Chapter 10
IT’S COMPLICATED
The last three days have been unpleasant to say the least. If I worked for anyone else, I think I would have quit. But I owe it to Herman and Elise to stick it out, no matter the discomfort I experience.
And boy, there’s discomfort. A whole bunch of it.
Between Holt’s gruff growls and barked orders, there are moments I catch him looking at me with a cool hardness that makes me wonder about the signs one observed before one was murdered.
The man obviously hates me. I know I deserve it, but it’s not easy to swallow none-the-less.
At least I’ve had Herman and Elise to buffer the very obvious animosity that radiates from him to burn me. But next week, that buffer will be gone. Herman goes in for surgery, and Elise will be with him through it all.
I stand from my desk, sliding my purse onto my shoulder.
Holt’s sharp eyes snap up from where he’s leaning over Elise’s desk, peering at the blueprints for a project we’re set to begin in two weeks’ time.
They narrow on my purse. “More coffee?”
“I’m off.”
“You leave at four,” he grinds, straightening to his massive height. To not feel so small, I’ve been wearing shoes with an extra inch, though I’m not sure I’m going to manage the upkeep. My calves are killing me.
“I leave at three-thirty on Thursday’s.” His eyes are like daggers pinning me to where I stand. I add, “Owen has soccer by four-thirty.” My eyes slide to Elise when Holt doesn’t reply. “Are you still good to grab Mabel from daycare?”
“Of course.” Elise sits back in her chair. I swear she can see the crackle of dangerous electricity that surges between me and Holt. She can see it and I’m pretty sure she’s amused by it.
“Thanks.” I start for the door.
She calls, “We’ll see you and Owen for dinner at the house tonight.”
I wave over my shoulder, because I can’t muster the courage to turn around again and face the glare I feel burning into the back of my head.
Next week is going to suck.
At least I have a long weekend to work up morale.
“Whose truck is that?” Owen asks as I park next to a big black truck that’s just as broody and space-taking as its owner.
I already know who the truck belongs to. I’ve seen it every day in the parking lot with mine.
“That’d be your uncle Holt’s.” I use the excuse of gathering my things to not look at my son.
“Cool,” Owen says cooly. “Do you like him?”
“I don’t know him.”
“You’ve worked with him for a week.”
I sigh and give my son my eyes. “He’s nice.”
Owen’s face doesn’t change. “You told Memaw he’s an asshole.”
“Owen!” I mean to scold his language, but find myself asking, “If you know what I think of him, why are you grilling me, huh?”
Owen shrugs. “Why is he an asshole?”
This time, I scold the language. “Language, bud.”
“Did he do something to you?”
There’s an intensity emanating from my little boy that feels far heftier than someone of his years should be able to emit.
It gives me pause. I decide to be as honest as I can with him.
“Your uncle Holt was once a big part of mine and your fathers’ lives.
We—we—well, we grew apart. He got famous and we stayed here.
We had you and Mabel, and we never really put any effort into healing everything we broke.
” I wince, because as honest as I’m trying to be, it sounds like a crock of poop to my ears.
I can only imagine what Owen is taking from it.
Still, my son nods like he gets something he can’t possibly understand. Then he asks, “Do you think I’ll like him?”
“I do.” I smile, and God, it hurts.
There’s a nugget of worry in Owen’s eyes. He asks quietly, “Think he’ll like me?”
“Oh.” I lean across the console to press a kiss to my son’s temple. “He’d be an absolute idiot not to.”
“I’m serious, Mom. Grandma says he’s a lot like Dad.”
What sin did I commit in my past life that God saw fit to hurt me like this?
“He’ll love you, Owen. And he’ll like you.” I tug on the handle of my door. “Let’s get inside, okay?”
Owen follows wordlessly to Herman and Elise’s front door. We’re just about to open the door when we hear a familiar shriek followed by a terribly manly roar.
Owen’s stoic expression—the one he’s worn since becoming the man of the house—cracks just a little. “I think he likes Mabel.”
I can’t reply beyond the rocks in my throat. Owen opens the door in time for me to see Holt bend down low to catch my fleeing daughter around her waist, swinging her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He digs tickling fingers into her ribs, and her shrieks morph into a hysterical giggle.
My eyes drift from his tickling hand to his eyes that are already pinned to me. My heart kicks into my throat, knocking the rocks loose as everything falls into the pit of my stomach. I swallow air and cough to clear my throat.
Holt’s head kicks back just a bit as he takes me in. I already know he sees straight through me, just like he always has.
His eyes slide to Owen, and he cocks a grin that, well, honestly—it’s like an alarm for my catatonic ovaries.
“Hey, my man,” Holt says around a face full of purple tutu. He comes close to swing the tickle hand out to Owen, keeping Mabel pinned to his shoulder with the other. My son shakes Holt’s hand for the first time, careful to keep out of Mabel’s kicking range.
God, my heart is being butchered inside my chest and no one sees it.
“Hey.” Owen’s voice sounds deeper than usual. It’s not from an attempt to sound like the big man, though. There’s emotion in the grate of his words.
“How was soccer?” Holt asks, not taking his eyes off my son.
“Great.” Owen lights up. It’s the same light-up I recall seeing when Holt would talk about hockey. “It was just practice today, but we did a mock game and we kicked ass.”
I bite my tongue to keep from scolding yet another inappropriate word as I slide my feet out of my sneakers. I’d changed quickly into jeans and a light sweater before jetting off to soccer practice.
The snow in town is gone, but it’s muddy out here. Too muddy for pumps.
