Worse, she had the sneaking suspicion that in her heart of hearts she didn’t want it to work.
Five years ago, when she’d first wanted to turn her life around with Ben, nursing was something she thought she might like to do. Everyone agreed, and she’d started upgrading her courses. Then, when Seth had taken the fall for her, it had become something she had to do, but she hadn’t been able continue...until now, after she had added Seth to her list.
But if she dropped out of nursing now, what was her backup plan? What would she tell Seth? Yes, bro, once again I’m giving up and I’ve no plan of action. Don’t worry, I’ve written your name down on my redemption list every day now for nearly a month, so I’m sure I’ll make it right by you.
Yeah, right. Planning his wedding wouldn’t make up for his criminal record. She checked the time on her phone—1:02 p.m. Still too early to head to the house to change for work, and no way was she going home early, not with Ben in residence.
She could discuss with the high school vice principal the promotion for the Lakers-on-the-Go Summer Launch. Might as well shoot him a text to set up a meeting. She got an immediate reply to say he was available in forty minutes.
Great! I’ll be there.
She resisted adding a smiley face. Too unprofessional.
Try not to be late as usual.
What? She checked his name and groaned. He was her old math teacher.
I’ll try. Still working on the time unit.
She was shoving the last book into her backpack when he sent a reply. A smiley face.
She took the trail to the school that cut through the trees—the same hard scramble she’d used twenty years ago because it shaved four minutes off her morning sprint to class.
Connie was about to clear the trees when she heard voices from The Ditch off to her right. It was a natural hollow where a stream surfaced and then ran along before going underground on its downward path to the lake. The Ditch couldn’t be seen from the school, creating a safe haven for illegal doings.
She might’ve carried on, except that she recognized a voice. Low, male, adult. Trevor.
“I can give you more next time but start with this. I don’t know you, you don’t know me. We need to build a relationship here.”
Anger blazed through Connie. She could guess exactly what kind of exploitive relationship Trevor had in mind. She gained the edge of The Ditch to catch him in the act.
Sure enough, he was there. But who he was with doused her anger with a cold wash of fear. Ariel. There in her leather jacket, with her hood up and her hands shoved into the front pockets. Connie was fairly certain that more than her hands were taking up space in there.
Ariel’s eyes widened at seeing Connie and she dipped her head so Connie could only see bits of her black hair sticking out from the gray hood.
“Ariel, hand it back to him. Now.”
“What are you talking about? What are you doing here, anyway?”
As if Connie had no right to be there. Huh. There was only one bad guy in this situation, and he stood there with a weaselly smile.
Yes, he was on her list, but today it was all about Ariel. Every bit of Connie ached to drag her home. But Ariel would fight her long and hard, and in the end hate and resent her, just as Connie had with her own mother. Better to let Ariel figure it out on her own.
With a little help from her auntie.
“I’m here to get my stuff.” Connie slipped through the snow down the embankment to them and fixed her eyes on Trevor. “You didn’t give her mine, did you, Trevor?”
“Wait,” Ariel said. “You sell?”
Connie rolled her eyes. “I’m not here for the fresh air.”
Ariel took in Connie’s rubber boots, pale blue with mauve flowers, and her windbreaker meant for running. “You don’t look the type.”
“Yeah, that’s the point. No one suspects me. You’d do well to think about that if you want to stay in this business.”
“She’s lying,” Trevor finally got in. “She doesn’t sell. She doesn’t need to. She has her own house and everything.”
“Wait,” Ariel said again. “You know her?”
“We dated,” Connie cut in, “then we broke up. Now we’re just in business together.”
“No, we’re not,” Trevor said. “She betrayed me. And all she’s going to ever get from me is what she deserves.”
He meant it, his voice laced with pure venom. This was his idea of revenge. By taking it out on Ariel.
The girl gave Trevor the stink eye. Ariel might not trust Connie, but neither did she seem wholly convinced by Trevor.
Connie countered with her own version of the truth. “Believe what you want, Ariel. The fact of the matter is that Trevor McCready is not to be trusted. The only reason I deal at all with him is that his bosses know me. With me, they’re assured that if anything goes sideways, they can come to me and get a straight answer. With him, you’ll never know.”
Connie could see Ariel’s right hand move around inside her pocket, holding on to the drugs. Was it fentanyl? She had no experience with the poison beyond news footage, but what she’d heard of the drug was enough to chill her blood. Way more addictive than heroin, and far, far easier to die from.
Connie kept driving home her point. “Trevor,” she said. “prove it. If you haven’t given away my portion, then hand it over. And let her get back to school before she has a whole lot of explaining to do to her teachers.”
As she hoped, Trevor fell into the trap. “I don’t have it because I don’t work with you.”
Connie made a noise of disgust. “You and I work for the same people. Why do you think I’m here? Right now? Because this is where we meet. Why else would I be here in the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday? In a bush behind a school I left long ago?”
Neither Ariel nor Trevor jumped to the obvious answer—as Ariel’s guardian, Connie could be visiting her teachers at school. Neither one of them had any experience with responsible parents, and Connie was counting on that to win Ariel over.
