Crazy Thing Called Love (31 page)

“No. No, please, honey, stop.”

Becky closed her mouth so hard her teeth clicked and Maddy didn’t know what to do. What to say. How to manage this girl’s pain.

It was a mistake to have them here
.

She had to suppress that part of her, the small, bitter part who liked her house clean and her life devoid of anything as uncomfortable as love, as painful as this girl’s hope. She’d spent years creating this place where emotion didn’t touch her, and in five minutes Becky had smashed it to pieces.

She swallowed those terrible petty instincts. She swept that small woman aside and let herself do the right
thing. As right as she was able—it was meager and pitiable, but it was all she had.

“Becky, don’t you want more?”

“More than having Charlie safe? More than a nice, clean house with a pool on the roof?” It was like she couldn’t imagine anything else, anything better for herself. And it devastated Maddy.

“You deserve more. You deserve to go to school. College, even. You deserve to have a chance at your own nice, clean house.”

Becky shrugged, but it wasn’t as fluent as her other ones. It was broken. She was broken. The girl knew “no” when she heard it. “I would like to go to school.”

“You will.” There couldn’t be any other way—and frankly, just saying the words, just committing to another person, washed Maddy with light. With sudden purpose, the warmth of feeling that comes from trying to help someone else. “Whatever happens, I’ll … I’ll make sure you go to school.”

“We can stay?” Becky’s eyes lit up, and she looked so much like her mother in that moment that Maddy gasped.

“I can’t …”—and the hope died—“… I can’t take you away from Billy.”

“You’re not taking us away. You’re not. He doesn’t want us.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Becky shot her a look that spoke volumes. This girl had never felt wanted in her life. She wouldn’t know the feeling if it took her out at the knees.

“It’s complicated,” Maddy whispered, the words so lame.

“Whatever.” And just like that, all the sweetness and kindness, those thin fragile bonds, were gone. “We better go. Charlie doesn’t know how to swim.”

“You want to go to the bathroom, put on your suit?”

“I’m wearing it,” Becky said and walked right past her with the Target bag, which must be empty.

She’d been planning this thing all along.

Maddy followed, wondering how she and Billy were going to handle this new development.

And she wanted to resist the idea of her and Billy handling
anything
together. She wanted to reject it as fast and as hard as she could, but her conscience wouldn’t let her. The dejected slope of Becky’s shoulders as she marched down the hall ahead of her, the tender pale skin at the nape of her neck, all that vulnerability she worked so hard to hide—none of those things would let Maddy walk away from these kids.

Somehow the past had resurfaced and tied her and Billy together again.

Billy and Charlie
were in the shallow end of the pool. Charlie stood on the first of the wide steps, the water lapping his ankles. Billy sat on the third step, his lower body in the water. Overhead there was nothing but glass and blue skies. White fluffy clouds.

“Char,” Billy said, “it’s not really swimming, what you’re doing. It’s wading.”

“I’m scared.”

Billy put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, felt the small bones, the twitching muscles. The shivering skin. “I’m here. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Charlie, so serious beneath the goggles and yellow water wings, took a deep breath and jumped down to the second step.

“Hey!” Billy cheered and Charlie clapped, but then lost his balance and grabbed on to Billy’s shoulders, climbing into his lap like the water was rising fast.

It was strange having a little kid in his lap, especially since the little kid’s knee seemed to have unerring aim for Billy’s testicles. But it was nice—great, actually. Having a kid wrap his trusting little arms around Billy’s neck had been a sensation his life had been missing up until now.

“Billy?” Maddy crouched down beside them. She wore a red swimsuit. Conservative by most standards.
He couldn’t see her boobs or her belly button or any of her butt—but the color itself was x-rated.

When he was fifteen, she’d had a red suit and he’d gone to the pool every day to watch the fabric of that bikini cling to her boobs and hips.

She’d been a dream in that red one-piece.

This one wasn’t any different.

“Hey,” he said. “You didn’t ring the bell to be let in.”

“I have another pass card.”

“We’re swimming!” Charlie yelled, waving over Billy’s shoulder, toward the hot tub. “Becky. Look.”

“Why don’t you go sit with your sister for a second,” Maddy asked Charlie and the boy didn’t have to be asked twice. He was up, dripping and running across the tiles toward his sister, who sat hunched and small among the bubbles of the hot tub.

“Are kids supposed to sit in hot tubs?” Billy asked.

“The temperature’s super low, it’s like a bath.”

“Well, that’s good. The kid could probably use one.” Billy pushed off the steps, drifting out into the pool. Like it was twenty years ago, he grinned at the woman in the red swimsuit who made him crazy and happy in equal parts.

“Come on in,” he said.

“We need to talk.”

“If it’s about the show—”

She glanced over at the kids. “It’s about Becky.”

He swam back to the step. “What happened?”

“She asked if she could stay. With me.”

“Oh Christ.” He had this sudden memory of Denise getting her period for the first time. Janice had been gone. Mom had been passed-out drunk. It had just been him and the mysteries of womanhood and a crying twelve-year-old girl.

He’d felt utterly inadequate to the task.

This moment felt that way.

“What are you going to do about the kids?”

“I talked to Janice this morning and she said she’ll give up custody.”

“You’re trying for custody?” She didn’t look horrified, or like she thought he might be joking. She seemed proud. And he didn’t want to need her approval quite like he did, but he couldn’t lie—it felt good.

“It’s not that easy, but I can’t send them back to Janice. She … she hits Becky.”

He saw the anger brew on Maddy’s face. She wasn’t a fan of bullies and Janice was nothing but a chain-smoking bully. She always had been.

“So what do we do?”

We?
he thought, the word like a neon sign in the dark. “We?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Billy. I just want to help. What can I do?”

