by Jeff Shelby
“Maybe this weekend will be better,” I said, glancing out the window and seeing Thornton’s SUV pull into the driveway. “Keep an open mind.”
She rolled her eyes again. “You always say that.”
“I’m an optimist.”
“Well, I’m a realist,” she said, then lowered her voice. “And you don’t have to spend two days with Babette.”
Babette. Thornton’s new wife. Who was having trouble winning over the kids. And who was a constant source of amusement to all three.
Grace came racing down the stairs, her backpack thumping her backside. “I got the underwear.”
“Excellent,” I said. “And your dad just pulled up.”
“Is she with him?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.
“No idea,” I said. “And her name is Babette.”
“Yeah, don’t call her Baboon this time,” Will said, coming down the stairs behind her, his backpack hoisted over one shoulder. It looked almost empty.
“Shut up,” Grace muttered. “I didn’t mean to say it out loud.”
“Mind your manners,” I said, raising an eyebrow at her. “Be polite.”
“I will, I will,” she said.
There was a knock at the back door and Emily went to open it. Thornton shuffled in behind her and waved at me. “Hey, Daisy.”
“Hey,” I said. “I think they’re all ready.”
He nodded. He had on dark denim jeans and a big poofy ski jacket. His hair was all spiked up like usual and it looked like there was a faint outline of a beard on his face. He always looked ill at ease in the house, despite our attempts to make him feel welcome. He and I had forged a decent relationship after the divorce, mainly for the sake of the kids, and Jake had joined in the effort to make him feel welcome. He always made an effort to say hello and make small talk when he saw Thornton, and he never made him feel like an outsider in our home.
The kitchen door opened and Babette stumbled in, crashing into Thornton.
“Thornton!” she said. “You left me in the car!”
Babette, on the other hand, was a different story. Her courtship with Thornton had been a bit of a whirlwind and I knew the kids had felt like she’d been forced down their throats. She was loud and boisterous and according to the kids, not terribly kind with her words toward yours truly. I assured them that maybe she was trying to find her role in this new family they’d put together, but I’d immediately been on guard with her. I’d been met with a cold shoulder anytime I’d made an overture to her in the past year and I’d finally stopped trying. I was careful to keep my opinion of her from the kids, but I had yet to figure out what Thornton was doing with her. She treated him like he was an idiot, she hadn’t been able to hold down a job, and she regularly failed to show at any of the kids’ activities. I hadn’t been able to figure her out.
“I didn’t think you were coming in,” Thornton mumbled. “You said you didn’t want to come in and—”
“I did not!” she screeched, slapping his shoulder. She noticed me standing in the dining room. “Oh. Hello, Daisy.”
“Babette,” I said, smiling.
She brushed at her blond hair. It was cut short, like something you’d see in a magazine, all angles and waves. Only it didn’t look quite right, like she’d missed the finishing piece. The bangs swung down across her eyes and she swatted at them again. Big silver hoops dangled from her earlobes and her short, squat nose was red from the cold. She wore an oversized pink sweater and jeans that were two sizes too small and not flattering on her pear-shaped figure. Her brown boots were caked in mud… mud that was now all over my kitchen floor.
“Okay, you guys ready?” I asked.
The kids responded with low volume assent.
“We’re going to have so much fun!” Babette screeched. “Your dad has so many surprises for you!”
Thornton looked at her and I surmised that the surprises were also a surprise to him.
“Well, I’ve got a ton of homework,” Emily said, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “So we can’t be gone all weekend. I have to write a paper for my history class.”
“History?” Thornton asked. “What are you studying?”
“The past,” she said, shooting him one of her death glares.
“Em,” I said, giving her a glare of my own.
She sighed. “Something about economics. The history of the banking system.”
“I used to work in a bank,” Babette said with a huge smile. “I’ll bet I could help you bunches!”
