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“You don’t like princesses, Soph.”
Sophie made a face her father didn’t see.
But Meredith saw it, and wondered why a little girl would pretend not to like princesses.
Not her business, she decided as she followed them down the stairs. Cam was obviously in as big a hurry to leave as she was to have him gone. He’d go, give her an estimate she’d politely decline, then go back to his wife and perfect family while she hunted up another remodeler to do the work.
He reached the side porch door and turned. “I’ll get back to you with a rough idea. Best I can do with my time frame today.”
Meredith nodded, playing along. “Of course. Thanks, Cam.”
He herded the girls across the porch. At the outer porch door, Rachel slipped from his grip and raced back to Meredith, surprising her with a hug that felt delightful. “Thank you for letting us play in your pretty house. I love it,” she whispered, head back, her gaze trained upward.
“I’m so glad, honey. Come again, okay?”
“I’d like that.”
“Rach. Gotta go,” Cam said.
“I know, I’m coming. Bye, Miss…”
“Meredith.”
“Brennan,” Cam corrected. “Her name is Miss Brennan.”
“They can call me Meredith, Cam. It’s all right.”
“It’s not, but thanks. I’ll be in touch.” He opened the side door, let the girls precede him and then shut it quietly without so much as a backward glance.
Not that she wanted him to glance back. She hadn’t wanted him to come around in the first place—that was all Matt’s doing—and seeing Cam’s reluctance made her realize gut instincts were best followed. His and hers.
Chapter Two
Fifty-two hundred dollars.
Cam added the hard knot of financial anxiety alongside five years of guilt and figured he deserved both. If he’d been more careful, more devoted, a better husband, he might still have a wife and the girls would have a mother.
Somewhere along the way of being father and provider, he’d forgotten to treat life’s blessings with the care they deserved. That carelessness cost his wife her life, made him a single parent, and left his girls with no mother to guide them or explain things to them.
The thought of more than five thousand dollars he didn’t have raised hairs along the back of his neck, but he signed the contract for Sophie’s braces and wished he could pray help into reality.
God helps those who help themselves.
His mother’s tart voice rankled. He ignored it and counted his blessings. He loved his teaching job, the chance to show high school kids usable trades. Woodworking. Plastering. Plumbing. Basic electricity. He taught valuable, lasting skills to kids who might never make it into a four-year college but could do well in a trade-school environment. And to kids who simply wanted to learn how to take care of themselves with skilled hands.
He had a home. It needed work, but it was clean and bright, a safe and open environment for the girls.
And he had his girls, precious gifts from God, the two lights in an otherwise shadowed life.
Cam slipped the dental estimate into his jacket pocket, waited while the girls adjusted their seat belts in the backseat, and racked his brain.
The dental office offered a payment plan.
Cam hated payment plans.
He pulled into his mother’s driveway as the girls started squabbling. His right brain knew they were tired and hungry and needed to run off built-up energy. Sitting in a dental office for nearly ninety minutes hadn’t added to Rachel’s humor or Sophie’s patience.
His left brain didn’t give a hoot and wanted peace and quiet.
“Stop. Now.” He got out of the car and hoisted a small white bag. “I’m dropping off Grandma’s medicine, then we’re going home. Stay in the car. Got it?”
Sophie gave him a “whatever” look.
Rachel smiled sweetly. “Yes, Daddy.”
Cam refused to sigh as he took his mother’s back steps two at a time. Sophie might make her feelings known, but she’d most likely be sitting there with her belt on, reading a book or daydreaming when he got back.
Rachel?
She pretended cooperation, a winning smile under her mop-of-innocence curls, but she acquiesced in name only. Most likely she’d be chasing his mother’s cat into the barn when he returned.
Fifty-two hundred dollars.
He shook his head as if clearing his brain, knocked, then walked in. “Mom? I’ve got your medicine.”
“I’m in here.”
Cam moved toward the querulous voice, fighting useless annoyance. His mother’s perpetual drama had become a way of life a long time ago. “Hey, Mom.” He swept the dark room a look. “Don’t you want a light on?”
“Light hurts my eyes.”
“Another headache?”
“Always.”
He swallowed words that matched the irritation, not an easy task. “Did you take something for it?”
“I don’t remember.”
Oh, she remembered all right. They’d gone through a battery of tests last year as her memory seemed to fade. The diagnosis: old and ornery.
The prognosis: she had the Murray-family strong heart from her mother’s side and might live to be a hundred.
Cam wasn’t sure what to make of that, but she was his mother and with his sister and brother both out of state, Cam needed to be available. Although not nearly as much as she’d like, which was why he was getting the “poor me” act now.
He’d promised to swing by earlier. Meredith’s estimate had messed up his time frame, but stopping by the old Senator’s Mansion then meant he didn’t have to travel to the other side of town now, at the end of a long day with two tired, hungry girls. Would Evelyn Calhoun understand that?
No.
“Can I get you something? Have you eaten?”
“I’m not hungry.” She patted his arm with a weak hand and sighed. “Just tired. And I worried so when you didn’t come like you said, imagining all kinds of things.”
“I left you a message.”
“Did you?” She thinned her gaze, looking up. “I must not have heard the phone.”
