Mister Fixit (Love in New York #3) (12 page)

He takes my offer of help and pulls himself to his feet. Together we walk around the couch and head for the kitchen. I’m both happy that he’s shared his past with me and scared. Because now I know I have to return the favor and open up my heart for his examination, and I’m not sure I can be as forthright with him about my mistakes as he’s been with me about his.

Chapter Nineteen

I TAKE MY TIME BUILDING the perfect ice cream sundae, not because I love them so much but because I’m stalling for time. Jake is fully expecting me to confess all my secrets, but I’m not even sure what they are. They’re not so much secrets as they’re just sad commentaries on things that happened to me, and I hate the idea that my story doesn’t have a happy ending like his does. Yes, he lost a friend, but he found himself. The lost boy is now the found boy, and as a result, his life is great. I’m still lost, and I have no idea how to find my way out of the darkness.

“So,” he says, using his spoon to gather up a big puddle of chocolate syrup, “what’s your deal? You a convicted felon too?”

I laugh, eating my cherry first. “No.” I crunch away on it as he licks all the chocolate off his spoon. Maybe if it were another guy I’d consider it sexy, but when he does it, it’s just silly. I really want to fling some whipped cream onto his face, but I don’t. Whipped cream has way too many sexy connotations to be playing with it like that. Besides, he’ll see right through it as the distraction technique that it is.

“I’m not a convicted felon, but I am a very screwed up individual.”

“I find that hard to believe,” he leans his butt on the counter and eats a big spoonful of ice cream as he waits for me to continue.

“Believe it.” I keep eating, hoping he’ll let me off the hook. I really don’t want to talk about my family and what happened. It’s making me sick to my stomach just thinking about it.

“I’m not going to force you to tell me,” he says after a long period of silence.

“Really?” There’s so much hope in my voice, it pisses me off. Since when did I become such a wiener, anyway?

He shrugs. “Nope. Not if you don’t want to.”

I shake my head, trying to push away the feelings of fear and inadequacy and shame. What happened, happened. I just need to figure out how to move on from it. Maybe talking to the guy who knew this priest will help me. Maybe he learned something from his friend the chaplain that could turn the light on for me.

I sigh and then just start talking. “My problems started when my sister-in-law was killed by a drunk driver when she was nine months pregnant.”

He stops chewing his ice cream and slowly lowers his dish to the counter. Then he just stands there, still leaning on the counter, waiting for me to continue. I see nothing but concern in his expression, and it fuels me forward.

“She died, but the baby survived. We named her Cassiopeia because that’s what Laura — my sister-in-law — asked us to do.”

“So she survived for a little while?”

I shake my head. “No. She died in the ambulance, but she was always telling us she knew she was going to die young, and she was always saying stuff like, ‘If I die, make sure you do this,’ or whatever. We were instructed to name her child Cassiopeia and that’s what we did. We call her Cassie for short.”

“It’s a beautiful name. And a beautiful gesture to grant her mother’s wish like that.”

“Yeah, well, my brother Jeremy —her husband—
 
was destroyed. He flipped out. He never showed up to take Cassie home from the hospital.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, wow. I did it, though. I took her home with me.” I can still picture that moment, when I lifted her out of her plexiglass bassinet wrapped in the blanket I’d bought for Laura and given to her at her baby shower. I never imagined that I’d be the one taking her home from the hospital in it. Not in a million years would I have guessed that would happen.

“What about your brother? What did he do then?”

“He went off the deep end. Drugs, alcohol, you name it. If he could disappear from reality, he took the opportunity.”

“And left you with the baby.”

“Yes. But I preferred that to him trying to take care of her in the state he was in. He couldn’t even care for himself let alone an infant.”

“It couldn’t have been easy for you. You were in mourning too.”

I nod. He gets it. “Yes, I was. We all were. But Cassie had needs and those came first. For nine months I took care of her like she was my own.”

“Don’t you have other family? What about your parents?”

I shake my head. “Died years ago. I have another brother, James, but he’s really busy with his medical practice.”

“You’re busy. Or I assume you were. Why were you the only one helping?”