As I slip by Holt, I’m forced to face the reality of his size. I don’t think the top of my messy bun even grazes his shoulder. The man is a beast.
This is not the boy I remember. He’s not the Holt I once knew.
For my own safety, I’m going to have to remember that.
I force myself to walk into the kitchen, but I can’t quite keep my ears from working to pick up every word the two men exchange. It’s not easy between the little shrieks and giggles and pleas for more tickles that Mabel lets out.
It’s clear that Holt obliges her every request, though.
“Crap.” I drop my head against the headrest as I pull my car into the driveway. There’s not much left of the sunset to paint color into the sky, and Mabel is clearly on a clock because about five minutes ago, her obsessive chatter about Holt drifted into mumbles that turned to silence.
Her clock will wake her up around two in the morning, to which my little demon will howl at the moon for an hour.
Of course, I’ll spend the hour moving between her bedroom to comfort her and mine to try and sleep.
This really means I’ll be watching the monitor as Mabel practices acrobatics in her bed. Kids are weird.
Owen’s nights were never broken. From the time he was eight months old, he slept through the night. Mabel has been a real-life night terror for anyone who requires sleep to function as a normal, well-rounded human being.
She’d broken from her night waking habit some four months before Tate’s death. We felt like we won the lottery. Then Tate died and Mabel was back at it.
“Holt’s cool,” Owen tells me.
I give my son a pinched smile. “Told you he’d like you.”
Clearly, Holt likes my kids far better than he likes me. I can’t lie and say the warm affection and attention he showed my children didn’t soften me just a little. I’m sure he’ll be back to class-A asshat as soon as Tuesday rolls around.
Praise Heaven for long weekends.
I’m about to push from the car when Owen’s question hits me like a bus. “Why did you choose Dad?”
I croak, “What?”
“I know you were with Uncle Holt first. Why did you choose Dad?”
“Um—how do you—how do you know that I was with Holt?”
“Are you serious?”
I blink. “Yeah, Owen. We never talked about my past with Holt.”
“This is Rubble Ridge, Mom. Everyone knows everything about everyone. Especially about the epic love triangle that is you and the Wilder brothers.”
“I’m sorry,” I blubber. I’m speechless. “The love triangle? Did you just say epic love triangle in reference to my love life? Owen, I married your father when I was eighteen.”
Owen lifts a shoulder. “Grandma has pictures of you and Holt together. Before you were with Dad.”
My head rolls back against the seat. I mutter a prayer to the ceiling of my car. I admit, “I saw your dad first.”
“But you were with Uncle Holt first.”
I can’t look at my son. “I was.”
“People say you loved him. That he loved you more than anything.”
“Holt loved hockey, Owen. Hockey to him is soccer to you.”
“I don’t know.” Owen lifts a shoulder again. “I think if I loved a girl like people say Holt loved you, I’d probably pick her.”
“Who talks about how Holt loved me?” I peer at him. “It was Grandma, wasn’t it?”
I love Elise, but right now…
“Not just Grandma. Kids at school talk about you two. Especially this week since he came back. Their parents remember, you know?” Owen’s eyes, dark and hard like his grandpa’s—like Holt’s—stare at the garage door. “He’s famous so everyone talks about him.”
Sometimes I hate small towns.
“We were kids, bud.” I stroke his thick hair, dark again, like his grandpa’s.
Like Holts. But he looks like Tate, too—in the way he carries himself.
In the good that pours out from the innermost parts of him to brighten the dull in this world.
I sniffle back the sting in my nose. “It was a long time ago.”
“Yeah, but how did Dad win?”
“They weren’t fighting for me, Owen,” I say gently. “Life just—it’s how our cards fell, I guess.”
“But they hated each other.”
“Your father never hated Holt.” It hurts to think that. Hurts to think that Tate was out there on that ice because it was something he’d done so many times with Holt.
Every year, Tate would go out ice fishing. And every year he’d write Holt a letter about everything Owen had done. About who Owen was, and the man Tate felt he was turning into. About how much he loved him. How proud he was of his son, his boy.
I didn’t know that’s what he was doing until he died, and I found the box of letters buried in the back of his side of the closet, behind the old work pants I’d never been able to talk him into tossing.
He never sent the letters, but I think it helped to ease Tate’s guilt to write them. To write out in black and white the wonderful son we’d created. The boy who wouldn’t exist—not the way we knew him—if I’d made another choice.
And Holt wouldn’t be the man he is now, either. The truth is, if I’d made another choice, Holt would have chosen us. That scares me more than anything else. Playing out the future that could have been, and the way it would have soured.
I shake my head. “I was with Holt for a long time. You’re right when you say that I loved him, and he loved me.
But we were kids. Some kids have really big dreams, Owen.
The kind of dreams that power everything they do.
Holt was one of those kids. He left to chase that big dream, but I wanted to stay here.
When Holt was gone…” I shrug. “Tate was there. He’d always been my friend and we were always close in the way that friends are.
But we grew closer. Your father confessed that he’d always loved me, but that he’d kept his space for Holt.
But when Holt left, and I decided I was staying…
” I drift off. “Well, you know the rest of our story.”
“That’s why he hated Dad?” Owen asks. “Because you chose Dad over him?”
“I chose life in Rubble Ridge.” Everything inside my chest hurts right now. “It’s complicated, Owen.”
Owen nods. “Yeah.”
I shove from the car, done talking about a past that has haunted me for years. Sleep is already going to come difficult considering the over-exposure to a certain grump that I’ve suffered today. I don’t need to make it harder on myself than it already is.