“What?”
I rose to get dressed. For some reason, I didn’t want to have this conversation naked. “It was the dinner in New York. The one with his dad. The fact that I was willing to sit down with him and didn’t leave or call the police or anything. They took it to mean I was no longer scared that he was a credible threat, and the judge overturned the restraining order and the injunction.”
I finished pulling on a t-shirt and a pair of underwear, then plopped down at the foot of the bed. I’d managed not to think about it all day. Will came to stand in front of me in his birthday suit, completely oblivious to the fact that looking at him like that was more than a little distracting.
But before I could reach out and distract him back, my cell phone lit up on the nightstand with a message.
Thanks for the dinner, Flower. It meant more than you’ll ever know.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, I began to shake.
Will picked up the phone and stared at it for a long time, the blue screen casting a ghostly glow across his face.
“This is from him?” he asked after a few minutes.
I nodded. “Y-yes.”
“Has he been texting or calling at any other times?”
I shook my head. “N-not since the triathlon, no.”
Will pulled his upper lip between his teeth and closed his eyes, like he was searching for patience with a small child. Then, without speaking, he walked outside and hurled the phone as hard as he could against the boulder outside my front door.
“Hey!” I cried out, jumping to the door.
“I’ll buy you a new one,” he cut back. “With a new number too.”
He pushed by me into the shack, then snatched his underwear off the floor and shoved them back on before he grabbed my empty duffel in the corner and started throwing whatever small belongings he saw into it.
“Will, what are you doing?”
“Packing.”
“Why?”
He stopped. “Maggie, you can’t possibly think it’s safe for you to stay here with that maniac stalking you. You’re coming with me to LA.”
“What?” I sighed and flopped down on the bed. “Will, it’s fine. It was just a text.”
He looked at me like I was missing a bunch of brain cells. “Baby, I saw the look on your face when you thought he was in that crowd waiting for you. When you saw him sitting at the table. And don’t forget, Lil, I’ve been in your shoes. It’s never just a text when it comes to a fucking stalker. Especially one who did what he did.”
“Will, I can’t leave my mom here again. Look at what happened when I was gone!”
“That’s not what I’m suggesting.”
“What, then?”
Will stopped, duffel in hand. “Where’s Ellie tonight, Lil?”
I swallowed. “You know where she is.”
“It’s getting worse, isn’t it? Every time I ask you that, you say the same thing. Curly’s. Some bar. Out with her friends. She’s a fifty-something woman who lives like she’s twenty-one. What the hell is that?”
I punched lightly into a small throw pillow I held in my lap. “I know that. I know that, okay? I know that she’s getting worse.”
It was the first time I had admitted it out loud. Whenever Lucas gave me knowing looks or other people mentioned seeing my mom at a bar, I would only shrug, act like it was nothing. But with Will, I couldn’t keep secrets like that.
“Did you tell her about the video?”
My hands stopped. “Not yet.”
“Lily, why?”
Will tipped my chin up so he could look at my face. I pulled it away and stared at the pillow in my lap.
“Maggie, she needs to know. Theo could release that thing at any time. She needs to be prepared. She needs to know what her disease is going to do to her. To you.”
I flopped back into my pillow. “So, what are you suggesting? Some kind of intervention?”
Will pressed his lips together. “Call it that if you want. If watching yourself give your daughter’s rapist a BJ isn’t a wake-up call, I don’t know what is, Lil. And if she doesn’t want to change after that…I don’t know, Maggie. Maybe it’s time to let her go.”
That was the difference between us. Will had long ago reached a point in his life where he had no problem giving up on the people who truly disappointed him. Which, for him, was many. I was the opposite—I’d only had one. And I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to write off my mother.
But eventually, I nodded. This was the only path I could see forward. For me. Or for her.
Will watched me process his thoughts for a bit, then looked at his watch and tapped the screen. Immediately, a gruff, male voice came through.
“Will. You almost ready?”
