Forevermore (12 page)

“You didn’t have him followed and not tell me about it, did you?”

Her lips twitched. “No, but one phone call and it’ll be done.”

“No. Thank you, though. This makes me feel better about it.”

Her smile faded. “I’m sorry you lost her.”

I nodded crisply. I was sorry, too. But I also tried to be happy for Olivia. If Kathryn had a sister, I would have wanted to know her.

“You’re an amazing woman, M. I don’t have the courage to take in a child and raise her, provide a safe place for her. You did it so well.”

I shook off her compliment. “You could do it. Anyone could.”

“Anyone should, but not everyone can.”

I pushed the file folder back to her. She took it without question and returned it to her desk drawer. Anyone else probably would have insisted I take it with me. “I’m glad I stopped by.”

She smiled. “Me, too.”

M / 17

For the second time this week, I nearly fell on my face as soon as I walked through my front door. Damn! It! Both Caleb and Briony’s shoes were right in the path of the front door like miniature stable jumps for anyone coming inside. Problem was, no one ever looked down when they first walked in the door. And I’d told them this, many, many times.

I always knew that no one would be as neat as I was. No one as ordered. I made allowances for that when I readied myself to live with Briony and her son. I had to come to grips with the fact that I would do more cleaning because I liked things much neater than, well, any human I’d ever met. I accepted that truth. For Briony’s love, it wasn’t even a factor. Still, the reality of it, sometimes daily, could grate on my nerves. Especially after a long day at work.

Taking a deep breath, I nudged the shoes out of the way, lining them up against the foyer wall where they’d forgotten to place them. Where they knew I liked the shoes to be placed if they were going to take them off as soon as they got home. Living with someone, no matter how much I loved her and how wonderful her child was, turned out to be harder than anything I’d done in my adult life. It was also more wonderful than anything I’d experienced in my adult life. But on days like today when I was hot and tired and still filled with sorrow, trip hazards as soon as I entered my very own sanctuary stirred my blood to a low boil.

“Why not?” Caleb’s raised voice hit me from the living room as I kicked off my dress shoes, placed them against the wall, and stepped into the comfy sneakers I wore in the house. “Everyone else has one.”

“Because you don’t need one. We said when you got to high school. We agreed on that.”

“You agreed to that,” he snapped, very un-Caleb-like, making me halt my progress down the hallway.

I could hear Briony’s sigh from twenty feet away. “Ninth grade, Caleb. That’s it.”

“I’m the only dweeb at camp who doesn’t have one. I’ll be the only dweeb in eighth grade without one. Even Olivia got one before she left. How come it’s okay that she has one but I don’t?”

“One, we didn’t get it for her, Willa did. And two, it was the only way to ensure we could all stay in touch with her. Unlike your situation, she actually needed one.”

“I can’t even text her.” The anguish in his voice lathered me in guilt.

“You can use your very handy iPad, which you begged me to get you last summer because you were the only dweeb at camp without one of those if I recall. I’m pretty sure you can text her and any of your other non-dweeb friends at camp or school on that. No one will know you don’t have a phone.”

“Everyone will know!” he practically screeched, sounding more like a variety of bird than a teenage boy. “Come on, Mom. It’s only a year early.”

“We’ll see,” she said, which meant she’d think of some other argument for saying no tomorrow.

“That always means no,” her very astute son told her.

“You’re right,” Briony’s weary voice caused a twinge in my heart. She must have had a hard day, too. “Last day of summer next year, you can pick the phone you want.”

“That doesn’t help me now.”

“Nope.”

“This sucks!” he griped.

“I’m sure it does,” his mom agreed. She must be too tired to remind him of his tone. For the three years I’d been a part of this family, I could count on one hand the number of times Caleb acted up like this. He was pretty even keeled, almost always cheery. Sure, he’d hit his teenage years, but until this summer, those expected angry teen moments hadn’t yet surfaced.

“I want to spend the night at Hank’s.”

“Not tonight,” Briony told him.

“Why not?” This seemed to be a favorite of his now.

“Because you’ve spent the last four nights at his house. You’ve overstayed your welcome.”

