He hadn’t said those exact words, but Lauren couldn’t find another explanation for his dismissal of her after Porter’s accident. And he never had said thank you. Not once. For almost anything.
“Nonsense,” Aunt Mabel said. “You’ll be a great mom to that little boy.”
Lauren had started to think so too, but that dream had cracked the night Trent had said he didn’t know if she’d ever be able to take care of Porter in a maternal capacity. How had she fallen in love with him when he obviously had stayed on solid ground?
“He doesn’t think so,” she said, turning away so Aunt Mabel wouldn’t see her cry. The tears were there in her voice anyway. “He said he doesn’t know if I’ll ever get to be Porter’s mom.” She gave up then and twisted back to her great aunt.
“And I’m stupid, and I went and fell in love with both of them.”
Aunt Mabel wrapped her arms around Lauren, and she was surprisingly strong for an elderly woman. “Come on, now. Surely you misunderstood.”
Lauren didn’t think so. It’s not your job to do. There wasn’t much gray area there, was there? She was exhausted, not having slept well since leaving Trent’s house days ago, and she couldn’t keep thinking about this. It hurt too much, and she couldn’t keep breaking down.
She clung to her great aunt for a few more seconds, taking the comfort from her. Then she pulled back and wiped her face, glad she hadn’t worn makeup to come help in the Mansion. “I haven’t told my mom yet. She’ll be so disappointed.”
Lauren couldn’t stomach the lecture either. And then she’d get a text with the suggestion to go see her therapist again, which actually wasn’t a bad idea. But she didn’t want it to come from her mom. She wanted her mother to hold her the way Aunt Mabel did and say what Aunt Mabel said.
“I’m sure it’ll work out,” she said.
Lauren gave her a look she hoped conveyed her disgust. “Really, Aunt Mabel? Is that what you thought about you and Kenneth?”
A pained look crossed her aunt’s face. There one moment, and gone the next. And it had been almost sixty years since that relationship had ended. Lauren wondered if she’d be like that when she was in her eighties, still hurting over the loss of Trent Baker and his son.
Probably.
“Kenneth made his choice,” Aunt Mabel said. “And it wasn’t me. And not because I didn’t try.”
“Really?” Lauren said. “Seems like I heard a story at Thanksgiving about how you told Gretchen not to let herself stand in her own way. That she’d always regret letting Andrew walk away from her.”
“Well, everyone needs a push in the right direction.” She lifted her head and patted her curls.
“So are you telling me you fought for Kenneth and he still left Hawthorne Harbor?” Lauren watched her aunt, the story not what she’d thought.
Sadness crept across her face, making her wrinkles deeper and showing her as much older than she’d just been. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Which is fine. I did all I could.” She looked at Lauren again, a bit of her old lady fire returning. “You have to be able to lie down at night and think you did all you could. So have you?”
The thought of seeing Trent again sent panic right through Lauren. “No,” she said. “But I can’t face him right now anyway.” Besides, she hadn’t done anything wrong.
“He probably feels as bad as you do,” Mabel said, returning to the table settings. “Let’s put Darrel and Kimmy here. Then your mom and dad. Then Eldon and Byron. They’ll probably all like to sit together.”
“What about those two spots back there?” She hadn’t written down Trent’s or Porter’s name.
“Let’s leave them for now,” Aunt Mabel said, and Lauren wanted to argue. But she didn’t. She also didn’t pencil anyone in. She couldn’t fathom a universe where Trent showed up to a massive Magleby family party when he didn’t have to. Nope. Wasn’t going to happen.
If only she could figure out what she’d done wrong, then she could apologize for it and try to get him back. But every time her mind went down this path, she couldn’t think of anything.
It had been an accident. It could’ve happened while Trent slept in the bedroom beside his son’s. Or while Betsy was sipping tea on the couch, waiting for Lauren to show up. Or while his nanny—whoever she was—dozed on the couch the way Lauren had been.
