“Of course not,” I bark, my anger rising at the mere suggestion. “He’s a good man, deserving of respect.”
“And you’re a good man,” she says insistently. “A man who made a mistake, then paid for it many times over.”
“There’s a difference between losing a job and going to prison. A big difference.”
She leans over and cups my cheek, pity filling her eyes. “You need to deal with your sister’s betrayal, and then maybe you’ll accept that you’re a good man. A man who made a stupid mistake as a kid, just like every other kid out there. You just had the misfortune of getting caught.”
With that, she walks out the door.
I spend the rest of the afternoon thinking about what she said. Come nightfall, Roger shows up for dinner, looking frailer than usual. I baby the hell out of him, making his favorite dinner—macaroni and cheese and my version of meatloaf, which is more like baked hamburger patties with barbecue sauce on top. But he just picks at his food before excusing himself to go home and go to bed. I follow him, making sure Cleo is doing okay after her walkabout and that they’re both all set for the evening.
I’m worried about Roger, but hopefully a good night’s sleep will help.
When I go back to my apartment, I pick up my phone and stare at it, shocked that I’m actually thinking about calling my sister. I know I’ll never change Amanda’s mind, but maybe talking to her one more time will give me some sort of closure.
The phone rings several times, and I’m sure she’s screening my call. Then the ringing stops. I expect it to go to voicemail, but I hear a male voice instead.
“Hello.”
The crack in his voice suggests I’m talking to a teenager.
My heart skips a beat. Is this Ben?
I’m a half second from asking whether it’s him, but if Amanda doesn’t want me to have contact with him, it would hurt him worse to have a five-minute conversation with me, followed by a lifetime of nothing, than to not hear from me at all. Instead, I ask, “Is Amanda there?”
“She’s busy. She ate corn for dinner, and now she’s got the squirts.”
I can’t hold back my laugh. Yes, it’s definitely Ben. I can’t believe I’m actually talking to him again.
“Did you know that an ear of corn has about eight hundred kernels?” he asks.
“I did not know that.”
“Do you think Mom’s gonna squirt out sixteen hundred pieces of corn? She ate two ears.”
“I suppose that’s possible.”
“Your voice sounds familiar,” he says. “Do I know you?”
I take a moment to swallow the lump in my throat, but my voice still sounds tight when I say, “We knew each other when you were little.”
“I’m not little anymore. I’m five foot and four and three-quarter inches,” he says. “I weigh one hundred and fifteen point two pounds. Yesterday, I weighed one hundred and fourteen point six pounds. I gained point six pounds, but the average ear of corn weighs one to one-and-a-half pounds, so I should weigh more.”
“You would think so,” I say patiently, my eyes stinging with welling tears. “But you didn’t eat all of the ear, did you? Just the kernels.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Even so, your body burns calories just to pump your heart and keep everything going. Are you still playing basketball?”
“I didn’t make the school team, but I play on another team,” he says. “Mom says it’s better.”
“What position do you play?”
“Forward. I make a lot of baskets.”
“You used to when I knew you too,” I say, then immediately regret it. The last thing I want to do is upset him.
“Are you one of Mom’s special friends?” he asks.
One of the many men who’ve paraded through her life after Ben’s dad deserted them when he was three? I don’t appreciate being lumped into that category. “No. But I knew you, and you were an amazing kid. I bet you still are.”
“I know lots of things,” he says. “I like to learn things.”
“You’re incredibly smart, Ben. Don’t you ever let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“I have to go,” he says. “Star Trek is coming on.”
“Okay,” I choke out. I was the one who got him hooked on Star Trek. “It was great talking to you, Ben.”
He doesn’t respond, just hangs up.
I lean against my kitchen counter, trying to get my shit together. After a separation of six years, I just had an actual conversation with him, even if he didn’t know it was me. I swallow back a sob, and tears stream down my face. My eyes are blurry, so when my phone rings a few minutes later, I can barely read the screen.
