Marisa Carroll - Hotel Marchand 09 (15 page)

“You haven’t made any worse mistakes than a lot of other parents.”

“I should have sat Guy down and made him tell me why he was so angry with Casey Jo a long time ago.”

She leaned slightly forward, her hands flat on the table top. “Granted, you should have talked to Guy, but that’s no guarantee he would have told you what he told me.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s fifteen and you’re his father. He doesn’t need any other reason than that. And you’re both stubborn Boudreaux men.” She smiled. “He’s begun to realize he was wrong not to tell you about what happened. He’s a smart kid. He understands now that his silence helped put his sister in the kind of situation he endured when he was small. He’s as angry with himself as he is with you for allowing the visit in the first place.”

Alain finished his soup in silence. What she said made a lot of sense. Guy was a proud kid. He took his role as Dana’s big brother and protector seriously. He would be as mad at himself as he was with Alain. “I should be getting home,” he said, getting up from the table. “Casey Jo might have called her mother, or mine. And I have to talk to Guy, work this out.”

Sophie came around the table to him. “You’ll let me know when you hear from Dana and Casey Jo?”

“Of course.” He didn’t like the faint hint of distance he heard in her voice, the feeling that she was pulling back from him. He wasn’t going to wait any longer to tell her what was on his mind. He’d waited too long already. There was never going to be a perfect moment. He reached for her instead of his coat. For a moment he thought she would step away, but slowly her muscles relaxed and she slipped her arms around his waist, laid her head against his chest. “Sophie, there’s something I have to tell you, to ask you.” His heart began to thud against his ribs. He supposed she could hear it.

She lifted her head to stare up at him. “Alain, I wish you wouldn’t,” she whispered. Sadness darkened her eyes to a foggy gray. “Not yet.”

“You know what I’m going to say,” he said, framing her face with his hands. “I love you, Sophie. Part of me has always loved you, even during all those years when I tried as hard as I could to put you completely out of my mind.” Like the last red-gold ember of a dying fire buried in ash, the love he had felt for her for more than a dozen years had needed only a breath of air to stir it to life.

“I know,” she said, tears shimmering on her lashes. “I’ve always felt that way about you, too. But that doesn’t mean it will work between us now any better than it would when we were teenagers.”

“Can’t you give us a chance?” He laid his forehead against hers. “Sophie, will you—”

“No.” She pressed her fingertips to his lips. “Don’t say any more.”

The words cut into his heart. “Sophie, I know I’ve got a lot of complications in my life right now. The kids—”

“The kids aren’t the problem. They’re wonderful kids. I’d be the happiest woman on earth if they were mine. And it’s not Casey Jo that’s the problem. At least, not all of it. It’s me, Alain. You’re a man who will need an extraordinary woman to handle all the complications in your life. I’m not sure I’ve got what it takes.”

“You just admitted you could love me again.”

“Sometimes that’s not enough.” She placed her hands on his chest, holding herself away from him. “My track record in marriage isn’t any better than yours. I got burned badly. It almost destroyed me. I don’t know if I want to make that kind of commitment again.” She brushed her tears aside with the back of her hand. “I’m not going to cry,” she said fiercely. “I’m trying to tell you what’s in my heart. I’m not going to mess it up with tears. I’ve got a life and a career in Houston, Alain. I’m not sure I’m ready to give that up. And that’s what promising myself to you would mean. Indigo’s where you belong. Once upon a time I thought I could belong here, too. But that was a long time ago. Now I’m not so naive or so brave to think that love is all it takes.”

“Don’t you believe in second chances?” he asked, using all his willpower not to pull her back into his arms and never let her go.

She laid her fingers against his cheek. “I think that week seven years ago was our second chance.” The sadness in her voice chilled him to the marrow.

“Then how about three time’s a charm?” he said, using the pad of his thumb to wipe a stray teardrop from her cheek.

She shook her head. “Not three’s the charm. It’s three strikes and you’re out. I’m going back to Houston, Alain. Monday morning. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“N
OTHING
in that fridge is going to mutate into anything else while you’re standing there with the door open.”

