Soaring (20 page)

* * * * *

“I had a lovely time,” I shared with Boston Stone on my front step, looking up at him and hoping he didn’t try to kiss me.

It was the next night.

The night before, I’d had dinner with Josie, Jake and their kids (and Sofie and Connor
were
adorable together—young love, seemingly the real kind, something I’d never seen before but it was amazing).

I did not share any of my Mickey-Stone-and-me stupidity with Josie because there was no need. I knew she was close to Mickey, I had a feeling that Jake was even closer and I didn’t want to be talking about him behind his back with this friends.

It would all be over the next night anyway.

So I’d had a lovely night with the Spear family and then gone home.

I’d gotten up and went to Dove House. I flirted with Mr. Dennison, listened to Mrs. Naigle telling me about her twelve great-grandbabies, found a pair of missing dentures in the cushion of an armchair in the lounge, assisted a staffer with a profoundly unpleasant situation that was the result of way too much prune juice, and avoided Mrs. McMurphy threatening to tell President Roosevelt about me.

Then I’d gone out with Boston Stone.

I’d been right. He was a man I wanted nothing to do with.

He was also boring.

Further, he was rich and he took every opportunity, including purchasing a four hundred dollar bottle of champagne for us to drink at dinner, to make certain I was aware of that.

This was even more boring.

And now, I really wanted the night to be over so I could go in, admire myself in my dress (which even I had to admit was fabulous) before I took it off and went to bed with a book.

What I didn’t want was for him to kiss me.

As was the way of my world, I didn’t get what I wanted.

He leaned in and kissed me.

It was short, not deep, and only included him curling a hand around my waist. His breath smelled of champagne and mint, which wasn’t all bad. And his lips were firm, which wasn’t all bad either.

Last, he didn’t go for tongues, which was a definite relief.

When he lifted his head, he said in a voice that I had a feeling was supposed to be sexy but missed the mark, “I’d like to see you again, Amy.”

God, I should
never
have invited him to call me Amy.

“Why don’t you call me?” I suggested, wishing, in all my boasting about being grown up, I was grown up enough to let a man I did not like down for any repeat dates face to face.

He pulled slightly away but not far enough for me. “I will, if you give me your number.”

Shit.

Now I was giving him my number!

Well, I’d successfully avoided my mother, who had my number. My best friend, who was alarmingly no longer using my number. And my father, who was rich enough to find commandos to track me down, kidnap me and bring me back to La Jolla to tie me to a chair and interrogate me about why I didn’t phone my mother.

I could avoid Boston Stone.

“Do you have your phone?” I asked.

This was a good move.

He shifted away, saying, “Certainly.”

He took it out.

I gave him my number.

He punched it in then bent and gave me another brief champagne, minty kiss before he leaned away and said, “Goodnight, Amy.”

“’Night, Boston,” I mumbled.

Then he stood there as I let myself in my front door.

I gave him a small smile as I closed the door and I did not wait a polite time so he wouldn’t hear me lock it against him.

I should have told Josie about my lunacy so I could call her and pick over that tediously boring date.

Or I should have shared with Alyssa.

Or I should have found a more mature way to deal with Robin so I could pick over
everything
with her.

Most especially the fact that, no matter how tedious, I had moved on so far that I was to the point of dating, something else which I wished I could pat myself on the back for.

On this thought, I wandered to my kitchen counter, dropped my sleek new clutch to it and pulled out my phone.

I went to Robin’s text string and typed in,
Haven’t heard from you in a while. All okay?
And hit send.

It was a puny attempt at communication but at least it was something.

I was staring at my phone, like Robin was hanging around waiting for me to text so she could reply immediately (when she was possibly making voodoo dolls of her selfish, thoughtless, gutless ex-friend who didn’t have the courage to lay it out about the way it needed to be, and sticking pins in it, something I knew she did because I’d done it with her—repeatedly) when it rang in my hand.