It’s my sister’s number. I almost don’t answer, worried Ben is calling me back. But it’s the promise of hearing his voice again that makes me pick up.
“What did you say to my son?” my sister snarls.
“Amanda,” I say in surprise.
“Sorry if you were expecting Ben to call you back,” she snaps. “What kind of stunt do you think you’re pulling?”
“I was calling you,” I say, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Ben had no idea it was me.”
“He doesn’t even know you anymore,” she says, her voice tight with anger. “You need to leave us alone.”
“I want to make this right, Amanda. I want to see you and Ben.”
“That’s never gonna happen.”
“Look, I know you’re mad at me. I know you think I killed Mom.”
“You did kill Mom!” she shouts. “You broke her heart!”
“I stole that car when I was twenty years old,” I plead. “I was young and stupid and drunk.” Then I remember what Mrs. Rosa said. “But I dragged your ass home plenty of times after you’d been out partying with your friends, drinking underage. I slipped you past Mom and Dad more times than I can remember, and they were none the wiser. You crashed Dad’s truck into a tree, and I took the blame. You were driving drunk, Amanda. You could have killed someone. You just weren’t caught. I was.”
She’s silent for a moment, then counters, guns blazing, “You know it’s more than that stupid car. It’s how you treated Uncle Lester after Daddy died. He tried to help us. He offered to buy the business, and you wouldn’t let him.”
“Because he’s the one who gave Dad his heart attack,” I say with plenty of heat. “He was trying to buy the business before Dad even died.”
“He was trying to help us, you idiot! If you’d sold then, we would have made a profit instead of you running the business into the ground and then hammering nails into its coffin by getting yourself arrested.”
“He was telling people not to hire us so we’d be desperate for money and he could buy us out, Amanda. And he started a good year before Dad died. When Dad found out the truth, it broke him. So no. I was never gonna sell to the man who betrayed our father.”
“How can you accuse him of that? He’s our godfather, Jace!”
“Which only made it that much worse when Dad figured out the truth.”
“Whatever your delusions are,” she snarls, “it doesn’t change the fact that you fucked up and left us with nothing.”
We’ve had this conversation too many times to count, and it never ends in any other way than with both of us more pissed off.
“You killed our mother,” she says, her voice breaking. “You bankrupted Daddy’s business. And you broke Ben’s heart. That’s three strikes. You’re out, Jace.”
She ends the call, and I’m left in silence.
When I wake up on Sunday, I’m restless and in need of a project, so I make myself a huge to-go coffee and head out to the local hardware store. Roger needs cheering up, and I have the perfect Christmas gift to lift his spirits—a cat tree. The job site I was working at last week has several pieces of scrap carpet I can use. All I need is the wood.
I’m standing next to the plywood in the hardware store, loading up a piece that’s already been cut, when I hear someone call my name
.
A brown-haired guy in his thirties is approaching, and he looks vaguely familiar.
“Hey,” he says. “I thought it was you.” He grins. “Cal Reynolds. We met a few months back at the McGruff job site. Remember?”
Cal Reynolds. This is Mary’s sister’s boyfriend.
Shit.
My old boss Mitch Pincher got into a dispute with Cal over some scrap wood on a job site. They were working on adjacent properties, and Mitch tried to claim the stash belonged to him.
It didn’t.
I reach out and shake his hand. “Sorry. Haven’t had enough coffee yet. Hope you don’t hold all that against me.”
“What? No,” he scoffs. “Pincher is an asshole.” He looks at the lumber on my trolley and the small piece of plywood. “Whatcha making?”
I rest my hand on the handle. “A cat tree.” I’m not sure why, but I add, “For my neighbor’s cat, not mine. Bingo would turn up his nose at any perching spot that wasn’t the back of my sofa or, in the middle of the night, my chest or the top of my head.”
Cal laughs. “And that’s why I have a dog.”
I laugh too, but although Bingo is a pain in the ass, he’s my pain in the ass.
“Chuck tells me you’re working for him now,” he says. “I also heard Pincher let you go.”
