Changing Fate (Changing Teams Series Book 3)

by Jennifer Allis Provost

  “My insurance agent,” he replied. “I’m trying to get you and Merriam Webster on my health insurance policy.”

  I laughed and pressed my face against his hair; it was still damp from the shower. “Are we really going to call him Merriam Webster?”

  Sean shifted his chair and pulled me onto his lap. “Maybe, maybe not.” After he held me for a moment he asked, “Was it too weird, being up there with Emily?”

  “It was, but that’s not her fault. This isn’t a situation any of us ever thought we’d be in. Speaking of Emily, is she on your policy? And what about the girls?” I added, wondering how many women and children Sean’s insurance company would allow on a single policy. At this rate, it was starting to resemble a trashy daytime talk show.

  “Actually, Emily has her own health insurance through her college. The girls are covered under her,” Sean replied. “As for adding you, my agent thinks that anything for the baby will be covered right away, but that I’ll have to marry you to get you on there.” He touched my ring. “What do you say, baby? Want to see my policy?”

  I laughed, and was about to say that I hardly needed health insurance. I rarely went to the doctor for anything more than an annual exam, and I always got a clean bill of health. Then I remembered that I was considered old for a pregnant woman, and all the complications that could arise for both me and the baby.

  “What is it?” Sean asked. Evidently he’d seen the worry on my face.

  “I’m just thinking about all the reasons that that is a great idea,” I replied. I didn’t want to burden Sean with my half-baked medical concerns, not until we’d seen a doctor, at least. “I’ll call Britt, and ask her to stop by the safe deposit box and withdraw all of my marriage-related paperwork. Better to work on this divorce sooner rather than later.”

  “I agree.”

  ***

  I did as promised, and after a brief phone call and an email exchange with Britt, she agreed to stop by the safe deposit box and retrieve the copy of my prenuptial agreement. A few hours later, I got a call from Britt herself.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” I said after I accepted the call.

  “Yeah, so, this isn’t good,” she began. “The bank is full of Patrick’s creepozoids.”

  “How is that even possible?” I asked. “It’s not like he knew I emailed you.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  I wasn’t, but I didn’t want to think about that. “Are you sure they’re Patrick’s people? Maybe it’s just a bunch of really ugly men coincidentally doing their banking on the same day.”

  “One of them is the guy from when we last had lunch,” Britt replied.

  “TJ,” I said. “All right, abort mission.”

  “Maybe we can get the paperwork in a different way,” Britt said. “If these are legal documents and all, wouldn’t he have filed them somewhere?”

  “Honestly, Britt, I have no idea.” For the first time in my life I wished the few college courses I’d taken had been in law. “Where would they be filed? At a courthouse, or a registry of…of agreements, or something?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll ask Sam’s mom, maybe she would know.” Britt paused for a moment, and conversed with a male voice. “Sam says we can always hire an attorney and subpoena the information directly from Patrick.”

  “I wonder how much that would cost me.” I had some money, and Sean seemed to be doing well with his store and online collectible business, but if I’d learned anything in my time with Patrick, it was how quickly one could drown under legal fees. It was Patrick’s favorite form of execution.

  “Hang on, Mom, Sam’s got a plan,” Britt said. I heard some muffled sounds, as if Britt had shoved her phone into her pocket. After a few minutes—which seemed like hours to me—Britt said, “Okay, we are almost done.”

  “Done with what?” I asked.

  “Thank you,” Britt said, then I heard something like papers rustling. “Okay, I’ve got it.”

  “What? How did you do that? What about the goons?”

  “Well, Sam pointed out that the brute squad can’t really do anything to us,” she replied. “What are they going to do, tell Patrick that Sam and I went to the bank? He doesn’t even know what’s in the box. It’s in my name, anyway.”

  “Good point,” I replied. At least my daughter and son-in-law had some sense. “Thank you, sweetheart. Now what do we do?”

