Get You Good (11 page)

They sat in silence as the weight of the situation fell on both of them.

“So he already found a buyer.”

“You'll never guess who.”

“Don't tell me . . .”

“Samantha and her people.”

Lissandra swore. “And they're willing to pay?”

“Above the asking,” Sydney said.

Lissandra swore again.

“He's giving our money back.” She shook her head. “Can you believe he came in here, showing me some tired storefronts that we could move to? Said he was trying to help.”

“I'll tell him what to do with his help.”

Sydney looked around at the office that she had shared with her father for several years and used on her own since Leroy died. The eggshell blue made the windowless room look brighter than it actually was. Books on food, pastry making, and decorating lined the bookshelves on one side while a large board covered with pictures of specialty cakes and creations, catered events, and favorite customers hung on the other. This place was her life. The one thing she could depend on to be there and to be the same. She couldn't imagine not coming here every day. What would she do?

The air in the room suddenly felt thinner and Sydney's chest hurt as she struggled to breathe. She bolted up from her seat and grabbed her purse.

“I have to go.”

“You can't go now, Syd,” Lissandra began. “We have to deal with this. . . .”

Sydney grabbed her iPhone in response. “I'll be back later.”

As she went through the door, she heard her sister call after her, but she didn't stop. She barely smiled as people called out to her on her way through the doors to the parking lot. Her cell phone rang as she started the car. It was Thomas
,
Decadent's accountant. He had probably heard from Dean and wanted to know what was going on. But Sydney didn't want to talk to anyone right now. So she shut off the phone and pulled out of the parking lot. She didn't know where she was going, but anywhere but here would be good enough.

“A
nywhere” turned out to be the backyard behind the house. After driving around for what felt like hours, it became her final stop. Still dressed in her clothes from work, Sydney slipped through the back door into the gated yard behind the house. She looked around the ground at the thin layer of grass that was bucking the winter and holding strong. The time for barbeques and evenings out back was long gone with the fall, but Sydney didn't care. She couldn't think of anywhere else to be, so here she was.

The empty wrought-iron benches beckoned to her, but she chose the tire swing instead. It had survived their childhood and was still useful as a source of entertainment for kids on the rare occasions that there were any at the house. She dusted off a thin layer of leftover leaves before fitting her legs through the hole and making herself comfortable. At the right angle her feet didn't even touch the ground.

She took a deep breath of the crisp, dry air and noted that yesterday's clear blue skies, which had today become gray and murky, were an uncanny reflection of the way her life had suddenly changed in only a few hours.

As the tire moved gently in small circles, Sydney wondered for the hundredth time what she was going to do. The one thing she had feared the minute Dean had come home was the very thing that was happening. She was losing the shop. But it was much worse than she had anticipated. In her worst-case scenario, Dean had just assumed ownership of the store and run it into the ground. Sydney could have dealt with that. She would have let him crash and burn first, but then she would have helped him figure out how to run Decadent. Then they would have done it together and everything would have been fine. But never had she imagined that she might literally lose the store—that it would no longer be in the family but belong to someone else. She didn't have a plan for that.

“Want some company?”

Sydney twisted the swing around and found Hayden standing by the door, his hands in his pockets and concern in his eyes.

“What are you doing here?” She let the tire turn her around as the swing righted itself.

“I called you several times on your cell, but it kept going straight to voice mail,” he said, walking over to where she was. “I got worried, so I called the shop. Lissandra told me what happened.”

He stooped down in front of her. “I'm sorry, Syd.”

She realized tears had begun to run down her face. Hayden reached over and gently wiped them away with his thumbs.

“I don't know what I'm going to do,” Sydney said, her voice cloudy. “If I had known this was coming like a year ago, then I could have planned for it. I would still be upset, but I wouldn't feel so . . . so . . .”

“Blindsided?”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “How am I going to fix this in a couple weeks? There's no time to find a new space, to let all our customers know we're moving, to change all our stationery and business cards, and reschedule all our orders, to move all the equipment—that's if Dean didn't sell all of it with the store. Plus, I know Samantha, and she's just going to swoop in and steal all our clients with our location. . . .”

“Easy, Syd,” Hayden said, taking her hand and squeezing her fingers. “One thing at a time. . . .”