I feel a little guilty taking all the credit for her care. James did step up to the plate eventually, when she was finally able to sleep through the night. “I wasn’t the only one. James helped when he could. He took her some weekends after she was a few months old.”

“You said you had her for nine months.” He looks around the room. “I don’t see any baby things here. How old is she now?”

“Almost one. She’s been gone for a couple months now.”

“Gone? Where?”

“With her father. He took her back.”

Jake’s expression goes dark. “How is that possible?”

I have the strangest urge to assure him it’s all fine, that everything worked out. I’m not sure why, since my first instinct up until now has been to cry foul and complain how Cassie and I got screwed out of our life together. This internal conflict has me feeling decidedly uncomfortable.

“Jeremy got his shit together, I guess.” I shrug, still not sure I believe it. “Stopped the drinking and the drugs, started going to meetings, met a
girl
.” I try really really hard not to snarl at that last part, but I’m only partially successful.

“Ahhh, a girl.” Jake folds his arms. “I take it you and this girl don’t get along.”

“Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know. Just the way your face looked when you mentioned her.”

I shrug. “She’s nice enough. I met her before she met my brother. She’s an artist and… polite.”

He laughs. “Polite?”

I smile too. I knew it sounded stupid and petty when it left my mouth, but then it was too late to take it back. Damn. I really need to grow up. Jake’s been to jail and back; I can hardly mope around and talk about how much my life sucks. At least I don’t have a felony record following me around for the rest of my life.

“She’s nice. I had some long conversations with her when we toured some museums together, and I liked her. But after my brother met her, just a few weeks later, supposedly his life was back on track and he was ready to be a dad again. I didn’t buy it.”

“And now? How are they doing?”

I want to kick the wall in. “They’re doing fine, I guess.”

“You guess? Don’t you know?”

My face burns with shame. “No. I haven’t seen them in a long time. Since they got married, not long after they took Cassie.”

Jake pushes himself off the counter and comes over to wrap his arms around me. I stand there accepting his embrace but not returning the gesture.

He rests his chin lightly on my head. “Sounds like you’ve had to deal with some pretty serious losses over the last year.”

I nod, unable to speak without crying, hugging my ice cream dish to my chest.

“I can see why you feel like everything’s out to get you.”

I slide my arms and ice cream bowl around his waist to rest at his lower back. The smell of his shirt and warmth eases the pain in my heart. I slip the bowl onto the counter next to his.

“What I can’t figure out is why you bought that house in the middle of all of it. Are you a glutton for punishment or what?”

I laugh, surprised that he’s able to make me smile when I should be crying. “Shut up.”

He pulls back so he can look at me. “You’re a brave girl. And I don’t blame you one bit for being pissed at the world.”

“Thank you.” I release one of my arms from his waist to wipe under my eyes. They were just about to leak a tear or two.

“Can I share with you the things I learned from Father Carlos?”

I shrug. “I guess.”

“I promise I won’t preach.”

“Good. Because preachers get a one-way ticket out the front door.”

He pulls back from me and takes me by the hand. “Come sit with me on the couch. I’ll share my last secret with you before I go.”

I follow behind, wondering if he’ll really leave when it’s all over or ask me if he can stay the night. I’m not sure what I’ll say if he does.

Chapter Twenty

JAKE AND I SIT ON the couch and share a glass of wine between us. We’re positioned closer to one another than we were before, and there’s a sense of having made it through hard times between us. It’s totally crazy, of course, since he’s my plumber and I still hardly know him. But still, I like the sense of comfort he brings by being near. I’m not going to fight the things that feel good tonight; it’s been too long since I’ve felt truly happy, and here next to him, I’m almost there.

“Carlos was this guy who walked around covered in tattoos but with a light kind of shining out from inside him.” Jake smiles. “It was crazy, but everyone saw it. Even the hardcore criminals who were never going to get out of there. When Carlos talked, everyone listened. Not everyone internalized what he said, of course, but they at least let him speak.”

“Do you mean like a sermon?”

