Larkspur Cove (41 page)

“You already have, Mom. Several times.”

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt him to hear it again. Maybe it will sink in through that thick skull of his. Maybe he’ll finally realize what a horrible, horrible man he’s become. Maybe he’ll decide to repent and ask forgiveness.”

I sighed, thinking of Karl’s face last night. What had possessed him to come to me, of all people, for comfort? Was it habit? Desperation? Nostalgia? “I think that’s going to have to be up to him.”

“You be careful.” Moisture gathered in the corners of Mother’s eyes. In spite of her sometimes bullish way of showing it, all she wanted was to keep me safe. “I just can’t stand to see you setting yourself up for a fall.”

“I’m a big girl,” I said softly, and Mother’s lips trembled. I’d hurt her feelings, made her think I was saying that I didn’t need her. “But thank you for looking after me. I know I haven’t really said it, but without you two and Meg, Dustin and I wouldn’t have survived this last year. Thanks for being there for us.”

I reached out and slipped my arms around my mother, hugged her and really meant it for the first time since I was a little girl. She was stiff initially, shocked, then she softened and held me close, smoothing a hand over my hair and rocking me back and forth.

“We’re here anytime you girls need us.” The answer was her way of saying that we
would
need her and Dad, of course. Meg and I would never completely be allowed to fly the nest, but there were worse problems to have.

“And sometimes when you don’t,” my father added, as if he’d read my mind. I hugged him, and he cleared his throat, patting my shoulder awkwardly. My father had never known quite what to do with girls, other than hand them money and occasionally admire someone’s church dress on Sunday morning.

As I waved my parents off, I felt like I was turning a corner. Maybe I just needed to accept my parents for who they were and get over myself. Maybe I was finally at a place in life where I could. After watching them drive away, I turned and walked back into the house, feeling like it was a good day, in spite of the fact that Karl was still holed up on my porch.

Voices in the living room told me that Dustin was up. I found Karl sitting on the sofa, looking strangely relaxed, and Dustin digging through the cubby in the end table. “Here it is,” he said, coming out with a dust-covered atlas. Apparently Karl needed a road map to get from Texas to North Dakota.

“You guys all right?”

Dustin seemed calm enough. Clearly, finding his father here hadn’t upset him. He sat down beside Karl, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and turned a look of bright anticipation my way. “Dad’s taking me to North Dakota. After the funeral, we’re gonna drive by the old ranch and then, like, come home the long way, spend a few days seeing the West.”

Dad’s taking me to North Dakota.
I stopped halfway across the room, stunned, then panicked, then angry. Karl didn’t look at me. He knew what I was thinking. He knew what he’d done. He’d wormed his way into my house, and as soon as my back was turned, he’d taken advantage of the moment to fill Dustin with fantasies about going on some trip. Karl was feeling needy, and since Delayne and her kids couldn’t fill this need, he was back in our lives, dangling a carrot in front of my son. How dare he do this without asking me! If I said no, I would be the ogre, the ridiculously mean mother, the bitter one who couldn’t let bygones be bygones, even in the hour of Joe’s death.

Karl had offered Dustin exactly the thing Dustin couldn’t refuse – time with his dad, a promise of a renewed relationship. My head was spinning, possible reactions whirling by so fast I couldn’t get a grip on any of them. “I’m not sure that’s the best thing. . . .”

Karl turned a pleasant look my way, blinking and drawing back slightly, as if he couldn’t imagine why I would say that. The broken man from the night before was gone, and the cool, calculating, blameless one had returned. “We’ll be back long before it’s time for him to start school.”

Anger swelled inside me, a hot, murderous rage that made me want to throw something and hit him with it, to wipe the patronizing smile off his face. I wished I’d left him in the driveway last night. “That’s not my point, Karl. I don’t think Dustin needs to be taking a trip right now – especially not that far.”
With you.

“Mom, please!” Dustin interjected, and I held up a hand.