I stared at the display giving me a local number I didn’t recognize.

It wasn’t late. Not early, after nine so really too late to call and do it politely (according to my mother, who had a cutoff of nine o’clock for some Felicia Hathaway reason).

That was, unless you were in California, got a new phone with a new number that you hadn’t shared, and wanted to call your wayward daughter or friend and blast it to them.

It was hours earlier in California.

Shit.

Even on this thought, I took the call, putting the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

“You went out with that dick.”

I stared at my counter.

It was Mickey.

“Mickey?” I asked to confirm.

He didn’t confirm but he didn’t need to.

What he did was ask, “You talk to Josie about that guy?”

“I’m not really sure how this is any of your business,” I replied.

“You didn’t,” he stated. “You did, Josie woulda told you that that asshole tried to steal her home from her. Lavender House.”

I blinked at my counter.

Lavender House, Josie’s house, was beautiful.
Stunning.
And it was pure Josie, imposing and welcoming at the same time.

Further, she’d told me it had been in her family for generations.

She loved it. She loved the family in it. In all that was Josie, who was her brand of kind and sweet but still kind of a hard nut to crack, those two facts were plain to see.

“What?” I breathed to Mickey.

“Yeah. And not up front. He did it nasty. Freaked her out. Scared her shitless. Brought back family, the bad kind Josie hadn’t seen in years, who not only got up in her face publicly, but also tried to break in to steal shit in the middle of the night.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

“Good people, Boston Stone,” he said sarcastically and my spine snapped to.

“You could have said this to me yesterday, Mickey.”

“You weren’t big on listenin’ to me yesterday, Amy.”

“That’s because you were being kind of a jerk yesterday, Mickey,” I retorted.

“Kind of a jerk lookin’ out for you, Amy,” he shot back.

He was kind of right about that so I changed tactics.

“I’ll have you know,” I began, “that my daughter was standing on the sidewalk and she heard what you said about her father.”

“I’m sure that’s supposed to make me feel bad,” he returned instantly. “But it doesn’t. See, I’ve been tryin’ to puzzle out why a woman who makes unbe-fucking-lievable cupcakes, who plays Frisbee in my backyard, who’s got so much money she doesn’t have to work but she doesn’t spend her time at the spa and instead spends it at a goddamned nursing home, who looks about ready to rope my kid to the chair at the fuckin’
possibility
he might do something dangerous for a living, that happening in a fucking
decade
…why that woman has only got her kids for two days of the month.”

I sucked in a breath.

But Mickey was not done speaking.

“Instead, they’re with your ex, who’s a fuckin’ dick.”

“Mickey,” I breathed. “Are you
spying
on me?”

“Red Civic in your drive, babe, not hard to see.”

Time to give Auden a garage door opener and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t already.

And if my son didn’t respond to a text to come get it (which he wouldn’t), I’d mail the thing to him.

Mickey spoke into my silence.

“You’re loaded so it can’t be that you don’t have the cake to hire a decent lawyer to look out for you. So not sure what it could be. ’Cept he did what dicks like him do. Especially dicks like him who think they can treat women the way he treated you. He convinced you that
you
were a piece of shit when
he
is and you went down without a fight.”

Oh God.

“Mickey, please—”

He again spoke over me. “And maybe he’s convinced your kids you’re a piece of shit too. They’re old enough to get to you if they wanna see their mom. But that Civic isn’t in your drive but a coupla days a month. So maybe your girl heard me and woke up a little to the way it really is, Amy, and I gotta tell you, I don’t feel bad about that shit at all.”

“I…can’t talk about this with you,” I told him shakily, his words rattling me.

“Not surprised,” he replied and then socked it to me. “Down without a fight.”

I forgot about being rattled and snapped, “None of this is any of your business.”

“Yeah, you’ve made that clear.”

What did he mean with that? How did I make that clear?

No. No, I didn’t care.