“What?”

“I thought you told me Grandma Yvonne put righteous fear into you about standing in front of an open refrigerator door?”

Alain twisted his head to regard his son lounging against the kitchen door frame, then looked back at the contents of the refrigerator and blinked. How long had he been standing there staring into space? “Sorry. My mind was somewhere else.” He grabbed a bottle of water and shut the door with a snap.

“Did Dana call while I was out?”

Alain twisted the cap off the bottle of overpriced water with more violence than necessary. “No.”

“It’s Saturday night. They’ve been gone since Thursday. How long are you going to wait?” Guy’s tone wasn’t combative enough to call him on, but he was coming close.

“I gave your mother until seven o’clock tomorrow evening to have her home.” He sat down at the kitchen table and made a pretense of rolling back the cuffs of his faded plaid shirt. He took another swallow of water, waiting for Guy’s next move.

His son snorted in disgust, but came to sit beside him at the kitchen table instead of turning on his heel and stomping out of the room. The kid hadn’t exactly been avoiding him for the last couple of days, but he’d sure made himself scarce when Alain was around the house.

“I just tried Mom’s cell again. It’s turned off.” So that was it. He
was
worrying about Dana. It was unusual for him to stick around the house on a Saturday evening. He was generally off with friends, watching videos, playing computer games, hanging out at the General Store to watch the girls watching the guys as they bought sodas and snacks and rented videos for sleepovers.

He ran with a good bunch of kids, so Alain didn’t worry too much about what they were up to, but he realized things were about to change. Guy would have a driver’s license in another six months, and so would the other kids. They were going to want to start wandering farther afield than the General Store or one of their friends’ rec rooms. They’d want to go to Lafayette to the movies or on fast-food binges. And there would be car dates with girls.
Lord, where had the time gone?

“You should have made a stipulation about her checking in once in a while.”

“Yeah, I guess I should have.” He’d screwed up there big-time. Casey Jo had him right where she wanted him this weekend and she was enjoying being the one calling the shots. He could deal with her playing these little games, but not if they compromised Dana and Guy’s welfare. “I won’t make that mistake again,” he said.

Guy traced a design on the table top with his cell. It was a picture phone, barely bigger than a matchbox, and it had cost plenty, but Guy had paid for it with his own money so Alain had let him buy it. The silence stretched out. Alain listened as the washer on the back porch whined into the spin cycle and a piece of loose change clattered away in the dryer. “I think you made a bigger mistake letting Dana go with her, at all,” Guy replied with a shade less animosity in his voice. He didn’t meet Alain’s gaze, but kept his eyes on the twists and turns he was making with his phone.

Alain had wanted to broach the subject since Sophie had told him about her conversation with the boy, but Guy hadn’t given him a chance. Now it was his son who had brought it up. He didn’t want to let on just how much he knew. He wouldn’t break Sophie’s confidence. “Why do you say that, son?”

“She left me alone in the mall once when I was really little. She just plunked me down on a bench and took off. She was gone a long time. I was there so long a security guard thought I was lost. I was scared and hungry and I had to go to the bathroom so bad I thought I’d pee my pants. I cried and cried. Because I figured the guard would take me to jail for being alone.” The words came out in a rush. Guy paused and took a breath, getting control of himself. “Little kids think of screwy things like that, y’know. And when she got back she told me never to tell you or you’d be really mad at me for causing a scene. Not at her for leaving me alone all that time.”

“I’m sorry, Guy. I never knew that happened. I wish you’d told me about it before tonight.”

The cell-phone design grew in complexity. “Yeah, I see that now. But all the time I was growing up, I figured you knew. When you’re little and something like that happens, you think your mom and dad know everything in the world and you believe what they say.” He shot Alain a quick glance. “But lately I…I talked to a friend about it and I realized you couldn’t have known if no one told you.”

“Did your mom leave you alone other times? Times when I wasn’t home?”

