by Pamela Morsi
Eli was amazed. He’d allowed the worthless-dude mentality to spill over into his relationship with Clark and it had acted like a wake-up call for his brother. This jerkish behavior stuff was powerful.
Clark gave Eli a brotherly shoulder punch. He reciprocated by wrapping Clark in a hasty bear hug.
As he wandered back down the lawn, Eli suddenly felt a lot better about the stunt he’d pulled last night. So far, Mazy seemed able to take whatever he dished out. But it would be impossible for her to pretend that his date desertion hadn’t happened. A big, angry accusatory argument was inevitable. He hoped he was ready.
The internet was very clear about how bad boyfriends handle conflict. No matter what they’ve done, they turn it around to make it the woman’s fault. At first glance, that appeared to be a challenge. How could Mazy be blamed for Eli’s behavior? But he’d already figured out that if a guy threw veracity out the window, he could talk his way around anything with smoke and mirrors.
And really, when he got right down to it, running out on her was her fault. All of it was. If Mazy hadn’t been a sucker for guys like Driscoll, Eli would have never had to do any of this scheming.
He nodded to himself, but the smug satisfaction was partially feigned. He had nothing to feel guilty about, but there wasn’t a whole lot about his behavior that he wanted to celebrate, either.
“Uncle Eli! Uncle Eli! Come play with us,” Ava called out to him.
The soccer match was still going on. Tru was a good sport to hang in there entertaining the little girls as long as he had. The teen truly deserved to be rescued, or at least offered assistance. Eli had not really grown up expending a lot of energy on the game. He’d been much more interested in hanging out in the wood shop than he had been in team sports. But he’d done his fair share of kicking a ball around at school recess and community picnics.
He quickly determined that Tru was a fairly formidable opponent for the two little girls. He thought the competition might be more evenly matched if he and Ava took up defense against Tru and Ashley.
It was only a few minutes into play that Eli realized he’d miscalculated. The two best players were on the same team. He and Ava were doomed to be creamed. So they improvised the rules to include tackling. Within minutes, the inevitable pile of laughing players was accomplished.
The girls finally ran off together when Ashley suggested searching for acorns.
Eli kicked the ball toward Tru. “You want some one-on-one?”
“Nah,” the teen answered. “I’m done with it. They have a lot of energy for little girls.”
Eli nodded. “Hey, when I was growing up, my best friend was a girl. Don’t buy all that sugar-and-spice, pink-princess propaganda. The female of the species is plenty tough.”
Tru shrugged. “I’ve never been around any little kids that much,” he said. “They’re kind of fun, really.”
Eli agreed. He’d always imagined himself as a father. Maybe it wasn’t too late. It definitely wasn’t too late if a certain woman that he was in love with could get her head around marrying him and allowing him to share her teenage son.
“Listen,” Tru began, his hands stuffed in his pockets. “Would you...would you introduce me to your dad?”
“Sure. I assumed somebody already had.”
They walked back up the lawn. As they neared, Eli saw that his father was beginning to tire. He should take him in for a nap. But meeting Tru was important. It was important for all of them.
Beth Ann vacated the chair next to Jonah. Eli gestured for Tru to take a seat before squatting down in front of his father.
“Dad, this is Tru Gulliver, Mazy’s son. He’s the one I told you about. He’s helping out in the shop after school.”
The face of the boy looked anxious. The face of the man never changed its frozen grimace. But his eyes surveyed the teen beside him. After a moment, he reached out to Tru with his one good hand. The boy took it in his own. He smiled a bit shyly and began telling the old woodworker all the things that he liked about the shop and all that he had already learned.
Eli retreated to the edge of the semicircle and watched Tru interacting with the silent, shaky Jonah.
Mazy might be a mistake-prone person, but she had definitely done something right in raising this wonderful boy.
As if his thought had conjured her up, Mazy suddenly stepped up beside him. His heart caught in his throat and his fight-or-flight response engaged. She held a steaming cup of coffee in her hands and for an instant he thought she might fling it in his face.
She did not. She held it up to him.
“I thought you might need this,” she said.
39
Mazy awoke groggy and hungry. She had tossed and turned miserably on the lumpy couch. Around her the house was completely silent. She figured that Beth Ann had taken her weekly trip to Walmart and Tru had gone with her.
Wandering listlessly into the kitchen, she found that her mom had left half of a tuna sandwich in the fridge. She ate it standing at the counter. As she watched the coffeepot fill, she tried to figure out how her life made sense.
Things had sort of gone off the rails for her when her father had died. By the time she’d hit puberty, she was looking for love in all the wrong places. Tru’s birth had given her purpose and meaning, but it had also ramped up the longing for a man she could call her own.
Of course, Dr. Reese had called her on that.
She wanted a wonderful man, like her father. But the thought that had so burned itself in her subconscious was the fact that her father had left. All the bad-news guys she’d picked weren’t supposed to change that narrative.
