Built to Last (Harlequin Heartwarming) (17 page)

In the next snapshot, she was younger yet. Jo had seen this one, in her aunt’s photo albums. In it the sisters, dressed in Sunday best, leaned against each other, arms around each other’s waists, heads tilted so they touched as they smiled at the camera. Rhonda was half a head taller than her slightly younger sister.

Other casual photos followed: Jo’s mother playing a piano, her gaze fixed intently on the sheet music; holding an armful of cut roses, as if surprised coming in from the garden; and singing, clearly on stage at a coffee shop. In that one she was sitting, guitar balanced on her knees, the microphone close to her
mouth. Her hair flowed loose and she wore some filmy white shirt with embroidery. Jo peered closely. A Mexican peasant blouse. Her mother looked like a young Joan Baez or Carly Simon.

A wedding photograph, in which Jo’s absurdly young parents posed stiffly, her father in a dark suit and tie, her mother with a circlet of flowers around her head and wearing a simple white dress. The young man in the picture stared straight ahead, as if self-conscious, while the young woman’s head was tilted just enough to let her look at her new husband’s face.

Jo didn’t start to cry until she reached the photo of her mother holding a baby, apparently in the hospital. Above the standard-issue faded blue gown, her dark hair was tangled around a face that glowed with delight and love as she gazed down at the infant in her arms.

Me,
Jo realized.
That was me.

She had an album on her shelf that she’d taken when she left home, one that held her school pictures as well as some her parents had taken of her and Boyce when they were little. A few included her mother.

But not this one. She had never seen this one.

Others followed of her mother with Jo at home, first as a baby, then as a toddler. There were lots of these, as if her father had been as eager as any new parent to freeze forever the stages of his small daughter’s life. Tears wet her cheeks and kept falling as she understood that her parents had been proud. Of
her.

Boyce came into their lives. A snapshot showed a three-year-old Jo making a horrible face at her new baby brother while her mother laughed in the background. Jo’s first day of kindergarten was immortalized in a slightly different pose than the one in her album—but there she stood, small for her age, hair pigtailed so tight it must have hurt, legs skinny beneath a red dress she knew her mother had sewed.

How funny. Jo frowned in space. She’d forgotten that, but suddenly she had a vision of herself standing beside her mother, who was working on her sewing machine. Jo was watching the needle flash, up and down, up and down, as the fabric she had picked out slipped beneath it. Mom had made a pinafore, too, but Jo had refused to wear it the morning of kindergarten. Mom hadn’t minded. She’d
said, “You look so pretty in red, I don’t blame you.”

Her voice was as clear as if she were standing beside the bed right now. She sounded…affectionate, proud.

She’d walked Jo to school that first day, all the way to her classroom door. Then, when Jo froze outside, suddenly scared to go in, Mom had given her a gentle, loving push.

Other images followed, other clips Jo’s memory had stored until this day. A fall she’d taken from a swing set, and the fright in her mother’s eyes as she helped her up and brushed her off and took her home to bandage her scrapes. A fight with Boyce, and Mom’s disappointment in her, more effective than any raised voice. A piano lesson, her sitting on the bench beside her mother, Mom gently guiding her hands. They’d owned a piano, Jo suddenly knew, an old-fashioned upright. Her fingers recalled it, the rosewood cover she lifted, the faintly yellowing ivory keys, the faded linen runner that went over the top. What had happened to it? she wondered. It disappeared from her memory along with her mother, and must have gone about the same time. Had her father sold it because it reminded him too much of his dead wife?

But she didn’t linger on the piano, because she heard a song, low and haunting. Nothing she knew or could put words to, just a beautiful, lilting impression. Her mother sitting on the edge of her bed, tucking her in. Singing to her.

The box held letters, some of which she read, some of which she kept to read another day. A small book labeled
My Child
held proud notes of when Josephine Dubray had smiled and rolled over and sat up and walked. Small versions of her school kindergarten and first-grade pictures were glued inside. The entries ended there; nothing had been written for second grade, not even her teacher’s name. Jo didn’t remember it, either. Her mother had died in August that year.

