travis. Your mother. What’s next—Joe begging me from his hospital bed? I don’t want anyone to get hurt by this. But—”
“This is no one else’s business right now but ours.” And Oliver would make certain Travis and the entire Dixon crew understood that. “Once we break the news, I’ll get my family under control.”
She shook her head, a sad kind of envy overtaking her features. “They love you, Oliver. There’s no controlling that. And I wouldn’t want you to try. You need them too badly still.”
He stared at her, his heart feeling like it was teetering on the edge of a cliff, destined to fall and take him with it, no matter what he did next. His family did love him. They couldn’t have made that more clear, or the fact that they wanted him in town for as long as he could stay. So why did it feel as if none of that could make things right, not without Selena in his life, figuring this mess out with him?
“I’m not sure what Travis thinks he knows,” Selena said. “But he seems pretty certain I’m a threat to you settling in Chandlerville. Reassure him that I’m not, and he’ll back off. The best way you can keep everyone else out of my business is to drop your questions about Camille.”
“Drop them?” Drop the fact that he could be a father—to a little girl who thought he was cool. To Selena’s little girl.
“Give me some time. I can’t make a split-second decision about verifying her paternity. Don’t ask me to do that. We have to do this carefully, if we do it at all. Be reasonable, and—”
“I’ve been reasonable. But I’ve already talked with Brad. Do you understand what I’m saying? You need to tell your mother as soon as possible, because mine’s the one who started this. And I don’t see Marsha letting this drop. I’m sticking in town for as long as I have to—to deal with whatever my parents need me to. And my mother’s asked me to deal with this.”
“So now you’re dealing
with my daughter . . .” Selena spat the words at him. “Is that what that display was outside? You cupping her cheek and smiling at her and crouching down in front of her to talk about cookies and lemonade? Maybe even kissing me just now. It was all for your parents’ sake, right? But now you want me to believe that Camille’s paternity means something to you personally.”
Oliver gritted his teeth. He felt just as incapable of helping Selena see reason now as when they’d been kids.
“Camille matters to me,” he insisted. “Even if the last thing you want is for anything about her to be about me. Let me help you see a different way through this. You’re ignoring the reality that there’s nothing I take more seriously than my responsibility to my family.”
“I see reality just fine.” Selena collected both their glasses. “And the reality is that I get to decide what’s best for Camille. And you get to leave. Don’t think you can bully me into agreeing to what you want. I’ll deal with telling Belinda. Then everyone’s just going to have to accept that I’m doing the best I can, the same as I have since Camille was born. I’m handling my responsibilities. I’m going to make sure my daughter has a happy life, whatever it takes. And the last thing she needs is another man wanting to call himself her father, while he’s only thinking about himself and what he wants. Now get out.”
“Funny,” an older, more lived-in version of Selena’s voice said, from the doorway to the porch. Neither Oliver nor Selena had heard it open. Belinda stepped all the way inside. “That’s pretty much what I said the day I told your daddy to leave and never come back.”
Selena watched Oliver leave without responding to Belinda’s bombshell.
“Mom . . .”
She had no idea what had just happened or what her mother had meant. Not for certain. And she didn’t dare ask. Not right now. Not when she’d just been kissing Oliver and wanting to keep kissing him—a man who was smiling at her daughter one minute, grabbing for Selena the next, then making not so thinly veiled threats about doing whatever he had to on his family’s behalf about getting to the bottom of Camille’s paternity. Now, evidently her mother might have booted Selena’s dad out twenty years ago, instead of the man abandoning them the way Selena had always believed.
“I got a call from Gladys in the school office,” Belinda said. “That Camille had gone home after having an allergy attack. I had to call the pediatrician myself to find out that you two were on your way home. I took off early to make sure everything was okay. I tried calling your cell.”
“I turned the ringer off in the doctor’s office.” Selena ran her hands through her hair. “Sorry. It’s been a long day. I was rushing to get set up for my class this morning when Kristen stopped by to talk . . .”
She took her glass and Oliver’s through to the kitchen. Kristen’s offer was a topic for another day.
“Then Travis interrupted us,” she added, arriving at even more details to skip over. “Before we could talk long I got a page about Camille. We just got home. I know I should have called. But—”
“Yes.” Her mother pulled down the hem of the post-office blue shirt she wore to work every day. “I obviously interrupted something important with Oliver. And I should have kept my opinions to myself. I’m sorry about that, honey, really.”
Selena returned to the doorway between the living room and kitchen. She realized she was smiling—completely inappropriately. And so was her mother.
“You should have kept your opinions to yourself?” Selena repeated.
Belinda set her purse on the entryway table. “You thought you’d never hear that from me, didn’t you?”
“With or without checking the sky for flying swine?”
Belinda actually chuckled. She passed Selena, heading for the automatic coffee maker. It could be 110 in the shade, high summer, a Southern heat wave with no end in sight, and she would put on a pot of coffee the second she walked in the door. An entire pot, even if she was preparing it only for herself.