She’d thought she’d worked through that. She thought she’d finally gotten her head straight enough to own the qualities that she truly loved in her father, rather than the fatal accident that had taken him from her.
Her very genuine feelings for Eli had encouraged her to believe that she’d finally made that transition. That she could finally love a man who wouldn’t leave her.
But it seemed as if she’d been wrong. He had left her last night. Maybe mistaking Dax’s words for Eli’s wasn’t so far off the mark, after all.
Mazy wished she could talk to Dr. Reese, though she knew that wasn’t possible. It was often said that the poor person’s therapist was a best friend. Of course, Mazy’s best friend was Eli.
A sound outside caught her attention and she turned to see a small heap of laughing people in the backyard next door. As the pile began to untangle, she recognized Clark and Sheila’s girls. And Tru and Eli.
Standing at the window, she watched the man she was in love with casually conversing with her son. A stab of pain and a jolt of fear hit her simultaneously. She had learned to protect Tru from the men that would leave her. She’d discouraged any camaraderie or attachment to her boyfriends. She hadn’t wanted him to feel any of the abandonment issues that had scarred her life. But she had not taken that precaution with Eli. She had not felt one worry. Because she knew Eli. She knew him to be different from the kind of men she’d gotten caught up with before.
She poured her coffee and took a couple of sips as she leaned against the counter watching the two of them.
Mazy no longer knew what to think. She no longer knew what to feel. But she did know Eli Latham. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she was certain that your best friend didn’t turn on you simply because you fell in love with him.
She poured a second cup of coffee and carried them both outside.
Her son was talking to Jonah Latham. How could that not be a good thing? One of the sweetest, kindest, most honorable men in the world and her impressionable son was sharing a moment with him.
She stepped up beside Eli.
“I thought you might need this,” she said.
“Mazy!” he breathed her
name in a shocked whisper. Then he took the cup out of her hand with a polite thank-you.
He looked guilty—embarrassed and guilty.
They stood side by side, not speaking, as they listened to Tru talk about all the tools that he’d been allowed to use. He sounded so happy. He was so pleased about what he had done, some of it more or less on his own. And he was excited about what he was going to learn in the future. Jonah continued to hold his hand as if it were a lifeline.
Ida greeted her with delighted pleasure. Sheila gave her a little finger wave that was a little more than pseudofriendly. Beth Ann was eyeing her approvingly. Clark had a big grin spread across his face. All in all, the mood was not suited for the giant blowup that she and Eli needed to have.
Mazy realized that she shouldn’t have come. She didn’t need normal, happy time with Eli. She needed a serious, down-to-brass-tacks talk about the night before. He needed to make some kind of explanation and she needed...she needed to decide if she could live with it.
But she couldn’t do that here. She couldn’t turn to him in front of his entire family and demand to know if he spent the night with another woman. He showed no outward evidence of having spent the night in the hospital or in jail, both of which somehow seemed to be preferable. His father looked better than the last time she’d seen him. No crisis, short of amnesia, was in any way evident. And alien abduction seemed unlikely.
If she had stayed in her house until he was alone, she could have immediately confronted him. She was not about to do so here.
“Can I get you a chair?” he asked politely.
Only if I can hit you over the head with it, she thought. Instead of speaking that aloud she replied, “No, thank you.”
The longer she waited, the more normal their interaction together, the more difficult it would be to have it out with him, and the less likely she would get any straight answers. She already wanted to forgive him. She wanted to believe that the Eli she knew could never do what she suspected him of doing last night. She wanted to put it all behind them. But she couldn’t do that by pretending that it hadn’t happened.
She wandered away from the group, hoping that he would follow her down the lawn and give her the opportunity to ask questions. He didn’t.
Instead, the two little girls came running up to her. She had never actually met them and they were excited for their opportunity.
“Are you Tru’s mom?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Tru’s my boyfriend,” the littlest girl told her.
The big sister rolled her eyes. “She says that about everybody.”
“Only the boys,” Ava corrected her.
Mazy certainly understood the challenge of believing that every guy you like is your boyfriend.
The children had gathered up an impressive pile of acorns. They wanted Mazy to assess their collection. She appropriately oohed and aahed at the biggest, the smallest, the one with the best “hat” and the variety in general.
“Why do I feel like this trio of younger women may be plotting against me?” Sheila asked.
Mazy looked up and gave her a smile.
“We’re not plotting, Mom. We’re getting acorns,” Ava assured her.
“If you gather up all the acorns, the squirrels will get lazy,” Sheila suggested.
“Not if we throw them back.”
That immediately commenced a new game of tossing them, one by one, back into the woods from which they came. Mazy threw one, but she left the rest of the pile for the girls as she rose to her feet.
She glanced toward the house. The lawn chairs were all empty.
“Where did everybody go?”
“The guys are taking Jonah back inside for a nap,” she said. “Ida and Beth Ann are talking out the Thanksgiving menu. I don’t know where your son got off to, but for sure it’s not far.”