She hadn’t freaked out at the sight of all the blood running down a little boy’s face. She’d gotten a cloth wet and dabbed around until she found the wound. She had him hold a dry towel there while she cleaned up his foot enough to see the gash from the glass.
Then she’d carried him to her car and gotten him to the hospital, all while texting and calling his father. She hadn’t missed a single step.
So why was Trent so angry with her?
Maybe she shouldn’t have slammed the door on her way out…she’d apologize for that if she ever saw Trent Baker’s handsome face again.
“Maybe in the new year you’d like to start learning how I’ve been running the Mansion,” Aunt Mabel said, drawing Lauren out of her thoughts.
She got choked up again. “I would, Aunt Mabel.”
Her aunt patted her arm and smiled, but it held a certain quality of melancholy that Lauren felt all the way through her soul.
“When do you want to retire?” she asked her aunt.
“Oh, when I’m dead.” She added a laugh to the statement, and Lauren appreciated how she’d lightened the mood. But it only reminded her that Aunt Mabel would leave Hawthorne Harbor eventually too, and Lauren would once again be here on her own, trying to figure out who she was without her great aunt in her life.
* * *
Lauren still had Trent’s deck to finish. It would probably take two half-days to complete the railing, and she wanted to be paid the rest of her money. But she didn’t want to be at his house when he was home, and since he was on the graveyard shift, he was home during the day. So she stuck to the basement and made good progress on it.
She remembered Trent telling her that he took quite a few days off over the Christmas holidays, because Porter didn’t have school and he didn’t like asking his family to babysit so much.
So she scheduled herself to finish his deck at the beginning of the first full week of January, hoping he wouldn’t ask her about it.
Porter was another matter. She’d promised the boy while they were at the hospital that she’d take him for ice cream after everything was done. After the stitches and the shots. And she didn’t break her promises to six-year-olds.
He must be so confused, she thought as she arrived at the house on the bluff. She paused overlooking the ocean, suddenly feeling very small and insignificant. She wondered how she’d feel if she had someone in her life one day, and then the next, they were gone.
Trent had lived through that when his wife died, and so had Porter, even if he was too young to remember it. And now that she and Trent weren’t speaking, did Porter feel like he’d lost her?
Did he even care?
“Maybe he doesn’t care,” she said into the wind. But she cared, and she wanted to see him and let him know that just because she and his dad didn’t get along anymore didn’t mean she didn’t like him.
So she finished up early that day and stopped by Duality to grab a couple of ice cream sandwiches. She was running a huge risk by going to the elementary school, but she didn’t know where else to talk to Porter, and she couldn’t go to his house. Trent would be there, and she knew he watched for Porter like a hawk. So he’d see them.
All she could do was pray he’d let her talk to him. It wasn’t like she was a stalker or anything.
She parked in the lot and got out of her car, scanning the pick-up line. She didn’t see Trent’s truck or his police cruiser, so she positioned herself next to the fence and waited. More and more cars pulled into the circle drive, but she kept her eyes away from them.
The bell rang, and kids started pouring out of doors. It didn’t take long for her to spot Porter, tho
ugh it felt like hours. He walked with a crutch on his left side, supporting the foot he’d cut. He didn’t wear a shoe on that foot, and she remembered the huge gash where his toes met his foot.
“Porter,” she called, and he turned toward her. His face lit up, and she started toward him in the same moment he changed direction.
She crouched down in front of him, her stupid emotions threatening to spill out of her eyes again. “Hey, bud,” she said, casting a quick glance over her shoulder to the pick-up line. “I promised you ice cream, and I didn’t want to break my promise.”
He looked at her with those brown eyes so like his father’s and smiled. “Thanks, Lauren.” He took the ice cream sandwich from her and then looked at her again. “Why aren’t you staying with me anymore?”
So Trent hadn’t told him. “Well, uh, that’s a hard question to answer, Porty.”