Emily’s gaze flew to me and we both bit back smiles. It was a running joke. Not only had she not been able to hold a job, but according to the kids, she’d also tried out nearly every job known to man. And she always made mention of them.
I gave her a small head shake, then hugged each of them. Emily and Will hustled out the door but Grace took her time, gathering her things, always the last one to leave, saying goodbye multiple times before she finally exited.
Thornton and Babette, though, stood awkwardly in the kitchen. Thornton had his hand stuffed in the pockets of his jeans and Babette was fussing with her hair.
“I think they’ve got everything,” I said, unsure as to why they were still in my house when all three kids were already in the car. “Let me know if they forgot anything. Jake and I should be around all weekend.”
Babette elbowed Thornton in the side and he winced.
“Uh, right, okay,” he said. “Hey, uh, we wanted to, uh, ask you about the play. That Grace is in.”
“Sophie’s in it, too,” I reminded him. “Didn’t I email you all of the dates and times and info?”
“Yeah, yeah, I got that,” he said, his eyes flitting between Babette and me. “Uh, we heard about the girl that got kidnapped.”
“Well, no one really knows what actually happened to her yet.”
“My friend, Myra, told me that it’s definitely a kidnapping,” Babette said, her eyes wide. She nodded her head, as if affirming this knowledge to herself. “She knows someone who’s also in the play.”
“I just talked to the police this morning,” I told her. “They aren’t sure what happened to her. So I’m not sure where that information came from.”
She pursed her lips and looked at Thornton.
He cleared his throat. “Well, um, yeah. Whatever happened, it sounds like it’s kind of dangerous over there right now.”
“Dangerous?” I repeated, arching my eyebrows.
“Well, if people are being kidnapped, that doesn’t seem like the safest thing.”
My temple began to throb. “I just told you,” I said slowly, as if I were speaking to an eight-year-old and not the father of my children. “No one knows what happened to Amanda or where she is. No one walked into the theater and put a gun to her head and walked her out. No matter what you heard.”
“Right,” he mumbled. He glanced at Babette and she frowned and nodded her head again. “But we were wondering if maybe it might be best if she dropped out of the play.”
I took a deep breath. Since our divorce, Thornton had awkwardly at times tried to act like a parent. But he genuinely didn’t know how to be one. When we were married, he worked long hours and was rarely at home and when he was, he wanted to do his own thing. So the kids had been my job. I’d resented it for years, but when we’d divorced, I realized I was in a fortunate position. The kids knew me as the parent. The kids had come to see Jake as a parent. But they didn’t have the same impression of Thornton. So when he, for whatever reason, decided to attempt to wade into the parenting waters, it nearly always rubbed me the wrong way.
“Neither Grace nor Sophie are dropping out of the play,” I told them. “Jake or I have been at nearly every rehearsal and we know a good portion of the parents and families in the play. Whatever happened to Amanda is a personal thing. It wasn’t random.”
“You don’t know that,” Babette said, folding her arms across her chest. She pursed her lips. “And we don’t think it’s a wise choice to put our daughter in danger.�
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The throbbing in my temple picked up pace. I took another deep breath. “I appreciate your concern, but both girls are fine and will continue in the play.” I looked at Babette. “And if you so much as mention the idea that it might be dangerous for them to be in the play while they are with you this weekend, I’ll make sure that you are barred from the theater during the productions.” I smiled. “Just to keep you safe.”
“No, we just—” Thornton stumbled.
I held up my hand. “Just stop. Anytime we go near this kind of stuff, it goes poorly. They live with me. I make the decisions about their lives. That was the deal. You haven’t spent a second in the theater at a rehearsal or an information session or anything else, even though you were absolutely welcome to attend.” I paused. “So don’t come in here with an opinion formed on something you heard from some random person.”
Babette sniffed and lifted her chin. “It wasn’t a random person. It was someone who is friends with someone I know.”
“So, third-hand,” I said. “Yeah, that’s not going to influence me in any way.”
