Second Chance Spring Page 15

  Taylor on the Rampage

  Cormac

  The girls were desperate to see Luke when they got home from school after spending a night with their uncle and missing the dog for more than twenty-four hours. I fed them dinner and made them wait until just before it was time to get ready for bed before heading across the street. I hoped the time would allow Paige to decompress after work and not feel like I was barging in so soon after I’d left this morning.

  “Hey guys,” Paige said, beaming down at my daughters in a way that made my heart clench a bit.

  Maddie didn’t hesitate, but stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Paige’s legs, pressing her face against her.

  Paige’s eyes grew round and then her expression softened, and she dropped a hand into Maddie’s soft curls. “Hi,” she said softly.

  “We missed you and Yuke,” Maddie said, and I watched Paige swallow hard.

  Taylor watched all this, hanging back against my legs, her back rigid as Paige and Maddie spoke.

  “Hi Taylor,” Paige said, when Maddie had released her and stepped past her into the entryway.

  Taylor looked at her, but said nothing, and then pushed past her into the house.

  “Sorry,” I whispered, and I was—I wished it was easier for Taylor to trust people, to love. I followed the girls inside as Paige’s smile faltered just a bit. It was hard not to have flashbacks to the previous night as I stepped into Paige’s house. I’d been having them all day.

  Leaning in, I kissed Paige on the cheek. “It’s nice to see you.”

  “You too,” she whispered, and the scents of vanilla and cream were so strong my stomach rumbled with some strange mixture of desire and hunger.

  We could see the dogs curled up in the living room when we first arrived, but now they were romping around as the girls played with them both, throwing their toys and playing tug of war.

  “Let’s take them out in the yard,” Paige suggested, and everyone moved to the door, rushing out onto the small grassy space.

  “Are you in the middle of anything?” I asked. “I guess we should have called first.”

  “No,” Paige said. “Just baking cakes for Mom’s annual festival cakewalk.”

  “When is that again?” I asked. Signs were beginning to pop up all over town, but I’d been distracted.

  “Not this weekend, but the one after,” she said. She pointed at the table and chairs, and we sat together, facing the yard. Taylor and Maddie ran in circles, though Taylor’s eyes were on us part of the time.

  “Right,” I said. “Should be a good time.”

  “You’ve never been?”

  “We went once, with Linda.” As soon as I’d uttered my wife’s name, it was like the air around us cooled.

  Paige only nodded. Her expression was a little bit darker tonight, hard to read, but I could tell she was thinking about something.

  “Everything okay?” I asked, something inside me beginning to twist up with worry.

  “Yeah,” she said, her fingers tangling together on the table as she stared at them. “I guess I’m just thinking about things, wondering—”

  Just then Taylor ran up, breathless from flying around the yard. She glanced at Paige and then inserted herself rather purposefully between us, killing whatever moment we’d been about to have.

  “Daddy,” she said, leaning in and whispering so Paige couldn’t hear.

  “Honey, it’s rude to whisper when there are other people around.”

  Taylor turned and glared at Paige, and then turned back to me and dropped a tiny fist onto her hip. “When can we have our dog back? I’m tired of having to see her.” She put special venomous emphasis on the word “her” as she tossed her head at Paige.

  “Taylor.” My voice was harsh, but I couldn’t allow her to be rude to someone who was going out of her way to be generous with us all. “That’s very rude. Dr. Paige has been helping us in lots of ways.”

  Taylor’s eyes widened at my tone, and her chin began to wobble a bit as she pressed herself into my leg, farther from Paige. “I don’t like her,” she said, sounding almost apologetic. “And I don’t care if you do, she can’t be our mommy.” She stared up at me, the tears in her eyes threatening to spill down her cheeks. My heart froze and then shattered all over again at the pain I saw in my daughter’s expression, the worry I knew she must have been carrying with her. “She isn’t Mommy,” she added in a whisper, and I felt a thick lump form in my own throat.

