Let Me Love You Again (An Echoes of the Heart Novel Book 2) (4 page)

“Let’s go, Cricket,” she said, using her favorite nickname for her daughter. She led Camille to their car.

Selena had affectionately named the heap Fred. He’d been all she could afford with what remained of the money she’d squirreled away before filing for divorce from her cheating, fabulously wealthy, well-respected yet not-to-be-trusted husband. When Fred slowed as he struggled up a hill, she imagined there was a rusted-out hole beneath the floor mats where she could stick her feet through, like one of the Flintstones pedaling to help the engine along. But he was hers free and clear. She didn’t owe anyone anything for him. And he’d come through like a champ on their long journey back to Georgia, charming Selena down to her unpedicured toes.

Slipping behind the wheel after buckling Camille’s car seat, she turned the key. The ignition sputtered and then died. Black smoke spewed from the tailpipe.

“Uh-oh,” Camille said.

Selena’s next attempt to rouse Fred from his funk ended in an emphysemic belch.

“No doughnuts?” Camille asked.

Selena laughed. She dropped her head to the steering wheel. This wasn’t happening.

She didn’t mean to glance next door at Oliver’s shiny red truck and the Dixon home. Her head just rolled to the side on its
own. Then she gritted her teeth and turned Fred’s key again. Because he
was
going to cooperate. The rumblings beneath his hood warned that he didn’t take kindly to being bossed around. But the engine finally caught and roared to life.

“Yay!” Camille cheered. “Chocolate!”

Soaking in her daughter’s celebration, Selena cajoled her ancient Chevy into reverse. She steered him out of the driveway and pulled away from their morning’s rocky start. Taking the turn onto Maple, she headed for Dan’s Doughnuts on Main and settled into the drive. She’d almost cleared her mind of everything but her daughter’s morning treat and the workday ahead, when
Mission: Impossible
heckled her from the depths of her tote.

Sighing, one hand on the wheel, she kept her attention fixed on the road in front of her and fumbled the phone from her purse.

“I’m driving,” she said after thumbing the call through and putting her mom on speaker.

“Tell me you’re going to steer clear of him,” Belinda insisted.

“Mom . . .” Selena tried to remember that her mother was trying to help, not obsessed with every new mistake Selena might make.

“I heard he was back. Jonathan Ritter said his mother saw a red truck pull up into the Dixons’ drive while you were working in the yard.”

“Janet Ritter needs something else to do with her time than peeking out her front windows at what the rest of the neighborhood is doing.”

And Jonathan needed to stop being quite so interested in every move Selena made. Her mother’s coworker at the post office had graciously offered more than once to let Selena reconsider her hasty decision not to date his fifty-something, single, still-lived-with-his mother self.

“Was it Oliver?” Belinda shuffled things on the other end of the phone.

Selena didn’t answer. Thanks to Mrs. Ritter, she didn’t have to.

“Did you talk to him?” her mom wanted to know.

“No.” A touch of disappointment escaped with the word. A deluge of unwanted questions that made Selena queasy.

Had she missed her last chance to clear the air with Oliver? To make things right with him and his family?

“Tell me,” Belinda insisted, “that you’re going to steer clear of the Dixon house and the hospital until he’s gone again. Don’t complicate your life even more.”

“I’m not, Mom. I haven’t visited the hospital. Neither have you, no matter how good friends you’ve been with the Dixons, or how serious Joe’s heart condition sounds.”

“I know, honey.” Her mother’s work noise stalled. “I feel bad about it, too. But . . .”

“It’s better not to rock the boat. I get it, Mom.”

Marsha had wanted to have Camille over to play with the Dixon kids. Selena and Belinda and Camille had been invited more than once to join their neighbors for one of the Dixons’ Saturday afternoon cookouts. Selena had declined every time.

“It would be asking for trouble,” Belinda warned. “You’ve got more than enough on your plate as it is, right?”

