Home for the Baby's Sake

by Christine Rimmer

  She took him. “Next year,” she promised the little cutie, “when you’re two, you can be in the Fall Revue and the Christmas show right here on this stage, just like all these other kids.” Or at least, he could if she managed to get Roman to see the light and give up on making a community treasure into an upscale hotel.

  Theo watched her mouth move, transfixed, and then let out a bunch of cheerful nonsense syllables.

  “Oh, yeah,” she agreed as if he’d spoken in English. “You are so right about that.”

  He giggled. “Lee-Lee...” With a sweet little sigh, he laid his head on her shoulder.

  For the next half hour, she carried Theo on her hip as she ran a chorus of six-year-olds through a last-minute rehearsal of a song about a scarecrow and a gray squirrel. When Theo started to fuss, Roman took him, gave her another kiss and said he’d see her when she got home that night.

  She stood stage left, bemused, staring after him, thinking that his house really kind of had begun to feel like home to her.

  And then Doug called for her and Rashonda to help run a last check of sound and light levels. Hailey went back to work.

  By seven, all the seats were filled, and the curtain rose. There were fluffed lines galore and too many missed cues, but that was part of the charm of putting just about every kid in town onstage. And with an audience of parents and community boosters, the Festival of Fall Revue was bound to be a big hit.

  They got a standing ovation when the curtain came down. And when the show was over, the Valentine Bay Community Club served coffee and cookies in the lobby for everyone to share.

  Sasha didn’t make the meet and greet in the lobby. Rashonda said she’d left shortly after the curtain call. When Hailey got to Roman’s, he was manning the baby monitor.

  “I better be meeting this guy of Ma’s soon,” he groused.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Your mom deserves a private life, Roman.”

  “And I deserve to know what the hell’s going on with her.”

  “She seems really happy, whatever it is.”

  He grumbled something under his breath. She kissed him. That ended the grumbling—at least for a while.

  * * *

  The matinee the next day went more smoothly than the opening performance. A few of the seats were empty, but the audience was every bit as rapt and enthusiastic as the one the night before. Too soon, it was over and everybody took a bow.

  Next up—the haunted house and then on to the Christmas show. And after that, who knew? Roman hadn’t changed his mind—yet—about kicking them out of the theater as of January 1.

  Monday, Hailey helped strike the Fall Revue sets.

  And Tuesday, Sasha was scheduled for her surgery. Harper and Daniel’s wife, Keely, volunteered to watch Theo for the day up at the Bravo house so that Hailey could be there for Roman and his mom.

  * * *

  Roman drove Ma and Hailey in the Dad Car to Valentine Bay Memorial.

  He tried to look calm and unruffled. But he wasn’t. He hated crap that he couldn’t control. Ma had better come out of this in good shape or there would be hell to pay.

  Hailey, in the passenger seat, kept sending him smiles and reassuring glances. She always read him way too damn well. He shouldn’t like that he was practically an open book to her, but he did. She knew him. Never before had he felt that a woman he wanted had a clue what went on inside him.

  Ma, in the back seat, seemed calm enough. He kept shooting her glances in the rearview mirror, on the lookout for signs she might be freaking out.

  She caught him doing it twice. The first time, she gave him a reassuring smile. The second time, she said, “I’m fine, Roman. Stop worrying.”

  He wanted to argue that he wasn’t worrying, but why lie? She’d diapered his ass when he was the same age as Theo, and she’d raised him mostly on her own. She had radar for pretty much everything that was going on with him. “I’m trying, Ma,” he said.

  Her doctor had explained that the pathologist would be available today and would be checking the lymph nodes immediately after they removed them. If the sentinel nodes were clear, Ma could go home by the end of the day. If not, the surgery would be longer because they would need to take and test more lymph nodes. Should that be the case, she would have to stay overnight, at least.

  The lymph nodes had damn well better be clear.

  At Memorial, they had valet parking. But he decided to park the Dad Car himself. He let Ma and Hailey out at the entrance and headed for the parking garage, getting lucky and finding a space right away. In less than five minutes from dropping them off, he was striding between the wide glass doors, headed straight for the sign-in desks.

  And at that point, he was holding it together—on edge, but dealing. But then he saw something that made him want to start throwing chairs at windows and putting his fist through walls.

  Ma stood not far from Reception—with the one man in the world Roman had never wanted to set eyes on again. Hailey sat on a nearby chair, looking like she didn’t quite understand what was happening. As Roman kept walking, Hailey glanced over and saw him coming. She started to get up, but he shifted his gaze away from her.

  All he could see right then was Ma in the arms of Patrick Holland, the man who’d destroyed their lives and left them destitute when Roman was eight years old.

  Chapter Eight

  “Reenie! Reenie, please,” the eight-year-old Roman had begged.

  He didn’t understand what was happening, didn’t know why Reenie was so angry at Ma.

  Everything was very, very wrong. But Roman knew he could make it right. Because Reenie loved him. Reenie would never send him away.

  “Don’t be mad...” He was crying like some little baby, tears and snot running down his face as he tugged on Reenie’s shirt, trying to get her to look down at him.