“I don’t like Randi at all. She plays her music too loud, and it wakes me up.”
“Porter.” Trent’s voice sent simultaneous shivers through Lauren’s body, along with a healthy dose of adrenaline. She straightened and shaded her eyes as she looked back at him.
“I have to go,” Lauren said. “I just didn’t want to break my promise.” She backed away from Porter, who hobbled badly now that he had a crutch and a backpack and an ice cream sandwich to juggle. She held up her hands, palms out, to Trent as if to say I mean no harm.
He simply watched her with that police officer mask in place, and she finally couldn’t take it anymore. She turned and walked away, her head held high.
Chapter Twenty-One
“She just gave me ice cream, Daddy,” Porter said when Trent still hadn’t moved. Almost all the kids had gone now, and still Trent couldn’t get himself back to his truck. “It’s good too. That neopolitan kind from Duality you never let me get.”
“Hm,” Trent said, taking his son’s crutch and sweeping the boy into his arms. The scent of sweat and sugar met his nose, and he suddenly wanted an ice cream sandwich too. “Why’d she bring you ice cream?”
He didn’t want to admit that seeing Lauren Michaels crouched down in front of his son, and Porter’s beaming face, had made his heart beat again. It hadn’t been functioning properly since she’d left his house last Tuesday night.
It seemed impossible that it hadn’t even been a week yet. He felt like she’d been gone forever.
“She said she would,” Porter said simply. Trent opened the door and slid his son onto the seat.
“Buckle up, bud.” He walked around the front of the truck and got in. “When did she say she would?”
“While we were in the hospital, before you got there. I had to get a big shot, and she said she’d buy me ice cream if I was really brave.”
“Hm,” Trent said again, but his mind wouldn’t stop whirring. Savannah used to give Porter “shiny coins” if he did something she asked. She’d potty trained him with the promise of pennies and the candy they could buy, and Trent once again thought that Lauren would make a great mother.
So why hadn’t he told her that on Tuesday night?
He’d been back over every detail of that night, and he was just as confused as ever. He kept coming back to his own guilt about having to leave Porter with anyone, and how he never wanted to get another phone call or text to come to the hospital for someone he loved.
So if you push Lauren away, you won’t have to get that text, he thought.
And then his mind whispered, Do you love Lauren?
He wasn’t sure what he felt, but he knew seeing her both hurt and thrilled him, and he knew he owed her an apology. And his gratitude.
After she’d walked out, he’d stayed in the kitchen for a few minutes, too stunned to move. Then he did go down the hall to the bathroom Porter used, and she had cleaned the whole thing. Not a speck of blood or glass or any evidence at all that an accident had taken place there existed—except in the big trash can beside his carport.
“Should’ve called her right then,” he muttered, and Porter paused in his consumption of the ice cream sandwich.
“Who ya talkin’ to, Daddy?”
“Just myself, bud.” He flashed a fake smile and turned onto their street.
“Daddy, why isn’t Lauren staying with me at night anymore?”
He pulled into the driveway and put the truck in park before he answered. “Did she ask you to ask me that?”
“No,” Porter said, licking his fingers. “I asked her that, and she said it was a hard question to answer.”
“Well, she’s right.”
“But you always tell me I can do hard things.” He looked at Trent with such innocence, and Trent didn’t want to disappoint him in any way.
“Well, you can.”
“So what’s the answer?”
Trent heaved a big breath. Because we got in a fight. Because I let myself push her away. Because I was worried about things becoming too serious with her. Because I love her.
He curled his fingers around the steering wheel and gripped it tightly. “You know I’ve been seeing her, right? Like, we’re dating.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Like, I kiss her and stuff, and we might get married.”
Porter just blinked at him. “Really?” A smile spread across his whole face. “And then she can stay with me again while you work nights.”
“Would you like that?”
“She’s way better than Randi,” Porter said, his grin fading. “She reads to me, and she was quiet.”