“Yeah, but which one thing first?” Sydney asked. “I feel like someone took my life, put all the contents in an electric mixer, and pressed START. Now everything's tossed around and all the things I care about are not how they should be. How do I deal with that?”

Hayden sighed. “I wish I could give you an answer, sweetheart, but I don't know either. What I do know is that everything that happens in our lives happens for a reason, and if God is letting this be taken from you, it's because he has something better for you.”

Sydney shook her head. “I don't know, Dub. In this past year, so many things have been taken from me. If something better was coming, it should have been here by now. Instead, it's just one thing after another. And I know you mean well, but if you start preaching to me, I'm gonna kick you out.”

“I'm not going anywhere,” Hayden said, unfazed by her words. “You already know that. I'm here for you for whatever, so you can quit the tough act. I'm not trying to preach to you, I'm just telling you I've been where you are. I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, a multiyear contract, and my entire career when I tore my ACL. In one night, one game, with five minutes left in the quarter, it was all over. The other dude walks away with a flagrant foul and a one-game suspension. I walk away with a bad knee and a lifetime suspension from the only thing that I knew how to do.”

“What did you do?” Sydney asked, watching as the emotions from the memories played over his face.

“I sulked and wallowed and hid from the world for a couple months,” he said with a small smile. “Then on May seven 2008 I prayed that if God gave me a sign, I'd pull my life together. Within seconds, my phone rang. It was my dad telling me it was time to get up.”

Sydney raised an eyebrow. “You remember the exact day?”

“How could I forget?” He smiled. “It was the first day of the rest of my life. My dad said exactly what I needed to hear, what I already knew—that God had a new direction for my life. I knew my dad's words were a message straight from God to me. That was the day I started moving, started living again. And since then I've never stopped.”

“But at least you had something to keep going with. . . .”

“Not much,” Hayden said. “What's worse, I had no plan for the future. And without a plan, you might as well have nothing. I thought I would play ball forever. I didn't even finish my degree. So I had to go back and do all that. It took me two years to get back on track, Syd. But you know what?”

“What?”

“I'm in the best place now that I've been in a long time.”

Sydney sighed and looked down at the grass.

“I know, baby, it doesn't look that way now. I couldn't see it then, either. But the God who loved me would never let me go through all that for nothing. And he's not letting you go through all this for nothing, either.”

He tilted her chin up so she had to look at him.

“It's OK to be upset,” he said gently. “It's OK to be angry and hurt. But don't give up. Give God a chance to show you what he's got for you.”

Sydney pursed her lips to try and hide a smile. “I thought you weren't going to preach to me.”

He smiled.

“Sorry.” He leaned over and brushed his lips against hers gently. “Sometimes it just happens.”

She reached out to touch his cheek as her eyes roamed his face. Who was this man, and what had he done with the arrogant boy she had grown up with? His eyes smiled at her, as if he heard her question, and he placed a hand over her fingers, holding them to his cheek a moment longer.

“Syd! Thank God you're here. I need you to help me in the kitchen.”

Sydney and Hayden turned to where JJ was standing by the doorway.

“Help you with what?” Sydney asked, not feeling in a particularly charitable mood.

“With dinner! Dean's going to be here in a few minutes. Remember, we told them six o'clock.”

Sydney rubbed her hand across her eyes. She had forgotten. With everything that had happened that morning, she had completely forgotten that Dean and Sheree were supposed to be coming by for dinner.

“I'm not having dinner with him.” Sydney shook her head. “Not after what happened today. And I'd be surprised if Dean was still planning to come.”

JJ sighed. “Yeah, he called about that. But I told him it was OK. Come on, Syd. It's been weeks since he's been back and you haven't even met his wife yet. . . .”

“You mean the woman who's been whispering in his ear and convincing him to sell the family business?” Sydney snapped. “Yeah, I'd like to meet her. My fist would like to meet her face, too.”

“I know you don't mean that,” JJ said, her tone slightly scolding. “Can't we put everything about the shop aside for just one night and try to remember we're family?”

“No,” Sydney said. “Not tonight.”

“Sydney . . .”

“Sorry, JJ, I can't be in a room with Dean tonight.” Sydney got out of the swing. “And if you're smart, you better hope Lissandra doesn't come either.”

