Come Home with Me

by Susan Fox

  “Now you’re the one who’s being stupid. Everyone needs a little help now and then. And it’s mature to acknowledge that. Luke should know that.”

  “He does.” And so did she, now. Glancing at her daughter playing with Gala, both of them so healthy and happy, she knew she could have made Ariana’s first couple of years better. If only she’d been willing to accept Aaron’s assistance from the beginning.

  Turning back to her friend, she said, “No, the immaturity thing was about me being, to use his words, ‘insecure and self-defeating.’” She swallowed. “And I can’t argue with that.”

  Glory opened her mouth in what looked like was going to be a quick protest, but then didn’t utter it. She pressed her lips together and after a moment said, “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  Her friend finished the lemon bar and then picked up her mug and spooned up a mushy mix of biscotti and coffee. Quietly she asked, “You really think he’s right?”

  She shrugged. “If ‘insecure’ means thinking I’m not good enough for Luke, that I can’t measure up to Candace, that he deserves someone better, then yeah.”

  “I think he’d be lucky to have you.”

  “Aw.” She reached over to pat her friend’s hand. “Thank you.”

  “I guess the point is that you need to believe that.”

  For a couple of minutes, they drank—or in Glory’s case, spooned up—coffee and watched their daughters. Then Glory said, “How did this whole conversation happen anyhow? I saw you guys at the reception and you seemed super happy together. Dancing, all romantic. How did it suddenly go sideways?”

  Miranda hunched her shoulders. “You know that big-haired brunette in the sausage-casing pink dress?”

  “Winnie Bender, divorced and on the prowl?”

  “I guess. Anyhow, I overheard her and a friend trash-talking, saying how Luke was just with me for the sex and how he deserved way better.”

  “Shit!” Glory cast a quick look in the girls’ direction and lowered her voice. “Didn’t you see her with Luke? She wants him for husband number two and she’s jealous. Besides, she’s a total bitch. She says bad stuff about everyone. I think Aaron only invited her because he was inviting everyone else from our high school class.”

  “She was being kind of mean about Iris, too. But, whatever. The point isn’t what she said, it’s what Luke did.”

  “So, like, what?” Frowning, Glory said, “You overheard Queen Bitch, went back to Luke, and asked him if he figured he deserved better than you, and he agreed?”

  “Kind of.” She rotated her shoulders and reached for her mug again. “I came back and I guess I was in a bad mood. It seemed like everything he said reinforced my fears and I was, well, kind of bitchy myself. So he asked what was wrong and I told him what I’d overheard. He didn’t rush in to tell me I was terrific, he asked if I thought I was good enough for him. Well, I could hardly say yes, could I? I mean, not when he’d be comparing me to Candace. So I said no, and then he said he and the boys didn’t need to be involved with someone like me.”

  “Ouch.”

  Miranda scowled. “And okay, it’s true, but he should’ve realized that in the beginning! He shouldn’t have asked me out, got our kids playing together, or introduced me to his folks. Shouldn’t have made me care, and hope, and—” She broke off, shaking her head, near tears.

  “You really do love him,” Glory said quietly.

  “Oh, shit.” She hung her head. “I don’t know. Is it possible that it feels different from other relationships because this time it’s the real thing?” Was that why she’d been so utterly miserable for the past week? More miserable than when any other man in her past, even Ariana’s father, had dumped her.

  “If it’s the real thing, isn’t it worth fighting for?”

  Feeling pathetic again, Miranda stared across at her, eyes swimming with unshed tears. “I haven’t a clue how to do that.”

  Glory smiled sympathetically. “Yeah, you try to tell a guy how you’re feeling and most of the time he just doesn’t get it. But girlfriend, you’re tough like your dragon. You can figure this out.”

  The supportive words were sweet to hear, but Miranda was afraid her friend’s confidence in her was unfounded. And yet . . .

  Gala gave an angry squeal and tossed a fairy doll across the floor.

  “Too good to last,” Glory said, and rose to intervene.