“Right.” Except the Dixons were the ones in trouble now. Which made Selena feel shabby for the way she’d rejected their friendly attempts to welcome her and Camille to town.

“Honey?” Belinda asked. “You know he’ll be there if you stop by the hospital.”

“I’m sure he will.”

And that would be even shabbier—Selena insinuating herself into an already tense situation, when the foster son she’d helped
oust from Marsha and Joe’s home had just made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her.

“It would be a mistake,” her mother insisted.

“It absolutely would be.”

Except the prospect of losing such a fine, loving man as Joe had hit Selena and a lot of their community hard. And as Selena flipped on Fred’s blinker to turn into the lot beside Dan’s, she was strategizing how she could carve a few minutes away from school around lunchtime. To offer her long-overdue support to the Dixon family, and to make what would hopefully be her final mistake where Oliver Bowman was concerned.

“I almost didn’t recognize him when he first walked in,” Marsha Dixon said a few minutes before eleven.

She and Selena were gazing through the large windows of Joe’s CICU room. A mother’s proud smile bloomed across her weathered features as she watched her husband and Oliver.

“He looks so grown up,” she said. “Of course he’s grown up. It’s been years. But I mean . . . I wasn’t prepared for him to look so . . . responsible and, I don’t know, corporate or something. Even in those raggedy clothes.”

To Selena, Oliver looked all of that and more. He’d changed into different jeans and a plain black T-shirt. There were dark circles under his eyes. His face was shadowed with beard stubble that gave his cheekbones an even sharper edge. From the looks of him he’d been up all night. But there was something coolly sophisticated about him, too.

The rough-and-tumble rebel who’d once mesmerized Selena was long gone. And yet, he was exactly what she’d somehow
known he’d become. Successful. Independent. Making his own way in a competitive business where few entrepreneurs thrived. And after Marsha had hugged Selena and thanked her for coming, she’d proceeded to behave as if Selena belonged there beside her, watching the man perched on the edge of his father’s bed.

Defying the hospital’s frigid artificial climate, a drop of perspiration trickled between Selena’s shoulder blades. She felt as if she were staring down a caution sign, flashing for her to turn back before all hope was lost.

“He’ll be glad you came,” Marsha said, carrying their conversation pretty much on her own.

“Your husband’s a wonderful man.”

Joe’s hand fumbled across the mattress. His fingers curled around Oliver’s. Something dangerous rattled Selena’s composure.

“I meant,” Marsha corrected, “my son will be glad to see you.”

Selena kept her focus on the touching scene playing out in Joe’s room. “Because of me, you had to boot Oliver from your foster home a week after graduation. He nearly killed his best friend in a bare-knuckles brawl because of me. He was finally sober, and because of me he drowned himself in a bottle of tequila and totaled your minivan. Glad to see me? You and I both know better.”

“What I know is that it’s been two months since you came back to town. And you haven’t brought that beautiful child of yours over once for a proper visit.”

“I’d love that, really.” It would be heaven. And hell. “But we just can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

Selena shook her head.

She wasn’t ready for this. She and her daughter were nowhere
near
ready for this. She’d put Camille through enough. She’d
promised to make her life and her daughter’s as uncomplicated as possible from now on. And this certainly didn’t qualify.

But Marsha had kept two generations of foster children in line. The woman could teach an NFL linebacker a thing or two about not backing down from confrontation. And Selena had set this awkwardness into motion when she’d shown up at the hospital. She turned to her neighbor, her hand clenched around the straps of her borrowed tote.

“You deserve your say, Marsha.” And then some. “I’m listening.”

“It’s been a long time since you and my son talked.”

“I wouldn’t call our last conversation talking.” The night Selena had gotten her drunk on and broken up with her soul mate. After which Brad had consoled her, had drank too much with her . . . And, Lord help them, the rest had just happened. “Oliver couldn’t get away from me fast enough this morning.”