  “I can scan them and email them to you and Dad,” Britt replied. “I’ll ask Laura what she thinks too.”

  “All right.”

  “Okay, Mom. Talk soon!”

  Britt ended the call, and I clutched my phone to my chest. Getting the papers had been too easy too, without Patrick’s usual schemes. Something was going to go wrong, I just didn’t know what.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Two

  Sean

  Present Day

  Over the past week, Cin and I had developed a routine. We got up early, way before Emily and the girls, and went down to the ground floor. While I went over the shop’s invoices and other paperwork, Cin made us coffee, then she brought me a cup and we enjoyed our quiet time together. We were behaving like an old married couple, and I loved it.

  We were doing a variation of that routine on Thursday, only Cin had gotten up extra early and made us a batch of cinnamon rolls for breakfast. While I teased her about eating her namesake, my office line, which went to an old school black landline with a curly cord and a rotary dial, rang. I picked up the receiver and said, “Moshi moshi.”

  Cin raised an eyebrow. “Japanese, are we?”

  “Sir, this is Sam,” my son-in-law announced over the line. “Would Ms. Sull—ah, would Britt’s mother happen to be nearby?”

  “She is,” I replied. “And don’t call me sir. What am I, a knight of the Round Table or something?”

  Sam chuckled. “All right, then.”

  “Would you like to talk to Cin?”

  “No, uh…I have some bad news that I think I’d better give to you first.”

  “Bad?” I repeated. “Is Britt all right?”

  “Nearly perfect,” Sam replied, while Cin demanded, “What happened to Britt?”

  I angled the receiver away from my mouth. “Britt’s fine,” I said to Cin. To Sam, I asked, “What’s this news, Sir Samalot?”

  “My mother has refused to look at Cindy’s prenuptial agreement,” Sam said. “She thinks it’s, ah…”

  “Just not her area of expertise?” I suggested, offering Sam an out. Not that he took it.

  “She doesn’t feel that it’s right to help Cindy, ah…since she’s already married, and, um…”

  “I get it.” I looked at Cin, and wondered if my parents or brothers knew any lawyers. It looked like we were going to need one. Before I could tell Cin that Sam’s mother disapproved of our sinful relationship, her phone buzzed on the desk.

  “712 area code,” Cin said when she checked the display. “Where’s that?”

  “That’s Iowa,” Sam said, surprise evident in his voice.

  “Iowa,” I repeated. “Pick it up.” Cin frowned, but accepted the call.

  “Hello?” she said, then she put it on speaker and held it out.

  “I’m looking for Cynthia Sullivan,” a man’s voice said.

  “You’ve found her,” Cin replied.

  “This is Tom MacKellar,” the caller said. “Sam’s father.”

  “Yes, of course,” Cin said. “How are you?”

  While they exchanged pleasantries, I said to Sam, “Your father just called Cin.”

  “Really? Put me on speaker?”

  I did some old school speaker phone, and put my phone’s receiver next to Cin’s as I gestured for her to keep talking.

  “I sure hope things are good out in Iowa,” Cin said, her polite tone forced. She had no future in poker tournaments, or the CIA, for that matter.

  “Yes, they are.” Tom paused. “I’m sure you know by now that Laura has refused to help you and Sean.”

/>   Cin looked at me, and I nodded. “Yes, I surmised as much.”

  “What you don’t know is that Laura is being rather hypocritical,” Tom continued. “She gave Sam a laundry list of reasons why assisting two people who are actively cheating on their partners is wrong.”

  Cin swallowed hard. “I-I can understand why she feels that way.”

  “As I said, my wife is being a bit hypocritical. You see, Laura and I were both married when we met.”

  “What?” Sam demanded. “You and Mom were what?”

  “What was that?” Tom asked.

  “Oh, Sean has your son on the other line, and you’re on speaker,” Cin said, giving me a sly smile. “Cat’s out of the bag.”

  Tom sighed. “Sam, please let me talk to your mother before you ask us any questions.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Sam muttered. “Any long-lost siblings I should know about?”

