Marty took his time coming to the house, but the boy hurried toward her. As if he’d been doing such things all his life, Adam pulled her into his arms for a hug.
“Granddad and I wanted to stop and say goodbye before we head back out on tour,” Adam said.
Cait hugged him right back, and it, too, felt as if they’d had a lifetime of this. There’d be other hugs, other times when she got to see him. She would make sure of it. Make sure to contact Adam’s mother, too, once she was out of jail. After all, the woman was Cait’s half sister, and she shouldn’t miss out on being part of this wacky mess that was the Jameson clan.
She pulled back but kept her palm on his cheek for a long moment. “You’re sure you’re okay with being with your granddad for a couple of months?”
Adam’s smile widened. “Better than okay. It’s fun, and Granddad’s teaching me to play the guitar.”
Cait was happy for him, she truly was, but there was that little pang to remind her that Marty had never given that kind of attention to his kids. It was good, though, that he was doing it for the next generation.
“You’ll have to write me a song,” Cait said. “And keep up with your homework,” she added.
“I will.” Adam was still beaming when he hugged her again. “Granddad wants to say goodbye to you, too.”
It’d be her third one of the day, and it wasn’t even midmorning yet. These last two were a piece of cake, though, compared to the first one, so Cait didn’t have too much trouble mustering up a “bon voyage” smile for her nephew. Adam waved at her and headed back to the bus as Marty stepped forward.
“I don’t want you to worry about him,” Marty offered. He didn’t even attempt to hug her and crammed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I’ll keep a close eye on him.”
“And teach him to play the guitar,” she muttered.
Marty smiled, nodded. “The boy’s a natural.” And that was pride she heard in his voice. “Once he’s had a little more practice, he’ll be ready to make an appearance with me on stage. He said he’d like that.”
The shy boy had come a long way in a short time, and whether Cait wanted to give credit or not, Marty was responsible for that.
“Don’t forget about Kinsley,” she reminded him.
“Oh, I won’t. I’ve talked to her about joining me on tour for her Christmas break. Adam should be back with his grandmother by then, but she might let him come with us. I’ve figured out something to do for Avery and Gracie,” Marty added before she could speak. “I’m writing a Slackers Quackers book just for them. They’ll be characters in it. I thought they’d get a kick out of that.”
They would. The twins loved the Slackers Quackers stories. But all of this gushing Marty was doing—and it was gushing—felt as though he were speaking in a foreign tongue.
While Cait knew she should hold her own tongue, she couldn’t. “Why the sudden interest in members of your gene pool?”
He didn’t wince or flinch, but he did lower his head for a moment. When Marty looked at her again, she saw what she thought might be a lifetime of guilt.
“I want to do the best I can do,” he said, and there was some weariness in his voice. “I’m trying to work my kids and my grandkids into my life.” Marty paused, met her eyes. “But I can’t do it here. Too many memories. This is where I failed, over and over again, and being here would make me feel like that pen y’all built for the ornery duck.”
She knew that, but she hadn’t understood it until this morning when Hayes had left. Now she had memories, too, that would haunt her. She’d see him in all the places they’d been together, and it would hurt. Still, she wouldn’t give up her home. She would just learn, somehow, to live with it.
“This place was never your home,” she muttered. “That is.” Cait tipped her head to the tour bus. “And what you’re doing for Adam, Kinsley, Avery and Gracie is a good thing.”
Some surprise flashed through his eyes, and he smiled. “It’s like compromise parenting and grandparenting.”
That should have riled her, made her remember what a crappy father he’d been to her brothers and her. But any compromise for Marty was huge. Including Kinsley and his grandchildren in his life was somewhat of a miracle. And that was enough.
It had to be enough.
“By the way,” Cait added, “I wanted to thank you for helping with Sunshine.”
“Glad I could do it. The woman was making a lot of people’s lives miserable.” He glanced away again. “So did I. Maybe that’s why I thought I could do something. Atonement, I guess.”
She didn’t like that they had worked their way back to the conversation about him and his shitty parenting skills, and it was time to put an end to this. “I need to get to work. I hope Adam and you have a good time on the tour.”
He nodded but stayed put, and he took a small envelope from his pocket. “It’s a VIP pass,” Marty explained. “If you’re ever so inclined, it’ll get you backstage or front row to any of my gigs. I don’t want you to have to buy a ticket to see me.”
Cait pulled out the pass, looked at him but couldn’t speak. That’s because of the sudden lump in her throat.
“Oh, and if you ever want to go on tour with me,” he added, “just let me know. I’d be plenty happy to have you along.”
She had to swallow hard. “Thank you,” she finally managed to say.
“I know this doesn’t undo what I’ve done to you,” Marty went on. “I can never undo that. Not enough atonement in six worlds to fix that. Just don’t keep on hating me, Cait. Hate eats up too much of you.”
“So does love,” she mumbled before she could stop herself.
When she looked up at Marty, he was blurry, and she realized she had tears in her eyes to go along with that lump in her throat. She had a debate with herself as to what to do. She could send Marty on his way with a snarky comment or with a heartfelt daughterly goodbye.