“She's not,” JJ said dryly. “She said Mario's taking her somewhere where she's far enough away from Dean so she can't kill him.”

“Lucky for him.” Sydney walked toward the door. “I'll be back around midnight.”

“Where are you going to go?” JJ asked.

“We'll find somewhere,” Sydney said, pulling Hayden with her.

JJ groaned. “This is not how this evening was supposed to happen.”

The three of them walked through the house toward the front door. Sydney had her hand on the doorknob when the doorbell rang.

JJ bit her lip. “It's Dean.”

Sydney felt Hayden's hand on her arm. “Easy,” he whispered in her hair. “Just say good night, then we'll leave.”

Sydney pulled the door open. She suspected that the scowl on Dean's face was identical to the one on hers. They glared at each other in silence until a small woman, with caramel-colored skin and Beyoncé-blond hair stepped in front of Dean and stretched out her hand.

“I'm so sorry we had to meet like this,” she said apologetically. “Hi, I'm . . .”

Sydney was about to give her a piece of her mind when she heard Hayden's voice.

“Sheree?” There was no missing the surprise in his tone.

Sydney watched the smile on the woman's face change to shock. “Hayden?”

Sydney whirled around to look at her boyfriend, then back at Dean's wife. They both wore a strikingly similar look of surprise on their faces.

“You two know each other?” JJ asked, voicing the question that Sydney was sure she and her siblings were all thinking.

Sydney watched several expressions she couldn't read pass over Hayden's face.

“Yes,” he said finally, as he folded his arms. “Sheree is my sister.”

J
ackie's house was in the community of Thornhill, situated near the northern border of Toronto. Yonge Street, which served as the east-west dividing line of Toronto, ran straight through Thornhill, dividing the community into Thornhill-Markham on the east and Thornhill-Vaughan on the west. Sydney's mother had bought her home, in what was now Thornhill-Markham, more than twenty years ago. She had gotten in right before the large housing developments began to move in. Since then, the size of the community and the value of Jackie's house had more than tripled.

Despite its closeness to Toronto, however, Thornhill, particularly the part where Jackie lived, still had a suburban feel. For one, it was still far enough from train lines and highways that one could sleep peacefully. In addition, Jackie's backyard had enough space that it could have fit Leroy's house and still have room for more trees than most downtown parks.

Sydney wasn't even sure why she was on her way to Jackie's. She loved her mother, but they didn't have the kind of run-to-you relationship that Jackie had with Sydney's younger sisters. Sydney didn't remember exactly when it had gotten that way, but she suspected it was some time after her parents' second divorce.

However, on this particular day, she was running out of places to go. Her own home was off limits, as was the shop. And after finding out the news about Sheree and Hayden's relationship, Sydney had needed a breather from her boyfriend also. At this point she was fresh out of options.

Her mother's car was the only one in the driveway when Sydney finally arrived. Parking behind it, she walked up the steps and rang the doorbell. When there was no answer, she tried the door. Open.

Sydney closed her eyes and sighed.

“Mother, how many times do I have to tell you, you can't keep leaving the front door open,” Sydney called out as she locked the door behind her and headed through the large entryway, past the sitting room to the kitchen. The house was quieter than she had heard it in ages, and she realized absently that it was the first in a long time she had been there without at least some of her siblings.

“Mom?” Sydney's voice echoed through the empty kitchen.

She stuck her head through the back door into the yard that was already growing dark as the night approached. No one.

“Mom, where are you?” she called out as she headed through the back hall past the laundry room.

“Jackie?”

“Child, who you calling Jackie? You think the two of us were born the same day?”

Sydney grinned and stuck her head into the large downstairs bedroom that Jackie had decades earlier converted into a sewing room.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Hey, yourself,” her mom said as she strung the needle on her Singer. “Why are you walking through this house, shouting at the top of your lungs like deaf people live here?”

“Why are you still leaving the front door open?” Sydney responded with an equal measure of chastisement. “This is not the eighties anymore, Mom. You can't just leave your door unlocked. It's not safe.”

“Don't you worry about me being safe,” she said, turning the reel of thread that she had just run through the needle. “God will take care of me. He and Alarm Force.”