  “Later,” Tom said. “As I was saying, I understand how relationships can be more complicated than we’d like them to be. I’ve printed out the documents Sam sent earlier, and I’ll have a few of my associates look it over. Off the record, of course.”

  “Of course,” Cin said. “Tom, thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “Yeah,” I said; since he knew I was there I figured I might as well express my appreciation. “You don’t know what this means to us.”

  Tom chuckled. “As a matter of fact, I think I do. I’ll be in touch within a week.”

  Tom ended the call, and I grabbed Cin and kissed her. “Hear that, baby?” I said against her lips. “We’ve got us a military man on the case.”

  “I know,” she said. “I-I can’t believe it. I love you, Sean.”

  “Love you too, baby.”

  Sam loudly cleared his throat. “Well, since you two have obviously forgotten my existence, and that you being all lovey and Britt’s parents is seriously creepy, I’m going to hang up.”

  The line went dead as Cin and I burst out laughing. “We creeped him out,” Cin said.

  I grinned. “That’s me, the creepy old man in the comic shop.”

  Chapter

  Thirty-Three

  Cindy

  Present Day

  Two days after Tom had agreed to look over my prenuptial agreement, I spent the morning holed up in my writing room watching a movie on my laptop. In addition to a standard cable plan, Sean also subscribed to one of those streaming video services, which meant that Penny and Ronnie could watch their favorite cartoons over and over again. And again. That was great for the kids, but not so great for my sanity.

  I didn’t even feel guilty hiding upstairs, two floors away from the girls. Emily was home, for once, and I was certain that she could ably handle her children. Besides, they would have to take a nap eventually.

  Now that I think about it, I remember one time when Britt didn’t sleep for almost three days. Maybe I should go downstairs and lend a hand.

  My phone buzzed, and I saw a text from Britt, asking me to call her. I did so right away.

  “Mom, you’re not going to believe this,” she began.

  “What happened?”

  “Patrick? That asshole you married? He’s representing the Williams brothers.”

  “Representing?” I repeated. “That doesn’t make any sense. Aren’t they already in jail?”

  “Yeah, well, guess what? It turns out that people in jail can sue people. And they’re suing me for defamation of character!”

  “Britt, what exactly does that mean?” I asked, cold sweat blooming on my chest.

  She was quiet for a moment before she replied. “Their story is that the three of us had a regular…a regular thing going on, and then Sam walked in on us and I got embarrassed and made up the assault charges.”

  “But they have your statement, and the videos, and all those other girls were killed,” I spluttered. “How can anyone think that you’re in league with them?”

  “They say it was all a big plot for me to try and get money out of Nash and Ben,” she replied. “Never mind that Sam and I haven’t sued them or gotten a lawyer or anything. Never mind that all we’ve really done is tell the police what happened.” Britt’s voice trembled, and she sounded like she was on the verge of tears. “Never mind that they have the results of my bloodwork showing I was drugged, and the…rest.”

  “Where’s Sam?” I asked.

  “He’s trying to get in touch with his parents,” she replied. “Maybe his mother will help us now.”

  I bit the inside of my mouth; in my opinion, Laura was a self-righteous hypocrite, but voicing that now really wouldn’t help matters. Besides, I was sure Britt already knew that. “Okay, that’s good. I’m going to talk to Dad, and maybe Grandpa. Both Grandpas. I’ll call you later, okay?”

  Britt said goodbye and we ended the call. I sat in my writing room for a moment, staring out the windows toward the mountains. Even though Britt hadn’t said as much, I knew full well why Patrick was representing the Williams brothers: to get back at me. Since the day we’d met, Patrick had known that Britt was my one weakness—my Achilles heel, even—and he’d used her against me right from the start.