She went for the kill. “The thing is, Ariel, if he can stand there and rip me off, knowing the kind of people who back me, then what will he do to you?”
Connie didn’t wait for an answer. Ariel had to feel that she was in charge—which sadly she was—and that meant granting her the space to make the right choice.
Instead, Connie gave Trevor one last scathing look, which she didn’t fake, and walked away to keep her appointment, making as much noise as she wanted, as if she had nothing to hide.
* * *
CONNIE SAT CROSS-LEGGED on Alexi’s bed, helping her future sister-in-law with the table arrangements for the wedding reception and wondering how to tease tips ’n’ tricks from the mother of four about handling Ariel without revealing details.
Alexi frowned at an invitation and tossed it onto a paper circle marked with a “5.” Connie spotted the names and pulled it out. “Bad idea. He’s having an affair with the wife of him, and now the wife wants a divorce from the husband.”
Alexi took the card, read the names and groaned. “Great. I have to look over at two marriages disintegrating on my wedding day. I don’t even know these people. They’re Seth’s friends. Why are they even coming, if they’re getting a divorce?”
Connie repeated what Luke had told her on her last shift. “They are going to work on their marriage for the next three months and then reassess. But we might want to avoid putting the wife in the way of temptation, if you know what I mean.”
Alexi dropped the card into the highest stack marked “1.” “I can’t have everyone sitting with Mel. I’m already expecting him to put out quite a few fires.”
Connie riffled through the stack. “If anyone can do it, it’s Mel.”
“I wish he could have his own wedding,” Alexi said.
Connie felt a sudden u
pwelling of love for her sister-in-law. It was exactly what she’d always thought herself about her bighearted oaf of a brother. At fifty, Mel had yet to find his bride.
“Here. Let’s put Derek and his wife with Marlene. She’ll keep him in line.”
Alexi pinched her nose bridge. “I swear I’m this close to calling the whole thing off and eloping.”
“Funny, Seth said the same thing when we were working on the vows.”
“I told him that after all the time and effort I’m putting in I would kill him if he cheated me out of the wedding.”
“Is that what you’re telling me, too?”
Connie checked another invitation. Paul, a police officer. She tossed him and his wife in with other Lakers-on-the-Go. “Yep.”
“So we’re doing this wedding for you?”
At this point, when the plans seemed all about taking care of others and none of it about them, neither Seth nor Alexi could see they were also doing it for themselves. They just needed to get over this hump, and if that meant directing some hostility at her, she could take it. “Yep.”
Alexi pushed her pile across the bed to Connie. “Then you deal with this. I’m checking to see if Bryn has finished his math homework yet.”
Alexi hadn’t answered her questions about Ariel yet. “Wait!”
Alexi froze, one long leg still in midswing. “What?”
“Um...how do you get a kid to do something that they have no intention whatsoever of doing?”
“Ariel giving you trouble?”
So much for subtlety. Connie read an invitation and then studied the circle. “If I told you, you’d feel honor-bound to report to Seth, and I don’t want to put you in that situation.”
“I also know that Seth wouldn’t want to see his best friend hurt. Or his sister, either.”
Ben could take care of himself. If he got wind that Ariel was involved in any way with drugs and/or Trevor, he would come down hard on the girl. Maybe even work to push her out of the house. Connie had no idea if Ariel had returned the drugs because the second she’d come home from school, she’d headed downstairs to her fish bowl. Connie didn’t pursue her because she was late for work, as usual. More to the point, Ben had been laying the floor in the living room and he would’ve heard every last single word.
“I could tell you what I do with Bryn,” Alexi offered.
“Sure.”
“Bryn never has to do the right thing, he never has to do what I tell him to do. But I make sure he understands what the consequences will be if he doesn’t. If he slacks off on his homework one night, he will have to do it the next day at school when the other kids are at recess. For every choice, there is a consequence.”
And wasn’t her life a screaming example of that? Then again, she hadn’t made Miranda’s choices. Yet despite witnessing the consequences of her mother’s bad choices, Ariel was following in her footsteps. Shoot. She shouldn’t have left Ariel this afternoon with Trevor. Getting involved with Trevor proved Ariel didn’t have the strength to make the right choice.
“When Amy or Callie are teenage girls,” Connie said carefully, “do you think that strategy will work with them?”
“I would say,” Alexi said, “that the message is the same but they would have to trust the source.”
Connie sighed. “In that case, I’m screwed.”
“I’d say,” Alexi answered, “that you are the most qualified person I’ve met.”
“You haven’t met that many people,” Connie said bluntly. “I mean, you don’t even know the people coming to your own wedding.”
“I know a social worker, a cop, a business owner, a school principal and a bunch of mothers. That is enough to be sure of your qualifications.”
“Ariel wants me to be her guardian, but only because she hasn’t got anyone else and she doesn’t trust the foster system,” Connie said. “I’m not naive enough to think it has anything to do with my awesome parenting skills. I can’t see her taking well to a lecture from me about making good choices. I mean—she already has this erroneous impression that I sell drugs.”
