Love Is More Than Skin Deep (A Hidden Hearts Novel Book 4) (10 page)

Ketki pulls on my shirt and asks, “Is Shelby supposed to look like that? Her cuts look worse and she looks so white.”

I kneel down in front of Ketki and quietly answer, “She’s been through a lot and she’s going to be paler than us because she’s not Cherokee, remember?”

When Shelby hears our voices, she struggles to sit up. “Hey Ki, hope you brought your DS. I’m bored out of my mind.”

I’m a little stunned to hear Shelby address Ketki by her pet name, but when I think about it, it’s not that surprising at all. In some ways, Ketki is closer to Shelby than she is with me.

Ketki nods and answers, “I did. But why are you so white?”

Shelby just groans as she replies, “Don’t remind me about that. That’s what started this whole thing or so the doctors say. When I was a teenager my foster mom had friends with older teenage girls. I wanted to fit in and be popular. But I was one of the most backwards kids you ever saw. I didn’t know anything about fashion, makeup or boys. I hadn’t even been to school in years. I was really insecure about that in fact. I didn’t really even want anybody to know about my weird past. I wanted to pretend that I was somebody else. I wanted to fit into this new foster home. These people were everything that my real family wasn’t.”

“They were?” Ketki queries.
 

Shelby frowns. “They were loaded with money. Sadly, their own daughter had some sort of incurable hard to face disease that they knew was going to kill her eventually, so for the first eight and a half years of her life, she knew that she was going to die and they were planning for her funeral the whole time she was alive. So, when they heard the story about my brother, they figured that they needed to try to adopt me.”

“That was nice of them,” I comment.

“One would think so, but it didn’t turn out to be so great. Instead of allowing me to be myself, they tried to turn me into the person that their daughter used to be. It was a huge humongous mess, I really didn’t have any idea about who I wanted to be, and I was trying to pretend to be somebody else. I was in a household where nobody wanted me to be who I really was. It was a recipe for disaster. I became this fake teenager, trying to be older than I really was. So, I started doing all of this weird stuff to my hair and going to tanning booths with the older girls.”

“How old were you again?” I ask, trying to do the mental math in my head.

“I did about a year in temporary foster homes before I was placed with Neil and Vicki Wilcox, so I guess I was still thirteen, may be a few months shy of fourteen,” I deduce.

“That’s absolutely crazy. They shouldn’t have allowed you to tan that young. Was Mrs. Wilcox taking you to those appointments?” I can’t help it as the natural attorney-voice in me pops out.

“No, of course she wasn’t. The older girls always had convenient excuses why we had to go to the mall and no one ever questioned it, because teenage girls always hang out at the mall.”

“Shelby, didn’t the mom-lady notice that you were changing color?” Ketki asks with open curiosity.

Shelby looks troubled for a moment before she answers, “You know, she probably should have, but I don’t think she did. I think she was too busy with her social engagements to look that closely at me. Don’t get me wrong, the Wilcox family was really nice to me. They gave me everything that I needed and could ever want. I thought I had everything that I wanted while I was hanging out in the middle of the wilderness with my parents, but even after I had all that new stuff, I still felt empty and lonely. What I learned from the whole experience is that it’s not really about stuff — either no stuff, or too much stuff. You just need to find someone and a few things to make you feel cherished and comfortable. The rest of it doesn’t really matter.”

Ketki looks baffled for a moment before she asks, “Why aren’t
they
here with you? My Dad is the busiest person I’ve ever seen and whenever I have to go to the doctor or the hospital, he’s always there.”

A spark of pain crosses Shelby’s face. I can tell that this question is not an easy one for her to answer, yet she puts on a brave face and forges ahead, “Ketki, I don’t know that I’ll ever know the whole reason, but I think it’s because they never got over the loss of their daughter and I couldn’t compete with that. Sadly, I left on angry terms and we don’t really communicate anymore. I don’t know that they would even care what I’m going through. I turned out to be simply an inconvenient blip on their radar. It’s weird, I’ve got two sets of parents who didn’t really want me”

“Wow, you didn’t tell me that you have a mom that didn’t want you too.” Ketki breathes almost silently.

Shelby and I immediately start to protest, “Ketki, That’s not exactly true — there was other stuff going on.”

“Dad, if that’s true for me, who’s to say it’s not true for Shelby too?” Ketki challenges.

Shelby swallows hard before she replies, “You’re right Ketki, I guess I don’t really know all the answers. I can only make guesses and they might be wrong. I’ve had the same cell phone number since I was twelve and no one has ever called me. I can only assume that no one wants to speak to me.”

“I like you and it’s not just because you play video games with me. I like talking to you and I don’t like talking to most people,” Ketki confesses softly.

“Oh, Ki, I love talking to you too and it’s not just because you bring me cookies,” Shelby responds tearfully. She leans forward in the chair to give Ketki a hug and has to draw in a deep breath as she winces in pain.

It’s all I can do not to scowl at the situation and make it worse. It’s the most helpless feeling in the world to see her hurting and not be able do anything about it. This is not helping my stress level at all. There must be something I can do to help relieve her pain. In what I’m learning is very typical Shelby fashion, she just grits her teeth and doesn’t say a single word. She might not want to talk about it, but I need to see how she’s really doing. It might not be the coolest thing I’m ever going to do in my life, but I am about to unabashedly throw Tristan under the bus as I make a suggestion to my daughter, “Hey, Ketki when I called Tristan this morning he was telling me that he had new updates to his new program and he wanted players who had never seen it before to take a shot at it. Do you want to go check it out and see if you like it?”

“Dad, I thought you said that we were here to hang out with Shelby, why do you want me to play with video games now?” Ketki asks with an incredulous expression on her face.