I draw in a breath. Great. Does he know I’m helping Aidan? Does he plan on telling Mary to keep me away from them?
“Pincher is an asshole and an idiot. Everyone in construction around here knows that Trey Miller is a drug addict and steals from job sites to support his habit.”
My mouth parts in surprise.
“Say,” he says in a hopeful tone as he rubs his nose. “I know Chuck has big plans for you, but are you looking for any side projects?”
I stand up straighter. “I could be.”
“I need some help with a special project I’ve been working on. You can put in time on the evenings and weekends, whatever you can fit in. I just want it done by Christmas.”
Which only gives us a few weeks.
“Sounds interesting,” I say. “What is it?”
“It’s a house remodel.” He pauses, turning up a sheepish grin. “For Molly and me. I want to surprise her for Christmas, but one of my guys broke his leg roller-skating with his kid last week, and another guy moved back to Michigan to take care of his mom with Alzheimer’s. Neither of them meant to leave me high and dry, but it means I’m behind on some paying jobs, which doesn’t leave me much time to work on our house. Especially since I’m trying to keep it a secret from Molly, which is next to impossible. She already suspects I’m up to something.”
I could definitely use more money, but I also respect Cal. Rumor has it he treats his crew well. Plus, there’s a stupid part of me that wants to do this for Mary’s sister. “I’d love to help.”
He glances down at my cart. “Are you too busy to come take a look now? You can even work on your project at my house if you’d like. You live in an apartment, right?”
I frown. “Yeah, how did you—?”
“Molly,” he says with a grin. “One thing you need to learn about the O’Shea sisters is that they usually tell each other everything.”
I doubt Mary tells her younger sisters everything, but she must have shared my address with them during the whole Cleo search. They’d both offered to help, something that had surprised me, because my own sister wouldn’t have lifted a finger unless there was something in it for her.
“Mary says she helped find your neighbor’s cat.” He points to the wood. “I’m guessing this is for the same cat?”
“Yep.” I tilt my head. “Did Mary happen to mention how we got Cleo back?”
“Just that one of your neighbors found her after someone posted on the Nextdoor app.”
I grin. “Molly’s sister is a badass. This tough guy was holding Cleo hostage, and Mary marched up to the door and demanded that he release Cleo or she’d have him arrested for felony theft.”
Cal’s eyes bug out. “Mary did that? Mary O’Shea?”
I laugh. “So apparently, she left part of it out.” But that doesn’t surprise me. She doesn’t strike me as the type of woman who loves the limelight.
Cal sobers. “I hear you’ve been spending time with Aidan. He’s a good kid. Thanks for helping Mary out.”
“He is a good kid,” I say with a touch of wistfulness. “A great kid.”
Cal’s silent for a moment. “Mary’s pretty awesome too.”
“She’s amazing.”
There’s a hint of a smirk on his face, but it’s there and then gone. “I hope you’re ready to work your ass off, because this house needs a lot of TLC.”
“TLC is my specialty,” I say as I start to push the trolley down the aisle.
“Yeah,” Cal says, watching me with a sideways glance. “I can see that it is.”
Chapter Twenty
Mary
After I leave Jace on Saturday, I feel shaken. Bereft in a way I can’t describe. It doesn’t make sense that I should feel this way about a man I’ve essentially just met, especially given everything I’ve gone through. I lost my parents at a young age. I lost my crappy marriage. I hurt my little sister by ignoring her accusations about our father, which I’d strongly suspected were true. And, most difficult of all, I confronted my fear for my child—because even though I love Aidan with all that I am, I fear for him because he’s different, and we live in a world that wants everyone to be the same.
All that heartbreak, all that worry, all that fear, and still…
I feel broken because I decided to walk away from a casual arrangement I suggested.