Jake shakes his head. “No. He never preached. That’s what I liked about him. He never quoted a bible verse or anything that I ever noticed. He never said anything about Jesus or whatever. He just lived like Jesus would have, I guess you could say. I know a lot of religious people say, ‘What would Jesus do?’ but I say, ‘What would Carlos do?’ and I always end up on the right path if I try to follow his example.”

“Huh.” I’m non-comittal because I can’t imagine a person being that good in this day and age. We all have our Kryptonite, and I’m sure Carlos wasn’t an exception. But still, if he had this much of an impact on Jake’s life, I’m interested in hearing what he had to say.

“Carlos talked a lot about choices. About how everything we do and see in our lives is a matter of choice.” Jake looks at me, handing me the glass of wine for my turn at sipping. “We’re all presented with situations every day where we have to make a choice. We can react one way or another. We choose which way we end up reacting, for better or for worse.”

I shake my head. “Sometimes people make the choice for you.”

“No, not really. Things happen, sure, but you make the choice how it affects you, if you think about it.”

I shake my head. “Not in my case.”

“Yes, in your case. In everyone’s case.”

He’s starting to piss me off. Clearly, he wasn’t paying attention to my story earlier. “Someone took my child from me. You’re saying I had a choice in that?”

He takes the wine glass from me and puts it on the table. “As I see it, Cassie was returned to her father. Is that right? From a legal perspective, I mean.”

I want to push him away from me, but I’m an adult and I can handle a difficult conversation without resorting to violence, so I don’t. But I do lean a little away from him. His closeness isn’t quite as appealing anymore.

“Maybe.”

“Okay, so of course it hurt your feelings and broke your heart when it happened. You probably felt like people let you down. People you cared about.”

He’s perceptive, I’ll give him that. I didn’t even tell him about the part Robinson played in the whole thing.

“Of course,” I say, slightly mollified.

“You had a choice about how to react to that. You could have focused entirely on the immediate emotional responses, like heartache and distrust and disappointment… or you could have focused on other things.”

“Other things? Are you kidding me? Apparently you’ve never lost a child.” So much for enlightenment. I’m starting to think this guy Carlos was a simple spin doctor, nothing more.

“Yes, other things. Like how joyful it must have been for her father to feel like he could care for his child, finally — the child he created with his wife who was taken from him much too early, much too young.”

Guilt stabs me right in the heart. I grit my teeth together to keep from saying anything rude.

“Like how good it will be for Cassie when she’s old enough to understand that she’s with her father, the man who loved her mother, who can share his love for her mother with her as she grows older.”

Tears start to build. I’m really starting to dislike Jake and his stupid philosophies on life.

“And like how it will be for you, to be able to continue with your life as it was, looking for someone to share your life with and maybe have children with if that’s what you want to do. Plus, you’ll have a much closer relationship with Cassie you wouldn’t have had otherwise…”

I stand, because I can’t hear any more of this garbage. “Stop. Just stop.”

“I’m sorry.” He looks sad. “Am I upsetting you? I didn’t mean to.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose and close my eyes, trying to get a handle on my runaway emotions and the headache blossoming from somewhere deep in my skull. I know he doesn’t mean to be destroying me with every single word; he’s just trying to help. I can’t hate him for that, but I also can’t be around him right now. He’s just another person making excuses for my brothers and Robinson, telling me I need to get over everything and suck it up.

“It’s fine. I have a headache. It kind of just snuck up on me. Do you mind?” I turn to face the door.

“You sure you don’t want me to stay and make you some tea or anything?”

I shake my head, dropping my hands and rubbing them on my jeans. “No, that’s all right. I’m just going to go to bed, I think.”

Jake follows me around the couch and takes my hand as I try to walk away.

“Hey. I’m sorry.”

I shrug, pulling my hand away. “No, it’s not a problem. Don’t apologize. I appreciate you sharing your stuff with me.”

“You weren’t ready to hear it, though.”

“Ready?” As if there’s a timeframe for acting like stuff didn’t happen the way it did. I want to laugh, but I realize he means well, so I won’t mock his personal philosophies.