Sydney rolled her eyes.

“Come over here and give your old mother a kiss. I can't tell the last time you came here.”

Sydney gave her mother a hug and a kiss before sinking down into the couch nearby. She remembered, as a child, spending hours reading in that same couch while her mother worked away at the machine. It was in the peaceful years after her parents had gotten back together. It seemed like so long ago.

“What are you working on today?” Sydney asked.

“Costumes for the Christmas play at church,” Jackie said. “You know, Josephine is directing it this year.”

Sydney fought her gag reflex. “I'm sure she is.”

“Now, why do you have to say it like that?” Jackie paused to look up at Sydney. “I can't talk about my own daughter now?”

“Of course you can talk about your daughter,” Sydney said. “I just wish she wasn't the only daughter you talked about.”

“Oh, please.” Jackie huffed. “I talk about the rest of you.”

“Zelia is not the rest of us, Mom,” Sydney said.

“So you think I only talk about Josephine and Zelia?”

“Yes,” Sydney said with a laugh, nodding at her mother. “You do.”

Jackie sighed. “OK. Maybe I do talk about them a little more. But it's only because they're the youngest. And they're the only ones who let me know what's going on in their lives. Like I said, before today I barely saw you. You never even told me you were dating that basketball player.”

“He's not a basketball player, Mom, he's a trainer,” Sydney said, resting her head against her propped-up hand. “And who told you about that?”

“Doesn't matter who told me. You didn't.”

“It was Zelia, wasn't it.” Sydney pursed her lips. “That girl can't hold water.”

“Don't blame your sister,” Jackie said. “I never said it was her.”

“You never said it wasn't, either.”

“I just wish I had heard it from you,” Jackie said. “You know, that man is at church every week. Which is more than I can say for you.”

Sydney's head fell back against the couch. “Here it comes . . .”

“I don't know what we did to you that you would rather worship in that big old church where nobody knows you, than worship with your family.”

“I come with you once a month.”

“Under duress,” Jackie said. “You can't grow your relationship by just going to church for two hours every week. You need other things—including fellowship with other believers who know you and can help you in your struggle.”

She shook her head. “Sometimes I wonder what happened to you.”

Sydney lifted her head and pulled her bare feet up under her on the couch.

“Nothing happened to me,” she said quietly.

“Uh-Uh,” Jackie side-eyed her daughter. “Something happened to you. The Sydney I know had real relationships with other people. The Sydney I know wouldn't ruin her relationship with her brother over concrete and stone.”

“I did not ruin my relationship with Dean,” Sydney retorted with a frown. “He did that all by himself. . . .”

“And the Sydney I know wouldn't walk out on her brother and her new sister-in-law because she was in a bad mood. . . .”

“Unbelievable.” Sydney sat forward and her eyes widened. “Does Zelia have you on a live feed?”

Her mother stopped sewing and turned to her.

“Look, Sydney, I know this whole business with the store has been hard for you, but remember at the end of the day all these things pass away. But what you do, the relationships you have with the people around you, your family, that's all that you will have.”

Sydney stared down at the arm of the couch for a long while.

“Did you know he was going to give it to Dean?” Sydney asked suddenly.

Her mother sighed. “No. I didn't know that Leroy would give the shop to Dean. He must have changed his will since the last time I saw it.”

“What was it like before?” Sydney asked.

“It doesn't matter,” Jackie said.

“It does to me,” Sydney said.

“Come on, Sydney. Your father was a good man, but you know he was old school. He loved you girls, but when Dean was born, his first son, it was a whole new set of rules. He wanted Dean to carry on his legacy and he was dead set on making that happen. No matter what anyone said.”

It was brief, but Sydney caught the look that crossed her mother's face. It was a look that told her that Dean had been a source of strong disagreement between her parents more often than she cared to know.

“Your father was who he was,” Jackie continued. “He did things his way and he was not the kind of man to explain himself to a woman. But he's gone, Sydney. And we may never understand why he did what he did. But your brother is still here.”

“He sold the shop, Mom.” Sydney blinked back tears. “After he agreed to sell us part of it, he went ahead and sold it to one of Dad's competitors. And then he told me after the fact. Do you know what I got on my phone on my way over here, Mom?”

