Where Azaleas Bloom (23 page)

Lynn nodded and followed her inside the courtroom. Ed was
already seated with Jimmy Bob. She noted that he didn’t even glance at her as
she took her seat. That couldn’t be good. And his parents were seated right
behind him, their expressions smug.

Once Hal Cantor had been seated behind the bench, Jimmy Bob
stood. “Your honor, we’ve filed a motion to amend the shared custody agreement
we were originally seeking.”

Lynn stared at him in shock, then turned to Helen. “Can they do
that?”

Helen patted her hand. “Don’t worry. Let’s just see where this
is going.”

Jimmy Bob’s expression turned almost as smug as Wilma Morrow’s
as he announced, “Ed would like to request full custody of Alexis and
Jeremy.”

At that, even as Lynn’s head reeled, Helen was on her feet.
“That’s absurd. On what grounds?” she demanded.

“It’s all in the motion,” Jimmy Bob said.

“Which, amazingly, has not yet been delivered to my office,”
Helen said, skewering him with a scowl. “Your honor, this is outrageous, even
for Mr. West. I request an immediate postponement and an order that a copy of
the motion be in my hands within the hour.”

“Granted,” Judge Cantor said, regarding Jimmy Bob with disdain.
“You know better, counsel.”

“This is an emergency, your honor,” Jimmy Bob insisted. “I’m
sure the courier has already made his delivery by now.”

The judge didn’t look impressed. “If I had my copy yesterday in
order to schedule this so-called emergency, then Ms. Decatur-Whitney should have
had it yesterday, as well. I can only assume it was a deliberate oversight on
your part.” He skewered Jimmy Bob with a look. “Not on my watch, Mr. West.”

Ed’s parents looked vaguely shaken by the judge’s unmistakable
fury. Clearly, they’d come expecting to leave the courtroom today
victorious.

“Helen, we have to know what this is about,” Lynn said
urgently. “I need to understand this now.”

Helen nodded. “Your honor, before we go, perhaps Mr. West would
like to summarize the grounds for this emergency change in the previously
approved shared-custody arrangement.”

Jimmy Bob jumped up eagerly. “We have just learned that Mrs.
Morrow is now working in a bar and is involved with an alcoholic. With both
children at such an impressionable age, this is no longer the appropriate
environment for them. Mr. Morrow, whose parents are more than eager to help out
with their care, is requesting full custody, with only supervised visitation by
Mrs. Morrow to be permitted. I think there’s little question that the Morrows
are respectable, God-fearing individuals who will provide a safe environment for
Alexis and Jeremy.”

Lynn heard his words with mounting shock and anger. She was on
her feet before Helen could restrain her. “Are you crazy?” she demanded, her
heated gaze going from Ed to the sanctimonious Morrows. “This is the most
outrageous claim I’ve ever heard in my life. You’re going to regret it, Ed. You
can count on that.” She turned to Helen. “Let’s get out of here. The smell is
making me sick to my stomach.”

Helen gave her a commiserating look. “Hold on a sec. Give the
judge a chance to leave,” she murmured. “Hal’s looking a little ill
himself.”

“Court’s dismissed,” the bailiff said when Hal had left the
room.

Lynn headed for the door with Helen right on her heels. She
couldn’t even bear to look at Ed as she went. When this had started, she’d vowed
to do everything in her power to keep it civil for the sake of the kids.
Allowing Ed to malign a man like Mitch in order to gain custody of their
kids—not because it was right, not even because he really wanted it, but to
satisfy his parents—was beyond the pale. That he would dare to attack her for
taking a job that he’d made a necessity by his own irresponsible behavior was
even worse.

She turned to Helen. “All bets are off,” she said tightly. “Get
that investigator to dig in every nook and cranny until we know exactly what
Ed’s been up to. If there are skeletons, drag ’em out of the closet. My children
will not live with a man who’d resort to something like this.”

“It could get really ugly,” Helen cautioned. “If I’m right,
either about the gambling or, worse, about Ed being blackmailed, there won’t be
any holding it back. The kids are bound to find out, especially if there’s
anything illegal going on.”

The warning gave Lynn pause. She wanted to do everything
possible to protect her children, but the best way to do that, she felt certain,
would be to keep them away from the man and his parents who would put her in
this position in the first place.