A jewelry box held a few good necklaces and bracelets, some of which pinged at her memory and others of which weren’t familiar. But with them were her mother’s wedding and engagement rings, gold, the small ruby flanked with tiny diamonds a testament to their youth and optimism when Jo’s parents said, “I do.” Jo slipped the rings on her finger, and found they fit perfectly.

Her mother had died at thirty, only a year older than Jo was now. Her death had been
sudden, the result of carelessness. She’d been looking over her shoulder when she stepped into the street in front of an oncoming car. Or so Jo had been told; she’d suffered enough nightmares just from imagining the thud, her mother being thrown over the hood and into the windshield so hard her head cracked it.

So much had ended that day. The family photos, the proud entries in
My Child,
the piano lessons and the dresses sewn just for her. Jo would have given anything to have had her mother look that day before she crossed the street.

She might have had her mother at her wedding.

Squeezing a pillow convulsively, burying her wet face in it, Jo thought in pain and exultation,
But at least now I remember.

T
HE PHONE RANG
that night, well after Ryan had said good-night to the kids. It wasn’t so late that he should have been alarmed, but gut instinct told him the news wasn’t going to be good.

Jo,
was his first, disquieted thought. Her mood had been…odd this afternoon and evening. Maybe because of the box of her mother’s things waiting, unopened, for her at
home. Had something her father sent upset her so much she needed to talk?

He grabbed the phone on the third ring. “Hello.”

“Ryan?” his ex-wife asked, as if she didn’t know his voice.

“Wendy.” He should have had one of the kids call her to let her know they’d arrived safely. Of course she’d worry. “Melissa and Tyler got here fine,” he told her. “They’re babbling about the presents you helped them buy. Tyler is sorry I’ve already put up Christmas lights, because he wanted to help me.”

“They’re excited about Christmas.” Strain thinned her voice. “Ryan…”

Something tightened inside him. He’d heard her sound this way before.

Ryan, I’m not happy.
Her face lifted in sad appeal, as if he should sympathize.
You work so much, and we never go dancing or do anything romantic. You hardly touch me anymore! This is so terribly hard to say, but… Ryan, I want a divorce.

He’d been ashamed of his surge of relief. Both emotions had been swamped in the next second by his terror of losing his children.

Now he felt some of that same fear. She was going to say something he didn’t want to
hear, something that threatened his relationship with Melissa and Tyler.

He imagined her breathless voice coming faster and faster once she’d gotten past the difficulty of starting.

Ronald has this wonderful new job in Tokyo. I just wanted you to know, because of course the kids won’t be able to see you next summer. Maybe not for a couple of years, because it’s too expensive and anyway we want to immerse them in a new culture.
Oh, she would feel sorry for him, but not so much that she would tell her new husband that, no, they couldn’t take his children halfway around the world.

He shifted the phone to his other hand and wiped his sweaty palm on his jeans. “What?”

“Ryan, Ronald and I have been having…problems. He didn’t understand what taking on children meant.”

Ryan listened blankly. How could anyone not know what having kids involved?

“You remember what it was like when we were first married. How wrapped up we were in each other.”

He mumbled something she must have taken for assent, because she hurried on.

“We…we need some time
without
Melissa
and Tyler. I know this is truly dreadful, but…can they stay with you? At least for the rest of this school year?”

For a moment, he felt…nothing. Her request was so unexpected, so far from what he’d feared. Ryan waited until it sank in, shimmering beads of water blotted by a cloth.

She wanted to give up the kids. She’d chosen her new husband over them. What would this do to them?

“If they stay,” he said in a cold voice, “they won’t be going back to you, Wendy. This will be their last move.”

A sob preceded her whisper, “I know you’ll be better for them, but… This is so hard!”

Hard? He clenched his teeth to keep from a savage response. She was abandoning her children, and it was “hard.” For her, of course.

“Have you told them?” he asked.

