by Devney Perry
“Oh-kay,” I drawled. There was no point arguing with Deb. The woman would never concede a point. “Well, I’m going to go and say hello.”
I stood from the chair and made it three steps away from the table when she stopped me again.
“Finn, I told Molly, but I’m telling you as well. You both need to watch Kali closely.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I turned. “What?”
“I’m concerned about Kali. The last three times I’ve seen her, she’s been quiet and withdrawn. I think you and Molly need to consider putting her in counseling. I’m worried this behavior is a sign she may be depressed. The last thing we want is her acting out and doing something drastic as a call for help.”
My hands balled into fists. “Kali is happy and healthy. There is nothing wrong with her.”
“She’s troubled.”
“She’s not troubled. She’s a ten-year-old girl. Her moods swing all over the place depending on what’s happening with her friends or her teachers or her brother. But she’s a happy and healthy kid. And I am telling you right now, Deb. If you say anything different to her, if you plant these ideas in her head that she’s unwell, you’ll never see my daughter again. Are we clear?”
My chest heaved as Deb’s jaw fell open. Dr. Deborah could diagnose her own daughter all she wanted but my child was off limits. I wouldn’t have her twisting up Kali like she did with Molly.
“I’m simply looking out for Kali.” She huffed.
“No, you’re pulling your psychobabble bullshit. It stops. Now.”
Deb’s eyes widened as she stood. “I will not be threatened.”
“This isn’t a threat.” I stepped closer, then I spoke loud and clear so there was no mistaking my position. “You will not talk to Kali about counseling. You will not talk to Kali about her moods. You will not talk to Kali about anything other than what Kali wants to talk about. If I find out otherwise, you won’t see her again.”
“Hey,” Molly hissed, rushing over to my side. “What’s going on? You two are making a scene.”
“Finn is threat—”
“It’s nothing,” I barked. “Your mom and I were just coming to an understanding.”
Molly looked back and forth between us. “Mom, is this about Kali? Did you tell Finn? I told you. She’s. Fine.”
“I disagree.”
“She’s—” Molly sucked in a calming breath. “You know what? I appreciate your concern, and I’ll keep an eye out. We both will. Then we’ll decide what’s best for our daughter.”
I opened my mouth to take them both on but stopped as Molly’s words sunk in. Had she really just taken my side? Against her mom? I did my best to keep my expression neutral but it was a battle. I couldn’t remember a time when Molly had taken my side in a battle of Finn versus Deb.
“In my professional opinion, you’re making a mistake,” she said.
Molly nodded. “So noted.”
Deb frowned at Molly, waiting for a different response. When she didn’t get one, she spun around and collected her purse from the table. “I’ve got to be going. We’ll discuss this again at a later date, Molly.”
I scoffed. “Just as long as you don’t discuss it with Kali.”
Molly shot me a look that said shut up, then she escorted Deb to the door. As her mom walked outside along the front windows, Molly scowled at me.
“What?” I held up my hands.
“Do you always have to argue with my mother?”
“Hey, I didn’t start that.”
She shook her head. “You never do. Mom is always the antagonist, isn’t that right?”
“That’s not—you know what? I’m not having this fight again. I came down here to talk to you.”
“About?”
“The letter.”
She shook her head, walking away from the door and through the restaurant to the counter. I followed, saying nothing as she led me into the kitchen.
“Hi.” Poppy smiled from her side of the table as she mixed something in a large silver bowl. “Want some lunch?”
“Hi. I, uh . . . maybe in a minute.” Molly was marching toward the office, so I held up a finger to Poppy and hurried to catch up.
Molly was waiting in the center of the room when I got there. She stayed tight-lipped until I closed the door.
“I’m sorry about the letter.”
“It’s fine.” She shrugged. “It took me by surprise. But it’s fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re pissed at me.”
“Because you came into my workplace and picked a fight with my mother. Can’t you just avoid her?”
I gritted my teeth. “I didn’t pick a fight with your mother. I was trying to be civil but she crossed the line. If you want to swallow the shit advice she feeds you, that’s your choice. But when it comes to Kali and Max, I won’t have it.”
“She gets paid a lot of money to give that ‘shit advice.’”
My blood pressure ticked up a notch. I fucking hated air quotes. And this fight. We’d had it so many times but never come out on the same side. Molly always stood on her mother’s, which left me standing alone, wondering how a woman with so much confidence and intelligence could let someone manipulate her.
“Tell me honestly. Do you think Kali is depressed?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Well, your mom says Kali has been quiet and withdrawn. All the signs, she says, point to a depressed kid on the verge of acting out and making drastic calls for help.”
Molly blew out a long breath. “Mom is overreacting. The last few times we went to see Mom, it was at her office. Kali gets bored there, so she plays a game on my phone. She got into it and shut out the rest of the world.”
“Yeah, because she’s a normal kid with a screen in front of her face. But the last thing I want is your mother convincing her that there’s something wrong with her.”
“Mom would never do that, Finn.”
“Really?” I gaped at her. “Of course, she would. The woman has no limits. She tried to stop our wedding.”
“Now who’s overreacting?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Listen, that was a long time ago. But I remember, Molly. You wanted to cancel the wedding.”
