Chapter 16
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
CONRAD
My stomach sinks while I drop onto a chair with my wife beside me. Mirabeth grabs my hand and squeezes it under the table, even as she gives me haughty eyes.
“Brad—” I start.
“Save it!” Brad roars, interrupting me, slashing his hand in the air.
“I don’t want to hear how this is payback for me marrying your ex when you decided to take the fall for Andrew.
And you!” Brad yells at Alisa, his voice breaking and his strong chin beginning to wobble.
“Did you pretend to fall in love with me so I would take care of you while he was in prison? Were you counting down the days until he was released so you could ride off into the sunset together?”
“No, Brad, never! I love you with my whole heart. Only you,” Alisa says with heartbreak in her voice, turning in her chair to hold Brad’s face, leaning closer. “How could you think I’d ever want to be with anyone else?”
He sniffs as he shakes his head. “I’ve seen your private calendar.
July thirtieth, four-thirty at the same hotel where we got married.
The hunting trip you planned for my birthday with my friends—that was just your excuse to get me out of town so you can sneak around all you want without getting caught. ”
“No, baby, you’ve got it all wrong,” Alisa says sadly, stroking his face. “I can barely look at Conrad now without being disgusted that we used to be together. I want to throw up just thinking about it.”
I smother a laugh with my free hand. This is great news, and it seems Mirabeth thinks so, too, since she drops her head on my shoulder with a relieved sigh.
“Then why did you go to his apartment in the middle of the night? I saw your location after I woke up in bed alone,” Brad says, ducking his head to hide the tears in his eyes.
“To apologize for taking the name he wanted, and that’s only because I felt so guilty for the strain in your relationship.
And I wanted to tell him that I felt terrible about the way things ended, but that I was so glad I didn’t wait for him to get out of prison or else I wouldn’t have been lucky enough to marry you,” Alisa says.
“You, Bradley Jackson O’Byrne, are the love of my life.
We are soulmates. If you went to prison, I’d wait a lifetime for you. ”
“Wish she’d actually said that at the apartment,” Mirabeth whispers to me from the side of her mouth. “Would have saved me a lot of heartache.”
Fucking same. Mirabeth and I aren’t the only ones who need to work on our communication skills.
Brad sniffles several times, blinking quickly, his hands shaky when he lifts them to cup Alisa’s face gently. “But you text each other all the time, sending him pictures of our son. Our son,” he says, his voice raw with emotion.
“It’s not like I want to.” Alisa rises and bumps Brad’s nose with hers.
“I’m only trying to be friendly so Drew can get to know his uncle.
” She sighs heavily and says, “And the texts and calendar reminder about the hotel—I was planning a party for your birthday. You were supposed to go with your friends to pick up the ones who are flying in before you go hunting, and we’d all be waiting to surprise you. ”
“Oh,” Brad says in a small voice. Then his face and tone transform, brightening like a kid on Christmas morning. “You said you wanted to try for another baby. Let’s do it. Now. Right now!”
“Finally!” Alisa tilts her head to kiss him, and he sweeps her onto his lap where they all but start having sex at the table.
It is both exceedingly awkward and encouraging, proving to both Mirabeth and Brad that Alisa and I in no way, shape, or form harbor feelings for each other. I’m nothing but exceptionally happy for my brother and his wife. Let bygones be bygones and move on with our lives.
Brad breaks the kiss, gasping for air, and says, “If it’s a girl, I want to name her—”
I smack the table, making the glasses of root beer shake precariously, and I point at Brad. “I call dibs on ‘Andrea’, ‘Drea’, ‘Rea’, ‘Andy’, and ‘Mandy’.”
Brad cracks a grin, his hair a mess. “I was going to say ‘Tally’ after Alisa’s grandmother, but now that you’ve mentioned it…first come, first served.”
I stand up so fast that my head spins, knocking my chair back as I haul Mirabeth up with my arm around her, flattening my palm over her stomach. “We’re pregnant! First come, first served,” I mock, lifting a brow, feeling ten feet tall with Mirabeth back by my side, as I have been all night.
The room goes silent for a heartbeat and then explodes with noise.
“Didn’t I tell you?!” Mom squeals at Kyra, the two of them hopping around once more. “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!”
“She tried, though, didn’t she?” Kyra cackles.
“Tried what?” Mirabeth asks, wrinkling her nose at her mom.
I would also like to know what other tricks my mother-in-law has been playing.
Kyra waggles her blonde brows. “I know the pharmacy tech who filled your birth control prescription. The pills are bogus.”
Mirabeth throws her hands up in exasperation. “Oh my god! I know this town is small, but it’s not that small. You can’t possibly rope everyone into your truly unhinged grandbaby scheme.”
I can’t help it. I start to laugh, then harder, bending over to slap my knee, my ribs aching. “This is too good.”
“What is? What’s so funny?” Mirabeth asks, steaming mad when she grabs my arm, trying to shake the truth out of me.
When I’ve caught my breath, I tell her, “I found your pills hidden in Merlin’s contraband cat treats and replaced them with fakes when I picked up my antibiotics. I probably got them from the same tech.”
“From Allie?” Kyra guesses.
“One and the same,” I confirm, pulling Mirabeth once more under my arm and kissing the top of her head, then tipping her chin up. “It’s why I stopped fighting you about taking them.”
Mirabeth crosses her arms and taps the toe of her shoes. “I’m going to sic the Berenson Boys on you. Just you wait.”
“Oh, please,” my mom says. “As if those boys are any better. They’ve got a football team of kids between them, and it didn’t happen by accident.” She should know, since she’s best friends with Yamuna, the gossipy receptionist at the trucking warehouse.