Another trick he wasn’t buying. She had caller ID on the phone and through her TV. If she didn’t want to talk to the caller, she didn’t pick up the phone. Which was fine until she used it on him to make him feel guilty for not being there long enough. Often enough.
“How did Sophia’s dentist appointment go? Everything fine?”
“Braces. Pricey. About what you’d expect.”
“I expect people are spending way too much money trying to look prettier, younger and thinner these days.” Her words pitched stronger in argument. Surprise, surprise. “The way young girls slather on makeup and wear high heels. It’s not right. None of it.” Her voice accelerated as she climbed on an old but favorite soapbox. “Sophie’s teeth are fine. They do the job, don’t they?”
The girls raced in at that moment, and Cam couldn’t be angry that they’d disobeyed his directive to stay in the car. It was getting dark and cold and his simple drop-off had turned into an interrogation. Or lamentation. Either label equated to something long and somewhat depressing.
“Hey, girls. I’m just saying goodbye to Grandma.”
“Hi, Grandma.”
“Hi, Gram!”
Evelyn laid an exaggerated hand against her forehead. “Girls, girls. So loud.”
“I’ll take them home. Get them fed. That will quiet them down. Kind of like feeding time at the zoo.” Cam sent a teasing grin to the girls and they lit up in return.
“They’ve had no supper?”
Accusation laced Evelyn’s words and Cam counted to ten—no wait, five. He wouldn’t be sticking around long enough to make it to ten. “Girls. Let’s go.”
“Dad, did you tell Grandma about the pretty lady’s house?”
“No.”
“What lady?” His mother’s voice scaled up.
Great.
“Meredith.” Rachel announced the name like they were new best friends.
“Rachel.” Cam crossed his arms and met her gaze, unblinking.
“She said I could call her that,” the little blonde insisted.
Innocence painted her features, but Cam recognized the belligerent heart behind the facade. “And what did I tell you?”
Rachel sighed, overdone. “To call her Miss Brennan.”
“You were with Meredith Brennan?”
“Doing an estimate. Yes.”
“Instead of bringing my pills?”
He fully intended to wring Rachel’s neck for plunging him into the heart of a discussion he’d be okay with having…never. “She needed an estimate and I was on that side of town.”
“Why did she call you?” Evelyn emphasized the pronoun in a way that suggested any old woodworker would do.
Because I’m the best around, was what he longed to say, but his mother wouldn’t get that. Evelyn Calhoun went beyond frugal and bordered on neurotic when it came to spending money. That someone would pay higher costs for Cam’s expertise didn’t sit right with her. But she sat more upright hearing Meredith’s name, and the self-righteous jut of her chin didn’t bode well for anyone.
“Are you seeing her?”
“What? No. It’s a job, Mom.”
“Why you? Why now? She’s been back for months.”
Cam grasped each little girl’s hand in one of his own, determined to bring the conversation to an end. “Gotta get these guys home. Call if you need anything.”
She rose, following them out, looking considerably stronger than she’d implied moments before. “We’ve been down this road before, Cameron. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
She’d used that quote all his life. Among others, most of them as negative and ominous as the one she’d just spewed. And while Cam read the common sense in the message, he refused to be a doom-and-gloom person, and that set them at odds more often than not.
“You’d take a chance like that again, Cameron? After what she did to you?”
He wouldn’t spar where the girls could hear. It was difficult enough to minimize his mother’s negative effect on them and still be a helpful son, a tightrope he walked daily.
You hate it, his inner self scoffed. Stand your ground, have your say and be done with it. Mark and Julia have no problem doing just that.
That was part of the problem. His siblings had distance on their side. Cam lived a few miles away on a twelve-acre parcel he’d bought a couple of years back. Room for the girls to run. Climb. Ride. Practice their sports.
Still, he wouldn’t argue with his mother in front of impressionable children. Reaching the door, they raced to the car. Sophie edged Rachel by using a well-placed shoulder, a great move in soccer. Not so much on little sisters at the end of a long day.
Rachel’s cries split the night. Cam followed them, wondering which fire to douse first. His mother’s intrinsic negativity, his daughter’s screams of indignation, Sophie’s heavy-handedness or…
His mind flashed back to the vision of Sophie in Meredith’s turret room. Bowing. Curtsying. Sashaying around as if wearing a fancy ball gown.
His girls cared nothing for that sort of thing. Never had, never would. A pair of little jocks, just like their mother.
He grabbed up Rachel, hugged her, tucked her into her booster seat and secured her seat belt. He’d throw a frozen pizza into the oven and “nuke” green beans, the only vegetable both girls liked.
Then baths. Story. Bed.
Only then could he ponder the price tag for Sophie’s dental work. Work that would be essentially complete in two-and-a-half years, just about the time Rachel would need to start.
He refused to sigh. Or whine. Or beat his head against a wall. For the moment, anyway.
As he backed onto the two-lane country road, visions of the gracious Victorian swam into focus. Corner brackets. Framed ceiling lights. Muraled upper walls. Built-ins everywhere, a sign of a well-done Queen Anne. Shelves, closets, cabinets, pantry cupboards. This grand old lady had them all and he’d always longed for a chance to work on her, but not with Meredith Brennan.