  When Britt had gone off to college—college that had been paid for in full by scholarships and grants, not in any way by Patrick—he had lost a measure of his power over me. Once I knew that Britt was safely out of his reach I could breathe again, and be myself. That was when I’d started writing again, had my daughter take out safe deposit boxes under her name, and started venturing out more on my own. If the Cindy I’d been from before Britt moved out of Patrick’s house had encountered Sean, she never would have had the guts to dance with him, never mind leave New York to be with him again. Present day Cindy had done that without a second thought.

  I laughed shortly. My subconscious had been planning my escape from Patrick for years, and I hadn’t even realized it.

  “I won’t be his prisoner again,” I said aloud. “I’m not going to let him use this baby against me the way he used Britt. I’m free, we’re all free from him, and it’s staying that way.”

  I patted my belly, pleased at my little declaration, then my fingers clenched into a fist. It was all well and good that I had said the words, but now I needed to act. If I only had the slightest idea of what to do.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Four

  Sean

  Present Day

  “That’s him?” I asked, squinting at the pale, wiggly blob on the screen.

  “That’s him,” Dr. Dardano replied. She was the doctor who had delivered Britt twenty-odd years ago, and by some miracle she was still practicing, and had room in her patient list to take us on again. Cin claimed that us being in Dr. Dardano’s office after all these years was just another sign that our baby was meant to be, and I wasn’t inclined to argue.

  “Is it a him?” Cin asked. “Or is he twins?”

  Dr. Dardano smiled. “It’s a little soon to know the gender. I’d say you’re about eight weeks along, give or take a few days. And what’s this desire for twins?”

  Cin blushed, but she didn’t look away from the screen. “I-I just really miss having a baby to cuddle.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Dr. Dardano said. “How old is our little Britannica now, twenty-one?”

  “Can you believe she’ll be twenty-three in June?”

  Cin and Dr. Dardano laughed and went on about Britt and how she’d grown, while I just stared at the little white splotch on the screen. That splotch was my fourth child, and while I loved my twins no matter what, there was just something special about being here again with Cin. Hell, Emily hadn’t even wanted me to go to doctor visits with her, she was so worried that she’d do or say something embarrassing in front of me. Never mind that I’d been through it all before, never mind that my children—all of my children—meant the world to me. The fact that she might have to answer a personal question in front of me, the man that had put her in that condition, trumped all that.

  After our appointment w
as over, and we each had a tiny photograph of our eight-week-old bundle of joy, Cin and I drove to a little coffee shop in the center of town. It had been a local fixture for as long as I could remember; back when I was in high school, it was the only place that served real espresso and cappuccinos. Over time all the fancy chain coffee spots had popped up around it, but it never felt trendy, just classic. Authentic. Real.

  Just like my love for Cin.

  “Decaf today?” I asked as we stepped inside.

  “I don’t think one caffeinated beverage will hurt anything,” Cin replied. Since I agreed, I stepped up to the counter and ordered two cinnamon lattes.

  “Since when did you like flavored coffee?” Cin asked.

  I winked at her. “Cinnamon’s my favorite flavor.”

  After we picked out a couple of pastries, and given the server our names, Cin and I found a seat by the front windows and I got hit with a massive dose of déjà vu. Cin wasn’t wearing a drop of makeup and had her long hair pulled back in a high ponytail, which made her look almost exactly the same as she had in high school.

  “Remember coming here when we were kids?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Cin replied. “Then we were kids bringing our own kid here. Britt had her first espresso right there, at the counter.”

  “Yeah, she did.” I still remembered the barista’s look of horror when Cin dipped her finger in the crema and placed a drop on Britt’s tongue. That one taste had launched a lifetime caffeine addiction. “Speaking of our eldest, Tom emailed me.”

  “Really? When?”

  I withdrew my phone from my back pocket just as our lattes and warm muffins arrived. After the server left, I replied, “It came through just as we got to Dr. Dardano’s office. Here, we can read it together.”

  Cin shook her head, holding her mug close to her face. “I’m too nervous. You read it, then tell me what it says.”

  I did, even though I was just as nervous as Cin. “We’ve got some good news here.”