Building a Family

by M. K. Stelmack

  “Not sure you’re the one to deliver it.”

  “If not me, then who?”

  Ben looked past her to the dark house. She hadn’t even bothered to leave the porch light on. “I don’t know, but I’m sure you don’t want to cause anyone pain.”

  Connie sucked in her breath. She had a history of inflicting it, anyway.

  “I hope—” Ben stopped, and his voice dipped. “I hope they find their way back to each other.”

  He was talking about them. Pain—and something ridiculously like hope that she had absolutely no right to feel—fluttered inside her. They weren’t a couple. But they had been. Before she could muster up an answer, he carried on. “You’re beat. Have a good sleep and I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  “What, no patrol?” Usually he came inside with her and switched on lights, checked the doors and scanned the backyard. But tonight, he clearly wasn’t concerned about her safety.

  “Thought I would give you some space. Unless, of course, you want me to come in. Do you, Connie?”

  She grabbed her purse. “No.”

  “See? I do know what you need,” he said, a smile still threaded through his words.

  She hopped from the truck. “Then there’d better be some of Dizzy’s cheesecake in the fridge.”

  * * *

  CONNIE SPOTTED THE ring box as soon as she entered the darkened kitchen. It was hard to miss, given that it sat beside a lit tea candle on the island.

  Her chest tightened and wild panic surged through her. “No. Don’t you dare.”

  She raced down the stairs and flung open the front door. Barefoot in subzero temperatures and with no coat, she ran to the curb. Ben and his truck were nowhere in sight. Figured.

  Giving her space. Uh-huh. She tiptoed up the snow-packed walk and then navigated the frozen steps back into the house, the sudden warmth making her toes tingle. Her defrosting feet left damp footprints on the plywood subfloor.

  Maybe the box had just been a figment of her Valentine’s Day–stressed imagination. She crept into the kitchen. Nope. Still there, with its pale blue velvet and gold lettering.

  Maybe it wasn’t what she thought it was.

  But what if it was? To verify her assumption, she’d have to open the box. And she knew—like she knew every line on Ben’s face—that above all else, she must resist the temptation. For she was quite sure that if it turned out to be the ring Ben intended to bind her to him with, she would put it on and never take it off.

  She loved him but she didn’t deserve to love him. The one good thing she’d done in their relationship was end it. Cruelly and quickly, but effectively.

  Until now. Why now, after three Valentine’s Days had passed, did he give her an engagement ring? How, when they’d not gone out on a single date, not kissed, not even held hands, when she’d not given the slightest encouragement—driving her home most nights absolutely did not count since she barely showed the decency to thank him—how in his right mind could he have possibly concluded she would marry him?

  She reached for her cell phone. He’d be awake. She called, and it went straight to voice mail.

  “Oh, no, you don’t, Ben Carruthers. You will pick up your phone. Right. Now.”

  Five more times it went to voice mail before Connie admitted defeat. She didn’t leave another message. The world could rightly accuse her of a lot, but she did possess the decency not to reject a marriage proposal via voice mail.

  She set her elbows on the island, lowered her chin into her hands and contemplated the box in the flickering shadows of the tea light. She didn’t recognize the jeweler’s name, and searched it on her phone. A custom jeweler from Calgary. She scanned through the creations, each a glittering marvel. Connie stretched out a finger and touched the velvet top of the box. Smooth and a little rough. Like Ben’s jaw before his morning shave.

  Connie pushed herself straight. “Why, Ben? Why could you not keep it simple between us?”

  A sudden thought struck her and she flung open the fridge door. Sure enough, there in the middle of the fridge on a plate fringed with red rose petals was a wide wedge of Dizzy’s cheesecake.

  “No,” Connie said, reaching for it, anyway. “No, no, no.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  CONNIE HUDDLED ON the cement floor of her basement before the coffeemaker her mother had drunk her last cup of coffee from. She had called it My Maker, and as she’d grown sicker, her humor had grown blacker than the coffee that now slowly dripped and burbled into Connie’s largest mug.

  Normally, she made her morning coffee in the kitchen, but with the ring box calling to her there, she had swept up the coffee machine and paraphernalia and fled to the farthest basement corner.

  She eyed the boxes and tubs of her mother’s stuff banked high and long against the wall. Stuff untouched in the one year and one month since Seth and Mel had packed it down here after their mother’s funeral.

  Connie was supposed to have dealt with it all—fair exchange for her inheriting the house.

  Connie knew full well why her mother had left her the house. Her whole adult life could be summed up as: Connie leaves home to do something big and important with her life, fails and moves back into her mother’s house.

  After high school, Connie had lived with her BFF, Miranda, to help the too-young mother with her baby. That had ended badly, and she’d moved back in with her mother. She’d then gotten a job as a grocery clerk and rented her own place, but she’d been rude to one too many customers and come home again. She’d cleaned up her act, and started dating Ben. Two years later, she’d found herself in this house again.

  When her mom died, she’d been renting a duplex with her then-boyfriend, Trevor McCready. She’d intended to renovate the house, flip it and make a bit of cash. But Trevor had gambled away all her money at a Las Vegas blackjack table, and she’d realized that her plan of reforming him was never going to work. She’d dumped him and moved back in seven months ago, the renovations half done and her mother’s boxes still stacked in the basement.