“Hey, Gar. Change of plans. I’m staying here tonight. Will you guys stay in the truck, or do you want to set up a camp down here?”
I listened to him jockey for a minute with his bodyguards, who clearly did not want him staying anywhere other than a plane back to LA, but in the end, they came to an agreement, and Will turned to me with a smile.
“Now it’s settled,” he said. “Tomorrow, we intervene, and then we talk LA.” He pulled me back to the bed and into his arms. “Tomorrow, Lil, tomorrow. We figure it out. Together.”
15
At seven the next morning, there was a knock on the sliding glass door. I was sitting at the kitchen counter sipping coffee while Will was in the bathroom. Mama had never come home, and the text message from last night was still burning in my memory, though the phone itself was still in splinters outside the shack.
Will might have been furious, but I was only scared. “This isn’t over,” he said, again and again as he gathered me close and we fell asleep together. But really, that’s exactly what I was afraid of.
The knock sounded again, and I got up and pushed back the curtains to reveal Lucas and his mother, Linda, standing behind the glass. I pulled open the door to let them in.
“She’s okay,” Lucas said. “At least, she was last night when she left Curly’s with a friend.”
Linda’s mouth pressed into a thin line of judgment—clearly “friend” meant one of the male persuasion, and Linda, with her very strict, church-going moral code, definitely disapproved.
She still gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Hi, hon.”
“Hey, Linda.”
I looked at Lucas, who shrugged. I had only asked him to come today when I’d called on our LAN line—not his mother. As much as I liked Linda, there was no love lost between her and my mother. Mama was grateful enough for all the times Linda had taken care of her daughter when she couldn’t, but she had never appreciated the gossip that often happened afterward, usually in the church basement after services. But aside from that, there was another issue.
“Will’s here,” I told him as they shuffled into the house.
Lucas turned around, frowning. “I thought you said he went back to Hollywood or whatever to make that movie.” His lips curled, like he felt ridiculous for saying it. It did sound far-fetched.
“I did.”
Will emerged from the bathroom rolling his cuffs up, but the shirt hanging open, considering all the buttons had been ripped from it. Any other time, I might have been distracted by the muscles on display. His shirt and pants were both wrinkled after a night air-drying on the boulder next to the shack, his short hair was wet and slightly wavy on top after he had attempted to hand-comb it back into place, and a day’s worth of stubble had grown out around his jaw. He looked a far sight from the near-perfection of last night. And yet, I was even more attracted to him now, after he looked like he’d been rolling on the floor all night long. His imperfections were perfect to me.
“I’m back for the day,” he said as he nodded hello at Linda and Lucas. “No one knows I’m here, and I’d prefer to keep it that way, if you don’t mind.”
Linda gaped. “I—I won’t tell a soul,” she promised with star-filled eyes.
Lucas just rol
led his. “Whatever,” he said. “She’ll show up soon. Do you have her things packed?”
I gestured toward the two suitcases I’d stacked by the door. It had been surreal, going through my mother’s drawers that morning. How do you pack someone else for rehab?
We had a plan. Confront Mama with what she’d done and give her an ultimatum: come with us to LA, where we could enroll her in Betty Ford and get her the help she needed, or I would leave on my own, and I wouldn’t be back until the house was dry.
“Anything less is enabling her,” Will had said again and again as he’d helped me fold her clothes this morning. The suitcases were a gesture, of course—more a sign that we were serious than anything else. More than likely, she’d want to redo them, and I’d help her with that too. But anything to convey that this was it.
“You can’t let her addiction control your life anymore,” Will had said.
And he was right. I couldn’t.
There was another knock at the door before it opened and Cathy, the owner of the local store, tiptoed in. I moved into the kitchen to pour her some coffee. Barb, Mama’s best friend from down the way, was in charge of making sure she showed up after their bender last night. That was all we were expecting. We could have gotten more, but they were the only ones up this early when I’d made phone calls at 6 a.m. And besides, these were probably all the people who would care about my mother’s sobriety anyway.