  But Irene Holland wasn’t looking at him. She shoved him away. He staggered, almost falling, as Reenie kept shouting at Ma. “You cheating little whore! I was your friend. I treated your kid like my own. And this is how you pay me back? By stealing my husband?”

  Ma was standing really straight. “I did no such thing,” she said, her voice low, but shaking a little. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t. Irene, you know me better than that.”

  But Reenie wouldn’t listen. “Liar!” She screamed the word. “I want you out of here. I never want to see your face again. I can’t stand the sight of you.”

  “Reenie, no!” Roman tried to grab her again.

  But Ma caught his hand. “Roman,” she said in that voice of steel, the one he knew meant he had to obey. “Stay by me.”

  “But—”

  “Shush,” she commanded.

  He shut up, but he couldn’t stop crying. He stood there, whimpering and sobbing, rubbing his wet face with the hand Ma wasn’t holding.

  Patrick, Reenie’s husband, came running out of the house. “My God, Irene! What are you saying? Sasha didn’t do anything.”

  A horrible, screaming noise came from Reenie. She turned on Patrick. “Oh, didn’t she? All of a sudden, you want a divorce and she did nothing? I see how you look at her. I see how she smiles at you. You think I can’t guess what dirty business you’ve been up to, the two of you, sneaking around behind my back?”

  Patrick started to say something else.

  But Ma spoke first. “Stop. We’ll go.” And she turned, pulling Roman with her, toward the four-car garage and the cozy apartment above it where they’d lived for all his life.

  Reenie shouted terrible things after them, while Patrick said she was crazy, that she didn’t know what she was talking about. Patrick called to Ma to wait. But Ma didn’t stop or look back.

  Roman did look back. He saw Patrick wrap both arms around Reenie. She struggled as he pulled her into the house. The door slammed behind them.

  “Roman,” s
aid his mother, her voice gentle, but firm, “keep moving. Come on.”

  He turned his face to the garage again and shuffled along after Ma. He wished he could get smaller, so small that he wasn’t here, in this bad place where Reenie had pushed him and didn’t love him anymore and Patrick had to drag her back into her house.

  In the apartment, Ma got his suitcase and put it on his bed. “Pack everything that belongs to you.” He just stood there and cried. Ma’s eyes got softer. “Oh, baby...” She knelt in front of him and took his wet face between her hands. “It’s okay, Roman. We will be okay.”

  “Ma, I’m s-s-scared.”

  She grabbed him close and hugged him tight. “Sometimes people say bad things when they’re hurting. Sometimes they get all mixed up in their minds and they say things that aren’t true. But you have me and I have you and we will be all right. I love you so much and I need for you to be my strong, big boy right now.” She pulled a tissue from her pocket. “Here you go. Blow your nose and let’s get packing.”

  Two hours later, with everything they owned piled in the car that was older than Roman, they were ready to go.

  Roman was a big kid. Big enough to sit in the front seat. He got in and buckled up like the big boy Ma needed him to be. Ma got in behind the wheel.

  But before she could drive them away from that place, Patrick came out of the house.

  He leaned in Ma’s window, his eyes full of sadness. “Sasha. Please. Don’t go.”

  “Step back from the car, Patrick,” Ma said, her voice so tight, like a wound-up spring.

  “Just listen for a minute. Just let me fix this problem.”

  Ma stared straight ahead. “Your wife needs you.”

  “I will talk to her, work it out with her. We’ll get a divorce and you and I will be together.”

  Ma sucked in a hard breath, like Patrick’s words had knocked all the air out of her. “What are you talking about? I’m no home-wrecker. I have never in any way encouraged you.”

  “I know. But I think you do care for me—and Sasha, I love you.”

  “Don’t say things like that.” Ma hissed the words.

  “Not even if they’re true?”

  “Go back to your wife,” Ma commanded as she started up the car. The engine lagged, then caught.

  “Sasha, please. At least let me give you some money before you—”

  “Go back to Irene. I don’t need your money. Roman and I will be just fine. I never want to see you again.”

  The car started moving. Patrick fell back. Ma clutched the steering wheel hard and drove them away from there.

  * * *

  As the glass doors closed behind him, Roman shut down the voices and too-vivid images of the past. He kept walking, headed straight for his mother and the man she’d once insisted she never wanted to see again.

  Ma must have seen movement in her peripheral vision. She looked over and met his eyes.

  That was when she pulled out of that bastard’s hold and stepped in front of the guy, like she was protecting him—protecting Patrick Holland, who didn’t deserve to touch her hand, let alone have her using her body as a shield for him. “Roman, calm down.”

  He froze in midstride and somehow managed to keep his voice low. “Really, Ma? Him?” About then, he realized he was almost as furious with her as he was with the man who had messed his wife over so bad, she’d blamed Ma and kicked her out on the street.

  “Roman,” Ma said. “We’ll discuss this later.”

  Okay, she was right. This was neither the time nor the place for him to beat the shit out of Patrick Holland. “Just get him out of here. Now.”

  The waste of space behind her chose that moment to speak up. “Roman, be reasonable.” He stepped around Ma and kind of eased her behind him. Like he was a big hero and she needed protection from her own damn son.