  “Of course not, honey,” I said as Taylor’s face crumpled and the tears began to stream down her cheeks. It took everything I had to swallow past the emotion threatening in my own throat. Taylor hadn’t talked about Linda in over a year, not really. I pulled my daughter into my arms and glanced at Paige over her head, but Paige was looking away, certainly trying to give us space.

  There was no doubt she’d heard Taylor’s words though.

  “Paige, I’m sorry,” I said as Taylor sobbed in my arms. “I think we better go.” I stood and picked up my daughter, whose body was limp and wrung out now as her hands fisted the front of my shirt and she whimpered, “Mommy” into my chest.

  “Tay-rer?” Maddie asked, coming over to see what was wrong.

  “Honey, we’re going to head home. Can you say thanks to Dr. Paige?”

  Maddie’s eyes rounded as she took in her sister, crying in my arms, but she obediently turned to Paige and smiled. “Tank you,” she said loudly. “It was nice to see Yuke and Bobo.”

  “They love seeing you guys and having someone to play with,” Paige said. “And I know Luke is looking forward to coming back to your house really soon.”

  “Thanks, Paige. Sorry about all this,” I said, doing my best to hold my daughter, keep my own emotions in check, and not be a complete ass as we navigated back through the house to the front door.

  “It’s okay. Bye Taylor,” Paige said as we headed down the steps.

  Taylor responded by sobbing harder into my shirt and wailing, “She’s not my mommy!”

  I couldn’t even bring myself to turn to see if Paige had heard, and I staggered back to my empty house across the street, the weight of the night falling around us made heavier by the distressed little girl in my arms and my own leaden heart.

  Distancing the Doc

  Cormac

  I arrived at Paige’s office Tuesday morning for my allergy shot, completely exhausted from the events of the last few days. My life had gone from sad and lonely but incredibly simple and quiet, to busy and full of dogs, hot doctors and little girls so distressed they made themselves vomit.

  “Hey,” Paige said, coming into the exam room after a quick rap on the door. “How’s Taylor?”

  I didn’t even try to hide the exhaustion I felt. I’d planned to put on some bravado—this was a woman I was wildly attracted to, after all. But I didn’t have it in me.

  “She’s kind of a mess. April’s with her right now, but I kept her home today. She didn’t sleep at all.”

  Paige’s face was concerned, her blue eyes deep and worried. “I feel responsible somehow. Cormac, you should know I would never try to replace—”

  “No,” I said. “Of course not. And this is my fault for not being more careful about how the girls perceived whatever was going on between you and me.” I had spent a lot of time thinking about this the night before. “The only woman they’ve ever seen me with was their mother.”

  “Of course,” Paige said.

  “Paige,” I said, wanting to reassure her somehow, to tell her how much being with her the other night had meant to me, but her face had become guarded and she had stepped away, was picking up the syringe and tapping it to release the bubbles. “The other night,” I began.

  “Ready?” She asked, ignoring me and holding up the needle.

  “Er, yeah. Sure.” She gave me the shot and then busied herself cleaning up. I sat still, waiting uncertainly for a chance to say something that made sense of all this. “Paige,” I tried again.

 
She turned. “Look, I get it,” she said. “I mean, I can’t pretend to know how to take care of little girls who’ve lost their mom. I have no idea how difficult that must be.” Her eyes shone as she talked, and I wanted so badly to pull her into my arms. “And you’re right—we weren’t careful, I mean, I wasn’t. I didn’t even really think about what they must be thinking, seeing us together all the time.”

  Paige took a breath, and I could see she was struggling with her emotions, her shoulders rising and tightening.

  “But I think it’ll be fine,” she said. “I’m leaving in another couple weeks anyway, so you won’t have to worry.”

  I’d been pretending she wasn’t leaving, though the fact had been circling my own mind too, presenting itself as a dark and painful solution to the current problem. I hated the idea.

  “I don’t want you to go,” I whispered, knowing it didn’t help matters.

