Chapter 2 #2
“With a baby on your hip?” Brock added, turning in his seat partway to face her.
He had one big hand braced on his thigh.
The other was resting on the table, his middling finger tapping at the wood while his expression took on a sternness that sent shivers zipping straight up her spine and into her nipples.
“It’s not full,” she said, her voice going small and uncertain all over again.
There it went again, something flickering in the depths of Brock’s brown eyes that was there and gone again so fast. Was it irritation, speculation, or something else, she just couldn’t tell.
It was the perfect topping for the six-month-long high-anxiety cake that she’d been handed, right along with divorce papers on the morning of her husband’s sentencing.
At least his parents had given her time to grieve before throwing her out of the house that they’d offered to sell him.
Rent-to-own terms, they’d said. Easier than going through a bank, they’d said.
So her husband signed the contract and for five years, she’d been making the payments both while he did and did not hold a job. She’d even made extra payments, although those had gone down since Lily was born.
“Owning this house will be nicer than renting,” Jim had explained, and so that’s what she did. No more eating out, not even fast food. No going to a movie or a bookstore. They ate like broke college students, and it was okay. Because they were together and they were going to be homeowners.
But then he went out for night with the boys and got arrested for selling to an undercover officer, which was ludicrous in her mind. Jim didn’t do drugs. She’d never seen him high, or seen so much as a baggy in the knapsack he always carried slung over his shoulder.
“You know me, honey,” he’d said, and she sure thought she had. “You know I don’t do this stuff.”
He’d said the truth would come out in court, and maybe it had.
Certainly, he went to prison for ten years, and yes, it got harder to make the house payments then, but Stace did her best. For all three months of Jim’s trial, she’d paid her in-laws who suddenly seemed to be angry with her, but gone were the extra payments.
She’d scrimped and worked overtime, and even sold a few things until along came his sentencing, and the divorce papers, handed to her while her mother-in-law looked on, arms folded, mouth pinched, her glare hard and cold.
That was when his parents took her to court, forcing her to pay them back for loans Jim had taken out with them that she’d known nothing about. They said they’d co-signed on his car and took that from her, despite the fact that she’d been the one to make the payments on that too.
They said the contract on the house was signed by their son and did not involve her.
Nor did the home that she’d shared with Jim belong to her, now that he was gone.
They gave her three months to move or be evicted—both her gold-digging self, his mother had said, and the baby she had used to trap their son into a marriage they hadn’t approved of from the start.
The way Brock was looking at her—disbelief, that was what it was.
He didn’t believe her. It instantly snapped her back to that moment when his parents had confronted her with the full force of their disapproval.
It was then that she found out the people she’d once thought of as aloof, actually disliked her, not a little, but intensely.
And she was blushing for him? Suddenly sick to her stomach, she looked down so she wouldn’t have to see him anymore. “I… I think maybe I should just go home.”
“Nonsense,” the sheriff said brightly. “Let’s go take a look at what we’re dealing with. Who’s got the keys?”
Standing up beside her, Brock dug the keys he’d taken from the driver out of his pocket.
The light tinkling as he jingled them together did not make her feel better.
When he put his hand on her shoulder, the warmth of his touch was negligible compared to the weight of disapproval bearing down on her.
What had she done wrong? She didn’t know, but she climbed to her feet when Brock and the sheriff walked from the table and pretended as if she hadn’t heard it when the old man called her to come back.
“Little girl,” he warned, hobbling after them as far as the front door, “you’re wet enough as it is. Get your hide back in this house before you catch your death!”
“Relax, Pops,” Brock called back. “I’ll take care of her.”
She flushed hot all over, but it was different this time. This time, she knew better than to let herself believe he might be nice.
You’ll never know if you don’t give people a chance, whispered her husband’s familiar voice in the back of her head.
Except this time she did know, and it was better to shut down now before she let herself get hurt.
Hupping the baby higher on her hip, she followed them down the stepping stones to the muddy road, and from there to the back of the moving truck.
When he saw them, the driver threw himself violently around the back of the sheriff’s squad car.
He rocked the vehicle with the force of his defiant struggles and the profanities he was shouting at them.
The closed doors and windows did little to muffle the coarseness.