“And to be fair, I would’ve been there, but we’ve been pretty busy with the band,” Thornton said.
“We would’ve been there,” Babette snapped at him.
They were both in a band that featured Babette as the lead singer. Thornton’s lifelong dream had been to make it as a musician and he’d been trying ever since I’d met him, rotating through different bands. Now, he and Babette had bonded over their shared passion of music.
“We finally got a gig,” Thornton said. “We’re playing at the feed store.”
“The feed store?”
“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “They’re gonna do a grand re-opening. It burned down last year and they finally got it rebuilt and they’re doing this big re-opening thing and they asked us to play. So rehearsals have been intense.”
“Great,” I said. “I’m sure it’ll be fun.”
Babette grabbed him by the arm. “Come on, Thornton. The children are waiting.” She gave me a fake smile. “Daisy.”
“Babette,” I said, returning the fake smile.
Thornton gave me the same half-wave he’d given me when he walked in and pulled the door behind him as they left.
I walked to the window and exhaled. Babette was already giving him an earful as they walked to the car, her head bobbing and her gloved hands gesticulating wildly. Thornton just shrugged as he untangled himself from her and made his way to the driver’s side.
I genuinely hoped they would keep their ridiculous opinions to themselves.
Because if they didn’t, I would show them both what dangerous looked like. In the form of one really ticked off mom.
EIGHTEEN
It was date night.
With all of the kids gone for the night, I’d considered numerous options for the evening.
Dinner down in St. Paul.
A movie.
A museum.
But what I really wanted was just time with Jake.
We so rarely got time to just ourselves, where we didn’t have to worry about doors opening, or being home at a certain time, or coordinating schedules to pick up kids from various activities. Time for just the two of us felt like something we had to be careful with and not waste. I’d lost count of how many times we’d turned down opportunities to go out and do something without the kids when they were home with us. The guilt of divorce weighed on each of us, and while we were both happy with what our family had become, we also knew that the kids hadn’t asked for divorce and multiple families and splitting time. We were hyper-aware of this.
And we’d chosen to have them live with us. We wanted to be parents. So we never wanted them to think that we needed to get away from them or that we were sorry we’d made that choice. We always tried to be available to them and to do things as a family when they were around.
When we finally did get some time just to ourselves, I always came up with a million things to do. But I really just wanted to spend an evening with my husband.
So I nixed all of the ideas that involved leaving the house and planned for a night in.
I did a quick cleanup of the house and then hopped in the shower. I dried my hair and reapplied makeup. I went upstairs and found some lacy lingerie that I kept shoved in the back of my dresser drawer, right behind all of the wool socks. It was a red satin camisole with a matching bikini bottom. I couldn’t recall if I’d ever worn and it vaguely remembered buying it for a date night that never happened. I pulled everything on and then assessed myself in the mirror.
I immediately focused on all of the things I didn’t like about myself. My stomach wasn’t tight enough. My thighs and rear end were bigger than they’d been twenty years earlier. More wrinkles and bumps than I’d ever hoped I’d have, a product of having kids and simple aging. I absolutely did not look like the model wearing the lingerie in the catalog I’d purchased it from.
But Jake made me feel better about myself than I’d ever felt. He’d given me about a million things and one of them was confidence in my appearance. He told me I was pretty. He grabbed me when no one was looking. He kissed me. He touched me. Most of the time, he made me feel like the model in the magazine.
So instead of frowning at all of the imperfections I saw in the mirror, I took a deep breath and reminded myself that my husband loved me. And he was a man. And lingerie was like catnip for a man.
I pulled on my robe and went back downstairs. I dug candles out of the cupboard and strategically set them around the main floor and then hurried back upstairs to put some in the bedroom, too.
My phone dinged and it was Jake texting me. He’d dropped Sophie at her sleepover and was fifteen minutes from home. And he was going to pick up Chinese food if that was okay with me.