“No, postpone.”
“Does it matter?” I shot back. “Cancel. Postpone. We were a week away from the wedding and you wanted to call it off because your mom had convinced you that we were rushing into it. Two months wasn’t long enough to be engaged, and we were breaking one of her rules.”
“She was just worried. We were both so young and the wedding planning was stressful.”
“See? You always defend her.”
“What’s wrong with me defending her?” she asked. “She’s my mom.”
“Then maybe she could support you and your choices for once instead of always questioning them.”
Molly was an incredible mother. Somehow she always knew the right thing to say to Kali when she was upset. Or how to communicate with Max with just a single look. Because she was such a good mom, it baffled me that she didn’t see how toxic her own mother’s words could be.
“It doesn’t matter anyway.” Molly waved it off. “We worked it out.”
Not fifteen minutes after I’d finishing writing that letter, Molly had knocked on my door. I’d apologized for getting so upset. She’d told me she didn’t want to postpone the wedding, then we’d made love for hours, the fight forgotten.
Until that letter had shown up last week.
Now, thirteen years later, it was all coming back again.
The wedding lost some of its shine because of that argument. The week leading up to the ceremony, I was in a constant state of alert, waiting for Molly to change her mind.
I took over as much as I could to help reduce her stress, not just for Molly’s sake but to keep Deb at bay. I became the liaison for the florist, caterer and photographer, making sure everyone knew when and where to show up. I packed up Molly
’s apartment and moved everything into mine so she could concentrate on the wedding and her classes. And I cleared my schedule, taking off more days from work than I’d planned so I was completely available to help if she needed it.
The day of the wedding, I stood at the altar in a panic that she’d changed her mind. When she appeared at the end of the aisle, I nearly cried. She was beautiful, my Molly. Full of joy and confidence. I would never forget how she looked that day in her white gown.
The strapless top was adorned with lace and a belt wrapped around her waist. It separated the lace from the billowing tulle skirt, one that had barely fit into the cab of my truck. We’d laughed about it, after we’d shared our vows and kissed. After we ran through a shower of birdseed to my truck—not a limo, because she hadn’t wanted to share those first few moments after the ceremony with a driver.
It took us ten minutes to get her dress into the truck. The skirt filled up every available inch of room. We laughed the entire drive from the church to the hotel where we had the reception.
That laughter, it had erased the stress of the wedding. With Molly’s ring on my finger, it was easy to forget the fight from the week before. The bad had simply been overshadowed by the good.
“We never talked about it,” I said. “About that fight. We didn’t really work it out, did we? We just went forward but never actually fixed the problem.”
“You mean the problem of my mother?”
I nodded. “I wrote that letter because I had to get those feelings out. I’d been holding them in for so long. I know it was harsh but that was how I felt.”
Molly walked to the desk and slumped down on the edge. Then she toyed with a green hair ribbon on her wrist. “I didn’t like reading that letter.”
“I know.” I sat by her side.
“The other two letters were so special. There was love there. This one . . . it was so angry and raw. It took me right back, and I don’t like being in that place again. It’s been bothering me all week.”
“Same here.”
“It’s made me think though. You were so . . . honest. Nothing in that letter was downplayed. You didn’t sugarcoat anything.”
I let out a dry laugh. “Because you weren’t supposed to read it.”
“I’m glad I did though. It made me see things from your perspective. And you were right. Mom has a way of making me question my decisions. I think she does it to challenge me and test my conviction. But because of the way she does it, I do end up doubting myself at times. I see that now.”
Halle-fucking-lujah.
“Want to know the thing that’s really been messing with me all week?” she asked. “I can’t help but think Mom was onto something. Not about you. You were right, she’s never liked you, and I’m honestly not sure why.”
“Because I have a different opinion than her one hundred percent of the time,” I muttered.
She smiled. “True.”
“What was the great Dr. Deborah onto then?”
Molly looked to the floor. “That we’ve been doomed from the start.”
Her words were like a knife to my heart. “Doomed? You really think that?”
“Well, we are divorced.”
Yes, we were.
“I won’t let Mom get inside Kali’s head,” she promised. “And I’ll try to stop letting her get inside mine too.”
“Good.” At least one good thing would come from that letter. I bumped her shoulder. “I am sorry about the letter.”
Her eyes came up to mine. “Thank you.”
We kept our gazes locked and my heart trilled a beat faster. It would have been so easy to kiss her. I wanted to kiss her. Even divorced, there weren’t many times when I didn’t want to kiss Molly.
I leaned down an inch, her soft lips drawing me in.
She stayed perfectly still, her eyes holding steady as I came even closer. The minute my lips brushed against hers, her breath hitched. She didn’t pull away.
I pressed against her, firmly running my tongue over the small crease in the center of her full bottom lip. She opened for me, leaning in so I could get a deeper taste.
I sighed a moan as I wrapped my arms around her, bringing her even closer.
Molly relaxed into me, letting her tongue sweep into my mouth. Her fingers gripped my T-shirt, one hand in front and the other at the back, pulling it from where I’d tucked it into my jeans and belt.
