Let Me Love You Again (An Echoes of the Heart Novel Book 2) (10 page)

The way she and Joe had. “Brad and Dru worked past their issues.”

Their Dru had learned how to believe in someone, something, as her very own. Oliver needed the same confidence in himself—in his heart. A lot of their kids struggled to trust the best of what life had in store for them.

“What if he’s still not ready?” Joe looking worried—for her and their son.

“What if Selena isn’t?”

The young woman was so deliberate now, so careful. Like Oliver always had been, even when he’d been drinking and self-destructing in high school. He and Selena had worked hard for their new lives. And both were determined to believe those lives should be far away from Chandlerville.

“This may be their last chance.” Marsha rested her head on her husband’s shoulder. “
Our
last chance to help them. We have to do something.”

She and Joe had guessed for a while now that there was more going on than Selena admitted to. They hadn’t said anything to anyone else. There was no way to ask questions about Camille without making the situation worse. But after what had just happened in the hallway, Marsha was even more convinced that Selena was hiding something, and isolating herself because of it.

Her husband sighed. “You’re determined this is the right time?”

“Is there ever a
right
time to dig into the past and hope the truth doesn’t make things worse?” Marsha was thinking of Dru now, and everything she and Brad had already been through. “The last thing I want is to cause more hurt.”

“A lot of good can come from believing that people will support each other, even if it hurts a little.”

“Camille,” Marsha whispered. “She’s a very good thing.”

“She’s the most important thing. Oliver will see that. Dru and Brad, too. Selena already does, the way she dotes on the child. We’ll have to convince her that she belongs with us, too. Or no matter what Oliver does next, Selena might bolt.”

“Oliver will make sure everyone’s taken care of.” Protecting his own was a soul-deep part of the man he’d become, the same as with Travis. And Joe. “But . . .”

“He needs to want Camille for himself—not see her as another responsibility to throw money at while he keeps himself from getting too attached.
If
she turns out to be his.”

“She’s so beautiful. And she’s
so
Oliver’s.” Marsha had hoped so at least, since the first time Camille had flashed her crooked, heart-catching smile.

“Our first grandchild.”

Joe sounded exhausted—and positively bewitched. Then his breath caught on his next chest pain. He insisted they weren’t nearly as bad now as when he’d collapsed in the heat of the late
afternoon sun, mowing their lawn. Fin Robinson, one of their newest kids, had found his father and run screaming inside to get Marsha. Her own heart clenched at the terrifying memory.

Straightening, she made her smile wider, softer, wanting Joe to know. Did he know? He was her everything—their family’s everything. He had to pull through this.

“I can’t wait to see Camille wrap her grandpa around her little finger,” she said. “You’ll be toast. You’re always such a pushover with the girls.”

He smiled through whatever discomfort remained, reassuring, determined, and then somber. A tear trickled from his eye.

“I . . . I don’t want to miss any of it. But I know it’s going to be okay. All of it. And I believe in you, love, whatever you think you need to do for Oliver.”

Marsha wiped his cheek, wiped her own. Her Joe’s belief was a powerful thing. It had gotten them through so much. It wouldn’t fail them tonight.

“After your angio’s a smashing success,” she said, “you’ll get to see plenty of Camille and Oliver and everyone else. All the kids can come for a visit once you’re on the mend and out of CICU.”

Her husband’s eyes slid shut, the weakness that struck without warning stealing him away.

“My first grandchild,” he whispered.

Marsha kissed him. “You better believe it, Gramps.”

She slid into the chair beside his bed. Useless tears welled behind her closed lids. But there was no time for that kind of nonsense.

Time, she’d learned years ago, slipped by too quickly to waste wishing things were different. Whatever was coming next always arrived, regardless. Steering into the current was the only way. Making life work the best you knew how, instead of fighting what needed to be done or giving up and going under.

Maybe Joe was right. It might be safer to let things follow their own course. But everyone needed to be navigating the same troubled waters sooner rather than later. It was the only way to tackle the hard work that had gone undone for too long.

“Leave it to me, love.” Her hand still covered her husband’s heart, desperate for the feel of its steady beat. “I won’t let our boy leave again without him knowing how much we all need him.”

Chapter Seven

“No, Parker,” Camille’s mommy said on her cell phone, while Camille played out back of her grammy’s house. She was in the shade by the tall bushes next to the Dixons’ yard.

It was one of her favorite places to play, near all the pretty white flowers—camellias—that were like her name. ’Sides, it was too hot to play anywhere else, even in the front yard where she wouldn’t have to hear Mommy argue with Parker.

And she’d already spread out one of Grammy’s quilts where she was. It was Camille’s favorite—the one with the big flowers all over. And she had her bubble wand and the big bottle of bubble stuff Mommy had let her buy at the dollar store. And bubbles kinda made it not so bad that Parker had ruined the drive home from the shoe store by calling and making Mommy sad again.
And
since Camille was sitting next to Grammy’s camellias, she could watch all the people next door. And that was even more fun than bubbles.

