Midnight Promises (34 page)

He was still at it, when Mack wandered into the kitchen in his PJs, his expression hopeful.

“Hey, buddy, what’s up?” Elliott asked.

Mack climbed into his lap, something he rarely did anymore, and snuggled close. “Did Mom talk to you?” he asked.

Now, there was a minefield. Karen had talked, but not about anything he cared to share with a seven-year-old.

“About what?” he inquired carefully.

“’Dopting me and Daisy,” Mack said, catching him off guard.

“No. Was she supposed to?” Elliott asked him.

“Uh-huh. I told her me and Daisy wanted you to be our real, forever dad. She said she’d talk to you about it tonight. She promised.”

A huge weight seemed to lift off Elliott’s shoulders. If the kids had independently gone to Karen to request this, he knew she’d never deny them.

“Well, something came up when I first got home, so it may have slipped her mind. We’ll talk about it as soon as she gets back.”

Mack sat up and looked him in the eye. “Would it be okay with you?”

Elliott smiled and hugged him tightly. “It would be great with me!” He knew better than to make promises, though. “It’s a big deal, though, so your mom and I need to have a long talk about it. Can you be patient?”

Mack shook his head, all but bouncing with excitement. “I’m no good at patient.”

Elliott laughed. “Me, either, buddy. Me, either.”

* * *

Karen arrived home to find the kids in bed and Elliott waiting for her in the kitchen.

“I kept dinner warm for you, if you’re hungry,” he said. “Or if warmed-up pasta offends your culinary instincts, I can make you something else.”

She tried to muster a smile for him, but she wasn’t quite able to hide the hurt she was still feeling.

“I’m not hungry,” she said.

“Can we talk?” he asked, a plea behind the words. He held up a lined pad of paper. “I’ve made some notes. I think the figures will reassure you.”

Though she wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and let sleep take her away from this conversation, she knew that the real work of marriage couldn’t be put off. If Elliott was ready to talk, she needed to listen.

“Let me get something to drink first,” she said.

“No, sit. I’ll get it. What would you like?”

It touched her that he was trying so hard. For a man not used to apologizing for his actions, he was doing everything he could to show her he was sorry for the way he’d handled this.

“Any caffeine-free diet soda in the refrigerator?”

Elliott looked inside, nodded and grabbed two, another sign of just how nervous he was. He never drank sodas, caffeine-free or not. He popped the tops and poured the drinks over ice.

She forced herself to meet his worried gaze. “For what it’s worth, I’m not furious anymore.”

His lips curved slightly at that. “Good to know. You probably have a right to be.”

“In some ways, I couldn’t agree with you more. In others, I know I overreacted. Once again, I let the past dictate how I handled seeing those papers. You’re not Ray. Our marriage is nothing like the one I had with him.”

“But you’re still a survivor of that experience,” Elliott said. “I need to remember that and let it guide how I handle things. I’m just not used to answering to someone else, I guess.”

“It’s the family way,” she said, actually injecting a hint of amusement into her voice, though there was nothing particularly amusing about the situation. “You are your father’s son, after all.”

Elliott immediately took offense. “You know better.”

She shook her head. “I love you, but the evidence proves otherwise. You act in a vacuum. I know you do it for all the right reasons, because you love us and want an amazing future for us, but we’re a couple. And I, maybe even more than most wives and certainly more than your mother or sisters, need to be a part of the decisions that get made. I can’t make myself any clearer than that. It’s a deal breaker for me, Elliott.”

He looked shaken by her words. “I’m not my father,” he repeated. “When I’ve left you out, it’s not because I don’t value your opinion, or think my way’s the only way. It’s because I’m trying to protect you from the worry you feel where money’s concerned. I’ve explained that before.”

“And I’ve told you that silence is exactly the wrong way to fix that,” she said. “If you explain things to me, show me those figures you say you have, maybe I’ll see what you see and won’t be so afraid.”

He nodded. “Probably a valid point.”

She smiled then. “Probably?”

“Okay, definitely.” He pushed his notes across to her. “These are just the current figures,” he cautioned. “Maddie’s convinced the open house and launch next week will show a huge spike. That’s what happened with The Corner Spa once word of mouth kicked in. I know I already have more men signed up for private training than I did women in the first few months at the spa.”