Her neighbor’s expression softened with understanding . . . and something more. Selena held her breath, wondering if this was it, if someone had finally guessed. But Marsha went back to watching her husband and foster son. Worry tightened her smile to the breaking point.

Selena placed a palm on Marsha’s shoulder. There was frailty today beneath all that strength. “I’m so sorry about Joe.”

Marsha shivered. Selena wrapped her arm around the woman whose generosity had smoothed some of the jagged edges of Selena’s young life, created by her own mother’s bitter fight to survive as a single parent. Selena held on tighter. Marsha and Joe had been a lifeline for her when she and Belinda first moved to Bellevue Lane, years before Oliver arrived. It shouldn’t have taken their son’s return to get Selena to the hospital to check on them.

Marsha eased away. And like the marvel she was, she squared her shoulders, all five feet one of her.

“We never know how much time we have,” she said, short gray hair feathering about her rounded face. “We’ve got no business wasting a single chance we’re given to make things right. Oliver just got back to town. You’ve been keeping to yourself. But in a matter of hours, you two have somehow managed to see each other long enough for you to think he’s avoiding you?” She raised an eyebrow. “Yet here you are, right where you knew he’d head next.”

“This morning was a coincidence.”

A dangerous one that could cause them all a lot of trouble. Especially given that for Selena, being careful where Oliver was concerned was a Zen state she clearly hadn’t mastered.

“The fact that Joe and I got custody of Oliver in the first place was happenstance.” Marsha wiped at the corners of her eyes. “Or providence. There’s not much difference once you take a closer look. And we’re thrilled he’s back. Don’t throw away your opportunity to at least speak with him, whatever’s happened between you two.”

“I came to visit Joe to see if there’s anything Belinda or I can do to help.” Her mother had been more Belinda than Mom for years. “It must not seem like it, but I really do care.”

“Of course you do.” Marsha hugged her. The wave of peace that washed through Selena should be bottled and sold. “You and your mother have always meant so much to both of us.”

Marsha let go. Selena kept her gaze down.

All of Chandlerville admired what the Dixons had accomplished with their group foster home. Belinda’s garden club had just last week chosen Joe as Father of the Year. It would be a lovely community ceremony. And Selena knew she’d belonged in the front row, leading the applause. Her marriage was a miserable failure. But the family she still dreamed of giving Camille had
always had its origins in watching the magic Marsha and Joe achieved with their eclectic tribe of kids.

Selena had never felt the crush of her reckless secrets more. But how did she face the truth and the people who needed to hear it? How did she create more chaos and confusion for them and her child, when Selena had no intention of becoming a permanent part of anyone’s life in Chandlerville again? She’d come home to regroup for a few days, a week tops. She’d never meant to stay this long, get this attached or, God forbid, to be here when Oliver returned. And now . . .

All she knew for certain was that if there was
ever
a right time for her to come clean about her daughter’s paternity, this wasn’t it.

She took one last look into CICU. Joe smiled at something. Oliver grinned in response, his lips curling higher on the right side. She raised a clenched fist to scrub at her cheek. The needy teenager still inside her longed for Oliver to look up and see her and forgive her and somehow make everything okay the way he’d once promised he would.

“Tell Joe I stopped by. I’ll . . .” She forced out the words, the lie. “I’ll come back when it’s a better time.”

“Don’t you want to wait until—”

“No . . .” She backed toward the elevator. It dinged, urging her to hurry.

“Selena—”

“I shouldn’t have come at all. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She stopped, appalled at the rudeness of what she’d said. “I didn’t mean . . .”

“Stay.” Marsha stepped toward her.

“I can’t.” She was moving again, twisting away. “I have to—Oof!”

She’d barreled into something solid that felt like a wall with arms and legs. She saw a blue shirt and stars. She couldn’t make her vision clear.

“Are you okay?” asked a deep voice that was as achingly familiar as Marsha’s hug had been.