I keep hearing Jace say it was never about feelings, something that should make me grateful for my decision. Because it shouldn’t be about feelings. But somewhere between the multiple orgasms, the burned pancakes, and the rescue mission for Roger’s cat, I discovered I like him, and not in the way you like a friend. Even I know that. It’s why I pushed him about his past. Because I didn’t want someone like Jace to keep suffering for a mistake he made years ago. One I suspect he had strong reasons for.
I don’t have my car, something neither of us considered after our talk, so I just walk for a while. Walk and think. Walk and pine. Then I find a bench and sit and check my phone.
Nicole’s text is all caps: NO APOLOGIZING. EVEN TO YOURSELF. HARNESS YOUR INNER BAD BITCH. ALSO: NEW CHALLENGE EARLY NEXT WEEK. I WON’T TELL YOU THE DAY, BECAUSE I WANT YOU ON YOUR TOES. CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED.
The text makes me smile, but it’s a sad smile, maybe a little bitter. I’d felt like a “bad bitch” earlier with that jerk who’d tried to steal Roger’s cat, but it’s so hard for me to be like that in my private life. It’s so hard not to get steeped in regret.
Eventually, I take an Uber home and then meet up with my sisters at the bar for our girls’ night. Molly picked it out.
Of course, within twenty seconds of walking into the bar, Molly says (much too loudly), “You’ve had sex. Good sex is life-changing. I always know.”
I glance around, suddenly worried Hilde might be here with the other lawyers from our office—of course, that would mean they got together without inviting me, which would be its own brand of bad—or that Mrs. Rosa could be slurping down cocktails in the corner booth, but I don’t recognize any of the other patrons. Just my two sisters, watching me as if I’d become a Lifetime movie.
“You said you’d only assume that if I cancelled on you,” I complain. “I’m here two minutes early.”
But they got here even earlier, probably to talk about me, because they each have a drink, and there’s a glass of white wine sitting in front of the empty spot next to Maisie. I have an irrational urge to dump it out and ask for…I don’t know. Maybe another margarita, or a crazy drink with a name like Sex in the Mountains or Voldemort Got a Bad Rap. (I only have it on Molly’s say-so that such cocktails exist. Glenn would never have willingly visited an establishment with so much creativity.)
> “Now I’m disappointed you didn’t cancel.” Molly waves a hand in front of her face. “Maisie showed me a photo of Jace she found on Facebook, and that man is five-alarm-fire hot.”
Part of me wants to tell them, to tell someone. But I spent less than twenty-four hours with Jace, and it already feels like a dream. One where I was the kind of person who danced and had orgasms and let the wonder of unexpected happiness carry me along as if I were a paper boat bobbing in its stream, not constantly wondering when I would collapse. Besides, I’m their big sister, and I still feel it’s my duty to embody that role.
So I change the subject. “I think I’d like to take dance classes.”
My sisters exchange a look. Then Maisie turns to me. “I’m really glad to hear you say that. But, Mary, you could teach dance classes.”
“No, I need to freshen up.” It’s on the edge of my tongue to add that I’m not good enough, that I’ve never been good enough, but then I remember the way Jace looked at me after he caught me dancing. With wonder. Something hums to life inside me, and I can see myself standing in front of rows of little girls in tutus, and I like it.
“Is that something you can volunteer to do?” I ask.
Molly is already nodding. “There’s a studio near me that gives people free studio time if they help out with the kids.”
That humming sensation, as if there’s a beast inside me that’s pleased by the idea, intensifies—and then sputters out. Because I can’t make a commitment like that, can I? Aidan needs me. He needs to be my sole focus. I open my mouth to say so, but Maisie beats me to the punch—
“You brought him here because it takes a village, Mary.” She looks tired, although I know not to say so, her curly red hair barely held back by an array of clips. She also looks happy in a way I’ve only flirted with. “So rely on your village. Dottie has mentioned wanting to babysit for you several times. And I want all the time I can get with him, and so does Molly.”
“So does Cal,” Molly says. Then makes a face. “Although he has been super busy lately. I suspect he’s up to something.”
Jingle Bell Hell (Bad Luck Club) Page 21