Karen studied the numbers, blinking at the bottom line. She lifted her gaze to meet his. “Seriously? This is the income you’re looking at already?”

He nodded. “The gym will get a cut the same way the spa does.” He pointed to another figure. “But it’s still a sizable boost for us. We can manage the loan and put money back into the baby account, Karen. You can see it’s right there in black and white.”

She breathed an audible sigh of relief and felt the tension in her shoulders finally begin to ease. “Helen told me it was going to be okay, but seeing it on paper like this really does make a believer out of me. Thank you for not brushing off my concerns or dismissing them as irrational.”

“I never meant to do that, ever,” he said. “I tried to protect you and only wound up making things worse.”

“Which should be a lesson to you,” she said.

“Full disclosure from here on out,” he promised.

Karen nodded. It was another one of those midnight promises made with sincerity that she knew without a doubt she could count on.

“Something else came up while I was at Helen’s,” she said.

He winced. “She told you I’d been to see her about adopting Daisy and Mack,” he guessed.

“You got it,” she said, frowning. “Why would you do that?”

“I just wanted to be sure the legalities wouldn’t get complicated,” he said. “I had every intention of discussing what she told me with you tonight.”

“And ironically, until I saw those loan papers, I had every intention of talking to you about the same thing. Mack and Daisy want this as much as you do. At least Mack does. I haven’t sat down with Daisy yet, but I have no doubt that she’s as eager as he is. I didn’t realize they’d been discussing this.”

Elliott studied her face. “How about you? Are you ready to take this step?”

She caught the hopeful note in his voice, remembered the plea she’d heard from her son and nodded. “Can we not say anything to Mack and Daisy just yet, though?”

He frowned at the request. “Still hedging your bets. Karen?”

“I suppose I am,” she said candidly. “I believe we made great strides here tonight, but the way we got here shook me up a little. It reminded me that there are still some big differences in the way we look at marriage.”

Elliott hesitated, looking as if he were torn about how to respond. To her surprise, though, he finally nodded agreement.

“There are,” he said, his expression somber. “But I have a hunch the ones I see are not the same as the differences you see.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, undeniably shaken even without hearing exactly what he meant.

“You see marriage as a partnership, and you
think
I see it as some kind of benevolent dictatorship.”

She couldn’t deny the truth of that assessment. “True.”

“Want to know the difference that concerns me?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Okay, then,” he said slowly, as if gathering his thoughts. “I see marriage as a commitment I made to spend forever with you, through good times and bad.” He held her gaze. “You’re convinced there are term limits. Until you truly believe that I will love you until the day I die and can say the same, then you’re right. We’re on shaky ground. You’ll view every mistake I make as a step on a slippery slope to divorce.”

At the seriousness of his tone, Karen felt the earth shift under her. He sounded so sure that his love was undying. He’d felt that certainty from the very beginning. Why couldn’t she take that same leap of faith? Was it past history? Was it his own recent actions? Or was there something wrong with her that she viewed love as something that always came with an expiration date?

All she knew for sure was that she needed to figure that out, and she needed to do it soon before she lost the most important relationship of her life with a man who was truly dedicated to loving her and her children—not just now, but forever.

19

W
hen the phone rang at midnight, Elliott reached for it, hoping to grab it before it woke Karen. He should have known better. She was already sitting up, rubbing her eyes as he answered.

“What is it?” she murmured sleepily. “Nobody calls at this hour.”

“It’s Sarah,” he said, muffling the phone with his hand.

Karen was instantly alert. “Why? What’s happened?”

Smiling as he tried to listen to Sarah, even as Karen peppered him with questions, he finally laughed out loud and handed the phone over to her. “You need to hear this for yourself,” he told her.

Regarding him with puzzlement, she took the phone. “Sarah? What’s going on?”

Elliott watched the play of emotions on her face as Sarah apparently told her what she’d just told him—that Frances, Flo and Liz were currently looped out of their minds on margaritas and singing in the yard that separated Liz’s guest house from the main house she’d sold to Travis before his marriage to Sarah.

“Oh, dear,” Karen murmured, though she couldn’t seem to stop herself from smiling. “Of course I’ll be right there.”