My cock jerked behind my zipper, wanting the chance to lay Molly across this desk and take her hard and fast. But the clanging sound of metal bowls drove us apart, a reminder that Poppy was outside.
“What are we doing?” Molly whispered as she stood up. Her hand went to her lips, wiping them dry as she paced the office.
“It was just a kiss.”
She stopped pacing. “Why are we kissing?”
Because I couldn’t stop. Kissing her was as natural as breathing. “Do you want to stop?”
She shook her head but said, “Yes. We should.”
I stood from the desk and rounded on her, framing her face with my hands. “We should.”
My lips crashed down on hers again, this kiss hotter and harder than the first. When her lips were wet again and she’d yanked my T-shirt completely out of my jeans, we finally broke apart.
Molly smoothed out the hair around her temples that I’d ruffled. I tucked in my shirt, making sure my belt was straight and the bulge behind my jeans wasn’t too noticeable.
“No more kissing me today,” she ordered.
“I was going to come over tonight and work on the yard.” And spend the night in her bed.
Her cheeks flushed. “Then no more kissing me until it’s dark.”
I chuckled. “Okay.”
I’d gone years without sex, but this past week had been torture. Was this how addicts felt? Once they fell off the wagon, how did they get back on?
“I’d really like to know who’s sending these letters,” she said.
“Me too.” Especially because then I could get them to stop. If Molly didn’t like reading this letter, she was really going to hate some of the others. “What about one of the kids?”
She shook her head. “We have brilliant children, but that’s giving them a lot of credit. Do you think it’s Poppy?”
I took a step toward the door. “There’s only one way to find out.”
“Wait.” Molly’s hand shot out and caught my elbow. “We can’t go out there. Look at us. She’ll know exactly what we were doing in here.”
A part of me wanted to walk out there and proudly show off the lip gloss I’d stolen from Molly. But it would only make things more complicated. “I have to leave at some point.”
“Here.” She hurried around the desk, grabbing a napkin from a drawer. She tossed it at me while she went to her purse for a compact mirror. “Ugh. My lips are all swollen.”
I hid my smile in the napkin as I wiped my lips clean. “Five minutes and they’ll be back to normal. Let’s just hang out for a few.”
“Okay. So how do you want to do this with Poppy?”
“Let’s just ask her.”
She gave me a flat look. “If it is her, she’s not just going to come out and admit it. She’s gone to a lot of trouble to hide this.”
“It’s her. I know it’s her.” There was only one person more devastated by the divorce than the kids, Molly or me, and that was my sister. “She’s at my house on a regular basis. She probably stumbled on the box where I was keeping them and thought . . . well, I’m not exactly sure what she thought.”
“Probably that the letters might get us back together.” Molly sighed. “I don’t want to get her hopes up. The letters might force us to deal with some old wounds, but we’re not getting back together.”
“Right,” I agreed, but something about her declaration didn’t sit well. We weren’t getting back together. So why did her words sound so wrong?
“How are my lips?” Molly asked as she applied some lip gloss. “Does it look like we were kissin
g?”
“No, you’re fine. Let’s go.” I shook off the strange feeling and led the way out of the office and into the kitchen.
Poppy was right where I’d left her, standing at the table with a smile on her face as she filled small jars with cornbread mixture.
“Hey, you got a sec?” I asked her.
“Sure. What’s up?”
I looked at Molly. She gave me a nod to go ahead. “We need to talk to you about the letters.”
“Letters?” Poppy’s forehead furrowed. “What letters?”
“The ones you’ve been putting in my mailbox,” Molly said. “The ones from Finn.”
“Uh . . .” She shook her head, clearly not tracking with us. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Come on, Poppy. Just fess up so we can talk about it.”
“I’d love to ‘fess up,’” she said, adding the air quotes, not happy that I’d all but called her a liar. “But I swear I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Really?” Molly asked.
“Yes.” Poppy crossed her heart. “Promise.”
She was telling the truth. Poppy wasn’t only my sister, she was my best friend. She’d done that heart-crossing thing since we were kids. It was sacred to her, meaning she was telling the truth.
“What kind of letters?” Poppy asked.
I ignored my sister and looked at Molly. “If she’s not behind the letters . . .”
“Then who is?”
- LETTER -
Darling Molly,
I need you to tell me what to say. Jamie’s funeral is tomorrow and I’m supposed to speak. But I don’t know what to say. Here’s my problem. Well, one of them. I don’t want to ask you for help. I don’t want to put this on you. It’s hard enough to carry myself, so let’s pretend, okay? Let’s pretend you’ll read this and help me decide what to say.
Jamie’s been gone eight days. You keep saying how it doesn’t feel real. Maybe I’ll say that tomorrow. I’m sure everyone will relate. Except here’s the thing. It does feel real.
He’s gone. I had to call his parents and tell them. I’ll never get his mom’s scream out of my head. I’ll never forget the sound of his dad crying into the phone. I’ll never forget the look on Poppy’s face that night when I got to their house. Her light was gone. How is she going to survive this? I honestly don’t know if she will. But I can’t say any of that tomorrow, not when his family is expecting me to keep my shit together. Everything is different now.