Alexi cut her the same look that drew immediate confessions from the kids. She’d even given it to Seth and he’d coughed up the location of their honeymoon. Connie dipped her head to avoid direct eye contact.
“Now why,” Alexi said, “would she have that impression?”
Connie examined the next invitation and studied all the circles. All the while her mind raced to come up with a good story. She was sixteen again, talking to her mother. “She saw me with a drug dealer. Trevor. My former boyfriend.”
“Oh?” Alexi said. That single syllable was universal among mothers. It was part interrogation, part invitation. Her own mother had used it, too. Connie was pretty sure that when babies were born, there was a synapse fired in the mother’s brain that activated the sound. Even if Alexi had adopted all four of her children, she was still a mother. The synapse had probably fired for her at puberty.
“Yeah, he came over with my—my old cosmetic bag. As if I needed old eyeliner and a tube of lipstick. Anyway, I think he was there to get inside and check out the place. I didn’t let him in but he did see Ariel and Ariel saw him. She asked me about him afterward.”
“Oh?”
“I told her that he was my old boyfriend, that he was a drug dealer and that I had no business with him anymore.”
Alexi’s mouth started to form another “oh” but before she got anything out, Connie hurried on. “Except I’m standing there with a cosmetic bag and you know what that means.”
Alexi blinked. “Actually, I haven’t a clue.”
Connie had no idea, either, but in a burst of brilliance, she said, “A cosmetic bag is the perfect place to carry drugs, and what kind of ex would return a cosmetic bag? Ariel’s not dumb. She grew up on the streets. Her conclusion, while erroneous, is reasonable.”
“So...he really was returning eyeliner and lipstick?”
“Actually—actually, it was a bracelet. Sapphire and diamonds.”
“In a cosmetic bag?”
“I thought it strange, too.”
Alexi nodded. “I see. So you figure because of this, she won’t believe anything you say?”
“Yep,” Connie said, “exactly.”
“Just like I don’t believe a word of it,” Alexi said softly.
Connie took Alexi’s wrist, sinewy and bony but with soft spots. “Listen, Alexi. Yes, Ariel has got herself mixed up in bad business. I am trying to get her out of it. If you tell Seth, he will get himself mixed up in it, too, and none of you need that. And Ben doesn’t need it, either. Ariel is none of his business. Please don’t say anything.”
Alexi looked at Connie’s hold on her wrist. Right, they weren’t that close. Connie released it. “I won’t make you promise not to say anything, Alexi. I have no right to ask that. I honestly think it would make matters worse, is all.”
Alexi placed her finger on the rectangle for the head table right where Ben was going to sit. “Seth is worried that you and Ben are getting close again.”
Seth was right, and he didn’t even know about the ring. “I’ve told Ben that isn’t happening, but he won’t take no for an answer.”
“That was Seth’s take on it, too.”
“Wait, he knows that I don’t want to ma—I mean, make up with Ben?”
“He understands that you’re trying to get your life back together.”
No way. They couldn’t be talking about the same man.
“To get into nursing school,” Alexi said. “That you don’t want to repeat mistakes.”
“Yeah.”
“You know Seth. He scares easily.”
Connie shook her head. “What? Seth? No way.”
Alexi stood. “Yes way. When it comes to those we love, we all do.”
Seth. Alexi. The kids
. Marlene.
Ben.
Ariel.
Alexi was right. Even when she’d been a dropout and a criminal, she’d never been more scared than she was now.
* * *
BEN FOUND PEACE in working with his hands, always had, always would. His brain and his hands and the tool he held, whatever it was, were a kind of trinity, building anew. Even if all it required was that he sand an old chair smooth, or apply paint, or lay the floor in the living room of the house, he intended to live out the rest of his days with the woman he loved.
With Connie and, down the road, their children. Not with the scowling teenager forced by a weak Wi-Fi connection from her basement bedroom to the kitchen island.
He’d made better time on the flooring than he’d hoped, the trinity in full sync. He was about to text Connie the good news when he decided to set the room to rights and surprise her.
He bent to lift the coffee table and take it from the kitchen back into the living room when he noticed the missing box. Ariel was the only other person in the house. There she sat, acting all innocent with her earbuds in and images of the parliament buildings on the laptop screen.
“Where’s the ring?”
Ariel pulled out an earbud. “What?”
He pointed to the coffee table. “The box. Where is it?”
“Not you, too. I don’t know where it is, okay? You’re the one moving everything around. Maybe it’s fallen under something. Look for it.”
She reinserted her earbud and fastened her attention onto the screen. Three strides and a slap of the laptop later, he had her attention again.
“Hey, the laptop needs to be closed properly or else—”
“Bring me the ring.”
Ariel stood, her stool shooting back to hit the new counter drawers.
“Fine. I’ll find it.” She walked to the coffee table, scanned the surface, dropped to her knees and checked underneath. She lifted a magazine that had fallen there to reveal the box, upside down and closed.
Building a Family Page 9