  For a second Paige was quiet, maybe processing what I’d just said. But then I saw the steely resolve return to her eyes, her jaw set. “But it’s probably best for your daughters,” she said, leveling her shoulders and fixing me with that steady gaze. “And better for me. Professionally,” she added.

  “But the other night,” I started, not knowing exactly what I intended to say.

  “Was really nice. But it’s probably best for us all if we just keep a bit of distance now until I go,” she said. And then she picked up the little tray in the room, and moved to the door. “I’ll see you next week for your shot, and I’ll drop Luke off for an hour when I get home from work.”

  I nodded, surprised at the way my heart, which I’d been pretty sure was so damaged as to be merely decorative, was twisting inside my chest.

  I went home and thanked April, feeling morose and depressed, and then I sank into a deep armchair as Taylor took a long nap, feeling the small dark house condense around me.

  Paige and I had fallen into a rhythm over the last couple weeks, a routine so comfortable and easy that I hadn’t even questioned it. I liked her. Hell, I more than liked her. What Taylor had undoubtedly picked up on was the way Paige fit us all so effortlessly. She’d fit so easily into the holes in our life, and it was easy to see why Taylor worried she might be trying to replace Linda. But Taylor was too young to see that it wasn’t nearly that simple.

  Still, maybe Paige was right. I’d known all along she was leaving. And I’d let myself get entangled. I guess I’d thought that maybe, on the heels of the night before, she might have thought about changing her mind. But today she’d made it clear she intended to leave.

  Better to step back now—be the only member of my family to suffer the loss—than to let the girls suffer losing another woman they loved.

  I laid my head back into the cushion of the chair in the shadowed living room of my quiet house, feeling more alone than I had in a very long time.

  Buckets Fix Everything

  Paige

  Crying at work was not something I did a lot. But by the end of the day—a day in which I pretended, very convincingly, I thought, that everything was fine—I felt desolate and empty. And so for just one second, I let myself sit down at my desk and drop my head into my hands and cry.

  Because some part of me had thought maybe, despite both of us saying it wouldn’t work, that Cormac might be the guy. The one I was supposed to find, the guy I’d been waiting for. The guy I’d always imagined would arrive and make all those things in my life happen—the family, the life, the messy, noisy house. And for a couple weeks, he had.

  But not really.

  I’d just been pretending, hadn’t I? I’d known, from the very beginning, that it was all a bad idea. He’d been clear that it wasn’t going to work, and I’d ignored the warnings in favor of the happiness blooming inside me after my life had been quiet and level for so long.

  “That’s it, let’s go.”

  I looked up. Leslie was standing in my doorway, hands on her hips and a stern look on her face.

  “Go where?”

  “We’re going out. You’re a mess. I’m going to fix you.”

  “How?” I did not feel fixable.

  She rolled her eyes and stepped into my tiny office, lifting my purse off its hook and holding it out to me. “Alcohol, silly.”

  “No, I don’t—”

  “Let’s go.”

  Leslie wouldn’t take no for an answer, so a few minutes later I was in the passenger seat of her car peering into the mirror to try to make my eyes look less swollen and sad.

  “Nothing a bucket of punch can’t fix,” she was saying, and soon we were walking into The Shack, one of just a couple restaurants on the square in Singletree. One that had a penchant for serving almost everything in buckets, fried and doused liberally in Old Bay Seasoning.

  I gave up protesting. Maybe a bucket was what I needed.

  But probably not.

  “Oh no,” I said, remembering Luke just as we sat down. “I have to take the dog across the street!” I imagined the disappointed faces of the little girls when I didn’t come home as they expected me to.

  Leslie ordered our buckets and then turned to face me at the bar, leveling me with a steely-eyed gaze. “Those girls, and that dog, are not your responsibility. You’re a young, hot, successful single woman, and your only obligation is to yourself, Paige. You get a night off from being everyone’s best friend and savior, okay?”

  But it didn’t feel okay. I nodded, and pulled my phone out, texting my sister and hoping she didn’t choose today to ask a bunch of questions.