“Honey, I’m not mad at you. Your father should have asked me before he said anything about this.” I glared at Karl, hated him all over again. The grace I’d felt just moments ago was completely gone.

Karl saw the change. He reacted by hooking one leg over the other and laying a hand on his shin, leaning comfortably back on my sofa. “Well, technically August is my time anyway. Tomorrow is the first of August.”

“
Your
time?” I coughed in disbelief. Was it possible that he could have the nerve to bring up the visitation arrangements after all these weeks? “Since when have you
ever
cared whether it was
your
time, Karl? Since
when
have you ever shown up? Now you want to just breeze in here because you’re feeling down, because you need someone, and take my son on a cross-country trip?”

“Mom, please!” Dustin’s volume rose to meet mine. “I want – ”

“Dustin!” I snapped. Even though I knew we shouldn’t be doing this in front of him, I couldn’t stop myself. “This is between your father and me.” It wasn’t really. The war was between Karl and me, but we were firing shots right over our son.

“I don’t see what the problem is.” Karl lifted his hands, free to play the victim.

“Yes, you do. Yes, you do, Karl. That’s why you didn’t ask last night, or this morning. You knew I wouldn’t want him going with you.”

“What about what Dustin wants?” Karl shifted forward, his body drawing a more aggressive line. “Who says everything has to be your – ”

“Stop it!” Dustin’s outcry reverberated through the room as he stood up. “I don’t want any more fighting!” He turned to me. His eyes, only a moment before glittering with excitement, were now brimming with tears. “I just want to say good-bye to Grandpa Joe, all right? I just want to go there, and see the ranch again, and say good-bye. Mom . . . please. I know what I’m doing. It’s okay. I just want to go, all right?” His plea ended in a sob as he swiped a hand across his eyes. I felt myself breaking, as if my heart were being torn from my body, as if someone were asking me to hang it on a string and send it to North Dakota . . . with Karl, of all people.

I just want to say good-bye to Grandpa Joe.
Dustin deserved that chance. If I stole it away from him, he would resent that forever. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t be safe, in the physical sense, anyway. Karl and Dustin had traveled together any number of times in past years on church mission trips, or when Dustin went along to one of Karl’s conferences. They’d enjoyed hotel pools and quirky local tourist attractions together. Dustin read the maps, Karl did the driving, and they ate at every hole-in-the-wall diner they could find. Maybe this trip would remind them of those good times, make Karl realize that Dustin’s love was something too precious to throw away.

But there was also Dustin’s well-being to consider. What if this trip raised his hopes, only to have Karl crash them again when life went back to normal?

What if it didn’t? What if this trip helped to rebuild the bond between them? What if this was the beginning of something new – the genesis of our learning to function in a way that, if not friendly, at least didn’t hurt our son? If that was possible, I owed it to Dustin to take the chance.

“All right.” It hurt to give in, even though everything inside me was telling me it was the right thing to do. “Go pack your things. You have some clean laundry in the utility room, if you need it.”

Dustin’s eyes widened in surprise, then amazement, then anticipation. He spun around, ran in place several steps like a cartoon character on ice, then took off across room. At the start of the hallway, he slid to a stop, smiled at me, and said, “Thanks, Mom!” and then careened down the corridor toward his bedroom, his footsteps shaking the house.

“I’ll go grab his laundry for him.” Karl stood up and sidestepped toward the utility room. No doubt he was afraid to be alone with me. He could probably read on my face all the things that were going through my mind. None of them were fit for polite conversation.

“You’d better take good care of him,” I bit out, because I didn’t trust myself to say anything else.

Karl glanced back over his shoulder. “I will.” His body language added,
What? Did you think I was going to dump him at a gas station
alongside the interstate somewhere?

I clenched my teeth, wishing again that I’d never let him in the door.

Before disappearing down the stairs, he paused, his shoulders softening. “Thanks for letting him come.”