Resting his hand on her shoulder, the sheriff pulled her in closer to him. “Don’t you worry about him. His feet are cuffed to the floor. He can holler all he likes. The only place he’s going is the county jail.”
He beamed, as if that were the worst of her worries, but all Stacee felt were wave after wave of crushing disapproval bombarding her from all sides.
The two men opened the back of the truck and the door rattled all the way up, revealing what few sparse things her in-laws had allowed her to take—some of her clothes, all of Lily’s things, a few items that she could have proved without a shadow of a doubt that she’d bought, if only they’d let her into the house to get her receipts.
Everything else her in-laws had withheld, including her wedding ring and the little pieces of jewelry her husband had bought her on birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays.
To be honest, none of that had bothered her half as much as suddenly finding herself homeless had. Thankfully, not only did Aunt Maggie have her back, but she was even allowing Stace and Lily to live in one of her rentals rent-free until she got her feet under her.
“What the hell is this?” Brock said, staring into the back of the mostly empty truck.
Behind them, the driver had fallen silent.
Her stomach roiling with mounting dread, softly Stace said, “It’s my things.”
“Where’s your appliances?” Brock said, the tone of his voice clipped, as if he were now angry with her too.
She wanted to crawl into a hole and just die, she was so embarrassed. “My in-laws kept them.”
“I see the crib. Where’s your bed?”
“M-my in-laws—”
Turning abruptly from the truck, Brock faced her. “There’s no sofa, no chair, not so much as a folding table, or a dresser.”
Her eyes began to burn. “M-my in-laws s-said—”
“They brought a twenty-foot truck to move, what…” He paused, his darkening eyes scanning her meager contents and obviously finding everything she owned lacking. She swallowed hard, shaking, her legs aching to just run. “What’s in here, twenty-some boxes, three bags of clothes and some baby toys?”
Her breath was shaking every bit as badly as the rest of her. “It was what they said I had to use.”
“Maybe it was all they had,” the sheriff said, striving for cheerfulness. “Back this puppy up to her porch, Brock. Bet we can knock this out in less than ten minutes.”
“I can do it myself,” she assured him.
Brock laughed, staring into the back of the truck once more. He stabbed the fingers of both hands through his short, dark hair, and then laughed again. Neither sounded warm, inviting, or even the slightest bit amused.
She bit down hard on the inside of her lip, trying to quell its trembling, but already the sting in her eyes was spilling over, blinding her as the tears rolled hot down her cold cheeks.
As the sheriff climbed onto the bumper, grabbing the rolling door’s handle, she quickly swiped her eyes clear, but too late.
It was at that moment that Brock turned to look at her, and he saw it.
“I can do it just fine on my own,” she quavered, hating how weak and small and sad she sounded.
Hating even more than that anyone, especially him, had caught her crying.
Hated the fact that he was staring at her now, his gaze tracking the next tear to fall.
She especially hated the weird look now wending through his openly angry expression, until for just a moment, it seemed as if he wasn’t angry at her at all.
But of course it was. Of course, it had to be. She was the only one here.
She was the only one who would ever be here, always and forever, all on her own.
Oh God, the tears really were coming now, a flood of them that refused to be blinked back.
“Hey,” Brock said, suddenly as if he wasn’t even mad at all anymore.
She couldn’t bear it.
Dodging his staying hand, she snapped around, slipping once in the mud and almost going down to her knees all over again before she caught her balance. She made a bee-line for the grass, ignoring when he called again, “Hey, Stace!” Using her first name like they were old friends.
Like they were friends at all.
Yeah, she should have known better.
Lily fussed uncertainly as she hurried across the half-weeds-and-grass lawn and jogged up the stairs. She hit the door, so grateful that it wasn’t even locked, and quickly slammed it shut behind her before bursting into tears.
“Muh,” Lily said, patting both sides of her face with baby small hands, while Stace slid down against the door until the old hardwood floor bumped up under her butt, arresting her fall.
She covered her eyes with both hands.
Come on, Stace, Jim’s gentle voice echoed in her head, the world really isn’t this scary. Stop being a baby.
Except, yes, it was. And nobody knew this better than she did.
Especially after these last six months.