“No.” Her voice was thick with tears. “I needed to talk to you first. To find out if you wanted them.”

Wanted them? She must know how desperately he had missed them, how hungry he was for every letter, every email, every phone call.

Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe her own emo
tions didn’t run deep enough to allow her to understand his.

“Yeah,” he said rawly. “I want them.”

The sounds of muffled crying came through the line. At last she blew her nose. With a form of dignity, she said, “You’ve always been a better parent than I have. I do know that.”

He was silent for a moment. “I pushed you to have kids. I guess I shouldn’t have.”

“I’m going to miss them so terribly!”

“Are you?”

“Yes! Why don’t you believe me? I love Melissa and Tyler! I just…” she faltered. “I need to save my marriage.”

“More than you need to be their mother.”

“It’s not that simple!” she cried. “Are you trying to make me feel worse?”

Me.
That’s all she ever thought about. If he hadn’t been so young when they married, he would have noticed.

But then, he wouldn’t have Tyler and Melissa.

“Do you want to tell them yourself?” he asked, knowing the answer.

“Would you?” she asked meekly. “Then I’ll call. But…oh, I think it will come better from you.”

Yeah. Of course it would. He’d had to tell them about the divorce, too.

How did you say,
Mommy doesn’t want you anymore?

“We’ll call you tomorrow,” he said harshly, and hung up before she could beg again for his understanding.

Because she wasn’t going to get it. A part of him was rejoicing—he didn’t have to put Melissa and Tyler back on the plane. He would tuck them in at night, chauffeur them to dance and soccer, go to parent-teacher meetings, deal with teenage sulks when they came in the next year or two.
His children were home to stay.

But rage gripped him nonetheless, for their sake. No matter how badly he wanted them, how would they live with the knowledge that their mother didn’t? Would there always be a hollow place inside them? How could she do this to them?

How would he tell them?

He turned out the lights and went upstairs, his steps heavy and slow. Light from the hall streamed in on Tyler, sound asleep, a tattered stuffed dinosaur tucked under his arm. He looked so young, no more than the five-year-old he’d been before the divorce.

Melissa slept more restlessly. She’d already thrown off her quilt and twisted the sheet around herself. Ryan gently untangled the sheet and pulled the quilt over her again, then eased out of her room as she sighed and turned over.

Tomorrow night, he guessed, they would cry themselves to sleep.

It wasn’t until he looked at himself in his bathroom mirror that horror hit him.

Oh, no! New Orleans.

He was going to prove that he and Jo could have fun as a couple, that they could be romantic and spontaneous and adventurous. That week was his one chance to convince her that life with him included more than obligations and dull routines. It was his chance to woo her, to persuade her that
he
was her greatest adventure.

Kathleen would take care of Melissa and Tyler—but how could he leave them right away, even for a week, when their mother had just dumped them?

Clutching the edges of the sink to keep himself standing, Ryan let a ragged, desperate moan escape, the closest he could allow himself to a howl of despair.

How could he look his kids in the eye, say,
“See you, guys, Jo and I are off on our vacation!” and depart for a romantic, theoretically carefree getaway?

How could he not, when it meant losing the woman he loved?

And he’d claimed not to understand Wendy. Ironic, wasn’t it?

The difference between him and his ex-wife was that he knew, from the roaring anguish in his chest, what sacrifice had to be made.

And his children wouldn’t be the ones making it.

“I
NEED TO TALK
to you two,” Ryan said.

Despite his best effort, something in his voice scared the kids. Tyler, who had been about to set his cereal bowl in the kitchen sink, turned with it still clutched in his hand. Melissa closed the refrigerator and backed against it as if facing an attacking Rottweiler.

“What?” she asked.

He nodded toward the living room. “Let’s go sit down.”

They sat next to each other on the couch, a rare event. Ryan lowered himself to the coffee table facing them, close enough to touch.

“It’s Mom, isn’t it?” Melissa said. “Is she sick or something?”