Cait went with a hug instead.
Because she was tired of hating. Tired of carrying this weight of believing the man who’d fathered her could ever be anything more than the man who’d shredded her heart too many times to count.
She felt Marty’s muscles tense. But only for a second. Then she felt the relief, too. His arms came around, holding her as if he were trying to make up for some of those sins.
And he did.
Who knew that a hug could perform such miracles?
They stood there, holding on to each other, before Cait finally pulled back. She didn’t even mind that he saw the tears in her eyes because he had some tears, too.
“Gotta go,” Marty said, brushing his fingers over her cheek. “Got a gig in Dallas tonight. See you soon, Cait.”
Not a goodbye. In some ways, it was more like a hello, something that regular fathers said to regular daughters. They hadn’t had much of regular in their lives, but maybe this was a start. She’d make sure it was a start.
She waved and watched as her father made his way back to the bus. Then Cait cursed the fresh tears that would require another makeup repair. There was no time for that, though, because her phone rang, and she saw the dispatcher’s number on the screen.
“Cait,” the dispatcher, Thelma Waters, said the moment Cait answered. “We just got a call about the Crocketts. They’re at it again.”
Cait groaned. She so didn’t want to deal with the ornery couple this morning, but she had no choice since she was the one on call. Besides, after the emotional upheaval of the morning, being around yelling, fighting senior citizens might help her level out.
She went to her SUV, unlocked the glove compartment and eased aside the standard-issue weapon she kept secured there. Her pepper spray had expired, so she took out the small can of Mighty Hold hair spray and shoved it into her pocket. If one of the Crocketts tried to stab her again, they were getting an eye full of maximum-hold goo.
She pulled to a stop in front of the Crocketts’ and had no trouble spotting the couple. That’s because they were in their front yard, and Wilma was hurling pine cones at Harvey, the man she’d once promised to love until death do they part.
Harvey, who was still in his pj’s, had wisely taken cover behind an oak tree, and he was hurling acorns at his beloved. They probably wouldn’t hurt each other with such puny weapons, but there were little pointy ends on pine cones, and Cait didn’t want Wilma inflicting scratches. If the woman did, then this would move from a domestic abuse situation to assault.
Cait didn’t especially want to do all the paperwork that’d go along with charges for an assault with a pine cone, and besides, it wouldn’t do any good. The couple would just start up again in a couple of weeks.
“Stop it!” Cait snarled when she stepped from her SUV. It wasn’t hard to do her cop’s voice with these two because she’d had plenty enough practice. What she hadn’t had a lot of was them actually doing as she said.
Unlike now.
The couple actually quit, and while they didn’t come out from the cover of the trees, they both did turn to her.
“I figured you’d be crying,” Wilma said. “A broken heart, huh?”
Cait hoped that crying part was all speculation and that Wilma couldn’t actually see her red eyes from this distance. Of course, with all the gossip no doubt floating around, speculation was going to happen. That’s why Cait didn’t bother addressing it or pretending that it was her allergies.
“Drop any acorns or pine cones you’re holding,” Cait warned them. She whipped out the can of Mighty Hold hair spray. “And this time I’d better not get hurt if you two go at each other again.”
The sympathetic look Wilma was giving her lasted another nanosecond before Harvey called out, “She started it. She always starts some kind of mess before I’ve even had a chance to have my coffee.”
“That’s because you farted in the kitchen when I was trying to have my coffee,” Wilma countered. “It stank so bad I nearly puked.”
Cait was reasonably sure that there’d been other such incidents like that, but it was a first for her.
“It stank because of that slop you cooked for dinner,” Harvey countered. “It tore up my stomach like it usually does.” He shifted his attention to Cait. “I think Wilma’s trying to poison me.”
Of course, Wilma didn’t take that insult well. “I should poison you, you old goat, and then I wouldn’t get farted on in my own kitchen.”
Harvey didn’t take that well, either. “You’re the old goat, and it’s my kitchen, too. You smell it up with all that slop you cook.”
And that started up another round of hurling.
Wilma had missed her calling. She probably could have played outfield for the Yankees with the speed and accuracy of the next pine cone she aimed like a missile at her husband. Thankfully, Harvey ducked in time, and it went sailing past him, but Wilma geared up to send another one his way.
“I said stop it!” Cait yelled, going closer. She positioned her finger over the dispenser button on the hair spray. “That’s it. I’m taking you both in for disturbing the peace and being a general pain in my ass.”
Again, she didn’t expect them to actually stop, but they did. Not because of her order, though, but because the approaching vehicle drew their attention. It drew Cait’s, too, because it was Hayes’s rental SUV.
“Oh, no,” Wilma muttered. “Is he gonna make you cry again?”
Cait sure hoped not, but she hadn’t steeled herself up nearly enough to see Hayes this soon.
Hayes got out of his SUV not in a “laid-back rock star” kind of way. It was more of a “man on a mission,” and he practically stalked toward her.
“How’d you know I was here?” Cait asked, and she tried not to take a step back. He looked supremely pissed.
