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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 of curses and sexual longing and such, then spit out his toothpaste. His front teeth were beaver teeth, enormous, one of them crooked. Braces, she thought, almost drowning in panic.
“You lost your job, huh?” George said, eyes huge in the mirror, beaver teeth glinting against a toothpaste-slicked lower lip. “Because of us?”
Swear to God, she would kill Maude Jenkins with her bare hands.
“Yes, I lost my job,” Violet said, being brave. “But no, not because of you.”
“But Maude said—”
“Maude’s a big fat poopyhead,” Zeke piped from Violet’s lap, and she bit her bottom lip to keep from laughing.
“We don’t call people poopyheads,” she said, kissing damp curls.
Zeke twisted around to look up at her, a single tiny crease marring that wonderful, perfect forehead. Mitch’s forehead, she thought, barely dodging the stab of regret in time. “What do we call ’em, then?”
Bitches, Violet thought with a sigh, getting to her feet, Zeke molded to her hip like a baby monkey. “Come on, you two—let’s get to bed.”
“Aw, Mom…”
She took George’s chin in her hand, which, she realized with a start, wasn’t nearly as low as it used to be. “Tomorrow, you can stay up later. Tonight, I need you to go to bed at eight-thirty.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m about to keel over.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Sometimes life doesn’t make any sense,” Violet muttered, steering him out of the steamy bathroom into the chilly, wallpapered hallway lined with photographs of somebody else’s children. “Suck it up.”
George griping and moaning the whole time, they made their way down the stairs of the tiny two-bedroom house, to the half-finished basement they’d called home for the past six months. Betsy’s husband, Joey, had originally fixed it up as a place where he and his buddies could watch games and not get in Betsy’s hair, which Betsy finally figured out was Joey-speak for hiding out so his sons wouldn’t get into his. It was what it was. Stained carpeting over the cement floor. Fake knotty pine paneling on two walls. A pair of small, grimy, shrub-choked windows hugging the ceiling that let in neither air nor light. An ancient, slightly musty pull-out couch on which all three of them slept.
True, Joey had grumbled a bit at first when his wife so generously offered his refuge to Violet when her life took yet another in a very long, very boring series of tumbles. But he was a good man, that Joey, the best in his price range, so he’d come around. Sometimes he even took Violet’s two with his three to McDonald’s or someplace, just so both women could catch their breaths for an hour or so.
Mitch had been like that, too, once upon a time.
Ignoring the temptation to wallow, Violet tucked both boys into bed like a normal mother, blinking away the tears pooling in the corners of her eyes. At times like this, all she wanted was to reverse the clock, to return to that brief period of her life when things actually made sense, when she knew she was loved.
Or at least believed she was.
Especially the weeks leading up to Mitch’s vanishing act, so she could study them, dissect them, figure out what had gone wrong. Because that’s what bugged her the most, that unanswered “Why?” The letters, filled with apologies without explanations (what the hell was she supposed to do with those?), weren’t helping, either.
Upstairs, Betsy’s boys went for each others’ throats, as usual. Joey worked second shift at a nearby machine factory—he wouldn’t be home before midnight. Violet’s kids, however, were nearly out before she doused the light, leaving only the night-light on so a sleepy boy wouldn’t break his neck tripping over forsaken skateboards and soccer shoes and badminton sets if he needed to go potty. They could sleep through anything, thank God. Unlike her, Violet thought wearily as she glanced up at the vibrating ceiling, thinking, For cripes’ sake, Betsy, put your kids to bed.
Overhead, something crashed; Betsy started yelling; somebody burst into loud tears.
That’s it, I’m outta here, Violet thought, dragging her old down coat on over her bathwater-splotched sweats. Not that she could actually leave, but even standing outside in twenty-degree weather was preferable to grinding her teeth for the next two hours until, one by one, her friend’s children passed out.
From the closet-size living room, she could see Betsy’s short, gelled, multitoned hair poking out over the top of the sofa, like a spooked tortoiseshell cat. “CSI’s on,” she yelled as Violet passed, cramming her own insane hair into the first hat she could find, a SpongeBob deal she’d given George for Christmas. Under normal circumstances, Violet loved CSI, in all its permutations. Tonight, however, she was feeling anything but normal.
“Thanks, I think I need to get some air,” she said, yanking open the door.
