Tiny Blessings

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

When Charlie got to Refind the next morning to open the shop there was a woman there. She was waiting at the locked door. Charlie knew instantly who the woman was and her heart sank. Not because Mary Ann was even more beautiful than she was in pictures, which admittedly made Charlie feel insecure. But because Charlie knew intuitively why she was here.

Mary Ann’s gaze dropped to Charlie’s belly and something flickered in her eyes. Sadness maybe. But Charlie couldn’t say for sure.

“Can I help you?” Charlie’s voice was tight.

“I’m Mary Ann Dalton, Jace’s ex-wife.”

Dalton.

Charlie flinched. Dalton was now her name. And yet another woman had come before her. It was Mary Ann’s not-so-subtle way of reminding Charlie of that.

“I know who you are. And you shouldn’t have come here.” Charlie unlocked the door and flicked on the lights.

Mary Ann followed her into the store. “I hoped we could talk.”

“You should talk to Jace, not me.”

“I already did that and it didn’t go too well.” Mary Ann let her eyes drop to Charlie’s belly again. “I thought we could talk mother to mother.”

The phone rang and Charlie went behind the counter to take it, hoping it would give her time to compose herself. Or even encourage Mary Ann to leave. Her surprise visit had ruffled Charlie. The right thing to do—for Jace and for the boys—was to tell Mary Ann to go, that her ambush—because what else would you call it?—was inappropriate. But her curiosity outweighed good sense.

The call was from a client who was redoing her den and wanted to know what kind of coffee table she should use for her crescent-shaped sofa. While Charlie ticked off a couple of ideas and dimensions, Mary Ann browsed around the store. She wasn’t leaving, that was clear.

“You have a lot of beautiful things here,” Mary Ann said after Charlie got off the phone. “The Village is interesting.” She nudged her head to indicate the shopping center. “It doesn’t strike me as something Jace would’ve gotten behind. He was always about preserving the ranch. About the cattle.”

While Mary Ann was just voicing an honest observation, Charlie resented it. Perhaps it was petty, but it felt as if Mary Ann was trying to show that she knew Jace better than Charlie did.

“Dry Creek Village was Jace’s idea. It was the best way to preserve it for the next generation of Daltons.” Charlie said it with an edge in her voice. But Mary Ann didn’t appear to notice because she just nodded.

“It’s impressive. So is your store.” Mary Ann toyed with the stack of business cards on the counter. “So Aubrey’s your partner, huh?”

Charlie had it on good authority that Mary Ann and Aubrey couldn’t stand each other.

“Yes, she is.” Charlie locked eyes with Mary Ann and, to borrow a phrase from Jace, said, “Why don’t you just cut to the chase?”

“Okay. I’ll be direct, then. I came here to ask you to lobby Jace on my behalf. I realize that you don’t know me, that you’ve heard what a lousy mother I’ve been, and that you probably dislike me. But if you have any feelings for my sons, which I assume you do, you understand how important it is that I make peace with them. Not for me but for them.”

“May I be direct too? Because what I’m going to say next will be hurtful to you.”

Mary Ann gave an imperceptible nod, but Charlie could see that she was girding herself for a verbal assault.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie said softly. “But I must abide by Travis and Grady’s wishes. And they’ve asked not to have contact with you.”

Pain washed over Mary Ann’s face. It was so pronounced that Charlie could feel it deep down in her own chest.

“I would hate me too,” Mary Ann said in a whisper of a voice and swatted at her eyes.

Charlie went into the back room and returned with a box of tissues.

“Do you have any pictures of them?”

Charlie was torn. To continue engaging with her felt like a betrayal of Jace, Travis, and Grady. But she couldn’t help but feel for the woman. And what would it hurt to show her a few pictures?

Charlie fished her phone out of her purse and cued up the most recent pictures she had of the boys from her photo gallery. Travis in his dorm room at Cal Poly. A picture of him with Grady at a restaurant in San Luis Obispo the weekend they’d moved Travis to college. And one of Charlie’s all-time favorites, a photo of Grady wearing a Santa hat at Christmastime sprawled out on the floor with the two dogs under the tree. There was also a picture of both brothers sitting on top of the fence at the horse barn, the brims of their cowboy hats pulled low over their foreheads.

“They’re so grown up.” Mary Ann’s hands shook as she held the phone. “Oh God, I’ve missed so much.”