Jackie sighed.

“An e-mail from the company that he sold to, with proposed dates for a meeting to work out the transfer details.” Sydney sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Dean already closed on the sale. I have to pack up everything and be out in six weeks. Did you tell Dean that I am still here? Did you give Dean this speech about how his relationship with me should still matter? Or was that just for me?”

Jackie got up from the machine and moved to sit beside Sydney in the couch.

“Honey, I know you're hurting. And I know it's unfair to ask you to make amends with your brother. But I'm asking because I know that you can. You're the older one. You're the more mature one. Dean doesn't know what he's doing. That boy just went and married a girl he barely knows because she's pregnant.”

Sydney looked up at her mother. “You knew about that?”

“You know your sister can't hold water.”

Zelia.

“The point is, he needs us more than he knows.” Jackie squeezed Sydney's hand. “We have to love him, Sydney. And loving him means giving him the freedom to make those selfish choices, but letting him know that we still love him at the end of it. It's like God and us. He knows what's best for us. And he could force us to it, but that wouldn't be love. Love is the freedom he gives us to choose to do things his way, or to choose our own way.”

“I'm not God, Mom.”

“I know.” Jackie pulled Sydney into a hug. “But you still have to love your brother.”

“And what about my career while I am doing that?” Sydney asked. “Should I run Decadent from a food cart on King Street?”

Jackie raised her hand to the ceiling and closed her eyes. “Honey, if that's where the Lord is leading you, who am I to stand in your way?”

Sydney smiled in spite of herself.

“On a serious note, though, I have a feeling things will work out the way they should,” Jackie said. “If we do things God's way, he will take care of us. Of course, it works better when we have a relationship with him and lean on him.”

Sydney groaned. “Not you, too.”

“Not me too what?”

“With the preaching,” Sydney said. “I already got a dose from Hayden.”

“You did, eh,” said Jackie, getting up and going back to the machine. “You keep that one. He's a good man.”

“Yeah.” Sydney got up and headed to the kitchen to see what she could scrounge up to eat. “That's what everyone keeps telling me.”

She was rummaging through the fridge for leftover chicken when her cell phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it's me. Can we talk?”

Speak of the devil.

Sydney closed the fridge and sat down on one of the stools by the counter.

“OK.”

Hayden let out a deep breath. “I didn't know about my sister and your brother.”

“I know.”

“I didn't even know my sister was married,” he continued. “We don't exactly have a close relationship. In fact, I barely see her a couple times a year. We have the same mother, but that's about the depth of our connection.”

Sydney heard him take another deep breath.

“Does that bother you?” she asked.

He paused. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Sometimes I feel guilty about not having a better relationship with her. She didn't do too well growing up. I lived with my dad, and he was able to give me everything I needed and more. But she lived with Mom, and, well . . . that wasn't always easy.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Hayden said with another sigh. “If you met my birth mother you would understand. She was never married, and I don't think Sheree knew a lot about her father. I know she moved out of Mom's house not long after she graduated high school, and she's been bouncing around since. I try to help her where I can, but she's pretty stubborn and independent.”

He chuckled. “A little like you, actually.”

Sydney felt her spine stiffen. “I doubt it.”

“Anyway, she always took care of herself, but like I said, we didn't have a close relationship. I would go years without hearing from her. And after I left Toronto and moved to Boston it got even harder. Today is the first time I've seen her in over a year. I knew she was dating someone, but I . . . I couldn't even imagine this.”

“OK,” Sydney said, letting out a deep breath. “I believe you. I didn't really think you knew, but it was just too much. I just needed some space.”

“I know, baby, I understand. It was a shock for me, too.” He let out a deep breath. “So are we good?”

“Yeah, we're good.”

Sydney paused. “I just need to ask. Sheree . . . she wouldn't . . .”

“She's a good person, Sydney,” Hayden said. “She's had some difficulties, but all she ever needed was someone to love her. To give her a chance. And it looks like your brother really loves her.”

“I just don't want him to get hurt,” Sydney said. “I may be mad at him. But if anyone hurts him they'll have to deal with me.”

“Well, you don't have to worry about that from her,” Hayden said. “She seems a lot more settled now than the last time I saw her. And happy.”