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep her company, I promise. You know me, I like to go on and on about really boring, complicated stuff. You might as well be having fun,” I try to hedge, embarrassed.
 

“Whatever,” Ketki answers as she digs a ponytail holder out of her pocket and stands in front of me waiting for me to do the usual. “You know that I know Shelby is sick, right? She told me. It’s not like she could keep it secret — the doctor dug craters all over her whole body like an archaeologist.”

I nod in agreement as I finish Ketki’s hair and briefly bend down to kiss the top of her head.

For the first time today, I see Shelby with her trademark wide grin. It’s a little crooked because of all the swelling in her face, but she still looks beautiful to me. She holds her hand out to Ketki and says, “I really appreciate you looking out for me — but your dad isn’t going to do anything to hurt me. He probably just wants to talk about grown-up medical stuff like what medicines I’m on or what kind of physical therapy I did last week. It’s really boring, tedious stuff, so you might as well go play games with Tristan. I can assure you that his stuff is massively intriguing. I’ve been down to his little computer lab of sorts down there — it’s like the set of a spy movie. Just the equipment alone is fascinating. I bet the software is downright awe-inspiring. If he gave me the chance to check it out and I felt up to it, you better believe I would be the first in line. Sadly, my skills on the computer are not as sharp as yours, so I think he’d rather have you over me.”

Ketki perks up when she hears that little tidbit of information. “Really? You think so? I’ve been kicked out of groups on the ‘net, because they don’t think I know anything, because I’m just a kid or because I’m a girl.”

I lay my hand on my daughter’s shoulder as I respond, “I agree Ketki, it’s totally not fair. So, do you want to show one of the best program designers in the whole world that you know your stuff?”

“Is pi the coolest number in the world?” Ketki asks as she sprints down the hall. That’s the interesting — and sometimes perilous thing about her — she doesn’t have a medium speed. It’s either totally stop or totally go, nothing in between.

Over my shoulder, I comment to Shelby, “I’ll be right back, I want to talk to you —”

HOW ODD. THE ALLEGEDLY HOT guy on the cover of the romance novel just isn’t doing it for me. Oh, I’m sure his sunny good looks, are appealing to some, but I’m finding myself drawn to an entirely different kind of man. Actually one man. One quirky, complicated, frustrating, sometimes brooding, often amusing man. I’ve never met anyone like him. It would be so easy to write him off as the quintessential rugged man-candy who is too good-looking for his own good, except that he’s such a great dad and deeply spiritual in an offbeat way. In my years as a teacher’s aide through college and a student teacher, I’ve met a lot of guys with kids, but I’ve never met anyone who is as close with their child as he is. It’s remarkable to me that he juggles all of this by himself.

It would be easy for me to claim that I’m not actually searching for a relationship. Yet if I’m honest with myself, I know that that’s not quite true. Deep down, I think everybody hopes that they’re going to miraculously stumble upon the love of their life when they go to the grocery store, the post office, or out for a jog. It’s supposed to happen like some grand romantic movie that you would see in black and white. At least that’s what I always thought when I made up stories in my head to pass the time. I would dream up elaborate scenarios about how I would grow up and meet someone when I was grocery shopping or doing the laundry in the laundromat and that person would take me away from the lifestyle that I grew up in.
 

Of course, that was before my brother died and everything changed, but I used to dream of how someone would see me from across the room and instantly fall in love and our chemistry would be so strong that nothing and no one could dissuade my potential beau from pursuing me. Back then I thought that the potential foes might be dragons, wizards or monsters. I never dreamed that the barriers that I faced would be both more insidious and more mundane, like chronic poverty and cancer. Surprisingly, aside from being incredibly worried about me, Mark does not seem to believe that the cancer and the fact that I might die from it is any sort of deal breaker in a relationship between us. In fact, he seems pretty intent on flirting with me and pursuing a relationship.
 

It’s the oddest thing about us, to the extent that there is an us. One moment he seems to be openly pursuing me like any regular guy would do. The next moment, he seems to be putting on the brakes as hard as he possibly can. Yet, I’m not really in a position to be calling him out on his behavior, because I’m doing the same thing.
 

It would be so easy for me to settle right into a relationship, but is it really the best thing for everyone, or am I merely taking the easy road because Mark has made it so comfortable for me to stay?

It would be easier if I could just ignore him, but Mark is just about everything I hoped to find in a guy. He is a man of extreme moral character; Mark isn’t easily persuaded by the whims of others. If he believes something is right, he is going to stand up for it regardless of what anyone else thinks. That’s really important to me, for a man to have principles and be willing to stand up for them. I love the fact that he’s made huge sacrifices for his daughter and is not willing to make compromises in her education or medical care. He’s her biggest advocate and I love that he’s always in her corner, even when it’s not convenient to be.
 

Mark shows that same kind of loyalty everywhere. The most astonishing thing to me is that before he even really got to know me, he extended that same dedication to me. After it became clear that the first plastic surgeon that I met with was subpar, Mark went out of his way to find me Dr. Charleston. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to separate my feelings of gratitude toward Mark from something much deeper. I don’t know where gratitude ends and something else begins.
 

What do we even call the “something else”? We are not really dating except we spend a remarkable amount of time together like a family. After the first procedure that took me by surprise, I practically moved in with Ketki and Mark. Honestly, although physically I felt like used chewing gum, emotionally, I felt the best I’ve been in a while. Sometimes, I just get so busy living my life that I forget how utterly isolated I am. Maybe, I do that intentionally, to protect myself from my own situation. I don’t really tell many people about the things that have happened in my life. If people ask me where my family is from, I just tell them they're not from the area. I don’t often go into the long saga very much. It surprises me that I’ve revealed so much to Mark. Yet, he makes it easy to trust him with the information, because he never makes me feel like he’s going to use it against me like a weapon.