  Miranda remained on the couch, deliberating. She thought about her dark, pessimistic side, the pathetic one that told her she was worthless and powerless, that seduced her toward depression. Once, her only tool for fighting it had been a shiny silver razor blade.

  She gazed down at her left forearm and ran a finger over her dragon’s scales. Strong and smart and fierce. Aaron had called her that, way back when she was thirteen. Glory had reminded her that she was tough.

  “Okay, dragon-girl,” she murmured. “What’s your next step?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Luke had been debating whether to try getting in touch with Miranda, when she had phoned him and asked if they could talk. The sound of her voice made his heart jerk and he’d almost dropped the phone. Now, waiting at his house for her to arrive, that same unreliable organ was racing so fast he felt like he was going to hyperventilate.

  It was late on Friday afternoon, almost two weeks since the wedding. The boys were over at Annie and Randall’s for their monthly dinner-and-sleepover, so Luke was alone in the house, but for the dogs whom he’d confined out in the backyard. He’d also checked with Viola to see if she was willing to cover for him if he got any vet emergency calls.

  Even though Miranda wasn’t due yet, he’d been looking out the front window every few minutes and this time it took a moment to register that the driveway wasn’t, as it had been each time before, empty. Her Toyota was there.

  The driver door opened and she stepped out. She stood, unmoving, a slim figure in a sleeveless blue top, tan capris, and sandals. A lonely figure, he thought, her aloneness somehow made even more poignant by the mid-May sunshine.

  Now his heart—the heart that loved her, the heart that wanted to heal the wounded—urged him to rush out to her. But he honestly believed what he’d said at the wedding reception. Maybe, like his mother-in-law, he hadn’t phrased it as tactfully as he might, but that “I’m not good enough for you” attitude grated on him. He was willing to keep helping Miranda deal with her issues, but only if she had enough self-esteem to commit to their relationship as an equal partner.

  And God, he hoped that was why she’d come.

  He opened the front door. Though it didn’t make any noise, her head came up and she gazed across the top of her car at him. She dipped her head in a nod, but didn’t smile.

  She leaned into the vehicle, pulled out her big purse, looped the strap over her shoulder, and closed the car door. Then, slowly but steadily, she walked toward him. Her shoulders were back, he noticed, and her chin high.

  “Hey, Luke,” she said as she mounted the steps.

  “Hey, Miranda. Want to go out on the deck to talk?” It was sunny, warm enough for her clothing and his tee and khaki shorts.

  “Sounds good.”

  He let her precede him through the house. In the kitchen, he offered her a drink and she accepted a bottle of iced tea. He seriously craved a beer, but didn’t want even the slightest impairment of his faculties so settled for iced tea as well.

  Outside again, she exchanged restrained greetings with the tail-wagging dogs who rushed up the steps of the deck to greet her. Then she walked to the railing and gazed out at the ocean.

  Glancing past her, Luke saw that a slight breeze ruffled the dark, blue-green surface of the sea. That breeze brought a hint of wood smoke and the sound of voices from the beach below. He knew without looking that some of his neighbors had a beach fire going. Probably they’d roast hot dogs for dinner, and marshmallows later.

  He studied Miranda’s back, wondering what she was thinking, what she’d come
to say. She turned and seated herself on one side of the picnic-style table, this time facing away from the ocean, toward the house.

  The dogs trailed her and he gestured them to the shady corner of the deck that was designated as theirs and said a quiet, “Down. Stay.” Then he sat across from her. “Why did you come, Miranda?”

  She put down the bottle of iced tea, untasted. “You said some harsh things to me.”

  “I guess I didn’t phrase it very well, and I’m sorry if I hurt you, but I was speaking what I see as the truth. And I need to look out for my kids.”

  “And for yourself. I understand. Yes, I was hurt. That was my first reaction, to just be hurt and also pissed off that you’d even started a relationship with me if you were only going to end it. I thought I’d been honest with you about who I was.”