“I don’t care about ugly,” Lynn said wearily. “I just want my
kids safe from the likes of those people. It will be a very cold day in hell
before Wilma Morrow gets her hands on my children.”

* * *

Mitch’s head was spinning as Lynn paced around her
kitchen, clearly furious, but so far not saying a word that made a lot of sense.
He’d stopped by soon after she’d returned from the courthouse to see what had
happened and had found her in this state.

He stood up, put his hands on her shoulders and commanded,
“Stop. Let me fix you some iced tea. You’re obviously upset. Once you’re calmer,
you can tell me what on earth went on in court today.”

“I don’t think I can sit down. The only thing keeping me from
screaming is pacing.”

He held up his hands in surrender. “Then pace away. I think
I’ll pour that tea, anyway. Anything else I can get you? Are you hungry? I’m
mostly hopeless in the kitchen, but I could probably whip up an omelet.”

To his shock when she faced him, there were tears in her
eyes.

“Here I am, acting like I’ve lost my mind, and you’re being so
sweet,” she said, the tears tracking down her cheeks. “You don’t deserve this
mess I’ve dragged you into.”

“What mess? And how am I in the middle of it?” he asked. “Are
you talking about the divorce?”

She nodded, suddenly starting to sob.

Mitch gathered her close, carried her into the living room and
sat on the sofa with her in his arms. He’d been envisioning a moment like this
for a long time now, but it certainly had been under different circumstances.
For one thing she wouldn’t have been sobbing as if her heart were breaking.

“Tell me,” he said gently. “What’s Ed done?”

“He’s filed…” The rest of her words were lost to sobs.

“What’s he filed for, sweetheart? Tell me and we’ll sort it
out. I promise.”

She swallowed hard, took the tissues he’d grabbed from a box on
the table and dabbed at her eyes. “He wants full custody of Lexie and Jeremy,”
she finally managed to reveal.

Mitch stared at her, stunned by this latest evidence of Ed’s
cruelty. “He’ll never get it,” he said confidently. “You’re an incredible
mother. No judge would ever take those children away from you.”

“Thanks,” she murmured, sniffing.

“What’s his reasoning?”

“He says it’s because I’m working in a bar,” she began, then
regarded him miserably, “and because I’m seeing you.”

Mitch hadn’t expected that. He’d known Ed didn’t like him
hanging around with Lynn or the kids, but for him to use their relationship to
try to take her kids from her was far beyond anything he could have possibly
anticipated.

“He won’t get away with it,” he said tightly.

“I know that. Helen says so, too, but now you’re smack in the
middle of this. I am so, so sorry.”

“Did he say what his big objection to me is?” Mitch asked, as
much out of curiosity as anything. Whatever it was, maybe he could fix it.

“He says you’re an alcoholic,” she confessed in a whisper.
“Added to me working in a bar, he thinks that’s grounds for the kids to be with
him and his parents.”

Mitch closed his eyes against the wave of pain that washed
through him at Lynn’s words. There might not be a bit of truth to Ed’s claim,
but added to Lynn’s own fears about his drinking, this could be the end for
them. If there was even the tiniest possibility that associating with him could
cost her Lexie and Jeremy, he needed to walk away, no matter what it cost him to
do it. This was not a battle she should have to fight.

He cupped her face in his hands and waited until she looked at
him. She was obviously embarrassed by having to admit what had been in those
court documents.

“Listen to me, Lynnie. I will not be responsible for you losing
your children.”

“This is about Ed and his sick, twisted mind,” she insisted.
“It shouldn’t be about you.”

“He’s made it about me,” he argued. “Now, I may think he’ll
have an incredibly difficult time trying to prove I’m an alcoholic, but it would
be a lot smarter to take me out of the equation entirely.”

She blinked, her expression dismayed. “What are you
saying?”

“That I’m going to walk away,” he said, every word like a knife
to his heart. “It’s the only thing I know to do to make sure that he can’t use
me against you.”

“But that’s so unfair,” she objected. “You haven’t done
anything wrong. Neither have I, for that matter. Mitch, Helen is going to fix
this.”

“Nobody has more faith in Helen than I do,” he said, “but I’m
going to make it easier for her.” He touched her cheek, stroked a finger over
the silken curve of it, wondering if he’d ever be able to be this close to her
again. “I want it to be easier for you.”

He stood up, set her gently back onto the sofa, then bent down
and kissed her quickly.

“Mitch, please don’t go,” she called after him. “Not like
this.”