  Me: There are four cakes on my kitchen counter that need to go to Mom’s freezer.

  Amber: Good job.

  Me: Any chance you could go grab them? And maybe run Luke across the street while you’re there?

  Amber: Because I have nothing better to do.

  Me: Please?

  Amber: Where are you?

  I hesitated, but then replied: The Shack. Leslie is making me drink because I was crying.

  Amber: What’s wrong?

  Me: Come here after you do the dog and cakes and I’ll tell you.

  * * *

  If there was one thing my sister couldn’t resist, it was gossip, even if it was about her own family. I’d pay her with information about my lack of judgement and humiliation, and she’d take care of cakes and dogs so I could drink alcohol out of a bucket. It all worked.

  “Okay, so let’s drink,” Leslie said, pointing at the ridiculously large drinks that had appeared before us. They were meant to be shared, but this wasn’t the first time we’d each had our own. “And then you can talk.”

  “If I drink this, I probably won’t be able to talk,” I said.

  “But you probably won’t be wallowing anymore either.”

  We drank. And we ordered a couple buckets of fried oysters and French fries, and surprisingly, I did feel a little bit better.

  Amber showed up after an hour, and pointed a finger at us as she slid into the stool on my other side. “You’re drunk without me.”

  Leslie giggled. “So you can drive us home.”

  “You both live close enough to walk,” Amber said. “And I want a bucket after the day I’ve had.” She signaled the bartender, ordered, and then turned to me. “Your neighbor was a whole tub of laughs,” she said.

  That sobered me up a bit. “What do you mean?”

  “The guy barely said two words and he looked pissed off the whole time I stood there on the driveway so the dog could run around with his daughters. And what’s with all the stuffed animals?”

  “What stuffed—?” I started to ask, but then remembered Frederick, the kangaroo. “Oh, it’s just that huge kangaroo, it’s a gift from a client or something.”

  “Oh, it’s not just that kangaroo,” Amber said, a smile lighting her face as she figured out that she knew something I clearly did not. “He’s got a fucking menagerie over there.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “Yeah, there was cardboard in a huge pile by the garbage can,
like they’d been opening boxes all day, and there were about six weird dead animals all lined up on his porch. The kangaroo was out on the lawn. I think the homeowners’ association is gonna have something to say about all this.”

  I tried to picture what she was talking about, but the alcohol and general strangeness of her words were keeping my brain from working properly.

  “What kind of animals?” Leslie asked around the straw in her mouth.

  “Small, big, you name it. I think there might have been a hippo.”

  Leslie grimaced. “You slept with a dude who ordered a stuffed hippo from the internet to put on his lawn?”

  I looked between the two women who were supposed to be making me feel better about my recent poor choices. “No,” I said slowly. “Wait, I don’t really know. But I don’t think so. That doesn’t sound like Cormac.”

  “Well, how well do you know the guy?” Amber asked, shrugging. “By the way, they kept the dog.”

  “Luke?” Surprise made me sit up straighter.

  “Yeah, he said to tell you thanks for keeping him and that he’s feeling much better.”

  For some reason, that little bit of news shredded whatever tiny amount of hope I’d been holding onto, and tears welled in my eyes again. Now there was no reason at all for me to see him except to give him a shot once a week.

  Even though I’d been the one to try to avoid talking about things earlier, even though I was the one who kept him from saying anything meaningful in the office, it was only because hearing the actual words would have been too hard. Taylor’s words had been enough.

  But the idea of him taking back Luke, cutting off the one remaining connection that bound us together …

  A sob escaped my throat.

  “More alcohol,” Leslie suggested, holding my straw closer to my mouth.

  I complied and sucked down the rest of the bucket.

  A half hour later, Amber was drawing animals on a cocktail napkin and making us guess what they were, which was difficult because my sister couldn’t draw and Leslie and I were drunk. Evidently, these were the animals she’d seen lined up on Cormac’s porch.