being unhappy.”
“No. He wouldn’t. And he’d kill me if he knew I was saying any of this to you, so you gotta promise to keep your yap shut, okay?” When she nodded, secretly thrilled to be part of a conspiracy, Kev said, “The thing is, from the minute you were born, everybody’s been hot to give your dad advice on how to raise you, what he should and shouldn’t do, stuff like that. He finally got tired of all the interference. Well, actually, he’s been tired of it for a long time. He just couldn’t do anything about it before now.”
Stacey felt her brow knot. “Interference?”
“You know, not being able to make his own decisions. About you. If you want my take on it, I think he was afraid of losing you. That it was getting harder and harder for the two of you to have your own thing, you know?”
“That’s nuts,” she said, her jaw crunching from her holding it in her hands. “Nothing’s ever gonna come between Dad and me.” This was one of those things she simply knew, the way she knew she’d never, ever like Brussels sprouts. “And anyway,” she added, still crunching, “so why couldn’t he just, I don’t know, get us our own apartment or something in Springfield?”
“Because sometimes a person can’t figure out who they really are until they break free of everything they’ve known before. Am I making any sense?”
Not really. But another thrill made her shiver, that Kev thought she was mature enough to handle what he was telling her. Not that she liked it, necessarily, but you can’t have everything.
She sat up straight to look at him. “Is that why you left home?”
“Basically, yeah. But some of the stuff I was into… Trust me, Stace, you don’t wanna know. I was a mess. Your dad, though—he’s always been solid as a rock. Dependable. Selfless. Always puttin’ everybody else first. Like you. No matter what, it’s always been about you. You first, then everybody else, then—maybe—him.”
He got up to stoke the fire, setting off a miniature fireworks display before he shut the doors with a screechy clang. Then he straightened, his hands in his pockets. It was finally beginning to warm up a little, enough for Stacey to open her coat. She wondered where her uncle was going with this.
“That’s kinda the point I’m trying to make,” he said, “in my own convoluted way—that on the surface, this might seem to be all about him. Except…” He sort of laughed. “Except your dad’s not capable of making anything all about him. So this whole crazy scheme—it’s about you, kid. You and him. See?”
But before she could say anything, her uncle’s cell rang—thank God they at least could get a signal out here—and he excused himself to answer it. Stacey wondered if it was a girlfriend. As cute as he was? He probably had girls up the wazoo. As opposed to Dad, who never had any. At least, not that Stacey was aware of. Thank God. She used to watch these movies or read books where the kids were all about trying to get their single father or mother hooked up with somebody, and Stacey had always thought, Why? Because she and Dad were fine, just the two of them. There was no way anybody else would ever fit in.
And, ohmigod—stepbrothers or stepsisters? Lots of her friends were part of these blended families, and they all totally hated it. So, yeah, she was cool with things, just the way they were.
But then, as she sat there, combing her fingers through her long hair, trying to look for split ends in the firelight, some of what Kevin said sank in. About how Dad always put her first.
For the first time since they’d arrived, she felt her lips curve into a smile.
Finally, she thought. Something to work with.
“It’s not fair!” George said, all elbows and indignation as he stood, arms crossed over his new SpongeBob jammies, in the Texas Hold ’Em–themed bathroom that made Violet’s eyes roll in their sockets. “Why do I hafta go to bed the same time as Zeke? He’s five years younger’n me!”
“Hey!” Violet said over the giggling, wriggling, terrycloth-covered mound that was her younger son, her mood perking up at the small miracle that had just taken place in this hideous bathroom that was not, thank God, hers. A small miracle that was somehow enough to momentarily blot out the cloud that was losing her job and having no home of her own and Rudy Vaccaro, with his damn strong jaw and kind blue eyes and his obvious penchant for helping the helpless.
And the letter, waiting for her on the entry table downstairs.
“What?” George said, damp red hair standing in spikes all over his head.
Violet grinned, heartened, and Rudy’s strong jaw and blue eyes faded a little more, even if the letter didn’t. “You just subtracted!”
“I did not,” he said, skeptical.
“You certainly did. You said Zeke was five years younger than you. Which means you subtracted his age—four—from yours—nine—to figure that out.”
“I did?”
“Uh-huh. Without even thinking about it.” She gave him a thumbs-up. Unfortunately her son was no fool.
Unlike his mother.
No. No, she was not going to believe that the occasional foolish choice made her a fool, kind blue eyes and strong jaws be damned.
“You didn’t answer my question,” George said.
“Since the answer’s no different than it was last night, or the night before that, or the night before that,” Violet said, yanking a Thomas the Tank-Engine top over Zeke’s damp, honey-gold curls, then kissing a soft pink cheek, just because she could, “there didn’t seem to be much point. Get your teeth brushed.”
Skinny bare feet stomped across the damp, slightly musty-smelling carpeting to the sink. Wall-to-wall in a bathroom? Let alone one used by small boys with delusions of Olympic glory in the hundred-meter freestyle? Not to mention lousy aim? Insane. But that was Betsy for you, Violet thought as, on the floor below, two of her best friend’s little boys launched into yet another brawl—
Her stomach clenched as It’s over, somebody else bought the house, nothing you can do about it now sailed through her head, along with the blue eyes. And the smile. One of those kick-to-the-nether-regions smiles, deep creases carved into slightly bearded cheeks…
Violet plopped her butt on the closed toilet lid with Zeke on her lap, tugging down the back of George’s pj top where it had stuck to his damp skin. “Have I told you recently how crazy I am about you guys?” she said, suddenly overcome with love and gratitude, despite the sensation of trying to dig out of a hundred-foot-deep sandpit with a teaspoon.
His mouth full of toothpaste suds, George looked at her, eyes bright with worry, and she thought, So much for falling back on maudlin sentimentality as an antidote to stress.
But she smiled anyway, inhaling her four-year-old’s berry-scented shampoo and innocence, and she cocooned him more tightly, cursing Mitch. Cursing herself, for finding herself attracted to another blue-eyed man, one who’d bought her inheritance out from under her. By rights she should have been heaping Irish curses upon his head. Not that she knew any, but she could probably find one or two on eBay, if she tried.
Her eldest eyed her for a moment, thankfully derailing thoughts