“You’re not leaving the kids with me?” Betsy called out over the shrieks of her youngest, a two-year-old who communicated mostly through punching and screaming.
“Of course not, Bets, I’m just right here in the yard.”
“You get the letter?”
Violet turned, eyeing the plain white envelope on the entryway table, addressed in Mitch’s microscopic print. She picked it up, shoved it into her coat pocket. “Yeah, got it.”
The front door shut on the chaos inside, Violet inhaled deeply, savoring the cold, sweet air against her skin, the relative silence soothing both her eardrums and her tender, shattered soul. She wavered for a moment, then dug the letter out of her coat pocket, yanking off her mitten with her teeth to rip open the envelope. Like all the others, it only took a second to read, the usual warp and weft of apologies and vague promises, fringed with a plea for forgiveness.
Eyes burning, she crumpled it up, the sharp edges pricking her lips when she pressed it to her mouth.
He’d sent money for the boys from the beginning, not regularly, but when he could. If he said anything at all, it rarely went beyond, “I’m okay, hope you and the boys are okay, too.” The actual letters, though, hadn’t started until after the divorce a year ago, when Betsy had finally convinced Violet she’d be better off financially as an official single mom. As much as it hurt, she’d taken Mitch’s not contesting the divorce as a sign that that chapter of her life was indeed over and done with. That there wasn’t enough love and patience in the world to fix whatever had gone wrong between them.
Except no sooner had the hole in her heart begun to close up than the letters started coming, from a P.O. Box in Buffalo. At first, only with the monthly money order for the boys. Then every other week. Now almost weekly, even though he never called, not even to talk to the boys, even though he swore he loved them—that he still loved her—in every letter.
The hardest part was writing back. Not knowing what to say, other than to thank him for the money, his concern, letting him know what the boys were up to. Not knowing what she was supposed to feel, other than hugely conflicted. What do you say to a man who saved you from a living hell, only to ten years later plunge you right back into another one?
A hot tear streaked down Violet’s cheek as she planted her butt on Betsy’s front porch steps to glower at the front yard, nearly bald save for the occasional patch of leftover, dully glistening snow. The tear track instantly froze; Violet wiped it away with the mitten, then stuffed her freezing hand back into it, giving in to a wave of self-pity she’d kept barely contained for months.
At the lowest point of her life, Mitch had been as close to a knight in shining armor as someone like her was ever going to get. But white knights aren’t supposed to bail when things get tough, when kids get sick and cry all night, or a half-dozen things break at once and have to be fixed.
Nor were they supposed to dangle half promises in front of you, making you want to believe in second chances, that the past two years had only been another in series of bad dreams.
I know I screwed up, Vi. And I’m working on fixing that…
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Violet muttered, cramming the letter back into her coat pocket. She shivered, her breath clouding her vision the same way this newest setback was clearly clouding her good sense. She didn’t need no steenkin’ white knight, from the past or otherwise, she needed a plan. Something to keep her moving forward instead of constantly glancing over her shoulder at the what-might-have-beens. Elbows planted on her knees, she breathed into her mittened palms, warming her face, rallying the weary, mutinous tatters of her resolve.
Because, dammit, was she simply going to curl up in defeat, or take charge of her own destiny? Was she going to sit on her fanny for the next thirty years boo-hooing into her Diet Pepsi about the dearth of white knights in the area, or was she going to get up off that fanny and go make her own opportunity?
The possible solution poked at her, carefully, cringing in anticipated rejection. And indeed, No way was Violet’s first, immediate reaction to the absurd suggestion. Except the idea poked again, more insistently this time, demanding she look it full in the face instead of automatically dismissing it out of hand.
So she did, partly to shut it up, partly because it wasn’t like there were any other ideas around, begging for an audience. And after she’d listened with an open mind, and considered the pros and cons, she finally conceded that—as a temporary measure only, just until she figured out her next step—it might work.
The issue barely settled in her mind, a white Bronco, ghostlike in the halogen glow of the streetlamp, turned the corner and rumbled down the street, pulling up in front of Betsy’s house.
And when Rudy Vaccaro got out, he of the square jaw and solid everything and searing blue eyes that saw far more than Violet probably wanted him to, she glanced up at the sin-black sky, studded with a million trillion suns, and thought, This is a joke, right?