“He wants me there.”

“It matters what his grandmother wants.”

“She likes me.”

“I know she does, but that doesn’t mean she wants to raise you. We’re going to give her a break for a while. You can spend the night in your very own room filled with all those other things you were convinced would make you lame if you didn’t have them.”

“Man!” He said it like he was swearing up a storm. “You don’t let me do anything. I hate it here. There’s nothing to do. No one to hang out with. You’re trying to ruin my life!”

With that declaration, I heard slapping feet on our refinished original hardwoods as he ran down the hallway, barely registering that I was standing in his path before swooping around me and pounding up the staircase. Three-two-one, SLAM! His door frame was probably hanging in shreds with the power of that door slam.

Briony’s head was bent when I joined her in the living room. I stepped up behind her and slid my arms around her middle, resting my chin on her shoulder. “Tough day?”

She shook her head and sighed, leaning back against me. “I should just get him the phone. He’s gotten so…so…I don’t know. Just a few weeks ago, he was a sweet kid. How could it go so wrong so quickly?”

“Demon possession?”

She laughed and the tightness in my chest loosened. My hard day suddenly forgotten. Her happiness was my quest. For someone who used to spend much of her time living inside herself, having a quest like this helped.

“You’re not getting him a phone or a dog. You don’t want or like either. You said ninth grade, he understands that. He doesn’t like it, but he understands it. You start switching the rules now and he’ll smell the blood in the water. He’ll circle you with his fin up for every moment of his high school years. Stay firm, my sweet.”

Her golden eyes softened. “I love you, you know? You’re exactly what I need. What we need.”

I slid my hand down her arm to her hand, fingering her engagement ring. The one I had inscribed with the very sentiment she just voiced. It was my way of telling her I loved her when I still had trouble saying the words. “You’re all I’ll ever need.”

She turned in my arms and kissed me, taking her time to show me how much she loved me. When she pulled back we were both breathless. “How was your afternoon class?”

“Fine,” I said automatically because really, what were entitled-acting college students compared to a stepson who was hurting so much he was lashing out at his once adored mother?

“Any requests for dinner?” She brushed her fingers through my hair as her other hand stroked patterns over my chest. It still amazed me how easy this was for me now. How much having her this close made everything in my life good.

“Caleb’s favorite.”

She flashed a bright smile. “Now who’s bribing him?”

“It’s not a bribe so much as a project.” I watched her head tilt in interest as I started backing down the hall. “We’ll see if it works.”

Upstairs Olivia’s door stood open. I’d closed it just yesterday, which meant that either Briony or more likely Caleb had opened it to look inside. It might have been the instigator for this mini-fit of his.

I knocked twice on Caleb’s closed door. No immediate response, so I rapped again. Harder.

“What?” he bellowed from inside.

I eased the door open. “Hi.”

His face registered shock, regret, then annoyance once again. He just looked at me, but I held firm until he finally relented. “Hey, M.”

I came in and gestured to the edge of his bed, asking if I could sit. He never minded before. In fact, he was more of a door’s always open kinda person. We’d had to train him to knock on all closed doors.

He gave me a shrug but watched as I took the seat, careful not to crowd his legs that seemed to be getting longer by the minute. His clothes from camp that day were strewn haphazardly near his closet. He must have tossed them toward the hamper and not cared if they made it in or not. It was fine with me as long as his room didn’t start to smell from the unwashed clothes or any food he smuggled up here. Briony was more of a stickler about him cleaning his room.

“I caught most of that as I came in, big guy,” I started, trying not to sound like a scolding parental unit and more like a concerned confidante. “I know you’re sometimes angry. I know the feeling can just creep up on you. It’s easy to vent to the people you know won’t hold it against you.”

“She holds everything against me.”

“You know that’s not true.” I stared him down until he jerked his chin in agreement. “And I know you miss Olivia. We all do. That anger you feel, it’s really just you hurting.”

He looked away then whipped his legs off the bed and lurched over to his beanbag chair. Every bone in his body collapsed in on themselves as he dropped into the cushy seat. “It sucks.”