Perfect, I told him.
I went back into the bathroom and teased my hair a little more. There were a couple of wiry gray hairs at my temple and I debated yanking them out. I decided against it; at the rate they were sprouting, I’d be bald in no time if I decided on that method of controlling them. I sighed at my reflection and the stubborn gray hairs and then returned to the living room. I lit the candles there and then went upstairs to light the ones I’d set up in our bedroom.
I heard the kitchen door open and the aroma of orange chicken drifted up the stairs. I untied the robe, thought about taking it off, then decided to keep it on, just untied. A little dramatic and a little sexy. I took another look in the mirror, squinting my eyes to soften my reflection.
Not bad for a harried mom and wife in her forties.
Then I went downstairs.
He was already sitting at the table, his back to the stairs, the food spread out in front of him.
And his laptop was open next to the food.
“Did the breakers trip?” he asked, without turning around. “I saw the candles. I’ll go check the box in a minute.”
“The breakers are fine,” I said, standing on the bottom step, waiting for him to turn around.
“Oh, okay,” he said. “Alright, you have to make a decision tonight.”
“A decision?”
“Do you know how easy it is to become an investigator in this state?” he asked, reaching for one of the white takeout cartons. “It’s really simple.”
“What?”
“I ran into Officer Ted at the Chinese place,” he said. “He told me you were asking about Amanda Pendleton when you ran into him today. So you need to make a decision.”
“Um, Jake?”
“Either get your license or leave it all alone,” he said, sticking a fork into a carton of rice. “And we’re going to make that decision tonight.”
“Jake?”
“I’m gonna hold you to it.”
“Jake?”
“What? And where are you?” He turned around. “The food is...whoa.”
I perched my hands on my hips. “Yeah. Whoa. While you’ve been ranting about my getting an investigator’s license, I’ve been
standing here nearly naked waiting for you to turn around so I could seduce you. Because there are no kids here in this house tonight.”
“Wow,” he said, his eyes big. He swallowed hard. “Wow.”
“Yeah, wow,” I said, walking slowly toward him.
His eyes swept over me. “But...but...I’m serious. You have to make a decision. Tonight.”
“Sure,” I said, reaching his chair. “I can make a decision tonight.”
He looked me up and down again. “Where did you...get that?”
“I thought you wanted to talk about the license?” I said, pulling the robe tight around me. There wasn’t a hint of the lacy lingerie to be seen.
“Well, I didn’t know—”
“It’s fine.” I smiled at him. “We can sit down and work on this. I can read through whatever you found. It’ll probably take several hours.”
“Um...maybe...uh...I mean, we can do it later,” he stammered.
Jake was always calm and collected. Occasionally his temper flared, but most of the time, he was even-keel. Cool under pressure. I took great pride in creating a disturbance in his force.
“No, no,” I said, shaking my head. “You seem so intent on getting this done. We can just eat dinner…and read.”
He frowned, but seemed unsure as to how to handle this now. He’d clearly come home with a particular plan in mind and I’d thrown a big fat wrench in his plans. He was now caught between wanting to force me to do what he’d been on my back about and…the lingerie.
“Daisy,” he began.
“Jake,” I said, grinning at him, enjoying watching him squirm.
He frowned again, then stepped toward me. In one smooth motion, he wrapped an arm around my waist and hoisted me over his shoulder.
“Hey!” I said. I squirmed against him. “I thought we were going to do some research.”
“We are,” he said, heading for the stairs. “I’m going to research how fast that lingerie comes off of your body.”
NINETEEN
I stuck my fork in the carton of noodles. “Do you really want me to do this?”
We were back downstairs, a little sweaty and a lot more relaxed. After nearly an hour upstairs of...research...we’d realized we were starving and headed down to reheat the Chinese food Jake had brought home. I’d pulled the robe back on and Jake had changed into a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. We were huddled together on the couch, passing the cartons of food back and forth.
