Let Me Love You Again (An Echoes of the Heart Novel Book 2) (15 page)

Chapter Ten

Selena would have given her last dollar for a cab and the disposable income to pay someone else to drive her and Camille home from their very long day—capped off by a lengthy visit to Camille’s pediatrician.

“I’m sorry, Mommy,” said the bedraggled moppet huddled in Fred’s backseat.

“You couldn’t help throwing up, Cricket. Mommy’s not mad at you.” What Mommy
was
, was certifiably freaked. It was terrifying each time her daughter’s allergies attacked—even when an episode turned out to be relatively minor like this one.

Camille’s doctor had said she’d be fine, just to keep an eye on her for the next twenty-four hours to make sure her symptoms improved.

“You told me not to eat other people’s snacks,” Camille said, “and I did. Karen called me a baby because I wouldn’t. I did it just to show her. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, honey. You had your EpiPen, and Nurse Mallory took care of you until I could get there. But you never know what foods might have peanuts in them.” Nuts had been the culprit this
time, the pediatrician suspected. “The doctor said we can’t be too careful, okay? Next time, talk to Mrs. Preston if Karen won’t leave you alone. Promise me?”

“I promise.”

Even Camille’s ponytails were drooping when Selena checked her daughter’s reflection in the rearview mirror. Her cheeks were flushed and sweaty, and her pretty pink dress was stained from her stomach’s attempt to expel the candy she’d let herself be bullied into eating. Selena pushed Fred’s air conditioner to Max, patting his dashboard when, without the slightest hesitation, he blasted colder air toward her daughter.

Chill bumps scatter-bombed Selena’s body at the thought of how much worse things could have been. She shivered and pressed the brake too hard at the corner of Maple and Branch. Fred jerked to a stop. He backfired, a gentleman’s warning not to push her luck. Selena took a more leisurely turn onto Bellevue.

She was losing it. Even her car could sense it. And Kristen’s and Travis’s visits that morning hadn’t helped. Even while she’d been dealing with Camille and the rush to her pediatrician, Selena hadn’t been able to get her future in Chandlerville, and Oliver and his family, out of her mind.

At least it was the middle of the day and Belinda wouldn’t be home from work until later. Selena hadn’t let her mom know about Camille’s emergency. Everything was fine. Selena was holding herself together. Adding Belinda to the equation might tip her over the edge to completely coming undone. She refocused on the angel sliding lower on Fred’s cracked vinyl seat.

“We’re almost home, honey.”

Her daughter’s miserable gaze met hers in the mirror. Then she caught sight of the red pickup once more parked in the Dixons’ driveway.

“None of my concern,” she reminded herself—even though she’d spent a large chunk of last night on her mother’s front porch swing, staring through the shadows at the yard and the house next door.

“What’s wrong?” Camille wanted to know, looking out the window, too.

“Nothing.”

Except someone was walking through the hedge between the two yards. A very tall, determined-looking someone heading toward Belinda’s porch, then standing there, watching Selena drive closer, looking ready to wait all day if that’s how long it took her to face him. She slowed at the curb, drowning in the déjà vu sense that Oliver belonged there, had been there all these years no matter how long she’d stayed away, waiting for this moment of reckoning.

She pulled into the drive, almost taking out the mailbox when she couldn’t look away from him. He waited, hands clasped behind him. Angry? Calm? Lethally patient? She couldn’t tell.

Leaving Camille in the car on a day this hot while Selena talked with Oliver was out of the question. So was running the engine and air conditioning for her daughter while Selena took care of things alone. Their weekly gas budget barely covered their drive back and forth to school. Selena turned off the engine. Fred rumbaed into his shutdown routine, various parts of the car shimmying in conflicting tempos until the racket settled to a random series of pings.

Oliver loomed on the porch steps, like a storm cloud rolling in on itself—more threatening the longer it held back its fury. It could have been Selena’s imagination. It could have been more of the guilt riding her for months that had become intolerable as she’d tried to sleep last night. But somehow she was certain . . . her secret was out.

“Mommy?” Camille asked.

“Let’s get you inside.” Selena opened her door with a grinding screech that resembled the mating call of the bobwhite quails nesting each fall in the countryside near Chandlerville.

Camille’s door didn’t make quite as much racket. She kept insisting hers sounded like a parakeet. Selena lifted her daughter from the car and held her close. Oliver waited for them to come up the walkway, more than anger in his shifting expression. Selena saw longing. And fear. As if something he’d wanted badly his entire life was within his grasp, and he had no idea how to hang on to it.

Selena bit her lip. She’d promised herself never to dream about what this moment could mean. But she felt her heart stumbling all over itself in excitement as she walked toward Oliver. She couldn’t stop herself from hoping.

Her child in her arms, Camille’s head nestled against her neck, Selena stopped at the bottom of the steps and waited.

“I could hear your car coming down the street from a block away,” he finally said.

The man who’d wanted to be anywhere else yesterday but near Selena had been listening for her. And now he had eyes only for Camille.

“Please,” Selena asked, “let me put my daughter down for a nap.”