“Why?” It was something Charlie couldn’t fathom. “Why did you leave them?”

Mary Ann looked up from Charlie’s phone, her eyes brimming with tears. “If you’re looking for a good sob story, I don’t have one. I’d always wanted to travel, see the world. Then I met Jace, got pregnant, and before I knew it I had two toddlers at my knee. It wasn’t the plan. It was never the plan, but it just happened.”

She wandered over to the window and stared outside. “I got depressed. I don’t know if you would call it clinical or anything, but I felt like a shell of myself. Like there was nothing left in me. And then one day I couldn’t take it anymore and I left, figuring the boys would be better off with Jace than they were with me. I didn’t go far at first. But just being away . . . from them . . . made me feel free, like a bird that had been allowed to fly after its wings had been clipped. I used to come and visit. But even that got hard. The boys—and Jace—would cry and beg me to stay and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. It was crippling being here. Like the minute I drove onto the ranch, my arms and legs felt shackled, literally chained. Sometimes I’d sit in my car just trying to catch my breath, just trying not to die. Have you ever felt that way?”

Charlie had. Right after Corbin would hit her or kick her or berate her until she felt like nothing. Like zero.

But with Mary Ann it was different. Jace and the boys loved her. She’d been cared for here. She’d been safe.

“Do you think it might’ve been a form of postpartum depression?” Charlie was by no means an expert, but that’s what it sounded like to her. “Did you seek help?”

Mary Ann let out a wry laugh. “Yes. My help was a ticket on the first outbound plane to anywhere. I visited every place I’d ever wanted to go, every place I’d ever dreamed of. Africa, Central America, South Asia, Eastern Europe, you name it. I wound up in France at a small artists’ commune in Antibes, where I fell in love.”

Charlie suspected there was more to the story, but Mary Ann was far away now. Somewhere painful, judging by her glassy expression.

“What happened?” she finally asked.

“Denis, a man I met in France, came into my life. And everything changed. My whole world opened up. He was a painter, an artist of some renown, and we fell desperately in love. We were expecting our first child together.” She paused and that faraway expression returned. “A car broadsided us on our way to Paris for Denis’s gallery show.” She stopped again and tried to compose herself, then in a shaky voice said, “They said Denis died instantly. It took me two days to lose the baby. And two years to mourn.”

Charlie knew what it was like to lose a child and her heart folded in half. “I’m so terribly sorry, Mary Ann.”

“Even now I wonder if it was my punishment for what I did. For me abandoning Jace and my boys.” She turned to Charlie. “You must think I’m a horrible person.”

“I think you’ve made mistakes, yes. Horrible? All I know is that you’ve hurt the people I love most.”

“I know I can’t take back what I did, but I want my boys to know that I never stopped loving them, that I never stopped feeling them right in here.” She placed her hand on top of her heart. “When I lost Amélie—that’s what we had named her, a baby girl—all I could do was think about Travis and Grady. About what I’d done to them. About how I missed them.”

She dried her eyes with the tissues Charlie had given her. “Please help me make it right with them again.”

* * *

Charlie had never seen Jace this angry. He was trying desperately to keep his cool, but she could tell he was fuming.

“What was I supposed to do? Tell her ‘I’m sorry about your tragedy, now get out of my store’?” Charlie said.

“You shouldn’t have let her worm her way in in the first place. I thought we were united on this.”

“We are. But is this really the right thing to do for Travis and Grady? Shouldn’t they at least hear what she has to say?”

“You’re going to lecture me on what the right thing for my sons are? I’m their father; I’ll decide what’s right for my kids.”

He may as well have slapped her across the face or kicked her in the stomach.

I’ll decide what’s right for my kids. My kids.

It was the first time he’d ever drawn a line in the sand, the first time he’d ever told her that he considered her an outsider when it came to Travis and Grady. That in essence she wasn’t an integral part of their family. His first family.

He immediately realized his mistake and went toward her. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

She pulled away. “How else could’ve you meant it, Jace?”

“Not like that.” He rubbed his hand down his face. “Not like how you think I did. Ah, jeez, Charlie. I’m upset. That’s all.”

“I have to wonder why you’re upset. Is it for the boys? Or for you?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You tell me. Ever since she came roaring into town you’ve been angry. Are you angry for Travis and Grady? Or are you angry for you? Because she left you. You!”