Filled with an unimaginable sorrow, he faced her one last time.
“It won’t be forever,” he promised. “If you need me, you call me.”

“I need you now,” she said.

He absorbed the sweet admission, but managed to make himself
shake his head. “Right now, the best thing I can do for you is to walk out of
here.” He held her gaze. “Let me do it, Lynnie.”

Once more tears spilled down her cheeks, but slowly she nodded.
“Thank you for being stronger than I am,” she whispered.

He smiled at that. “No one is stronger than you are. No
one.”

Certainly not him, he thought as he fought his own tears as he
walked out of the house and away from the woman who’d come to mean more to him
than life itself. He’d wanted to give her his heart. How ironic to discover that
the best gift he could give her for now was her freedom!

22

L
ynn had been in a daze for what felt like
an eternity, but in fact had been less than a week. Between Ed’s courtroom stunt
and Mitch walking out of her life, the stability she’d only recently thought
within reach was suddenly shattered in unexpected ways.

She spent almost every night lying awake, which meant she
looked exhausted most of the time and felt wretched all the time.

She told Helen what Mitch had done, taking himself out of the
equation in an attempt to protect her. She’d expected Helen to be as distressed
by that as she had been.

“Sadly, he’s probably right,” Helen said, regarding her
sympathetically. “If Ed’s going to be unreasonable, it’ll help to have one less
thing to fight about when we go back to court next week.”

“But Mitch isn’t an alcoholic,” Lynn said, surprised to
discover as the emphatic defense left her mouth that she honestly believed what
she was saying. There was no doubt he’d had a drinking problem for a time, just
as he’d admitted, but she’d brought her own history to bear on the situation,
reacting out of fear, even when all the evidence favored Mitch. He simply wasn’t
her father. She had absolutely no reason at all to believe he’d follow the same
drunken path her father had.

She gave Helen an indignant look. “I don’t even know where Ed
came up with such a crazy idea.”

Helen smiled wearily. “Probably the same sort of gossip we
heard from people who saw him in Monty’s after Amy died.”

“But he hasn’t hung out there in months,” Lynn said.

“Until you started working there,” Helen reminded her. She held
up her hand when Lynn started to jump once more to his defense. “Look, I know
why he’s there, and I’ve spoken to Monty, who’s willing to testify that he
hasn’t had a drop to drink on any of those occasions, but frankly, it’ll be
easier if this is one less battle for us to fight.”

“It’s just wrong,” Lynn said, totally frustrated by the
injustice of it.

“I agree, but staying apart doesn’t have to last forever, Lynn.
Once this custody motion is resolved, if you and Mitch want to see each other,
there will be nothing to stop you.”

“You don’t think Ed will go running right back to the judge if
he finds out Mitch and I have reconciled?” Lynn asked doubtfully. “Come on,
Helen, this might never be over. Ed could keep our lives in turmoil out of
spite.”

“I think you’re wrong. Frankly, I think this was a very
carefully devised tactical maneuver to throw some mud in your direction and keep
us so busy that we wouldn’t have time to dig for whatever real dirt Ed’s trying
to hide.”

Lynn thought about that. At one time, she would never have
imagined that her husband could be that devious, but recently? She simply didn’t
know him anymore. “Maybe so,” she conceded. “Do we have that dirt yet?”

Helen smiled. “We’re getting very close. The investigator has
found a trail of credit card receipts that don’t make a lick of sense.”

“What do you mean? Personal credit cards?”

“Personal. Company.” Helen shrugged. “Ed apparently used them
indiscriminately.”

“For all those golf trips he’s been taking?” Lynn wondered.

“Smoke screen,” Helen said succinctly.

Lynn stared at her. “I don’t understand.”

“Ed may have been doing a lot of playing on those trips of his,
but it wasn’t golf,” she said. “I’m just about a hundred percent sure of
that.”

“What then?”

“Give me another day,” Helen said. “I don’t want to speak out
of turn. I may not much like your husband these days, but I don’t want to do my
own share of mudslinging without facts to back it up.”

Lynn had never seen Helen look quite so somber. “You’re not
really loving this, are you? You usually look happier when you have something
that can win a case.”

“I don’t mean to play some cat-and-mouse game with you, Lynn,”
Helen said apologetically. “I really do want to be sure before I say anything
more, okay? It’s just not the sort of thing I could wipe out of your mind if
I’ve made an unfair accusation.”