Guy shrugged. “She might have. Never that long though or I’d remember. Funny, I never remember her hitting me, or even yelling at me a whole lot. Only leaving me that one day. It seemed like she was gone forever.” He stopped working the elaborate design and flipped open the phone, still without meeting Alain’s eyes. “I don’t want that to happen to Dana. Especially in some place as big as Disney World.”

“I don’t want that, either.” It was Alain’s turn to trace designs on the table. He moved the water bottle around in ever-widening circles. “I’ve always done the best I could for both of you.” A lump formed in his throat and he swallowed it down, but the residue made his voice rough around the edges. “You two are my whole life. You know that, don’t you?”

Guy lifted his eyes from the tiny screen of his phone. His Adam’s apple jumped up and down. “I know, Dad. I was never afraid again after we moved to Indigo. I guess I knew by then that you’d be there to take care of me. Of both of us. That’s why I went ballistic the other day. It always seemed like you were almost as smart as a superhero or something, and somehow you should have known about that day, too.”

“I hate to tell you this, pal, but dads don’t know everything.”

Guy’s lip curled into a half smile. “No kidding.”

“I’m sorry that your mom scared you that way when you were so little and helpless, but since you don’t remember any other incidents like that, it makes me feel a little better thinking it was a one-time thing. Your mom’s not a bad person, Guy. She’s just…”

“Sort of like a female Peter Pan.” Guy clicked the phone shut and closed his palm around it. It disappeared and Alain realized his son’s hands were almost the size of his own. “She’s probably having more fun at Disney World than Dana is and that’s why she hasn’t called. Not because she’s kidnapped Dana and run off with her to start a new life somewhere.”

“That’s what I believe.”
Dear Lord, he hoped he was right
.

“Why did you have to marry her, Dad?”

Once more Alain was caught off guard. He’d expected arguments and recriminations, raised voices. Instead he was talking to an image of the man his son would soon become, not the boy he had been only a day or two before.

“She was pregnant with you.” He wasn’t going to lie and say he loved her. He owed Guy’s new-found maturity that much honesty.

Color stained his cheeks but Guy didn’t look away. “I can count. What I mean is, why did you think you had to marry her just because she was going to have a baby? Lots of guys wouldn’t do that. One or two guys in school brag about it. Making babies but not having to marry the girl.”

“I married her because it was the right thing to do, and I hoped we could learn to be happy with each other. We were probably too young, but I gave it my best shot.”

“Did Mom?”

“If I told you she did the best she could, would you think better of her or worse?”

Guy’s mouth twisted in a half smile. “That’s one of the lady-or-the-tiger questions, isn’t it?”

“I guess it is.”

“I’ve finally figured out she’s never gonna be a real mom to me or Dana. She’s not like
Mamère
Yvonne or Grandma Cecily. She’s one of those people who need someone else to take care of her, not be responsible for others. Right?”

“Yes,” Alain answered. “That’s as good a way to say it as any.”

“I’ve been thinking about stuff like that lately. I think maybe when I start looking for a wife, I want to find a girl that will be my partner, too. You know. Not that I couldn’t take care of her. And I will. But someone who’ll be there for me, too.”

“If you find a girl like that, you hang on to her, hear?” Alain said with a smile. “She’ll be worth her weight in gold.”

“Is that the kind of woman you’d want? I mean, if you marry again?”

Alain hoped the sudden twist of pain he felt in the middle of his chest, right over his heart, didn’t show on his face. “Yeah, that’s the kind of woman I’d want.”

Guy studied him for a long few seconds. “We—Dana and me—we wouldn’t mind if you did get married again.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Just don’t you be in any hurry to find Ms. Right yourself. Okay?”

“Don’t worry about that. I was just talking in the abstract, you know. Something that might happen. Someday. Maybe. We’ve been studying that in school. Right now I just want Dana home. If Mom keeps her word this time, maybe I’ll be able to start thinking about being her friend. Someday.” Guy pushed away from the table, pocketed his cell phone and walked out of the kitchen.

“I
THINK
you can count yourself one hell of a father if Dana and Guy grow up and embrace Casey Jo as a friend. It’s more than she deserves.” Cecily had waited until Guy left the kitchen to come in off the back porch.