“Hi, honey,” Cathy said as she entered.
She gave me a hug and walked right past to set a tray of cinnamon rolls on the counter. In typical Cathy fashion, she would have only been interested in Will if he had won awards catching bass.
“I brought a little nosh in case anyone is hungry,” she said. “Do you have any paper towels?”
Lucas grabbed a roll.
“Damn,” Will muttered as he looked on with envy. He rolled his eyes at me as I took a big bite of mine.
“Are you watching your figure or something?” Lucas joked after he swallowed.
I snorted. Will watched intensely as I licked a stray bit of frosting off my bottom lip. There hadn’t been anymore time last night or this morning for us to get “reacquainted,” and right now, in front of all these people, was definitely not the time.
“Don’t start,” he muttered as I giggled. “I’ve got two more months of pretending black coffee is a really big milkshake, and then I’m going to eat my weight in fries. You won’t be laughing when you’re grabbing my love handles in the middle of the night.”
I burst out laughing even harder, much to everyone else’s dismay. Really, it was more the idea that Will could ever look anything less than cover-ready that was funny. Will’s face reddened, but his eyes twinkled when he looked at me over the rim of his coffee cup.
But the laughter died down quickly when the sounds of footsteps sounded on the stairs outside the house. We quieted, and my stomach, which I hadn’t even realized was this clenched, softened slightly as I realized my mom was okay.
I set the cinnamon roll on a paper towel and turned to the group. Everyone wore identical expressions of nervous dread.
“Okay,” I said, no longer hungry anymore. “I guess it’s time.”
Everyone filed into the living room and took awkward seats on the couch and chair surrounding the fireplace—Cathy on the couch, Linda in one of the armchairs with Lucas perched on the arm next to her, and Will in the other while I stood to the side. We didn’t have time to get help doing this—no therapist to counsel everyone’s words. We were going to speak from the heart.
The sliding glass door opened, and everyone turned to the entrance as Barb, followed by Mama, entered the house.
“For goodness’ sake, Barb,” Mama was saying blearily. “I would’ve slept right through Roy’s lawn mower, and you know it. I still don’t understand why we had to come home this sec—” She stopped cold when she caught sight of everyone perched in the back of the living room.
She looked exactly as I would have expected her to look after a long night out. Her curly brown hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail at the base of her neck, her jeans and rhinestone-decorated blouse rumpled. A smear of blue eyeliner made her look like she had a black eye, and her skin had that yellow, pallid sheen that came when the body was ridding itself of toxins.
“What in the…” Her eyes sharpened on me. “Maggie, what is going on here?”
I stood up, letting Will hold my hand. “Sit down, Mama. We have something to say.”
“What?” Her face turned red. “What in heavens can y’all possibly have to say that’s so important at seven in the damn morning?”
Linda winced at the mild profanity, and Lucas shook his head.
“Come on, Ellie,” Barb said as she guided her into the room. She handed a cinnamon roll and a cup of coffee to Mama, guided her to the armchair we’d left empty, and then took a seat next to Cathy on the couch.
“Margaret.” My mother’s sharp brown eyes danced between me and Will for a moment before settling solely on me. “What is going on?”
I took a deep breath. Will squeezed my hand.
“Mama, we’re here because we all love—”
Mama snorted. “Please. People I hardly know love me?”
“Love and care about you,” I continued. “And we’re worried. Mama, I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep wondering, night after night, if you’re going to come home alive, or with someone, or if you’re going to get us both hurt. I—”
“Is that what this is? You’re all here to shame me?” Mama set her coffee down on the floor and stood right back up. “Well, no to that. I’ll say it right now: no.”
“Mama, please!” I begged. “Listen. Afterward, you can do what you want. But everyone here took the time out of their mornings because they have things to say. The least you can do is listen to us!”