If it hadn’t been for the streetlamp setting on fire the wisps of orange sticking out from underneath that silly hat, Rudy would have never recognized her. As Violet, as a woman, even—sad to say—as a human being. Since, unfortunately, in that puffy pink coat she looked like one of those awful coconut-covered marshmallow things his mother used to occasionally stick in their lunch boxes when she hadn’t had time to bake.
She stood as he approached, her expression uncertain. But only for a moment. Because almost instantly her gaze turned direct, purposeful, as though she’d tracked him down, not the other way around. Interesting.
“I asked Darla where you lived,” Rudy said, preempting.
“Because…?”
“Because you left before you got your tip.”
“I never actually served you, as I recall.”
“Technicality,” he said.
“I see. Well, then…” Unsmiling, she stuck out her hand.
Half amused, half unnerved, Rudy dug his wallet out of his back pocket, concentrating on fishing out a bill as he closed the gap between them. When he laid the bill in her mittened hand, however, he caught the smudged streaks on her cheeks. Despite the bitter cold, everything inside him melted.
She glanced up, surprised. Pleased. Clearly not in a position to protest his generosity. “Thanks,” she said, pocketing the twenty. “So. Was that it?”
Rudy crammed his own hands in his pockets, his ears fast-freezing by the second, even as he had this weird thought about how she was somehow like the house, neglected and closed up for far too long, her true potential hidden under umpteen layers of bad history. “Actually, no. I…we need to talk. About the inn.”
An odd mix of hurt, despair and determination flickered in her eyes. “Oh?”
“Yeah. Look, Darla told me you’d expected to get it, and…” A breeze nudged inside his jacket, salsa’d down his spine. “Is there someplace we can go? To talk? Someplace warm?”
“I can’t leave the boys,” Violet said, glancing back at the house. From inside, he heard a woman yell. Her gaze returned to his, eerily silver in the half-light. “They’re asleep.” Don’t ask, her eyes said.
“Can we at least go inside?” She shook her head. “My car, then.”
“Oh, right. Like I’m gonna get into a car with a complete stranger?”
“Dammit, Violet—I feel like crap about what happened, okay? All I want is a chance to at least try to make amends. But I’d rather not freeze my nuts off while I’m doing that, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Amends?” A wary curiosity flickered in her eyes. “Like how?”
“Like a job offer. Sort of. And a place to live.”
At her intake of breath, he moved in for the kill. “The car’s at least got a heater. And hot chocolate.”
“Hot chocolate?”
“I passed a Dunkin’ Donuts on the way over.” He shrugged. “I took a chance.” When her gaze drifted over to the car, he said, gently, “I was a cop. A good cop. I swear, you’re safe with me.”
He thought he might have seen one corner of her mouth twitch. “I only have your word on that, you know.”
Rudy flipped up his collar. His thighs were stinging, his butt was going numb and he didn’t even want to think about what was happening to other parts of his anatomy. “Okay, so yeah, for all you know I could be some raving weirdo. Actually my kid probably thinks I am, dragging her up here to live and everything. But that’s beside the point.”
He bent slightly to see her face, pretty and soft and round and pinked with the cold. Like one of those old porcelain-headed dolls his mother liked to collect. “So why don’t you go tell your friend inside to keep an eye out, and we’ll stay right where you can see the house.”
“I don’t know…”
“Violet. Please. Let me at least try to make this right, okay?”
She wavered for another several seconds before, with a sharp nod, she skipped up the porch stairs, opened the door and spoke to whoever was inside, then marched back down the walk, her coat swishing slightly in the still night air.
“This had better be some damn good hot chocolate,” she muttered as he opened the door for her.
Chapter Three
In the grand scheme of things, Violet mused as she sipped the hot chocolate, did it really matter who came up with the idea first? Because sometimes there was a fine line between forging your own destiny and begging. Between determination and desperation.
So all in all, she decided, sitting in Rudy’s nice warm car, the cozy throw he’d had dug out of the backseat snuggled around her thighs, the scent of big strong man mingling with the sweet, warm breath of the chocolate, things were probably working out better than she could have hoped.
“Better” definitely being a relative term. Because she felt a little how Moses’s mother must’ve felt after she’d hidden her baby in the rushes so Pharoah’s daughter would find him, then going and offering herself as a wet nurse. Yeah, she’d been able to stay with her baby, which was some consolation, but he was no longer really hers, was he? A temporary arrangement was all it had been.