  He’d seen her as the one who ended it, but he’d come to realize she might have a different perspective. “Maybe I was wrong to ask you out. I knew you had thorns but I thought . . .” That she would change from a wild rose with thorns and a lovely scent to a bland hothouse flower? No, that wasn’t what he’d wanted.

  “You said you kind of liked the thorns, that you were up for a challenge. That I shouldn’t make things too easy on you.”

  Wincing, he did recall saying those words. “You’d gone through some bad stuff and I figured that when you felt more comfortable with me, you’d relax. Be the woman I thought I saw inside you.” One with prickles and character, but also with the confidence of a lovely rose.

  “I did feel comfortable with you, but there were also things that made me uncomfortable. I don’t know if you truly appreciate how different we are. I know you had a tough time when your dad died, but you at least had one and he loved you. Your mom went through her own issues, but I bet you still knew she loved you. You had a comfortable roof over your head, food in the cupboards. You went to one school; you had friends to hang out with. You had this one special girl who became the love of your life, and you married her.”

  “I’m sorry you didn’t have those things, but—”

  “I’m not making excuses. I realize that, as an adult, it’s up to me to get past all the bad stuff. But that’s been hard.” She pressed her lips together, and then went on. “I kept comparing myself to you, and I always came out second-class. I only finished high school last year and you’ve got a professional degree. You’re respected by everyone on the island, and I’m this weird former Goth girl whose mom was an addict and whore. You’ve always given your sons a stable home, and I’ve often had to scramble to even give Ariana decent food. You said I was special but, comparing myself to you, I felt inadequate.” Finally she raised her bottle and swallowed some of the cold drink.

  “I don’t understand why you feel the need to compare.”

  “Maybe that’s because you grew up in a stable environment. People knew you and accepted you, and I bet you never had to prove your worth.”

  “I guess not,” he admitted. “Yeah, I guess self-esteem has never been an issue for me.”

  “Nor for Candace, who was beautiful and popular and rich. And generous and loving. The two of you fit together so perfectly.” She shrugged. “You and me, not so much.”

  “But we did. Like the day we went kayaking. You, Ariana, me, the boys. It felt right.”

  “It did. But here’s the thing.” Elbows on the picnic table, the bottle held between both hands, she leaned forward. “You could let it be. Just feel the rightness. For me, when things are going well, I question. There’s got to be something wrong. It can’t last. Because for almost all my life that’s how things have gone.”

  A woodpecker had taken up drilling on a nearby tree, its hammering forming a steady percussion backbeat to her words.

  “I guess that’s what I meant about being self-defeating,” he said. “You take something good and poke away until you destroy it.”

  She winced, but then firmed her jaw again. “I guess I do. That’s what I did at the wedding reception. The mean girls hit all my triggers and rather than be mature and let it roll off my back, I struck out. Not at them, who deserved it, but at you. At our relationship.”

  She’d laid some heavy stuff on him, but none of it was a big surprise so he didn’t have to reflect long before nodding in agreement. “But what were you thinking? What did you want me to do? Reassure you all over again? I started to, but if it never worked before, why would you suddenly then, when you were in that mood, let it sink in?”

  “You’re right, I wouldn’t have.” She lifted the bottle and took a long swallow. “I have a thick head. Ask Aaron and Eden. People can hammer away at it, like that woodpecker’s doing to the tree, saying the same thing over and over, but it doesn’t always sink in because there’s a barrier in place. The barrier you identified. Low self-esteem.”

  He drank from his own bottle and waited for her to go on.

  “You know what you did?” she said. “You stopped repeating the same message, the one I couldn’t let myself believe. You poked back at me, and stabbed right through the barrier. After I got over being hurt and mad, I thought about the things you said. You called me self-defeating and you were right. A while back, Eden suggested that I was self-sabotaging.”

  He nodded slowly. If it was true, could Miranda ever move past it? Did she want to?

  “A few minutes ago,” she went on, “I said that I thought I’d been honest with you about who I was. But the truth was, I hadn’t been honest with myself. I hadn’t dug deep.”