When she’d hung up, she couldn’t seem to bring herself to meet Elliott’s gaze. “She told you?” she asked, lips twitching.

“Oh, yeah,” Elliott confirmed. “I gather you want to go and pick up Frances.”

“One of us certainly needs to. She’ll probably be less embarrassed if it’s me.”

“You sure about that?”

“I’m like a daughter to her,” Karen said.

“Precisely. What mother wants her daughter to see her making a fool of herself? Besides, she might require a little extra assistance getting home and into her apartment.”

“True, but I can’t help myself. I have to see this. And I gather Sarah has also called Helen to come after Flo. How can I miss that?”

Elliott chuckled. “It’s a sight I wouldn’t mind seeing, either, but obviously we can’t both go. Will you bring Frances back here?”

“I suppose that depends. She may insist on going home to be sure the kids don’t get a glimpse of her like this.”

Elliott nodded. “Okay, do whatever you think is best. Just call me if you’re going to stay with her. I can handle things here in the morning.”

“You can’t say we don’t lead interesting lives,” she told him as she dragged on jeans and a sweatshirt. “Try to get some sleep. I know the open house is Saturday, and you have a million and one things that need to get done tomorrow. If I can help, leave me a note if I’m not back before you go in the morning.”

“Will do.” He rolled over and would have buried his head under a pillow, but a thought struck him. “Hey, Karen,” he said just as she was about to walk out.

“What?”

“Take video,” he said, barely containing a chuckle. “I think when she sobers up, Frances is going to want a record of this night. Something tells me it’s been years since she’s gone this wild.”

“You just want something to hold over her head next time you’re in dire need of her oatmeal raisin cookies,” she accused.

“Absolutely not. Charm’s all I need to get those,” he boasted. “It still works on her.”

In fact, he wished it worked half as well on his wife.

* * *

When Karen parked in front of Travis and Sarah’s house, it looked as if they were throwing a party. Helen’s car was already there, along with Carter Rollins’s police cruiser, lights flashing. She gathered a neighbor had taken exception to the post-midnight concert from the three unruly seniors.

As she rounded the side of the main house, she overheard Helen’s impatient voice. “Mom, what on earth were you thinking? Who gets drunk and disorderly at your age?”

“We were just having a little fun,” Flo said defensively. “You girls have margarita nights all the time without anyone calling the cops.”

“Mostly because we don’t go outside and serenade the entire neighborhood,” Helen said with unmistakable exasperation.

Karen spotted Frances seated on a concrete bench in the garden and crossed the yard to sit beside her. “Girls’ night out?” she inquired lightly.

Frances blinked and regarded her with surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“Sarah called me. She thought you might want a lift home or back to my place.”

“Really? I was going to walk as soon as things stopped spinning.”

“Probably not a good idea,” Karen told her. “Just how many margaritas did you have?”

“I only remember one,” she said, her expression bewildered. “Would one knock me on my behind like this?”

“If it was Helen’s recipe, yes,” Karen said, chuckling despite her determination to be sympathetic and nonjudgmental. “There’s a reason we all describe them as lethal.”

“Yes, I can see that now,” Frances said, her head bobbing like one of those dolls.

“Are you ready to go?”

Frances shook her head, then winced, probably because it was pounding with a margarita-induced headache. “I really can’t drink anymore,” she murmured regretfully. “I could hold my liquor much better back in the day.”

“I’m sure you could,” Karen consoled her. “Do you think you’re feeling steady enough to walk to my car?”

“Can’t go,” Frances said, gesturing toward Carter who was standing across the lawn next to Travis, both of them clearly trying to muffle laughter. She leaned closer to Karen and confided, “I think we’re under arrest.”

Frances sounded oddly pleased by the possibility.

“Let me check,” Karen offered. “I’m pretty sure you’re free to go.”

She patted Frances’s hand, then crossed the lawn. “Any reason I can’t take Frances home?” she asked Carter, whose eyes were twinkling.

“None that I can see,” the town’s police chief said, grinning. “Assuming she can stay upright long enough to get to your car.”

“I’ll get her out there,” Travis offered. “Will you be able to manage once you get her home?”