His list for an acceptable mother seemed a bit short to Trent, but he chuckled. “I can talk to Randi about being quieter.”
“But don’t you like Lauren, Dad?”
He sighed. “Yeah, bud. I like her.”
“She doesn’t come over anymore.”
“Yeah, that’s because we broke up.” The words hadn’t been said, but he knew he was the one who needed to say a lot of things.
“Why’d you break up if you like her?”
Trent opened his door, the questions in Porter’s childlike tone the same ones he’d been berating himself with for almost a week. And he still didn’t have the answers. “That’s a hard question to answer,” he said.
“You can do hard things,” Porter chirped just before Trent closed the door and then walked around to get his son out of the passenger side.
Inside, with Porter snacking away on a piece of toast and a banana, Trent pulled out his phone. Maybe he could get Lauren back over here by talking business.
When are you going to finish my deck?
He stared at the words and then deleted them. It sounded like a demand, and nothing ever translated well in texts or messages when feelings were already hurt. Trent knew that—wasn’t that why he’d been called out last Tuesday in the first place?
Hurt feelings between a couple. Texts and messages that shouldn’t have been sent.
She knew he had a deck that needed finishing, and he went out onto it to see what she had left to do. Just the railing, and the last conversation they’d had about it ran through his mind.
A couple more days, she’d said. Just a few hours. He looked back and forth between the unfinished railing and the pile of wood against his fence. There seemed like way more wood than was needed to finish the railing.
Maybe he could complete the deck for her…would that be like saying thank you?
He’d probably ruin the whole project. He knew how to prune rose bushes and lavender and make a hawthorn tree grow straight. But he knew nothing about construction.
But he knew someone who did. Or rather, someone who knew someone.
He dialed Jason Zimmerman, hoping he wouldn’t have to give a big explanation to get a phone number. “Hey, man,” Jason answered. “How’s Porter?”
“Oh, he’s doing great.” Trent looked back into the house to make sure Porter didn’t want to get down from the counter. He was still happily engrossed in the laptop, a piece of toast on the counter beside him.
“Hey, listen,” Tre
nt said. “I need to finish my deck. Your sister is dating Bennett Patterson, right? Do you have his number?”
“Yeah, sure I’ve got it. Just a sec.” Jason went silent for a few seconds, then he asked, “I thought Lauren Michaels was doing it? Weren’t you two getting serious?”
“Yeah,” Trent said, hoping he could leave it at that.
“And she didn’t finish?”
“Um, no.”
“Hmm, that’s good to know. I was going to hire her to do a gazebo for Kaitlyn. I swear its all my wife ever talks about. This yard would look so great with a gazebo, right Jason?” He laughed. “All right, I’ve got it. You ready?”
But Trent had frozen. He couldn’t let Jason think Lauren had skipped out on finishing the deck. He couldn’t cost her business in an attempt to make up with her.
“I don’t need it,” he said, making something up. He could lie in this situation, he was sure of it. “I just got a text from her. She’s coming tomorrow.”
“Oh, great,” Jason said. “I’d love to come see the deck. I’ve heard she’s the best general contractor in town.”
“She is,” Trent said. “You should definitely call her.” He hung up and turned back to the house, at a complete loss for what to do now.
Just call her, came to mind, but he pushed it away. He’d hurt her—he could see that plainly on her face as she backed away from him. He hadn’t liked that one bit, and he’d retreated behind a straight face so she wouldn’t know the depth of his sorrow and guilt that he’d hurt her.
“Daddy, I want to get down.”
He helped Porter down and over to the couch, and then he got busy in the kitchen making something for dinner, his mind stewing and bubbling the same way the pork and beans did as he stirred them.
By the time he spooned the beans over hot dogs and took a plate to Porter, he knew what he had to do.
He just didn’t want to talk to Mabel Magleby about Lauren.
* * *
Hawthorne Harbor Box Set Page 77