Lynn regarded her with dismay. “It’s that damaging?”

Helen nodded, her expression weary. “I’m afraid so. Can you
trust me just a little longer? Once I have solid proof, assuming it exists, I
won’t hold back. I promise you that. You’ll know everything I know.”

“I’ve trusted you so far,” Lynn said. “I see no reason for that
to change now.”

“It won’t be long. As soon as I have something concrete to
share with you, we’ll talk and decide how you want to handle it from then
on.”

Lynn frowned at something she heard in her tone. “This really
is going to be a shocker, isn’t it?”

Helen nodded, her expression somber. “You have no idea.”

* * *

The back door to the house crashed open, scaring Lynn
half to death. She ran in from the living room, only to find Ed standing there
in the kitchen looking thoroughly furious. To her surprise, there was none of
her usual cowering response to his anger.

She stood her ground and leveled a look at him that would have
withered anyone else. “Next time knock,” she said quietly, regretting for once
that she hadn’t been more cautious about locking that blasted door, as Mitch had
begged her to. “You don’t have any right to walk in here anymore. I thought we’d
established that weeks ago.”

“I do as long as I’m paying the mortgage,” he blustered.

“But according to the bank, not only haven’t you been paying
the mortgage, you’ve been taking equity out of the house behind my back,” she
retorted furiously. “Thanks for that, by the way. Not only are you seriously
endangering the roof over your children’s heads, but ruining my credit rating in
the process.”

He waved off her claim as if it were unimportant. “And you’re
about to destroy my reputation. Watch how fast the gravy train dries up, if you
accomplish that,” he threatened. “I know what you and that barracuda attorney of
yours have been up to.”

“You mean the whole fighting fire with fire thing?” she asked.
“You started it, Ed, the day you came after my kids and used my job and Mitch to
do it. Until that moment, we still had a chance to settle this like civilized
adults.”

He looked only vaguely chagrined by her charge. “The man has a
drinking problem. Ask anyone.”

“He had a drinking problem right after his wife died,” she
said. “He was grieving. I doubt you’ll find anyone who’s hit an emotional rough
patch and hasn’t resorted to some sort of bad behavior they come to regret. If I
hadn’t grown up around a drunk, I might be drinking right now myself.”

“Of course you’d defend him,” Ed said sarcastically.

She looked him squarely in the eye. “Of course I would,” she
said quietly. “Especially when there’s an unjust charge leveled against him. Of
all the people you know, don’t you think I’d recognize an alcoholic if there
were one in my life?”

Ed flinched at that. He knew more than most what living with
her father had been like for her. “Maybe so,” he conceded.

“And, while we’re on the subject of crummy allegations, do you
honestly think I’d be working at Monty’s if I didn’t need the work because of
your outrageous behavior toward your family? Not that I need to defend myself in
the first place, because it’s a perfectly respectable bar. It’s not some
low-life dive the way you tried to imply in your motion. Don’t you think Hal
Cantor knows that, too? He eats in there at least once a week with some of the
other judges from the area. I assume you know that, since he was there when you
and Jimmy Bob were in there spying on me. That is why you came in that night,
right? It’s certainly not your usual style.”

“Okay, yes, I wanted to see for myself how low you’d sunk.”

She merely lifted a brow at that. Ed raked a hand through his
hair, then dragged out a kitchen chair and sat down, looking defeated.

He gave her a pleading look. “Lynn, we need to stop this before
it spins out of control.”

She heard something new in his voice then, a genuine edge of
desperation.

“I’m all for that,” she said cautiously. “Why this sudden
change of heart? Exactly what has Helen discovered that’s made you so nervous?
What have you done, Ed?”

He regarded her with unmistakable misery. “It’s not what I’ve
done, at least not exactly.”

“You’re not making a lot of sense,” she told him, arms folded
across her chest as she stood there waiting.

“Could you please sit down? This is hard enough as it is
without your just standing over me, waiting for me to trip up or something.”

She sat down gingerly on the edge of a chair on the opposite
side of the table. “What’s going on, Ed? Is it someone else? Is that what this
has been about from the beginning? Were you cheating on me and got caught?”

The question hung in the air for a very long time before he
finally nodded. “You’re not going to believe this. Hell, there are days I don’t
even believe it myself.”