No single-cup fancy maker for Belinda. Selena had wanted to buy her mother one a few Mother’s Days back—the swankiest must-have model available in New York. It had had a feature for practically everything except giving you a mani-pedi while you waited. But coffee was coffee to Belinda. Ground beans. Boiling water. The rest was just trappings to get you hooked on buying things you didn’t know you needed until some marketing team said so.
Selena leaned against the arched doorway, watching her mother go through the soothing ritual of setting things up.
“I’ve been all over you since you came home.” Belinda measured out grounds. “And I know I could have handled things better when you were growing up.”
“You don’t have to apologize, Mom.” More than anything, Selena couldn’t take that right now.
“For how I raised you? I’m not. I did what I thought was best, the best I could. The same as you are with Camille.” Belinda finished up and faced Selena, the kitchen’s small table and three chairs between them. “But you’ve got enough people forcing their opinions on you. You don’t need more pressure from me about the choices you’re facing.”
“About?”
“About Oliver, dear. I should have butted out just now. I shouldn’t have called you about him yesterday morning. I had no business at Neat Feet trying to talk you out of doing whatever you need to do. I’m not very good at keeping my worries and thoughts to myself. But this is one time I’m going to do just that. It’s your decision to make, not mine. Just know that I’m here to talk if you ever want to. That’s all I’m going to say. About Parker and Oliver . . . about your father. When you’re ready, if you’re ever ready, I want to be here for you.”
Selena sat in one of the chairs, her legs as wobbly as the unsteady flutter of her heart. “Like you waited for me to tell you about Parker?”
Belinda frowned. “That man never loved you or your daughter. Not enough. He wasn’t going to give you and Camille the family you deserved. I could hear it in your voice, the way you described your lives together. I knew you hoped he’d change. I knew from personal experience that men like him never do. But . . .”
“You let me come to my senses on my own and ask you for help.”
Belinda joined her at the kitchen table. The legs of her chair creaked as she sat. “Me telling you that you deserved better than a man you thought was your savior wasn’t going to get either of us what we wanted. You’d never have trusted me if I’d been the one to say it first.”
Selena inhaled the comforting aroma of her mother’s coffee. She cherished the care and patience Belinda had shown her all this time, no matter the bumps in their relationship they were still working through. But she couldn’t talk about Oliver yet. Or whatever had really happened when her dad left.
She just wanted to sit there with her mother, she realized, and enjoy the simplicity of the birds chirping in the backyard—the way they had when Selena was a little girl, doing her homework at this same table and dreaming of growing up and moving away and making a bigger, better life for herself. She didn’t want bigger and better these days. She wanted simple. She wanted honesty and hope and a belief in tomorrow she hadn’t felt in a long time.
“Thank you, Mom.” She didn’t know what else to say. “For waiting, and for not asking too many questions yet.”
Belinda smiled and left, only as long as it took to pour coffee and stir sugar into her cup before she sat back down. “There’s time to work up to the rest, as long as you keep letting me be part of your life.” Her steady gaze said she knew how much even that was asking. “I realize I’m set in my ways. I’m not easy to live with.”
“That’s not it.”
Even if the last thing you want is for anything about her to be about me, Oliver had said. And Selena had no idea if that was it. She couldn’t see anything clearly now. She had no idea what to do next.
“I know how hard you’re trying,” she said to her mother, grateful that she wasn’t doing this alone.
“We both are.” B
elinda smiled. “You’re trying not to run again before you’re able to make ends meet on your own. And I’m trying to talk less. Listen more. I know I’m not good enough at it. But I’m getting better. We’re getting better. We can get through this together this time. I know we can.”
Selena blinked.
If you decide you’d like to give Chandlerville a chance, call me . . .
Let me help you see a different way through this . . .
You both have secrets you think won’t hurt anyone else . . .
We can get through this together this time . . .
Selena had left New York, determined to make it on her own. Only to surround herself with people determined to help her find her way.
“You have a meeting tonight?” Belinda asked.
Selena shook her head. “Tomorrow. I’ll probably take the day off to stay home with Camille. If she’s still not feeling well by tomorrow evening, I don’t need to make a meeting.”
“Oh yes you do. I saw your face when I walked in on you and Oliver. You’ve had quite a day—Travis, Camille’s allergic reaction, then whatever was happening just now. On top of yesterday. You don’t have to talk about any of it with me. But you’re going to be where you need to be tomorrow night to feel supported.”
Selena’s sobriety and how hard she’d worked at it since before Camille was born had so far been one of the few conversations Selena and Belinda had muscled all the way through—two adults talking, instead of falling back on the dysfunctional parent-child dynamic that wouldn’t have gotten them anywhere. Since then, Belinda had made it a point to be home anytime Selena had an AA meeting. In fact, Belinda had regularly insisted on it, just as she was now. Supporting. Pushing. Loving Selena in her own way.
“I’ll be there,” Selena promised.
Let Me Love You Again (An Echoes of the Heart Novel Book 2) Page 12