“Just make it a good trip for him, all right? You can’t take him to North Dakota, and then bring him back here and just ditch him again. He needs you to be consistent in his life. He needs to know he still has a dad who loves him and cares about him and can’t wait to spend time with him. Be the dad you used to be to him. Don’t end up with him where you’ve ended up with your father, Karl. That’s all I’m asking.”

“I know.” Karl didn’t turn around, but this time the words seemed to come from a deeper place, a place that was real.“That’s the reason I came here.” He drew a breath, his shoulders rising and sinking as if he would say something more, but then he just continued across the room and disappeared down the stairs.

Tears pressed my eyes, and I walked onto the back porch to try to clear my head. It wouldn’t do Dustin any good to see me crying. He’d only feel guilty – as if he were being forced to make a choice between his father and me. I wished I could just fly to North Dakota with Dustin myself, but that wouldn’t do anything to help Karl and Dustin rebuild their relationship. Aside from that, there was no way I could get time off from my job to travel up there. Taz wouldn’t be able to handle the load, even for a little while. I had so many ongoing cases, and there was the tenuous situation with Birdie. I’d planned today’s school-supply run partly as a way of spending more time with her, encouraging her to communicate more freely. Next week, she had appointments with the school psychologist and the caseworker. I wanted those assessments to go well.

I tried to put the rest of the day and the rest of the week out of my mind as I helped Dustin get his things together for the trip. Within twenty minutes, he was ready to leave. A lump clogged my throat as I kissed him good-bye, then stood in the driveway, watching the road long after Karl’s car had disappeared.

I sent a prayer along in their wake.
Please make this trip what it
needs to be for Dustin. Please make this the first step on a new path.

When I went back inside, the house felt too quiet and too empty.

I stood gazing out the back windows, unaware at first what I was looking for, and then, of course, I knew. I was watching for Mart, wishing I could talk to him about Karl and Dustin, and get Mart’s opinion. Wishing that last night hadn’t ended the way it did. Wishing that last night hadn’t ended. Living within the fantasy was so much better than dealing with reality.

On impulse, I picked up my cell phone and checked for missed calls. There were none, of course. Why would he call, after the way I’d left things? No doubt he’d decided that I was a complete basket case – warm one minute, cold the next. He probably thought I was playing some sort of neurotic game – enjoying the thrill of our clandestine meetings, with no real intention of taking things any further. How could I explain to him that I had no idea what my real intentions were? If I were one of my clients, I would have told myself that the inconsistent behavior was a sign that I wasn’t ready for a relationship. I needed to move beyond past pain and resentments before I could expect to be successful in the present. It was only logical. There were so many layers of defensive insulation wrapped around my heart and soul right now.

But another part of me, somewhere beyond logic, begged the question, How could something that seemed so much like it was meant to be, be a mistake? When Mart and I were together, we were perfect, as if we were made for each other. We fit together like two oddly shaped pieces of a puzzle. What if I never found that again?

I dialed his number, then disconnected the call before it could go through. Setting down the phone, I went to the bedroom to shower and get dressed. I rummaged through my clothes, unsatisfied with everything. It really didn’t matter what I wore today. I was only planning to hang around the house for the morning and then go to the Crossroads this afternoon to pick up Birdie and take her to the Community Closet. Shorts and a T-shirt would be fine for that. The day was already shaping up to be a hot one. A great day for being on the lake.

A great day for being on the lake with Mart. . . .

After last night, why in the world would he want to be on the lake with me?

The question drummed in my head as I wandered around the house, looking for things to do. I finished the laundry, cleaned the kitchen, scrubbed the bathroom, went outside and filled the rest of the bird feeders, then swept the back deck. Next I hosed down the screened porch, helped Sydney and Ansley cut some old-fashioned roses for their grandma, gathered fallen twigs and branches, and finally weeded a flower bed, watching the lake glisten below, teeming with ski boats and sailboats, paddleboats and water bikes from the resort. Filled with tourists enjoying the last few weekends before the start of school.