Let me catch my breath before we do this.

Not once in the nearly seven years she’d lived with Parker—a lot of them truly bad years—had Selena been tempted to have another drink. But in less than twenty-four hours of living in the same town again as Oliver . . .

This should be the most precious moment of her life, having Camille meet the man who could very well be her father. Instead, Oliver’s jaw was clenched, terrifying Selena that he’d say too much and scare her child. He inhaled. His attention slipped to Selena’s ringless left hand where she was gently rubbing Camille’s back.

Then her daughter straightened and turned enough to see who was there.

“Hello,” Camille said. “You’re the man who threw the Frisbee.”

Oliver’s breath came out in a rush. The two of them studied each other, connecting silently with an ease made sweeter by the look of wonder Oliver flicked toward Selena.

“Who’s the father?” he said cryptically.

He didn’t sound angry. But Selena sensed something surging through him, silent thunder rolling closer. Then the rebel of her misspent youth smoothed a palm across Camille’s cheek. Selena’s little girl smiled back, thankfully not catching on to the tension escalating between the adults.

“I don’t know for sure,” Selena said, giving her awful truth its voice, even though she’d always thought of her daughter as Oliver’s.

She thought of Brad and Dru and Marsha and Joe, herself and Oliver, and even Belinda, and the confusion and chaos that were about to descend, ratcheting up what the Dixons were already dealing with. And, God help her, she thought of Parker, a part of her wishing she were weaker. More practical and able to go back to him and not care how many other women he slept with, as long as he came home, made the pretense of their marriage believable, and provided the financial security that to some other woman—to a younger Selena—might have been enough.

“I didn’t want to know at first,” she explained, needing Oliver to understand her long-ago decision. “I was alone, which meant I was going to handle it alone. And I did.” Except the happy, secure family she’d wanted for her baby had never materialized. “Please, let me settle Camille in her room. Then give me a chance to explain the rest.”

Chapter Eleven

A father was a good thing, so whoever’s father the man from next door was looking for, Camille hoped he found him.

As much as Camille had always wanted a big family with tons of kids like the Dixons, she’d settle for just a daddy to go with the mommy she already had. A real daddy was one of the best things she’d never had. She figured a daddy would be even more fun than living with Grammy the last few months, and all Grammy’s flowers and quilts and bubbles, and Mommy’s old toys from when she was little.

A daddy would be better than anything Camille could think of.

One who’d be there when the other kids’ daddies were. And he wouldn’t do things to make Mommy decide to leave. He’d love Camille more than his job. He’d make Mommy laugh and smile, and he’d want to go to the playground and play games. And he would never make Mommy cry, not like Parker had, or the way Mommy looked like she might cry now, while Camille looked between her and the man from next door. The one who’d smiled and waved at Camille from the Dixons’ kitchen window.

“Just tell me the truth.” He sounded like someone was in trouble or something, the way Parker did a lot of the times.

“I . . .” Mommy was shaking, the trouble kind of shaking Camille felt when she’d done something wrong, like eating Karen’s M&M’s when Camille had known they were bad for her. “I am, Oliver. I don’t know. I couldn’t . . .” Mommy made that sound with her throat, like when she and Parker had fought and she’d been crying—only she didn’t want Camille to know. “I don’t know how things got this far, but I promise. I never meant for anyone to get hurt.”

The man looked at Camille again, smiling now, at least at her. Camille remembered Grammy saying he was part of the Dixon family, too. Even though Camille had never seen him before yesterday.

Camille’s stomach rumbled, like it wanted to be sick again. She swallowed, not wanting to make Mommy worry again. Her mommy looked so sad.

“Don’t cry.” Camille patted her mommy’s cheek and smiled at the man. “You’re not mad anymore, are you, Oliver?” Mommy had said his name was Oliver. “Say sorry, and Mommy will get you lemonade like she’s going to get me because I’m sick. Grammy makes the best, Mrs. Dixon says. And Mrs. Dixon makes the best chocolate chip cookies, and she brought some over awhile ago, and we saved them in the ’frigerator so they would last. So, say sorry, and we can have cookies and lemonade.”

Oliver smiled at her again. He had green eyes, almost as dark as hers.

“She’s been sick?” he asked Mommy.

Camille’s mommy headed up the steps, hugging her again. “Come on, Cricket. Let me get you out of this heat.”

“I’d like to come in.” The man stopped Mommy from opening Grammy’s screen door so she could get to the wood one behind it, the one Camille couldn’t get open on her own.

“Please, Oliver,” Mommy whispered.

“It’s okay,” Camille said. “I don’t feel so bad now. He can come in. He’ll be nice. Won’t you?”

Oliver agreed, and Mommy sighed the way she did when she agreed to do something for Grammy that Camille knew her mommy really didn’t want to do. She nodded her head, and Oliver held the screen door open while Mommy unlocked the wooden one.

Grammy’s shady porch felt so good after being in the hot sun. Camille wished she could just take her nap on the old metal swing in the corner. It had Grammy’s pretty pillows all over it. It was where Camille’s mommy snuck off to late at night when she couldn’t sleep.