She turned on her heels, went to the bedroom, and slammed the door. That was when a cramp sliced across her stomach, making her double over. She made it to the bed and lay on her side the way her obstetrician told her to do.

It’s nothing, she told herself, just normal third trimester cramping or Braxton-Hicks. She’d be fine as long as she rested.

Jace came charging through the door, took one look at her, and his expression turned from fury to fear. “What’s wrong?”

“I had a cramp. That’s all. It’s probably all the stress this is causing. It’s gone now. I just need a few minutes.”

He lay down next to her on the bed and rubbed her back. “You sure? Should we call the doctor? Maybe you’re going into labor.”

“No, it’s too soon. Dr. Orville said occasional cramping is normal. I’m doing exactly what she told me to do. Do you have your boots on the bed?”

He laughed, and the sound of it was so reassuring that it filled her with love, even though she was still angry with him.

Jace swung his legs over the bed and she heard each boot drop to the floor, then he was spooning her again, his warm body encasing hers like a weighted blanket. He left a string of kisses across the back of her neck. “Better?”

“Much better.”

“Just rest, okay?” He pressed against her.

“You too. But we’re not done talking about this.”

* * *

The barbecue was at Cash and Aubrey’s. Besides Charlie and Jace, they had the biggest house, with an outdoor kitchen and a large smoker. Cash liked getting his grill on as much as Jace did. All the Dalton men considered themselves pit masters, although Gina and Tuff were no slouches either. You couldn’t live on a cattle ranch without mastering the art of the grill.

Everyone brought sides and Gina always made the dessert, which tonight was strawberry shortcake. The strawberries were from the restaurant’s garden and Charlie couldn’t wait to taste a slice. They set everything out buffet style on a long picnic table. There were at least three salads, heaping bowls of chips, a Crock-Pot full of beans, and garlic bread. The host always provided a big jug of Jimmy Ray and Laney’s sarsaparilla and they all brought beer and wine. It was enough food to feed two counties, yet they rarely had leftovers. The Daltons had big appetites.

Charlie’s nap with Jace had only temporarily quelled her uneasiness about the Mary Ann situation. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that Jace wasn’t as done with his ex-wife as he let on. After six years his hostility toward her should’ve mellowed. She could understand a fresh resurgence of resentment toward Mary Ann for showing up here and demanding to see the boys, but not a burning fury that consumed him. It was too much emotion for a man who was supposedly over his ex-wife.

Charlie didn’t doubt Jace’s love for her, but what if he still loved Mary Ann? What if he loved his first wife more?

She excused herself from the party to use the powder room in Cash and Aubrey’s sprawling hacienda-style ranch house. Aubrey had worked side by side with the architect to design it and it was marvelous. Saltillo tile floors, thick white walls, vintage Mexican rugs, and chunky wood-beam ceilings.

Charlie loved hers and Jace’s home, but she envied Aubrey for getting to put her own personal touch on this place. Charlie’s home had been designed by Jace’s grandfather and except for a few knickknacks, pieces of furniture, and artwork that she had added, it was exactly the same as Grandpa Dalton had left it.

The powder room was one of Charlie’s favorite rooms in Aubrey’s house. It was small, but Aubrey had gone all out with handmade Mexican tiles, a vessel sink stand made of wrought iron with matching towel and tissue holders, and forged-iron light fixtures.

She took a quick look in the mirror; even that was a work of art, framed in carved wood from an old Mexican barn. Her face was pale and slightly puffy and she had dark circles under her eyes.

The memory of Mary Ann’s flawless skin flashed in her head and she quickly swatted it away. She was being ridiculous. She was pregnant, not ugly. Despite all the BS about pregnant women glowing, Charlie had never looked worse. Her petite frame was carrying an extra twenty pounds, her feet were swollen, her hair was limp, her skin was sallow, and she looked perpetually exhausted.

Even though it was only a temporary state, she couldn’t help but compare herself to Mary Ann, who had the figure of a goddess and probably turned every head in a room. Charlie was sure Mary Ann was turning Jace’s head. Ever since he’d found out she was in town, Charlie sensed a difference in him. He was behaving like the hero in one of Charlie’s enemies-to-lovers romance novels. And she knew how those ended.