“Yeah, it does. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t a good thing for us. It hurts like crazy. But we can’t get mad at each other, Caleb. We can’t let that sadness make us hurt others.”

His eyes welled up, and he swallowed hard. “I just get so…”

“I know. I heard a girl laugh on campus today, and I could have sworn it was Olivia. It just made the hurt hurt more, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“Your mom loves you more than anything in the world. She’s hurting, too. She doesn’t deserve to be yelled at.”

“I didn’t yell,” he mumbled, but he looked sufficiently guilty.

“Okay, she doesn’t deserve to have her kid, the person she loves more than life itself, tell her that she’s ruining his life. Don’t ya think?” My eyebrows rose and accompanied a teasing smile. “Maybe you were a little hard on her?”

“Yeah. But I am the only kid without a cellphone. Hank got one yesterday.”

Ah, there it was. Hank got one, so Caleb would want one. “You know that the texting function on a cellphone will help Hank communicate with people who don’t always understand him when he speaks. He actually needs a phone and you just want one.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Face it, you’ve got a mom who thinks cellphones are causing the downfall of civility. Consider yourself lucky that she’s even letting you get one next year.”

His lips pulled wide. “Hank said I could use his anytime I wanted.”

“Brilliant. You’ve already got a temporary solution. Now all that’s left…”

He looked expectantly at me.

“Is to…” I went on.

He still gave me a blank look.

“Apologize for being a clone of Damien, maybe?”

He laughed, not that he’d seen the movie, but some of his friends had seen the remake so he knew the reference. “Yeah, okay.”

“Now, bucko,” I used his mom’s favorite pet name for him. “It’s taco night, and you’re the only one who can chop the onions without crying.”

He laughed again, that sweet boy I’d first met at Hank’s house and later gotten to know and love always seemed to win out, even when he was being his most demonic.

M / 18

Laughter erupted from the sofa cluster. I glanced over from the dining table not at all surprised to see Willa leaving the group on her way over to me. She was a master at drive-by entertainment. Stop off to hear a topic, drop an amusing line or two on the subject, and whisk herself away before the topic becomes stale.

“What are you doing?”

“Setting the table,” I said as I did any Sunday night that we joined the friends for dinner. It kept me from having to take part in many conversations. Or having Briony or Willa help me through them.

“If you do this, how do I stay away from the annoying ones?” She smiled brightly, knowing exactly why I was doing this.

We glanced back over at the group where the most boisterous of the crowd, Des, was holding court. I’d actually gotten somewhat used to her when she was restoring the historical home Briony and I bought. She does good work, talks too much and is nosy as hell, but she does good work.

The baby started crying again. It pretty much only ever cried, or at least, that’s all I ever saw it do. And yes, I should call it by its gender but so far I could only label it a crying machine. Sam and Caroline looked exhausted, acted exhausted, and used these dinners as their best chance to pass off the baby to other willing arms and zone out. I tried not to frown whenever I saw them or the baby. They’d spent hundreds of thousands to get that child, first with donor sperm then in vitro fertilization. When neither worked, they chose the more expensive option of utilizing a gestational carrier rather than a surrogate so they could use Caroline’s eggs to have a biological baby. At first I felt bad that they couldn’t get pregnant, but then I started thinking about all the barely year-old babies in the foster care program that could have used their love and care and not cost them a dime, or rather, cost Willa a dime.

Isabel scooped up the baby before Sam or Caroline even made a move off the couch. She beat Skye to the bassinette by five seconds. Isabel obviously missed holding babies now that her daughter was almost seventeen. Kayin, her partner, well, renewed partner after a yearlong separation, moved to the other side of the group. She clearly didn’t want Isabel getting any ideas about babies.

Jessie, Lauren, and Briony all made their way outside where Quinn was grilling dinner. This had been a standard action for many of the group since the baby’s arrival six months ago. All that time that Sam and Caroline were trying for a baby, I doubted they counted on having one that never stopped crying.

Willa tipped her head and smiled as she watched them sneak outside. She gestured for us to go into the kitchen so we could distance ourselves from the squalling child. “My ears!”