Let Me Love You Again (An Echoes of the Heart Novel Book 2) (9 page)

“Dad’s not doing too well,” Ginger confirmed. “He’s in a rehab place just outside of town. It’s the only way insurance will cover his care. Mom goes to be with him every day. It’s weighing on her, not keeping him at home. I’m mostly holding down the fort by myself now.”

She’d answered in a casual way, seeming to expect Selena not to really care, or to be looking for a reason to change the subject. Instead, Selena gave Ginger a hug. They’d been friends once, both of them with pigtails like Camille’s, long before the world had gotten so complicated they’d forgotten the simpler things that had once made them giggle and smile and twirl around each other’s backyards.

“I’m sorry about George.” Selena stepped back. “Your dad’s the best. He always made us laugh. And he loved this store. I’m sure
he’d be proud to bursting if he could see what you’re doing with it.” She took a moment to watch Camille pick up a pair of black-and-white oxford shoes, her smile ear-to-ear. “You’re carrying on your family’s legacy. I’m glad my daughter got to see this place. I really didn’t mean to be so rude.”

Ginger turned from watching Camille, too. She fiddled with the pearls she wore at the neck of a silk sweater twinset. A multi-karat diamond twinkled atop the thick platinum band on her wedding finger.

“I can understand the long day part,” she mused. “The whole town is talking about it. Honey, I’d have sprinted for the hills, too. Both times.”

Selena’s mind blanked, not following at first. She was so tired, she was practically dead on her feet. And it was only four o’clock.

“Oliver being back,” Ginger explained. The bell atop the door jingled, announcing another customer’s arrival. “It’s going to stir up a lot more people than just you. The town’s buzzing about you two meeting up at the hospital this morning, after he drove right up his parents’ driveway earlier and just stood there, staring at you.”

“Which is why”—Belinda breezed to their side, joining the conversation without missing a beat—“I thought we’d discussed you steering clear of the hospital while he’s in town. Why would you go and open yourself and Camille up to even more gossip?”

The bell over the door chimed again.

“Let me go see if I can help Camille make her selection.” Before she slipped away, Ginger exchanged smiles with the new mother and daughter who’d come in, the little girl skipping along instead of walking.

“Tennis shoes,” Selena called after her. “Something that will last through a summer of playing outside in my mother’s yard.”

“So,” Belinda said, “you’ve definitely decided to stay awhile longer?”

The other mother glanced over from the table of dress shoes, the patent leather kind that little girls in the South wore to church on Sundays. The woman looked away when she realized she’d been caught eavesdropping.

A growing part of Selena would have liked nothing better than to pack her and her daughter’s things and leave Chandlerville by nightfall.

“We don’t seem to have a choice but to stay,” she said to Belinda, keeping her voice down and praying her mother followed suit. “Parker’s got his lawyer delaying the divorce again, asking for new briefs about joint assets. Something about categorizing them differently. The school year is almost over, taking my anemic income stream with it until I can find something else. Parker’s and my joint accounts are still frozen. And I haven’t saved nearly enough yet to get me and Camille set up with a place of our own.”

“He called again?” Belinda turned her back to their still-avid audience. When Selena nodded, Belinda sighed. “Why do you encourage him? Stop answering when you know it’s him.”

“I was leaving the hospital.” Selena stared the other mother down until the woman finally moved herself and her child across the store. “I was distracted. Besides, I can’t risk agitating him more than he already is. He’s swearing he’ll hold things up until I agree to fly myself and Camille back to New York to meet with him in person.”

“The more your lawyer has to do to get you out of this marriage, the less money you’ll ever see from whatever settlement you’re awarded.”

Selena shrugged, despising the no-win limbo her husband and his financial resources had exiled her to.

It had all been explained to her. Why a judge’s ruling would be better than a protracted trial. How a mediator might be an option. But that would require either Parker’s agreement or a judge’s order, and so far Parker’s attorneys had prevented the latter. And while she didn’t owe her own legal team a dime until a settlement was awarded, they’d take their fee out of whatever she received. And that bill was growing at an alarming rate, given that Selena had filed to end her marriage six months ago.

“I hate this, Mom. Owning nothing of my own, having nothing to offer Camille that Parker doesn’t control, and owing you more every day we stay here.”

“All you owe me,” Belinda said, her tone brooking no argument, “is your promise to do what’s best this time for yourself and your daughter. Be smart about this, Selena.”

Belinda was trying so hard to be supportive. Selena knew that. But her mother’s concern, her disappointment at the state of things, dripped from every word.

“Be smart about Parker,” Belinda insisted. “About Oliver. About Camille. Stay as long as you need to. I’ve told you that. Get your life straight and figure out what you really want. I’ll take care of what I can in the meantime. You save your money for you and Camille. We’ll make it work.”

Liquid sprang to Selena’s eyes, emotion she wouldn’t let fall.

We’ll make it work.

How many times had her mother said that when Selena had been a little girl and wanted something they couldn’t afford? Something that her friends like Ginger had gotten so effortlessly from their parents. Belinda would inevitably have to say no, but
that they’d
make it work
somehow. Selena would see, her mother had promised. And now Selena did.

She’d blamed both her parents for how hard life had been after their divorce. But Belinda had borne the brunt of everything Selena had thought she’d gone without. Material things Selena had been obsessed with, like pretty new shoes, shiny churchgoing shoes, while her mom insisted on buying sturdier ones that would do just as well for nice as for everyday. Now Selena was relying on Belinda to help her navigate the same limited-income choices for Camille.

“Thank you, Mom.” She hadn’t said it enough as a child. She’d never again forget to say it as an adult. “I am going to make this work.”