“I called the police station, and the dispatcher said you were here.” He stopped only a few inches away from her and didn’t even spare the Crocketts a glance. However, he did look at the mini can of Mighty Hold hair spray. “Have a good life?” he snapped. “Have a good life!”
It took Cait a moment to realize he wasn’t talking about her choice of weapon. She remembered that she’d written those very words to him in her goodbye letter. A letter he whipped out of his back pocket as if it were proof of some vile crime she’d committed.
“What kind of stupid-assed thing is that to say to a man?” Hayes snarled.
Cait was truly confused. “Uh, a nice thing?” Though judging from his expression, that was not the correct answer.
Hayes’s teeth actually clenched, and he went silent as if trying to rein in his temper. Wilma and Harvey must have thought they were about to witness something more interesting than their squabble, because with their hands still filled with the pine cones and acorns, they ambled closer.
“You told him to have a good life?” Harvey asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer. He snorted as if that was the dumbest thing in the history of dumb things.
“You were just trying to spare his feelings,” Wilma concluded. “You didn’t want him to leave while he was worried about making you cry.”
“No,” Cait snapped. “I was telling him to have a good life.”
“Bullshit,” Hayes insisted, though he didn’t justify why he thought that. He just took hold of her shoulders, anchoring her in front of him. “Are you in love with me, Cait?”
He couldn’t have stunned her more if he’d Tasered her. She couldn’t waffle on this. Even a couple of seconds’ delay in responding might make him think that she did indeed have a broken heart and that she’d been crying her eyes out over him.
The delay happened anyway, though.
Cait felt a sharp jab on her arm, followed by an equally sharp jab of pain. She whirled to see the pine cone that Wilma had poked into her. It gave Cait a bad jolt of memories of getting a very painful shot. It was that jolt that caused her finger to react, too.
And she hit the dispenser tab on the hair spray.
The aerosol came spewing out in a thick cloud, and Cait wasn’t sure what came next: Hayes’s cursing, or her own cursing as the Mighty Hold hair spray went straight into her eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“I DON’T WANT to go to the ER,” Cait snarled.
Since she’d said at least a dozen variations of that, Hayes wasn’t surprised by her comment, and like the other variations, he ignored this one, too. Cait’s eyes were red and slightly swollen, and she was blinking fast enough to cause a breeze with her eyelashes. She was clearly in pain, and while he wouldn’t have liked the idea of a visit to the hospital, either, she needed to be checked out.
He pulled his SUV to a stop by the ER doors and saw that the Crocketts were right behind him. Thankfully, Cait probably couldn’t see them, because the couple certainly wouldn’t have improved her mood since it was their fault she’d gotten hair spray in her eyes. While the nurse was checking out her eyes, Hayes would suggest looking at her arm, too. It had a bit of pine cone sticking out of it, and there was a trickle of blood making its way to her elbow.
“Just take me home and I can try flushing my eyes with water,” Cait grumbled.
She’d also said variations of that as well, along with having Hayes actually try the water flushing at the Crocketts’. It hadn’t worked. Her eyes were still stinging, and she had tiny drops of what appeared to be clear glue stuck to her eyelashes.
Hayes ignored her protest and helped her out of the SUV. He considered leading her into the ER by taking hold of her arm, but scooping her up was faster.
“I can walk,” Cait snapped. She added a groan and token
protest by poking him with her elbow. “Do you have any idea the paperwork this is going to cause?”
He didn’t, but he was guessing it’d be considerable. Maybe charges would even be filed against Wilma since her pine cone was what started the hair-spray injury. For reasons that Hayes didn’t want to know, Wilma still had hold of that pine cone, and instead of running from Cait’s inevitable wrath, the couple continued to follow them into the ER.
“What happened?” the nurse on duty immediately asked.
Hayes knew her. She was Bev Dennison, one of his old girlfriends. Thankfully, though, Bev didn’t spare more than a glance at him and scrambled to get a wheelchair for Cait.
“Hair spray,” Hayes explained. “Cait took a full spray in the face at point-blank range. The blood on her arm is from a pine cone.”
He had to hand it to Bev. She didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow at his description of Cait’s injuries, which made him wonder how often weird things like that happened. With the Crocketts around, probably way more than they should. A small-town deputy, and apparently a nurse, encountered some weird shit.
“I don’t want a wheelchair,” Cait protested when Hayes sat her in it.
Bev blew off that protest and started pushing Cait toward an examination room. Now she did more than glance at Hayes, and he was pretty sure he saw condemnation in the nurse’s eyes.
“I thought you’d left town,” Bev remarked, her voice cool and clipped. “Is part of the redness in Cait’s eyes because she was crying, or is it all from the hair spray?”
“The hair spray,” Cait insisted.
But since Cait couldn’t see him, Hayes gave Bev a look to inform her that, yes, there’d likely been some crying involved. In fact, when he’d gone over to the Crocketts’ to confront Cait, that’s what he’d first noticed.
Those tear-reddened eyes.
And that’s when he’d known that her have a good life in the letter was pure bullshit. She didn’t want him to have a good life. Well, not in the overall sense of it being a polite goodbye. Cait was hurting because he’d left.
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