“No. She’s not sick.” Searching for inspiration that hadn’t come during the night, Ryan looked down at his hands, splayed on his knees. “She and I did talk last night, though, after you’d gone to bed.”

Melissa blanched. Tyler’s face was pinched, his eyes wide. Neither said a word.

“I guess she and your stepdad have been having some problems.”

His daughter gave a tiny nod. “They argue some times.”

“The thing is,” he drew a deep breath, “we decided it would be best if you two live with me.”

Tyler seemed frozen, his mouth half-open, his eyes unblinking. Melissa was the one to scoot sideways, close enough to her brother so that their shoulders touched.

“She knew before she sent us, didn’t she? That’s why she was so sad.”

“I guess she was thinking about it,” Ryan admitted. “I didn’t know until last night that she would consider letting you stay with me.”

They said nothing.

“I hope you both know there’s nothing in the world I want as much as to have you living here, with me. It’s been killing me having you so far away. The trouble is, now you’re going to be a long ways from your mom instead.”

In a small voice, Melissa asked, “Will we visit her?”

He hadn’t asked, had no idea. “I assume so,” he said. “Your mom and I haven’t discussed that yet. She was pretty upset. You’re right. She’s sad.”

Tyler unfroze. “Will we go to school here and everything?”

“Yep. Your mom will have to send your stuff. The first day of school, we’ll go down and enroll you here.”

“Can I be in the same class with Chad?”

Ryan exhaled. “I don’t know. We can ask.”
Or beg, if he had to.
“Your mom is going to want to talk to you tonight. You can think of questions to ask her.”

They nodded like automatons, apparently numb.

“Once you’ve had time to take this all in, we’ll have to talk about rules here. What I expect from you, what you expect from me. We’ll look into getting you signed up for whatever you want—dance, music lessons, whatever interests you.”

He expected Melissa to demand instantly that she have her own bedroom. Instead, she put her arm around Tyler.

“Mom didn’t want us, did she?”

He hated to lie to them, but some truths shouldn’t be told.

“I think your stepfather didn’t want you. Or your mom thinks, for whatever reason, that the problems she’s having with him will go away if you’re not there all the time. After
being divorced once, she really wants to make this marriage work.”

The subtext couldn’t be hidden:
she wants the marriage to work more than she wants to have you with her.
Even Tyler at only eight was smart enough to understand that much.

“We’ll have to buy stuff for you guys, too. More bedding, posters for the walls…uh, whatever your mother doesn’t send.”

Still his often pouty eleven-year-old daughter amazed and impressed him by not saying rudely, “I can’t share a bedroom with
him!
”

He continued, “Melissa, if you’ll be patient, I’m going to open up the rest of the attic and create another bedroom. When I’m done, you can choose which one you want, since you’re the oldest.”

“But…what if Mom wants us back?” Tyler asked, voice trembling. “And you’ve gone to all that work and everything?”

Another truth had to be told. This one might be unwelcome, but Ryan would not let them live with any more uncertainty.

“You won’t be going back to live with her.” He looked them in the eye, made sure they saw the steel that underlay those words. “I won’t lose you again, and I won’t have you two put through another move. Having to
make friends again, remember what bed you’re waking up in, know who you can count on. You’ll probably visit your mother sometimes, but your home will be here. For good.”

“Oh.” Tyler looked shell-shocked, Melissa only slightly less so.

Ryan dropped to his knees and held out his arms. “Come here.”

They flung themselves at him, burrowing against him, clutching him so tightly it hurt, their arms overlaying each other. He hadn’t cried in a long time, but his eyes were wet right now, blurring the sight of their heads against his chest, Tyler’s darker than his sister’s.

They spent the day prowling the Northgate mall, partly to give themselves something to do. Tyler picked out new sheets and a comforter for his twin bed. Melissa didn’t know what she wanted for hers. Tyler asked for a Mariners pennant to hang on the wall, “Since I live here now,” he said firmly. “In
Seattle.
”

Ryan had the guilty feeling that he was spending money as if doing so would patch emotional wounds, but he wanted to believe that instead, with a few new possessions to make the bedroom
theirs,
he was helping to
root them, to convince them that this really would be home.