There were lots of people to watch today—extra cars in the driveway, plus all the kids were home from school. The man from that morning and his truck were back, and Dru and Travis and Mrs. Dixon now. Plus, Camille was close enough to still hear what her
mommy was saying if she wanted to. And she kinda wanted to, even though she wished they really had left Parker behind for real, the way Mommy kept saying they had. Only Parker kept calling and calling. And Camille worried about her mommy when he did that.

“No,” Mommy said. “We’re not coming up there. I told you this morning, last week, last month,
two
months ago. My answer hasn’t changed. It’s not going to change. You don’t want a family. You want to look like you have a family, while you live your life however you want to. We don’t need to see each other again to agree on that. And Camille doesn’t need to be any more confused by what you think being a father and a husband looks like. We both know what we want and what we don’t.
You
need to tell your lawyers to release enough money so I can get Camille settled somewhere else. I’ve said yes to mediation. I’ll say yes to whatever’s fair, including not asking for child support. But that’s not enough for you. We agreed . . .”

Mommy kept saying that to Parker—the man they’d lived with all of Camille’s life. The man who’d married her mommy so they could be a family forever, and had kept asking Camille to call him Daddy when Mommy said she didn’t have to, ’cause he wasn’t really. The man who made her mommy cry at night sometimes still, when Mommy thought Camille was asleep and wouldn’t hear her talking to Parker on the phone.

We agreed . . .

Her mommy saw Camille watching and turned away and started whispering. Like she didn’t want Camille to worry. Like she didn’t want Camille to miss the things they used to have when they lived with Parker in his fancy apartment in New York. But it was okay with Camille, all of it, ’specially leaving. Because now they got to live with Grammy. Whatever
we agreed
meant, New York had never felt as good as living here, and living next door to Grammy’s neighbors.

Watching the Dixon house around the shady bushes in the hedge, Camille sat in the middle of the old quilt on one of the tulips—the flower that had a little tear she didn’t mind on one of its purple petals. She dipped her daisy bubble wand and waved it and thought about all the times in New York when Mommy had taken her to play in the park next to Parker’s building. And Mommy had kept telling Camille how great it was to live where they lived, and all Camille had ever wanted was a house of her own, with other houses all around them and kids her age to play with, like the ones she saw on TV.

She watched her bubbles fly and sparkle and sink, the sun making rainbows in them, and wondered what living at the Dixons’ house would be like. There were always tons of kids there. She’d even snuck over a couple of times to play, when Grammy wasn’t watching and Mommy was out, even though Camille wasn’t s’posed to.

The Dixon family was so cool. All those kids. All of them looked different. They weren’t a real family, someone at school had said. But they were bigger than any family Camille had ever seen, and they looked so happy, and she kinda sometimes wished . . .

She looked behind her.

She wished her mommy wasn’t upset so much still. She wished Parker would stop calling. She wished she could believe her mommy and grammy when they acted like nothing was wrong, no matter how many times Camille asked ’cause she knew something still was. In New York Mommy had smiled and said things were okay, too, only they hadn’t been.

Camille wished that whatever the fresh start was that Mommy kept saying would happen would go ahead and happen now.

“No, Parker,” her mommy said. “Camille and I can’t live that way anymore. We’ve moved on.”

Mommy said
moved on
a lot, too.

Moved
, Camille understood. They’d moved from their apartment with Parker to a friend’s place in New York. Camille had slept on the couch and Mommy on the floor, and they hadn’t been able to bring most of their things. Then they’d moved from New York with Mommy’s new, funny car, Fred. And that time, they’d only brought the stuff they could pack inside him. They’d been at Grammy’s longer than Mommy had said they would, and Camille loved all of her new things here—mostly Mommy’s old things, because Camille was staying in her mommy’s old room, and the other cool stuff Grammy didn’t mind Camille playing with, like her quilts. But Mommy said they’d be moving again soon.

Once Parker did whatever Mommy said he’d
agreed
to.

Camille dragged her floppy blue bunny, Bear, into her lap. She’d brought him outside with her quilt. She liked to pretend he was the pet she’d never been able to have in Parker’s apartment. She blew fresh bubbles while she stared next door. She bet no one over there wanted to move. Why would they, in a family like that?

She noticed the man from that morning standing at the kitchen window, the same place Mrs. Dixon stood sometimes on the weekend, when Camille stayed home with Grammy, and Mommy did errands or jogged the way she did every day she didn’t work. Camille stood, leaving Bear on the quilt. She bounded up and down on her new pink tennis shoes and twirled her bubble wand the way she sometimes did with Mrs. Dixon, wanting the man to see how many great bubbles she could make.

Mrs. Dixon always clapped. She liked bubbles a lot. The man didn’t clap, but he kept staring. So Camille waved her hand, the way Mommy had waved at him that morning. He waved back this time, and it looked like maybe he was smiling. Then Mrs. Dixon was there, waving, too.