By the time she got around to using the facility she was so worked up she was ready to leave the barbecue and walk home. It was the three specks of blood on her underwear that stopped her. She reminded herself that it could be normal, that one out of ten women spotted in their third trimester, according to all the literature she’d read. But just to be safe, she would call Dr. Orville in the morning.

“Hey, you okay in there?” Jace knocked on the door.

“I’ll be out in a minute.” Charlie pulled herself together and came out of the bathroom to find Jace leaning against the wall.

“Everything all right?”

“Jeez, can’t a woman go to the bathroom in peace?”

His lips curved up in his signature cocky smile. The one she’d fallen completely, hopelessly in love with. “I thought you might’ve fallen in and needed rescuing.”

She shook her head and headed back to the party, calling over her shoulder, “You’re an idiot.”

Later that evening Aubrey took her aside. “I heard Mary Ann showed up at the store.”

Charlie did a double take. “Jace told you?”

“Yeah, what’s the big deal?” Aubrey waved her hand in the air dismissively. “What’s important is that the woman had a lot of nerve putting you in the middle like that.”

“In the middle? That makes it sound like I’m a third party to all this. Is that how you see me? As a third party? As someone who isn’t an essential part of this family?” Charlie clutched her stomach as another cramp seized her.

“What’s wrong?” Aubrey grabbed Charlie’s arm and pulled her over to one of the patio chairs. “Are you cramping?”

“Just a little one. It’s probably Braxton-Hicks. Nothing to worry about.”

“Does Jace know? I’ll get him.” He was over at the grill with Cash, Sawyer, and Tuff.

“Don’t! Aubrey, please, don’t.”

Aubrey, not one to be cowed or mince words, pinned Charlie with a look. “What’s going on with you? First you bite my head off and then you don’t want me to get Jace. You’re right, the cramping is probably nothing, but Jace should know about it in case you’re going into early labor.”

“I’m sorry. I think it’s a combination of raging hormones and stress. That’s all.” Charlie couldn’t bring herself to tell Aubrey about her suspicions of Jace’s feelings for Mary Ann. It was too raw and too personal, even though Aubrey had seen Charlie through her worst times with Corbin. Plus, Aubrey would only tell her that she was being ludicrous. And while Charlie wanted to hear those words she didn’t believe it was the truth.

“Are you sure? Because it seems like there is more going on here.” Aubrey took the chair next to Charlie. “Stress over Mary Ann?”

“Over Mary Ann, over the boys, over the baby. What’s there not to be stressed about?” She smiled to show Aubrey that it was nothing, just normal baby jitters.

“Are you still cramping?” Aubrey dropped her gaze to where Charlie’s hand still rested on her stomach.

“No, I’m good now.” It had only been one sharp pain and then nothing. It was all fine, Charlie told herself. She was getting closer to her due date and her body was reacting, that was all.

“Let me get you a drink.” Aubrey went over to the bar and returned with a glass of sarsaparilla.

Charlie took a few sips even though she wasn’t thirsty.

“I want to make something very clear,” Aubrey said. “I have never, ever thought of you as a second party. I . . . all of us . . . think of you as Travis and Grady’s mother. Not stepmother, do you hear me? You have done more for those boys than their biological mother ever did. All I meant is that Mary Ann is putting you in the middle because she’s relying on the fact that as a mother”—she emphasized the word “mother”—“you’ll side with her. That you’ll persuade Jace to convince the boys to see her. She’s sneaky that way. And conniving.”

Charlie had not gotten the impression that Mary Ann was sneaky or conniving. Her only take away from her was that she was sad and sorry for the things she’d done. For the things she’d lost.

“Do you think there’s a chance that Jace still loves her?” Charlie blurted out, then immediately wished she could take it back.

“Oh my God, you’re seriously hormonal. My mood swings were so intense during my third trimester that Cash is lucky I didn’t kill him. Listen to me carefully: You are the love of Jace’s life. Mary Ann is the bane of his existence. How do I know this? Because I was there. I was there through the whole sordid thing. No, let me correct that. I was there long before Mary Ann came along. I mean, Jace and I go back to splashing each other in a baby pool while his parents were still alive. This is all to say that I know the man as well as I know my own brother. Mary Ann is nothing to him. Nothing.”

It was exactly what Charlie expected Aubrey to say. But it didn’t mean it was true. Because while Aubrey was one of Jace’s oldest friends, there were some things that only a wife knew.