  “Go back to your wife,” Roman said.

  “Roman...” It was Hailey. She stepped in close, took hold of his arm and said, soft and gentle, the way you would to someone who was out of control, “Maybe we ought to—”

  He spoke right over her, his gaze glued on Holland. “Get. Out.”

  And Ma stepped from behind Holland again and got right in Roman’s face. “This is not about you,” she whispered.

  Behind her, Holland shook his head. “I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Figured that out, did you?” Roman sneered, as Ma glared at him like he was the problem.

  Holland said, “I just couldn’t not be here.” He muttered the words at the industrial carpet beneath their feet. And then he looked directly at Roman. “Your mother asked me not to come. She didn’t want to upset you. She was right,” he said. “I’ll go.”

  “No,” said Ma in the voice nobody argued with. “I want you here.” She stuck her hand behind her, and that bastard took it as she said to Roman, “I should have done this better. But I didn’t, and here we are.”

  “Roman, please.” Hailey tried again. “What matters right now is what Sasha wants. Just consider the situation, just—”

  He patted her hand and cut her off a second time, accusing Ma, “He’s the one, isn’t he? The one you’ve been staying out half the night to be with?”

  “Yes, he is,” Sasha replied, chin high, eyes full of fire. “And if you don’t mind, Roman, I would like to stop making a scene at Reception. I need to let them know I’m here and ready to prep for my surgery.”

  Surgery. For a moment, the sight of Holland had wiped everything but rage from his mind.

  “Roman...” Hailey squeezed his arm again and he finally got what she was trying to tell him.

  Right now, all that mattered was what Ma wanted. Whatever it was, even Patrick Waste-of-Space Holland, she would have it.

  “Okay, Ma.” He took a step back. “Whatever you say.”

  * * *

  The tension in the air thick enough to cut with a knife, they all trooped upstairs to the surgical unit, where Ma announced that she wanted Holland with her during the prep. She asked that Roman and Hailey remain in the waiting room.

  Roman had wants, too. Right now, first and foremost, he wanted to punch Holland’s lights out. If he couldn’t do that, he longed to march back down the curving stairs and walk right out those sliding doors, not once looking back.

  But punching Holland really wouldn’t solve anything. And Ma was still Ma, no matter how infuriated he was with her. No way he could walk out on her at a time like this.

  He and Hailey sat side by side, between a potted palm and a table set out with water and coffee, not far from the hallway that led back to where the action was. Ten minutes passed. He knew because he couldn’t stop glancing at his watch. Hailey read something on her phone and didn’t say a word.

  Not that she had to say anything. Like Ma, she had that talent for seeming calm and unconcerned, minding her business at the same time as he just knew she was reproaching him without speaking, without so much as a single meaningful glance.

  In the end, he couldn’t take it. Exerting effort to keep his voice low and without heat, so no one nearby would be disturbed or likely to eavesdrop, he said coolly, “You have no idea about any of this.”

  She shut down whatever app she was using and met his eyes. “And whose fault is that, Roman?” Her voice was just as quiet and neutral as his had been.

  He felt like the bad guy here. Hell. Maybe he was the bad guy.

  Yeah. Probably he was.

  She raised her phone again. He realized she was about to return to whatever she’d been reading.

  Gently, he laid his hand over the screen. “I’ll tell you. Everything.”

  Her face got softer. “Okay.” She dropped her phone into the tote bag she’d brought with her. “I’m listening.”

  So he just went ahead and told her outright what she’d no doubt already figured out—that Patric
k and Irene Holland were the wealthy Seattle couple his parents were working for when his dad died.

  He went on to explain that the Hollands had no children of their own and that, while Ma continued to keep the huge house and cook the meals, Irene was only too happy to play substitute mom to Roman. “I called her ‘Reenie,’ and I loved her almost as much as I loved Ma.”

  But there was trouble in the Hollands’ marriage.

  “As the years went by, Patrick Holland fell out of love with his wife—and in love with Ma.” Looking back now, Roman realized that Ma must have had feelings for Holland, too. But Holland was a married man and completely off-limits to someone like Ma. For Ma, marriage was a sacred trust. Not to mention, Ma had great fondness for Irene, who had treated her like a sister and Roman like her own.

  “I was eight when my safe, happy life with the Hollands was blown all to hell.” He quickly explained the ugly scene that had gone down the day Patrick Holland asked Irene for a divorce. “So Ma and I came to Valentine Bay.”

  Roman wanted to leave it at that. But Hailey was watching him. Those eyes of hers saw too much, and he wanted to marry her, which meant he was supposed to communicate with her.

  He said, “I didn’t know it at the time, but somehow Patrick found out where we’d gone and started sending money to Ma.”

  As Roman learned later, Holland had sent a check every month. Sasha sent the first check right back. “But then the next month, he included a note explaining that if she didn’t take the money, he would show up on her doorstep to speak with her about it. From then on, she put the money in the bank but refused to spend any of it—until I was ready for college. I wanted to go to Berkeley. I knew we couldn’t afford that. Then Ma told me she had it covered. That was when I learned about the checks Patrick had sent.”