“Ellie.” Will’s voice, with its quiet demand, stopped my mother in her tracks. “Please.”
She turned slowly, and after a pause, returned to the chair.
“All right, then,” she said with a wince—I guessed she had a headache. She look a long sip of her coffee. “Talk.”
We glanced around at each other, unsure of where to start.
“Ahem.” Lucas cleared his throat. “I’ll–um—I’ll start.”
He ignored everyone’s surprised faces and sent a kind look to me before pulling a crinkled receipt out of his pocket.
“Ellie,” he said. “I’ve, um, I’ve known you a long time.”
Mama stared at him. “Well, yes, Lucas, you have.”
Lucas laid the receipt down on the coffee table.
“What’s this?” Mama asked.
“It’s your bar tab. From 2008.”
My mouth dropped, and so did my mother’s. Lucas shifted on his feet, looking nervously between me and Will.
“When I was sixteen, I fell in love with your daughter, Ellie. Everyone told me I shouldn’t get involved because her mom was trouble. But I didn’t care. Didn’t really understand what that meant, until this night, when Maggie called me from outside Curly’s, having to break our date because she’d been called to pick you up.”
Mama looked around with shifty eyes. No one seemed surprised by this story but her.
“I knew what you were like, in theory. We’d all seen you have a few too many beers at picnics and things like that. But when I came to the bar to help out, that was when I really learned what it meant for Maggie.”
Mama scowled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“They wouldn’t let us go,” Lucas replied. “Because you owed the bar a lot of money. They said pay it, or they’d call the cops.”
The room was quiet. This time, Mama didn’t say anything.
“That was your tab,” Lucas continued. “I drained every penny of my savings that summer to pay it off so Maggie wouldn’t have to deal with Curly’s suing you and contacting social services. Maggie was afraid she’d lose her home. She was afraid she’d lose her m
other. I was afraid I’d lose her, so I paid it. But I wish to God I hadn’t, because maybe then you would have gotten the help you needed.”
He sat back down, and we all stared at the receipt. The number at the bottom stood out: over two thousand dollars in an accrued bar tab over the course of maybe two weeks. Curly’s didn’t let Mama rack up a tab anymore, and it was because of this.
Mama fingered the receipt for a moment, then sat back in her chair. “I’m sorry for that, Lucas,” she said. “I really am. And I’ll reimburse you, every penny. I swear it. You’ve been nothing but a help to me and Maggie here, and I don’t want you to feel taken advantage of.”
Lucas shrugged, and I shook my head. Obviously that point had passed long ago.
“Just get some help, Ellie,” he said. “That’s reimbursement enough.”
The others continued, offering their stories. Barb talked about how many times she’d had to turn Mama on her side on her couch, how she was afraid to send her home because she worried she’d pass out there and die alone. Cathy told a story about picking up Mama on the side of the road, about when she hit on her husband, and another time when she puked in her car. Mama had no recollection of any of those events. Linda talked about housing me as a teenager at the inn when I didn’t feel like it was safe to come home. With every story, my mother’s face grew redder, her shame becoming thicker and more palpable.
Finally, everyone had taken their turns, and she turned to me. Her eyes had lost their daze. They were dull and defeated, but when they landed on me, sharpened.
“Well,” she said in a voice that had completely lost its previous bravado. “Don’t you have a story to tell me too?”
For a second, I wasn’t sure I could do this. I wasn’t sure I could break my own mother’s heart. Beside me, Will took my hand and squeezed. His strength, warm and solid, flowed through me. This was for the best.
“Most of them you know, Mama,” I said in a quiet voice. “Because you were there. You were there when I learned, at seven years old, how to turn you on your side so you wouldn’t choke on your own vomit. You were there when I had to pretend to my second-grade teacher that the bruise on my cheek wasn’t because you pushed me too hard after I spilled your coffee, but because I was clumsy walking down our stairs.”
Indiscreet (The Discreet Duet Book 2) Page 16