“Well, I’d probably have a better chance at being approved as a foster parent if I wasn’t a single man …”

She couldn’t quite fight the smile. “I was thinking more along the lines of a letter of reference.”

“I suppose that would be good, too.”

“So have you told Becky you’re not sending her back?”

“My lawyer advised me against it. Said if Janice gave up custody and I didn’t get approved as a foster parent, the kids could be split up, sent to separate foster homes.”

Maddy glanced over Billy’s head and he turned to see Becky and Charlie sitting on the edge of the hot tub, corralling bubbles with their hands.

“They can’t get split up,” Maddy sighed.

“I’m doing the best I can.”

In her eyes he could see his reflection, the scars and muscles, the tools he used to terrorize men on the ice. But he always looked like so much more in her eyes, too.

Funny how he was finally starting to believe it.

“If word got out about what a good guy you are, your reputation would be ruined,” she murmured.

Ah, man, first the red swimsuit and then the “we” stuff and now she thought he was a good man. He sat back down in the cold water before he got ahead of himself.

“Hey!” Charlie came running back across the tiles, water splashing and sloshing out of his cupped hands. “Look at the bubbles!” When the boy slid to a stop beside them, his hands were empty.

Billy laughed at Charlie’s crestfallen expression. Two days these children had been in his life. Two days. And yet he could tell nothing would be the same again.

Becky sat shivering in the hot tub. Uncle Billy had convinced Charlie to try to put his face in the water, so Charlie stood on the middle step in the shallow end, bending over at the waist, trying to lower his face into the water.

Uncle Billy and Maddy were cheering him on, but at the last minute Charlie pulled back up, jumping and dancing, nervous and excited.

The grown-ups both groaned.

Becky bit her lip hard, and when the skin tore a bit, she yanked at it, pulling off a big sliver. She tasted blood but she kept on licking the spot even though it stung like crazy. She couldn’t stop. She just kept on licking, stinging, and bleeding, and watching Uncle Billy and Charlie and Maddy.

A little family. That’s what they were.

If Becky walked over, there wouldn’t be any more happy family. Uncle Billy would yell at Becky, or Becky would yell at him, and the whole scene would be ruined.

And that
, she told herself—mean as she could be, as awful as Janice and Mom dying—
is why no one wants you. No one
.

Funny, she’d thought she left everything bad behind in Pittsburgh. But the bad was in her.

Charlie was happy and that was the only thing that mattered. Uncle Billy seemed to like him. Way more than he liked her. What with all that hugging.

Yeah, and whose fault was that?
she wondered, a little embarrassed by the way she’d been acting all day.

Why do I do that?
she wondered. Maybe Janice was right about that, too—Becky just wanted to make life harder. It’s not like she woke up every morning thinking “How can I be a total bitch?” It just happened. Someone tried to be kind or give her a hand and it always seemed fake to her.

Charlie hugged Uncle Billy, his arms around the guy’s big neck, and Uncle Billy patted her brother’s back. He didn’t force him to go underwater, or make fun of him for being scared.

Uncle Billy took such good care of Charlie. Which was awesome. Strange and totally unexpected, but awesome.

So awesome, in fact, that it gave her a new idea. Finally, days after Plan A fell to pieces, Plan B was ruined because she couldn’t hot wire a car, and Maddy shot down Plan C, Plan D came to her.

She would just leave. By herself.

Uncle Billy had money, he could pay for two nannies to take care of Charlie. And those women would teach Charlie to use the bathroom, because he never would for Becky, and they would walk him to school on the first day of kindergarten. And take him to soccer. Teach him to read.

Her raw and bloody lips burned as tears ran into her mouth.

And running away without him would be so much better for her. She wouldn’t have to worry about diapers,
or where he would sleep, or if he was clean. Or scared. Or getting hurt.

Away from her, with Uncle Billy, he’d be safe and happy and wearing new clothes and playing with toys and she could just worry about herself.

Just herself. Alone.

She glanced behind her at the big windows, the sunshine and the blue, blue sky.

It would be easy to walk out of here. Really easy. Her clothes were in a locker in the changing room, and she had the key around her wrist. She could change and be gone before Uncle Billy and Maddy even realized she wasn’t in the pool.

She’d taken sixty bucks out of Uncle Billy’s wallet. It wasn’t as much as what he owed her, but it was something. She could make it last.

Charlie’s scream—a happy one—made her heart stop, and out of habit she turned to look for him. There’d been more of those happy screams in the last two days than she’d heard since Mom died. And that made Becky happy—it did, but it also made her heart hurt.

She had kept him safe and clean, but she hadn’t managed to make him happy.

I won’t be able to say good-bye
.

She tilted her head back, trying to get a breath, because suddenly there was no air.

Charlie was little, a baby practically—he’d cry for a few days, but he’d probably forget her. In a few years he wouldn’t remember her at all, it’s not like there were any pictures of her. Or any of him that she could take with her.

Another strip came off her lip.

“Becky?” She whirled and found Maddy standing behind her. “You okay?”

Becky lifted her wrists to wipe away her stupid tears
with her sleeves, then remembered she was wearing a swimsuit.

“Charlie needs a nap,” Becky said. She had the same trapped feeling that she’d had when she and Charlie packed their stuff to move into Janice’s house. There was nothing, nothing she could do to change things. It was like the whole world was sitting on her chest and her brain was crazy from trying to think of different ways they could get out of the situation. But in the end she was only thirteen, just a kid. “Charlie takes a nap every day. Every day at one. If he goes to sleep later than that he stays up all night.”

“Oh …” Maddy looked over at the pool, where Charlie was holding on to Uncle Billy’s neck and Uncle Billy was carefully swimming so that Charlie’s head never went underwater. “We can take him down for a nap. Do you want lunch—”