Melissa didn’t pick out anything, Ryan noted. Of course, her room would take him several weeks if not months to carve out of unfinished attic, especially if he added a dormer, but he guessed her disinterest stemmed instead from her tighter bond with her mother. This was going to be harder on her. Tyler and Ryan had always been buddies, nothing complex to their relationship. But Melissa…she
looked
like her mother. She identified with her.

And now, at a particularly difficult age, on the brink of puberty, she’d been abandoned by her.

A man who rarely had violent tendencies, right about now Ryan would have liked to kill Wendy. Or make her sit down, look Melissa in the eyes and explain why she didn’t have it in her to be the mother her daughter needed so badly.

By evening, he was exhausted. The strain of maintaining an upbeat front all day was showing. The kids got quieter and quieter while he got jollier and jollier. He couldn’t seem to stop himself.

He called Wendy for them, handed Melissa
the phone and left the kitchen to give them the privacy to say anything to their mother. Out in the living room, he paced, able to hear only a low murmur of voices.

The conversation was a lot shorter than it should have been. They came into the living room with the same pinched expressions they’d had that morning, the same stiff, mechanical way of moving. “I’m sorry,” he said simply, and held out his arms again.

With Melissa nestled under one arm and Tyler under the other, he kissed the tops of their heads. “Did you have a good talk with your mom?”

Sure they had,
he mocked himself.
They just
loved
discussing why, after sending them off to visit Dad for Christmas, their mother had decided she didn’t want them to come home again.

Tyler shook his head. “She just kept crying and saying she was sorry.”

In a small voice, Melissa asked, “Doesn’t she love us at all?”

He explained the best he could. He concluded, “She does love you. A whole lot. As much as she can. But sometimes I think she isn’t completely grown up herself. It’s one of the things that led to our divorce. I needed
her to be completely adult, a mother and wife, and she still wanted to be twenty years old and fun-loving. She
is
fun, which is one of the great things about your mother, but it can also be really frustrating.”

Tyler’s head bobbed against him. “She was always forgetting stuff she’d
promised
to do. Like, she was supposed to go on a school field trip to this TV studio, only she didn’t show up and my teacher had to find someone else at the last minute.” His humiliation and disappointment could be heard even in this flat recitation.

Melissa stiffened. “She
explained!
She
told
you she didn’t forget, she just had an appointment and then traffic was really bad and she couldn’t get there in time. Things happen!”

“She forgot!” Tyler yelled.

“She didn’t!” Melissa’s voice choked with tears. “You’re trying to make her sound bad!”

“Hey! Hey!” Ryan shook them gently. “Enough! It doesn’t matter whether she forgot. People
do
forget things that are important to other people, and we can forgive them. Okay?”

They went quiet and sullen. Finally Ryan got them to agree to watch a TV show they usually both enjoyed, and, leaving them sit
ting as far as they could get from each other in the living room, he went to the kitchen to call Jo. A cowardly part of him wanted to put off giving her the news, but he wouldn’t let himself.

“Hey,” she said, sounding pleased to hear from him. “Did you have a good day with the kids?”

“No. Actually, today sucked.” He heard the exhaustion and anger in his voice. “Any chance you could come over? We can talk after the kids are in bed.”

She agreed to come and didn’t question him, for which he was intensely grateful. The doorbell rang just as he was ushering Melissa and Tyler upstairs to bed.

“Jo must be here,” he said.

Their glances at each other crackled with unspoken communication, a sign that they had restored a semblance of solidarity.

“We’ll go brush our teeth,” Melissa said. “Won’t we, Tyler?”

Her brother nodded, but his expression became anxious. “You’ll come and say goodnight, won’t you, Dad?”

He ruffled Tyler’s hair. “Of course I will. Now, go on.”