Mirabeth clutches the front of my shirt. “We’re moving far, far away from these crazy people.”
Kyra snaps her fingers. “About that…” She turns to rifle through a purse large enough to qualify as a suitcase. “Ah, here it is,” she says, handing Mirabeth a fancy card with a printed picture of her and Garth holding hands in front of a fake backdrop of a sunny day tacked to a cinder block wall.
When Mirabeth doesn’t take it, turning up her nose, I do and read the text printed beneath the photo. “You got married?” I ask. “Congratulations.”
“What?!” Mirabeth snatches the card from my hands. “When?”
Kyra twists her upper half back and forth while folding her hands like a shy schoolgirl with a crush. “Last week. Preston—the bald guy who married the two of you?—performed the ceremony. It was magical. Oh, and I moved in with Garth. Isn’t that exciting? And now I can sell the house—”
Mirabeth screeches to everyone’s shocked wariness, and she speeds out the front door without a word. I scarcely make it across the street in time to sprint alongside the Beetle, wrench open the passenger side door, and jump inside before she really guns the engine.
“Where are we going?” I ask nervously.
“Home!”
When Mirabeth said home, I assumed, of course, that she meant to stay there. Instead, she threw her empty luggage at me, demanded that I pack the essentials, somehow wrangled Merlin into a cat carrier with only a few bloody scratches down her arms, then stomped back to her car.
Keeping silent, I hold the cat carrier on my lap so Merlin doesn’t go careening around the car with every sharp turn made at warp speed, then brace a hand on the dashboard when Mirabeth comes to a screeching halt in her mom’s driveway, the tires skidding with a squeal.
“Princess…” I say cautiously, trying to catch up to her across the lawn—unfortunately, not in time to prevent her from picking up one of the ten plastic planters of peonies sitting on the porch, then hurling it through the window to the left of the front door with a warrior’s cry.
I curse under my breath, hurrying to set the cat carrier down gently so I can wrap an arm around Mirabeth’s waist before she can climb through the broken window.
“Let me,” I tell her while her chest heaves, doing my best not to cut myself so deeply on the jagged glass that it requires a trip to urgent care.
I collide with a sturdy, oval table in the kitchen nook, feel my way in the dark, and unlock the front door from the inside.
Mirabeth strides inside with Merlin’s carrier that she sets on the coffee table to the right, unzipping the canvas bag to let Merlin out, and then she blows past me into the attached garage.
The banging of metal tools being thrown around is loud enough to draw the entire neighborhood’s attention to our crime of breaking and entering, if they hadn’t already been aware.
I sigh, preparing myself to take the fall for someone else’s crime once again, should the cops show up, and I lean against the door jamb, already sweating in the stifling hot garage.
Watching Mirabeth sort through a pile of old lumber and tree trunk cuttings along the back wall, I ask, “What are you doing?”
She jerks upright, hefting a few long boards over her shoulder, holding a hammer and a rusted tin coffee can of nails.
Nudging me out of the way with determination, crossing to the front of the house, she says, “If Mom thinks she can sell my childhood home right out from under me, she can think again!” She drops the wood pile on the nook’s travertine tiles and braces a board across the broken window, hammering both ends into the wall, rattling the decorative plates from Kyra’s travels displayed on hanging shelves.
After a few more of my questions are met with grunts or shrieks, the drive of the hammer drowning out my voice, I give up trying to reason with her or talk her through her feelings.
I set about helping her board up the front and back doors so she doesn’t overexert herself, then tack a quilt that had been folded atop the gingham couch over the broken window to keep the heat out until we can replace the glass.
Once done, Mirabeth turns, fire blazing in her eyes, sweat breaking out over her clammy skin. “I’m going to throw up.”
Thinking fast, I rip the sad pink peonies out of the planter and lift the pot in time to catch her dinner and dessert.
“Uh…feeling better?” I ask, avoiding looking into the pot.
“No.” She yanks the planter back toward her to finish emptying her stomach, then slumps down to lie across the cool tile, fanning her face.
“How about now?”
“A little.”
I discard the planter in the large trash bin in the garage, wet a tea towel to place it on Mirabeth’s forehead, then lie down beside her, pulling her into my chest.
“How can she do this to me?” she asks with a sniffle, tucking her head beneath my chin. “She’s gone too far this time.”
“I don’t know, princess.” I kiss the top of her head, combing the tangles out of her loose hair with my fingers.
“The marriage and baby are one thing, but to sell the house? It’s not right.”
I snort, and she rolls away, giving me the stink eye. “It’s not funny.”
I pull her back toward me. “I know, you’re right, it’s not.” Except I can’t stop my body from shaking with suppressed laughter.
“Why are you laughing at me?” She pinches and twists my left nipple through my shirt hard enough for me to jerk backward.
“Because, princess…out of everything she’s done, it’s the house you’re most upset about?”
“Yes,” she cries. “Last year, she said she wanted to move to Montana to find a hot rancher with lots of land so she could retire early, and she promised I could buy the house when she leaves. It’s why I hadn’t bothered looking for a bigger apartment yet.
But guess what? She’s a big fat lying liar, and…
and…” Mirabeth covers her mouth with a yawn wide enough to crack her jaw.
Since the cops haven’t shown up yet, I figure it’s safe enough to say they won’t be coming, and I roll up onto my knees to lift my worn-out, exhausted wife off the floor. Carrying her to the hallway past the airy living room, I ask, “Which bedroom is yours?”
“Second on the left,” she says through another yawn, burying her face in the crook of my neck.
Cradling her in one arm, I push open the bedroom door and stop short. “Princess, look.” I set her down when she gasps.