Lynn waited him out. Over all these years, she’d thought she
knew and understood everything there was to know about her husband, but she’d
never seen him like this. Whatever he was trying to say was clearly costing him.
There had been a time when she’d have felt so sorry for him, she’d have let him
off the hook, but not now.

“Lots of people have affairs, Ed,” she said, trying to give him
an opening. “I never thought you’d be one of them, since you weren’t exactly
passionate when it came to me. I always felt like sex was some kind of chore for
you. I was young and naive when we got married, so I didn’t know any better, but
I understand now that wasn’t exactly normal. Was it because there was someone
else all along?”

He smiled weakly at that. “You’d probably even forgive me if I
said that’s all it was, wouldn’t you?”

She’d wondered about that way back when Helen had first asked
if he’d been sleeping with someone else. Would she be able to forgive him and
move on for the sake of their marriage, their children? At one time the answer
had probably been yes. She’d learned to live without passion, accepted that as a
trade-off for the tranquility she’d found in her marriage.

Now, though, having fallen for a man like Mitch who was willing
to give her up rather than hurt her, she wasn’t so sure she could ever go back
to the selfish, passionless brand of love Ed had shown her.

“No,” she said softly. “Maybe once upon a time, but not now,
Ed. I have more self-respect these days.”

“Good for you,” he said. Surprisingly, he sounded as if he
really meant it. “I was never the right man for you. I knew that almost from the
beginning, but I tried to be, Lynn.” His plaintive expression begged her to
believe him. “I swear to you that I really wanted our marriage to work. It was
just never meant to be.”

Now he had shocked her. “Because there was always someone
else?”

He nodded.

Lynn waited…and waited some more.

“It’s Jimmy Bob,” he said eventually.

Lynn heard the words, but they made no sense to her. “What does
Jimmy Bob have to do with anything?”

“He and I…” That was as much as he seemed capable of
saying.

“You and he,” she repeated, even as her mouth dropped open in
shock. “You and
Jimmy Bob?
”

“At least he was honest enough never to marry, never to drag
someone else into the middle of things, but me, I didn’t want to let down my
parents. You were right there, loving me, willing to take whatever scraps I
handed you. I deluded myself into thinking we could make it work, that no one
would ever have to be the wiser. Jimmy Bob wasn’t exactly thrilled, but he went
along with it because he knew as well as I did how conservative this town can
be. We both had big ambitions back then.”

“All these years?” Lynn said, unable to grasp it. “And no one
guessed?” She certainly hadn’t, and she’d been living with the man.

“We were careful. We never spent time together around here. In
fact, a lot of people thought there was bad blood between us. There was never a
hint of suspicion around town, at least not until someone who recognized Jimmy
Bob saw the two of us on a trip out of town.”

“And that person is blackmailing you,” she guessed, reeling.
Suddenly so many things were making sense to her. “My God, Ed, how could you do
this? All these years of lies and deceptions? The pretense of loving me? Of not
being true to yourself? How could you even look at yourself in the mirror?”

He looked at her sorrowfully. “Because I’m weak. I wanted what
I had, what we had. I wanted my parents to go on respecting me. I wanted to be
the man people would trust just the way they had my father. I wanted you, at
least in my own selfish way, and our kids. You know how it would have been if
I’d come out and announced that I was gay. There are not a lot of folks in
Serenity who would have coped well with that, even in some superficial way, much
less trusted me with their insurance needs.” He took a breath. “So I lied, to
you, to myself, to everyone.”

“Except Jimmy Bob,” she said wearily.

He nodded. “I even kept him at arm’s length in the beginning,
trying to maintain the charade, but it got to be too much. And he was getting
tired of it. I could hardly blame him for that. I had a decision to make and I
did. I chose him. I swear to you, though, before that he and I weren’t, well, we
weren’t
together
together, if you know what I mean.
I insisted on that.”

If she hadn’t been so stunned, Lynn might have been amused by
his odd code of honor.

“We went away after I’d asked for the divorce,” he told her.
“That very first trip, that’s when someone saw us and somehow put the pieces
together. That’s when the blackmail began and everything started to
unravel.”

“Why was Jimmy Bob setting up those offshore accounts for you?”
she asked. “So you could run?”

“Yes. Once the divorce was final, we planned to leave, get away
from the blackmail, all of it. I was tired of hiding. I knew once everything
came out, I’d never be able to face anyone here, least of all my parents.”