  Refocusing on the coffeemaker, Connie snuggled deeper into the flannel shirt she’d taken from Ben three years ago when they’d broken up. It had been outright theft, but she’d needed something of him.

  The shirt was all thready and the dark green of moldy wood, the armpits hanging four inches below her own. It was the ugliest thing she possessed, and it had to be a record-hot summer morning for her not to wear it when she woke.

  She switched the now-full cup with the pot, and leaned against a cardboard box. It cracked and folded under her weight and her backbone bumped against something ribby and flexible. A book? Hmm...well, this was one box she could safely open...

  Inside were her dad’s old steno pads. Dozens of pocket-size, coil-on-top ones in blue, green and red.

  Every August during the back-to-school sales, Connie had bought twelve pads for her father. She’d print out the months, color and tape them on, apply appropriate stickers, date the pages and note special events such as holidays and birthdays. Then she’d stuff all twelve into her dad’s Christmas stocking. Mel and Seth had complained that there was no room for their gifts. Connie had said they should buy their mother more because she’d taken care of their dad.

  Her mother must’ve saved the pads all these years. Who knew why she’d bothered.

  Elastic bands held together five bundles, but one pad was loose. The one marked “June,” the month her dad had died suddenly, horribly, twenty-one years ago when he’d fallen from a roof.

  She flipped through the pages, rippled from the press of her dad’s pencil and her own.

  Her dad had entertained all her schemes. A class party at the house, Thanksgiving meals at the pet shelter, a one-girl show at the beach with proceeds going to her newly formed theatrical company. She’d pitch her idea to him, and no matter how wild, he’d accept it and say, “Better w
rite it down.” And then it would happen. Her dad had taught her the importance of a simple list.

  The little red pad suddenly felt to Connie like a wisdom book that revealed her life since her father died.

  She’d lost him and her lists. No one to listen to her crazy ideas and put it on a list. And reminded her to stick to it until she got what she wanted.

  Her brothers had repurposed their lives. Mel and Seth worked harder with the roofing business, and her mother had tried to become both parents. Even Ben had helped with the roofing, still did for that matter.

  Only Connie had been given the luxury of carrying on as if nothing had happened. She went to school, hung out with friends, earned money to spend on herself.

  Connie slowly flipped the small pages, and it was like reading her past in clear order. The more everyone else sacrificed for her, the more undeserving she felt until she’d gradually become the despicable person she believed herself to be.

  For the last twenty years she’d unleashed her misery on her mother, her brother, her friend Miranda...and Ben.

  Connie crushed the red pad in her hand. She didn’t deserve happiness again, and yet there it was, upstairs, sparkling, in a box. Hers to grab hold of.

  Except first, she wanted to be the kind of person who believed she deserved a ring. And the only way to do that was to right twenty years of wrongs. Then she would be the kind of person who made lists and dreams come true.

  Except...she could be that kind of person right now.

  She pressed the little book between her palms to smooth the crushed pages, flipped it open to the first empty page and slid out the short HB pencil still tucked into the coils. She crossed out June 18 and put February 15, and updated the year.

  She jotted down five names in no particular order. Her list.

  Trevor McCready: for wanting you to be hurt after you took my money. And then getting my wish.

  Miranda Sloane and her daughter, Ariel: Ariel, for how I slept through your crying when you were a baby. And for choosing Ben over you both.

  Connie crossed out the last bit.

  Miranda: for not stopping you from making me choose Ben over you.

  That still wasn’t it, was it?

  For letting you think I couldn’t love all three of you.

  Seth Greene: for letting you take the fall for the police charges against me.

  Finally, Ben. She crossed out and erased until she arrived at her best attempt at truth.

  Ben Carruthers: for not loving you right.

  She poured herself another cup of black, bitter coffee. Now, to make these wrongs right.

  First: Trevor. She hadn’t seen him since the summer, when she’d followed him and her money down to a blackjack table in Las Vegas. And Google didn’t track the whereabouts of people that biker gangs had contracts out on. She put a question mark beside his name.

  Next up: Miranda.

  If only she could go straight back to her teenage years, to when she’d met Miranda in high school. Miranda had been fifteen to Connie’s fourteen, and that year had made Miranda something of a hero to Connie. She’d made it all glamorous—the partying, the alcohol, the drugs. When Miranda had become a mother at eighteen, they’d moved in together, though the wildness continued.

  They’d lived together on and off until five years ago, when she’d started dating Ben.

  Miranda had freaked when she heard the news, told Connie that it was either him or her, said that she and Ben hated each other too much for them to share her. Connie had believed that was the only option, and wanting a new start, she’d dumped Miranda and her then eleven-year-old daughter. They’d left town shortly after. Hard to make it up to them when she had no idea where they were.

  So maybe she’d start with Ben. The solution there was straightforward: return the ring box unopened and immediately.

  With him, she’d have stability, love, someone who didn’t steal, lie or cheat. But what would he get? Her poor credit rating and a bad girl who meant well. True, she hadn’t had a drink since last spring and her credit card balance hadn’t increased in the last three months. But those sad facts didn’t make her wife material.