“You heard, eh?” Alain asked, not getting up from the table as she poured herself a cup of coffee that looked black enough and strong enough to keep her on her feet another four hours.

“Of course I did. In the first place, I couldn’t help but overhear without sticking my head in the dryer. In the second place, I didn’t try not to. You’re two of the three most important people in my life. I wanted to hear what he had to say about his mother.”

“I swear I never knew about her leaving him in the mall like that.”

“I’m not surprised it happened, but there’s no way you could have known about it.” She sat down beside Alain at the table. It had been in the family for almost a hundred years. She’d been raised around this table, so had her mother and aunts and uncles, as well as her own three kids. One of the hardest things she’d had to do after her husband died was to stop setting his place each night.

“He’s afraid she’ll do something like that with Dana.”

“I wouldn’t put it past her,” Cecily said before she could censor herself.

“Guy asked me why I married her.” Alain ran his thumb up and down the side of his water bottle. He was wearing an old plaid shirt of his dad’s and he looked so much like him that her throat tightened with tears.

“You thought it was the right thing to do. And I encouraged you.” Cecily sighed. “But believe me, I’ve asked myself that same question a lot of times the past fifteen years. I thought she’d grow up.” She looked up from her coffee cup. “I thought you were over Sophie Clarkson and that you and Casey Jo would have as good a chance at making a go of your marriage as anyone else in that situation. I was wrong on both counts, wasn’t I?”

He had been staring at a spot on the wall beyond her left shoulder, but now he brought his gaze down to hers.

“I’m still hoping she’ll grow up before Dana does,” he said, ignoring the other half of her question.

“I’m not holding my breath.” She stood up and poured the rest of her coffee into the sink. It was too strong even for her. She couldn’t spend half the night lying awake, stewing over those damned stuffed animals again. She had to be on duty at seven the next morning, the Lord’s Day or not. She turned around and leaned her hip against the counter. Time to get another worry out of her thoughts and into the open. “Alain, what about you and Sophie?”

“She’s heading back to Houston on Monday,” he said, pushing back his chair and rising to his feet. He was taller, leaner than his father had been. He took after her side of the family that way, just as Guy did.

“For good?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Did you ask her to stay?” She usually kept her nose out of his love life but she sensed what he felt for Sophie Clarkson was too important to keep quiet about.

“No,” he said bluntly. “What can I offer her?” He pushed his hand through his hair, making it stand up on end just as it had when he was a little boy. “My life is pretty much a soap opera right now, Mom, you have to admit that. Even if she was willing to take on a man with two half-grown kids and a perpetual-adolescent ex-wife, there’s the problem of her having a life in Houston that she doesn’t want to give up.”

“Did you ask her that?” Cecily held her breath. Had it gone that far? Had Alain asked Sophie to marry him—again?

“I asked her if she believed in second chances,” he said, and the sadness in his voice was so well hidden she suspected no one but his own mother would have detected it.

“Everyone believes in second chances,” Cecily whispered.

“That’s what I told her.” He aimed the empty water bottle at the wastebasket in the corner. “She told me we had our second chance seven years ago when Casey Jo burst into the back of Past Perfect and found us together. She said this was our third time around.” He shoved his hands in his pocket. “And three times wasn’t a charm. It was three strikes and you’re out.”

“Oh, Alain, that’s not true.” She was afraid if she said anything more she’d start to cry, she hurt so badly for him.

“Maybe if things were more settled here I’d be able to convince her of that. But as it is, Dana has to come first.” One corner of his mouth ticked up in a travesty of a grin. “It’s not like I haven’t been here before.”

She watched him turn and leave the room and her heart ached for him. The dryer buzzer went off like a hundred angry bumblebees. Automatically she went to take out the load of towels and fold them. It kept her hands busy while her thoughts wheeled around in her brain.

The last thing in the world she wanted to do at the moment was bother him with her own problems. The damned toy animals, in full view of the town now in the window of Past Perfect, would have to wait. Her baby was hurting, and as Alain had just said, your children’s welfare came first—even before unfilled prescriptions and jail time.