Karen nodded. “As long as she doesn’t pass out on me, I’ll get her inside. Worst case, I’ll take her to my house, and Elliott can carry her in. She can sleep in the guest room.” She regarded Travis curiously. “Any idea what brought this on?”

“According to Liz, who’s in no better shape than these two, they saw Frances’s doctor today in Columbia.”

The last of Karen’s humor at the situation fled. “Oh, my God, what did he tell her?”

“I’m a little muddy on that,” Travis admitted, his expression sobering, as well. “I’m not sure if they were celebrating good news or drowning their sorrows. Chances are you won’t get to the bottom of it until morning, when clearer heads prevail.”

Karen glanced across the yard to where Frances was rocking back and forth on that bench, a woebegone expression on her face. Just looking at her, she had a hunch she knew what the news had been. And if it was as dire as she feared, morning would be soon enough to hear about it.

* * *

Frances had never been so embarrassed in her life. What little she could recall of the night before was mostly a blur of margarita-induced laughter, singing every Johnny Cash song they could remember, and then the arrival, first of Sarah and Travis, whom they’d obviously awakened, then of Carter Rollins, followed by Helen and Karen. Since she’d awakened in her own bed, someone had obviously brought her home. She was fairly certain she could thank Karen for that.

She sat up gingerly, waited for the room to steady itself, then stood slowly, holding on tightly to the nightstand beside the bed.

“Hmm,” she murmured with surprise. “Not so bad.”

She went into the bathroom, took a shower, washed her face and cleaned her teeth, then pulled on a comfortable pair of slacks and a blouse. When she walked into the kitchen and found Karen there, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

“I didn’t know you’d stayed,” Frances said. “You must have been the one who got me home.”

“That was me,” Karen confirmed, doing a halfhearted job of stifling a smile.

Frances winced. “Just how bad was it? I remember Carter showing up, but not much after that.”

“Oh, I think the presence of a cop quieted things down pretty quickly,” Karen said, then giggled as she reported, “You thought you were under arrest.”

“But we weren’t?” she asked, almost disappointed. Unlike Liz, who’d been arrested more than once during civil rights demonstrations, Frances had never misbehaved in a way that would land her in jail. She wondered if that was evidence her life had been far too dull.

“No arrests,” Karen told her. “Just a stern warning.” She gestured toward the kettle on the stove. “Do you want tea or coffee? How’s your stomach?”

Frances considered the question. “Steady enough,” she concluded. “I think coffee would be good. It might wipe away the last of this alcohol haze.”

“So, whose idea was it to have a margarita night?” Karen asked as she poured the coffee.

“Mine,” Frances admitted. “The Sweet Magnolias always have such fun. Flo thinks we should be the Senior Magnolias. We had one once before, but it didn’t end like this.”

“I’m sure the others would be flattered you want to emulate them,” Karen told her, “but maybe you ought to drink sweet tea instead.”

Frances regarded her indignantly. “We might have gotten a little crazy last night, but we’re not too old to handle the occasional margarita. At my age, who cares if we make fools of ourselves? It’s called living, and I intend to do as much of it as I possibly can.”

As soon as she’d spoken, she saw the worry on Karen’s face. “Oh, don’t look like that. I’m not going to do anything dangerous, though I’ve always wondered what it would be like to go skydiving.”

Karen’s eyes went wide with shock. “Frances!”

Frances chuckled. “Just teasing. Even I’m not that foolish. A fall walking down the street could land me in the hospital with a broken hip. Who knows what I’d break jumping out of a plane?” She shook her head. “No, that’s definitely not for me.”

“What brought all this on?” Karen asked. “Travis seemed to think you’d gotten a report back from the doctor in Columbia yesterday.”

Frances nodded. “Nothing conclusive yet. It could be something called mild cognitive impairment, which is manageable, but which can also lead to Alzheimer’s. Or it could be early stage Alzheimer’s already. It’s hard to be definitive, I guess. At least they ruled out a brain tumor and a few other things.”

“So it was good news,” Karen said, studying her.

“Better than it might have been, I suppose, but not a clean bill of health,” Frances admitted candidly. “I have a prescription to be filled, and we’ll see if that helps. At least it seems as if my children won’t have to worry about shipping me off to a nursing home just yet.”