“Not clear enough,” I returned. “Has it occurred to you with all you’ve said about things you know nothing about that perhaps
you
are treating me much like Conrad did?”

“Oh no,” he whispered and a chill chased up my spine at the sound of it. “No, you fuckin’ do
not
, Amelia,” he kept whispering sinisterly. “If you were mine, no matter if you fucked me, you’d get respect from me. I know that shit because my wife sunk into a bottle, she fucked up our lives, our future, our kids, and she never gets that shit from me. You cannot tell me that whatever it is that happened between you two is as bad as you pickin’ booze over your family. So you cannot tell me the way he spoke to you was what you deserved because I know that shit isn’t fucking true.”

Again, he was right and this time, not kind of.

This time, he was
really
right in a way that again rattled me.

“I can’t imagine why we’re discussing this,” I said defensively. “We hardly know each other, and again, my business isn’t yours.”

“I figure you’re right, you can’t imagine why we’re discussing this because even someone who gives a shit about you, we hardly know each other or not, lays it out straight with no bullshit, you’re so deep in what he’s taught you to believe, you refuse to see.”

Again.

Right.

Again.

Rattled.

“Maybe we should stop talking,” I suggested.

“Maybe,” he returned.

“Like,
ever
,” I went on.

“You want it that way, Amy, in your big house all alone, accepting the dregs when a woman like you should be handed everything, you got it.”

Before I could reply, he hung up on me.

I took the phone from my ear and stared at it, asking, “Did that just happen?”

The phone and the entirety of my house were unsurprisingly silent.

He convinced you that you were a piece of shit when he is and you went down without a fight.

Mickey’s words pummeled me so hard mentally, my entire body jerked.

Did I?

Did I go down without a fight?

It felt like I’d been fighting for years. Anytime I saw Conrad or Martine, anytime I forced them to see me, I fought.

But I didn’t.

In the game they made me play against my will, each time that happened, I wasn’t fighting.

I was showing them my cards.

So it wasn’t a big shock that they’d bested me.

And maybe he’s convinced your kids you’re a piece of shit too.

My husband had cheated on me. He’d left me.
He’d
destroyed our family.

I thought we’d been happy. For years,
years
, I’d run through moments, snippets, hours, weeks,
months
and the only thing we consistently disagreed about was how he didn’t want me to spoil the children. Outside of that, I’d never found a single
second
where he’d given me any indication things were going wrong.

Conrad had never sat me down and shared something wasn’t working. He’d never found his time to find his way to say something I was doing upset him, troubled him, annoyed him.

He’d never said or done anything.

Heck, we’d made love, doing it most enjoyably, until the night before he told me he was leaving me!

“Oh God,” I breathed, staring unseeing at my phone. “I’d showed them all my cards and they’d bested me.”

I lifted my head and looked at my reflection in the glass of my wall of windows.

It was wavy but it was me.

Great highlights.

No-longer-Felicia-Hathaway dress that very much suited me.

And I knew I had elegant, stylish, strappy, high-heeled sandals on my feet.

But that was wrapping.

All of that,
all
of it, was me.

It had always been me.

And I let Conrad—
and
Martine—convince me differently.

“They bested me,” I whispered, my hand curling tight on my phone. “Those assholes
bested me
.
All of them bested me.
”

I glared at my image in the glass.

Time to grow
the fuck
up.

On that thought, I stomped through my fabulous, multi-million dollar, Prentice Cameron house right to my unfinished den/office/whatever-I-wanted-it-to-be.

I fired up my computer on my used, massive, intricately carved baronial desk and I sat down in the officious, completely awesome, leather button-backed chair behind it.

I waited and when it was ready, I pulled up my email.

I typed my father’s address in.

Dad,
I wrote.

I’m aware you and Mom have been calling. I’m emailing you now to explain why I’ve not picked up.

Before I left, I told you I was moving to Maine in order to be closer to my children. My relationship with them the last few years has deteriorated and it’s crucial I do the work I need to do to focus on healing that breach.