  He deserved better, even if he couldn’t see it for himself. Someone had to save him from his own stupidity.

  * * *

  CONNIE DIDN’T EVEN bother knocking on Ben’s door, but rounded his house to the backyard, where his workshop dominated.

  She pushed open the workshop door and, sure enough, there he was. He sat on a sawhorse, in front of a huge sheet of wood leaning against a wall. She inhaled the smell of newly cut wood and the chemical tang of varnish. When they had been together, she’d breathed in the same smells on his neck.

  “I haven’t been here in years and it still stinks to high heaven,” she declared.

  Other than turning his head to her, he didn’t move. Connie checked for the box in her front jacket pocket for the thousandth time. “You didn’t return my calls.”

  Ben shrugged. “I didn’t know that I was supposed to.”

  “After six calls, it should be obvious.”

  He went back to studying the sheet of wood. He was going to make her spit it out. Fair enough. The ball—or the ring—was in her court.

  “I found the Valentine’s Day gift you left in the kitchen.” A part of her still hoped it wasn’t him, though who else?

  He didn’t lift his eyes from the absolutely riveting wood. “Did you like it?”

  “I never opened it.”

  Ben’s shoulders curved in a kind of cringe. She’d hurt him. Well, let the bleeding begin. She pulled the box from her pocket and set it beside him on the narrow wedge of the sawhorse. “Here. You can have it back.”

  He maintained his focus on the wood. “I’m not taking it.”

  “You have to. That’s one gift you have to accept if the recipient declines.”

  “No, I don’t. You can keep it.”

  “What would I do with an engagement ring if I’m not going to marry the man who gave it to me?”

  “I suppose you could give it away. Or sell it. It’s yours to do whatever you want with.”

  “Don’t be a jerk. You know that I don’t have the willpower to sell it or give it away. You also know that it’s taking every last bit of my self-control not to flip open that box, jam on the ring and make you marry me. I am really that shallow.”

  Finally, he dragged his attention away and looked at her with his strange brown eyes flecked with yellow. Polished and stained circles of natural mahogany. “Connie,” he said, “I don’t know that at all.”

  She glanced away. Had to, if she was going to get through this, if writing his name down not a freaking hour ago was to have any meaning. “Well, it’s true,” she muttered to the cement floor. It had a crack in it. She marked its path across the cement to where it forked underneath the sawhorse, the two paths fading away underneath the sheet of wood.

  “Just to be clear,” he said. “You wouldn’t be making me marry you. The fact that I gave you the ring indicates a certain amount of free will on my part.”

  “Ben. But—” how to say this without sounding mean? “—you were always a bit dumb when it came to me.”

  He traced his finger along a curving grain in the wood. “I’m aware of that,” he said softly.

  “Ben, listen to yourself. You sound like someone on a suicide mission. Are you out of your mind?”

  “Yes,” he said, “I am.” He picked up the box. “I’m so far gone that I bet I will go ahead and open the box, show the ring to you and you will cave and put it on.” His fingers settled on the lid.

  She lunged and stripped it from him. “Don’t you dare.”

  He returned to contemplating his big screen of wood. “I guess you’ll be keeping it.”

  She chucked the box into her purse. “How long have you been ke
eping it? You didn’t have the time to drive the two hours to Calgary and back again last night.”

  He didn’t answer and she was about to repeat herself, when he quietly said, “Since a week before we broke up.”

  That was three years ago. When she was a drunk, unemployed and...hateful. How could he have even considered marrying her? “Why?”

  “Connie, I get it. You’ve given me every reason not to love you. But last night you slipped up.”

  “I slipped up? What are you talking about?”

  “I saw you. I was coming out of the washroom. I spotted you over at the bar. You were picking olives out of my nachos.”

  Her stomach flip-flopped. “The cook messed up. You hate olives. I didn’t want to hear you gripe about the mini rubber tires.”

  He turned and raised his index finger, a detective about to break the case. “The reason I have always ordered nachos is because I thought your kitchen made them without olives. I assumed other people ordered them as an extra. But they didn’t. You’ve just always made sure that mine came without rubber tires.” His smug smile widened and softened into one that made her insides all squishy. “You’ve always known what I wanted.”

  Panic ran circles around inside her. Remember the list, remember the list. “You’re nuts. I have no idea how you draw a line from me making sure you don’t get olives to proposing marriage. I mean, if the criteria’s remembering what people like or don’t like, I’d be getting marriage proposals every other day.”

  He shook his head, again in that slow way of his. “Not buying it, Connie.”

  What would it take for him to understand? “Ben. I broke up with you. I cheated on you with another guy. Another guy that I didn’t care to date again, that I can’t even remember the name of, because he’d served his purpose of making you see that I didn’t want you then, and I don’t want you now.”

  There, she couldn’t be blunter. Some of that wasn’t entirely true, but it was all for his own good.

  Ben didn’t even blink. “Don’t tell me what you believe I need to hear, Connie. I love you, you love me—” she squawked in protest but he sailed on “—what’s holding you back?”