Mazy nodded.
The two began walking back up the lawn together. She knew that Sheila had never cared much for her. And she wasn’t in a mood to try to change her mind. Truthfully, it didn’t bother her. Nevertheless, she did make minimal effort to be civil.
“It’s such a beautiful day today. Really unexpected this time of year.”
Sheila agreed with the lovely weather. “I hope my girls haven’t made a nuisance of themselves,” she said.
“Your girls are lovely,” Mazy answered. “Very bright and well behaved.”
No parent ever minded hearing praise about their children.
“It seems like we’re going to be spending Thanksgiving together,” Sheila said.
“Are we?”
“It’s what Ida and Beth Ann are planning.”
“How nice.”
“It’s probably a good thing that we’re not actual enemies.”
“We definitely aren’t,” Mazy assured her. She knew that Sheila had undoubtedly said plenty of negative things about her. But she’d already learned that part of moving back to town meant relinquishing any grudges.
“Yes, that was all a very long time ago,” Sheila agreed. “All of us have made some sort of screwup as teenagers. Maybe that’s the best news about being over thirty. All those mistakes are part of a distant past.”
That was not true for Mazy, of course. She was over thirty when the surprise audit revealed the crime she’d covered up. She’d turned thirty-one wearing an orange jumpsuit and picking up trash on the side of the highway. She was unwilling to share either of those facts with Sheila.
As they took adjacent seats in the lawn chairs, Mazy went back to the subject of weather and the likelihood of rain in their future.
The conversation dragged on interminably. She began to think that Eli was deliberately staying inside the house. She had waited all night on him, now she was waiting all day.
She was tempted to question Sheila about Enna Brakeman. It seemed fairly obvious that Eli’s sister-in-law kept up with every snippet of gossip that was ever spoken in Brandt Mountain. She would undoubtedly know how long and how serious any relationship between the woman and Eli had been. That would give Mazy good insight to what last night might have been or meant.
But she resisted.
This was between Eli and herself. She would draw no one else in. She would give no further information out.
Finally Eli and Clark emerged from Jonah and Ida’s house. Sheila was eager to go. She and Clark rounded up the girls and, after plenty of goodbyes, Mazy and Eli were left alone in the backyard.
They turned to face each other. He was stiff and unsmiling.
“We have to talk,” she said.
With an extended arm, he invited her into his apartment.
Once inside, he walked behind the kitchen counter and began retrieving things from the shelves.
“What are you doing?”
“Fixing drinks.”
“I don’t want a drink.”
“Hey, babe, when a woman is about to throw a tantrum, a guy needs a drink to get through it.”
“Is that what you think of me? That I’m going to throw a tantrum?”
“Pretty much.”
It was what she wanted to do, but it wouldn’t get her the answers that she needed.
“Did you sleep with her?”
“Who?”
“Enna Brakeman.”
He hesitated, as if trying to recall. “Ever?” he asked finally.
“Last night,” she answered, a bit more loudly than she intended.
He took a sip of his drink.
She held herself together by sheer force of will.
“No.”
The relief washed through her like a gasp. For an instant she thought she might burst into tears. She quickly turned her back on him so he wouldn’t see the evidence if she did. Mazy had totally steele
d herself against the worst. And the wait to hear his answer had made her brittle. She gazed slightly away from him, controlling her breathing. In...out...in...out. She tried to repurpose, but she couldn’t manage it. The moment dragged on.
“So, I guess, if that’s all you wanted to know, we’re done here.”
She turned on him. “Where were you?”
Eli shrugged and held up his hand. “Do you see a ring on this finger?” he asked. “I don’t answer to you as to where I go or what I do.”
“You left me stranded at the roadhouse.”
“Looks like you made it home all right.”
“Why?” she asked. “Why would you do that?”
He took another good slug of his drink. “I thought a dose of your own medicine might do you some good.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Driscoll.”
“Driscoll? Tad Driscoll?”
“Is there another one? I’m not sure that son of a bitch could be duplicated.”
“What about Tad?”
“Yesterday, on the street in front of the coffee shop, I saw you two together.”
For a moment she thought he must be lying. Yesterday seemed so long ago. But it had happened.
“Oh, that.”
“Yeah, that,” he said. “I saw you all cozied up with him.”
“We weren’t ‘cozied up.’”
“Maybe that’s not what you call it,” Eli said. “But you and Driscoll, I guess that’s back on.”
“What? No.”
Mazy could hardly believe it. Not in any of her wildest imaginings would she have thought that Eli’s actions had been based in anger. There hadn’t been even a hint of that at the roadhouse. But he was admitting it here. He had been angry and jealous. Jealous of her? Or maybe jealous of Tad. But somehow deliberately lashing out in jealousy seemed better than callously doing so.
She turned to face him again. “Tad and I were just talking.”
“Talking?” He repeated the word in a fashion so snide it was as if it were a euphemism for some very sinful deed. “What on earth could you and that creep have to talk about?”