  The woodpecker was silent now, and the only sound came from the distant voices on the beach below. Luke waited for Miranda to go on.

  She tipped her head back slightly and took a deep breath. “Mom was self-destructive. Falling for losers, doing drugs, selling her body. I think my grandparents’ coldness, their rejection of her, turned her in that direction. I also think she might have suffered from depression, and would try anything to escape the black moods. In the end, she did destroy herself.”

  “You’re not her,” he said quietly.

  “I was always determined that I wouldn’t be. I’m the dragon, right?” She rested her hand on her tattoo. “But, sadly, a part of me isn’t at all strong or smart or fierce. That part tends toward depression. It’s weak, vulnerable, self-sabotaging. Drawn to the wrong kind of men.”

  “Go on.”

  “Guys I thought were larger than life, with exciting lives. Except, as Eden pointed out, they had something else in common. They were emotionally unavailable.”

  He frowned, trying to understand. “But you told me you believed in love, you were looking for love, so why would you go for guys who weren’t available?”

  “Doesn’t make sense, right? Except it kind of does. As a kid and a teen, everyone I looked to for love, with the exception of Aaron, let me down. Subconsciously, I learned not to trust in love, and came to believe I wasn’t worthy of being loved.”

  Luke swallowed, and thought of his own irrational feeling that the people he loved had betrayed and abandoned him. The moment he and Miranda had a major spat, he’d leaped to the conclusion that she didn’t really care about him or their relationship. Maybe the two of them weren’t so different.

  “If I picked a good guy,” she said, “and truly gave my heart to him, then in the end he’d leave me and it would be, like, the ultimate destruction of my heart. My soul.” She took a deep breath.

  After letting it out slowly, she went on. “So instead of real love, I gave . . . well, infatuation, and to guys who would never love me back. So yeah, when they dumped me, it hurt, but subconsciously that’s what I’d expected all along so it didn’t totally destroy me. But it did reinforce my low self-worth.”

  “You set yourself up for rejection?”

  She nodded. “Sounds totally dumb, doesn’t it?”

  “I guess the subconscious has its own weird kind of logic,” he mused, thinking again of his own abandonment issue. “Based on the stuff we internalize as we grow up.”

  “Yes. I’m
reading about that kind of thing in my courses about early childhood development.”

  His mind sidetracked, thinking about his boys. Growing up with him and no mother. He was doing his best, but each decision involved soul-searching. There were almost always cons as well as pros. What weird things were making their way into the hidden depths of his kids’ psyches? Parenting was tough, even for the most loving, conscientious parent. He’d been so lucky, having two of those—and even then he had some issues. Miranda’d never had anyone who cared for her except a two-years-older brother who’d been damaged by the same disastrous life circumstances.

  “I’m sorry about all of that,” he said, wanting to reach over and take her hand, but instead gripping his tea bottle. “I truly am.” He appreciated her self-analysis and her honesty, but where did this leave them, as a couple? Wasn’t she confirming his fear that she wasn’t capable of entering into an equal, healthy relationship with him?

  “It’s where my independence comes from, too,” she said. “I’m afraid to trust anyone other than Aaron, because I learned that everyone else would let me down. When we were kids, we said it was the two of us against the world. But as I got older, I decided that even if he’d always be there, it wasn’t fair to keep leaning on him. I had to be able to look after myself. And then look after myself and Ariana.”

  “Thank you for telling me all of this. It helps me understand what was going on. I’m sorry I wasn’t sensitive enough to all you’d gone through.”

  “I guess I’d have liked you to be, but I’m not sure it would have helped.” She shrugged. “Anyhow, so I thought, okay, that’s what I’m like. I’ve been stuck in that pattern forever. Was there any way of breaking out?”

  He leaned forward, wondering if he dared hope. “And?”

  A smile trembled. “I realized I’d already started. I’ve accepted Eden as the sister of my heart. I’m part of her family, a real, true part and not just because I’m Aaron’s sister.”

  “That’s encouraging to hear.” But what about him, and their relationship?