“I know you will. Just steer clear of Oliver Bowman, honey. Don’t go down that road again, unless you’re one hundred percent sure of what you want.”

“What I want?”

Sometimes Selena wondered exactly what her mother knew, or what Belinda thought she knew, where Oliver, Selena, and Camille were concerned. And after the mess Selena had made of things at the hospital, today of all days, she found herself wishing she and Belinda were close enough to talk about everything. The way other mothers and daughters seemed to so effortlessly share life’s ups and downs.

“Mom,” she said, “do you—”

“Let’s go make sure your daughter’s not buying out the store.” Belinda left to chat with Ginger and Camille about shoe options.

Selena stared after her. She didn’t have the energy to follow. The rest of her day and the decisions she still had to make about Oliver and the Dixons and Camille—while the entire town watched on—were for once making her issues with Parker seem
like the least of her problems. Except that if Parker hadn’t been yanking her around financially all this time in an attempt to manipulate her into taking him back, she and her daughter would be long gone from Chandlerville. Then there’d be no Oliver for Selena to have to deal with. At least not until she’d settled down somewhere with Camille and begun building the happy life she was determined to give her child.

Maybe then Selena would have been able to see her way clear to reach out to Oliver on her own terms. Instead of it feeling like the worst possible timing for her to tell the man she’d loved the deepest secrets of her heart—and hope he didn’t crush both her and her daughter with more of the cool indifference he’d shown Selena that morning.

“Leave the boy be for a while,” Joe cautioned Marsha. “Let him settle in before you throw more at him.”

Marsha shook her head, her thoughts more scattered than she ever remembered them being. Her Joe was getting worse, not better. And Oliver was back—still struggling with seeing himself as part of their family, no matter how honest and responsible he’d become in the rest of his life. But there was one thing she was certain of.

“We don’t have time for him to settle in,” she said.

The doctor was gone. The decision between the available surgical options was made: angioplasty, scheduled for ten o’clock that night. There was only the waiting now. The wondering if they’d made the right choice. And the worrying over their kids. Joe’s mind was preoccupied by family, same as hers, even now. The kids had always been their priority since the day they’d begun fostering.

“Besides”—she smoothed salt-and-pepper hair back from her husband’s forehead—“when has Oliver ever settled in anywhere? From what he told you earlier, I’d be surprised if he’s stayed in one place all these years more than a few months at a time.”

And now they had him home—their brilliant boy, all grown up, with his heart in his eyes each time he looked at Marsha or his father . . . or Selena. That fine mind was no doubt already fixated on getting away from them again. Which was unacceptable. She was done enabling his believing that being responsible to the family was all he had to offer. That sending home money was all the contact with life in Chandlerville he needed.

Joe shook his head. “He’s not going to put up with much more meddling from you, love. Not if he doesn’t understand why.”

“Then I’ll have some fast explaining to do at the house, won’t I?”

After which she’d talk with the younger kids and get herself back here, to make certain Joe had whatever he needed.

They’d scraped by without opting for bypass. But angioplasty was invasive enough. Kask and his team would attempt to widen the main artery leading to Joe’s heart without cracking his chest open to do it. And if they couldn’t . . .

She brushed the backs of her fingers over the stubble of her husband’s beard. “I want our son back.”

“I do, too. For longer than a few days. But he’s seen staying away as the answer for himself—and us—for a long time. He’s never been ready to—”

“Give his whole heart away again? Have we waited too long?”

“He reached out first,” Joe reminded her, “when he contacted Travis about sending money home. And we didn’t give him a reason
not
to keep that door open. He felt comfortable coming home again because of that. If we’d pushed for more, he might not have.”

“He’d have been here for you.”

“He needs to stay for more.”

“And if he’s not ready to? I won’t be at the house after today, to make sure he sees what’s right in front of him, waiting for him to want it, too.”

Joe eyed her. “So you’re going to cut to the chase this afternoon?”

“He needs to know, before it’s too late and he makes a mistake he’ll regret.”

“He’s a fine man. He’ll do the right thing.”

“He doesn’t know what the right thing is yet.”

“Neither do you.”

“He still believes he’s let us down.” Marsha stared at the clock across from Joe’s bed until her vision cleared. “It’s breaking my heart to see how much being back means to him, and to know he’s already decided that being elsewhere as soon as possible is what’s best for everyone.”

He
was
a fine young man with a bottomless heart that had refused to let him cut ties completely with the people who wanted to love him. He needed to give folks in Chandlerville a chance to see that—especially Selena. He needed to give himself the chance to finally belong to all of them.

“The years away have taught him good things about himself,” Joe reasoned. “The next few days will teach him more.”

“If he stays.”

“He won’t turn his back on the promise he’s made.”

Marsha wanted to believe that. “If anything can show him what’s still inside him, diving headfirst into helping with the kids should.”

Her Joe’s eyes sparkled. He drew her palm to his heart, his hand trembling as it covered hers.

“The kids get what they need,” he said.

It had been their pact from the beginning of this crazy dream of theirs—to still have a huge family, despite learning that they couldn’t have babies of their own. They’d from the start put doing what was right for the kids first. The rest had worked itself out every time.

“Brad and Oliver and Selena and Camille,” Marsha said. “It’s not a coincidence that they’re all back now.”

“Not if you have anything to say about it,” Joe teased.

“I don’t know what has Oliver more spooked. Agreeing to stay in town for longer than he’d planned.” She could still see her son’s shock in the hallway. His anger downstairs. “Or the prospect of still being so tangled up over Selena.”

“They weren’t ready for what they had when they were younger. Or how hard it was going to be to keep it. Not everyone gets it right from the start.”