Ryan let Jo in. “Sorry to be so slow. I was just sending the kids up to get ready for bed.”

She unwound her scarf. “I’m too early.”

“Nope.” The anguish that hadn’t left him since last night twisted in his chest. “You’re never here soon enough for me,” he muttered, just before he kissed her.

Her lips held the chill of a night that might bring snow. They warmed quickly under his, and she sighed.

How was he going to live without her?

She was the one to ease back, her eyes searching his. “It’s only been one day, and you missed me.”

“You could say that.” He sounded ragged.

Jo framed his face with her hands and stood on tiptoe to press a sweet kiss on his mouth, a complete contrast to the moment before.

“I missed you, too,” she said softly. “Last night, after I looked at my mother’s things, I wanted so much to talk to you.”

In his own troubles, he’d forgotten the package from her father waiting for her at home. Ryan felt like scum.

“Talk to me now.” He smiled ruefully when they both heard the voice call him from upstairs. “Well, in a minute.” He nodded toward
the kitchen. “Get yourself a cup of coffee if you want. I’ll be back.”

“Okay.” She smiled. “Go. You’re wanted.”

Upstairs he found the kids in their own beds, Melissa already with her light turned off and her back to the door. Ryan went to her first, bending to kiss her cheek and murmur softly, “I love you, ’Lissa.”

Her arms shot out for a quick, fierce hug. “I love you, too, Daddy,” she whispered.

He smiled, hiding the pain he felt for her, and smoothed first the hair back from her face and then her covers over her shoulders. “I’ll see you in the morning. Hey, maybe there’ll be snow.”

“I want it on Christmas.”

“This might be the year. You never know.”

Tyler still sat bolt upright, bedside lamp on. “You’re not going anywhere, are you, Dad?”

“Nope.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “I wouldn’t leave you and Melissa alone. Your sister isn’t old enough to be in charge yet.”

Tyler muttered, “She already
thinks
she is.”

“I heard that!” his sister snapped from the other bed.

Ryan and his son exchanged wry grins. “Okay,” Ryan said, “scoot down. Time to go to sleep.”

He arranged Tyler’s covers, made sure his dinosaur was within reach and turned out the light before leaning down to kiss his forehead.

“I love you.”

Tyler nodded. “Dad?”

“Um-hm?”

“I’m
glad
we’re staying,” he said with astonishing force. “I want to live here, with you. I hated Denver.”

Melissa kept quiet this time. Ryan said, “I know you hadn’t made friends. I’m glad you still have some here. And you know what?”

“What?” his son asked.

“I know you’ll miss your mom, but
I’m
glad you’re staying, too.” He kissed Tyler’s forehead, too. “Good night,” he said softly.

From habit he left their door open about six inches and the bathroom light on so that they weren’t in complete darkness.

Outside, he stood for a moment listening, but heard nothing. Tyler would have wanted him to dry his tears, but Melissa was old enough to prefer to cry alone, into her pillow. He had to respect that.

Tiredly Ryan started downstairs. Time for phase two in the rotten day.

In the kitchen, Jo turned to face him, set
ting down her coffee cup. “Okay. What was so awful about your day?”

No reprieve. “More than a day. The past twenty-four hours.”

Creases formed in her brow. “But I’d barely left you twenty-four hours ago.”

“Wendy called.” Ryan pulled a stool up to the tiled counter. Fittingly, Jo stayed on the other side of it, waiting. Ryan was blunt. “She doesn’t want the kids back. They’re going to stay with me.”

Except for a widening of the eyes, Jo didn’t react. Slowly she said, “Aren’t you glad?”

“Yeah!” he said explosively. “For myself. Maybe for Melissa and Tyler, long term. In the short term, they’re hurting. Your mother died. Imagine if she’d left you on purpose.”

Jo flinched, and he cursed his big mouth. “I’m sorry….”

“No.” She shook her head. “You’re right. Poor Melissa! That day at the Pike Place Market, she talked about her mother all the time. This is going to be hardest on her, isn’t it?”