An Underestimated Christmas (Underestimated 3) (31 page)

“You didn’t wash it first. Mommy took it off me. She said you have to wash new clothes first. Don’t you know that, Daddy?”

“No, buddy, I guess I didn’t. I’ll be sure not to let it happen again.

How the hell was I supposed to explain to him that his mom was going to live in a different house? He would never understand it. Never. Morgan could do it. She wanted this. She was doing this to us, not me. She could get him to understand.

“Where are the boys? Drew! Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re picking me up without the boys.” I was so mad at him and I knew what he was trying to do. I bet he even lied about taking care of the finance part of this house for me.

“You’ll see them tonight.”

“What? No. I want to see them now,” I protested. Hell no. Fuck no. He was crazy if he thought I was going to go off on some romantic date with him. It wasn’t even noon yet. I wanted my kids, not Drew fucking Kelley.

“Yes. We have something to take care of first.”

“No we don’t. Like what?”

“You’ll see.”

“You lied. You said you would pick me up, take me to my new house, and let me keep the boys. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you. I knew you couldn’t do all that in five days. You probably didn’t even get the house for me, did you, Drew?” I couldn’t believe he was doing this. I spent the entire night before talking to Carlie about my fears while I listened to hers. I was sure we would always remain friends.

“I never lie. I may not tell you everything, love, but I don’t lie,” Drew sang shaking one finger in the air while driving us to who knew the hell where. “And, I think you already know that I can do anything in five days. It only takes resources and money. It just so happens I have both.”

“You’re ridiculous. I’m supposed to be stress free. I’m not supposed to be dealing with stress right now. Do you care, Drew?” I yelled. Un-fucking-believable.

“Oh, it’s okay, love. You’re therapist knows I’m kidnapping you for the night. She thought it was a wonderful idea.”

“I’m calling her,” I said, taking my phone from my purse. Drew took it out of my hand.

“You’re stressing yourself out. Stop it. I’ll have you home later tonight. Right now we’re going to take care of a couple things.”

“I hate you. You know that, right?” I pouted, crossing my arms. He laughed. Ugh. I wanted to stab him in his face.

“Drew,” I desperately protested when I realized we were heading right to the jet. 

“You promised to trust me until Christmas. I have ten more days. This is still my day. It’s a quick flight. Stop whining.

I didn’t stop whining. This was bullshit. I had my day planed out. I was going to decorate a tree in my new living room with my two favorite people. My own living room, not Drew’s. My complaining continued the whole time, walking to the stupid plane, climbing the stupid steps I was being forced to climb, and through the entire flight.

Drew was an ass the entire time. He didn’t give two shits about my feelings. Not once did he even say, I am proud of you. That would have meant more than all this. “I really do hate you,” I said for at least the tenth time since I foolishly got in the car with him. Just call me Drew’s fool. Ugh. I did hate him.

“Did I tell you how nice your ass looks in those jeans?”

“Oh my god. I’m jumping,” I said, standing. Drew laughed and pulled me back to the seat beside him. I had to move my hand to keep him from holding on to it.

The airport didn’t really look familiar, but I knew we were in the air for less than an hour. I tried to pinpoint where we were going by the landmarks below. It wasn’t the city like I was expecting. There were a lot of fields and open land.

“Drew, what are we doing here?” I asked, knowing exactly where we were.

“Wait,” Drew whispered, losing his smart tone. His expression was a mixture between worried and serious. What the hell was going on?

Of course Drew had a car already there and waiting. “Drew, please tell me what we’re doing here. I don’t want to be here. This is why things are never going to be okay between us. You always do this stuff, Drew. You can’t just go through life making all my decisions for me,” I pleaded, trying to get through his thick skull. My eyes looked around at the familiar yet unfamiliar town.

A Sprint store was in the place of Martin’s Drugs and a new Walmart sat where the VFW once resided. The truck stop where I waited in the cold while my mother entertained a bypassing trucker was closed down, decaying with time.

“I don’t understand, Drew.” I confessed, feeling emotions from my hometown that I didn’t comprehend. He was a freaking idiot. I literally just walked out of a drug rehab. What the hell was he thinking? I knew exactly where we were going when we started down the old holler. My old neighborhood hadn’t changed much. The mine where most of the coal town worked was fenced in with danger and warning signs. The Barkley’s put a new mobile home in the place of their old one, if they still lived there.

“Drew?” I questioned again, seeing my mother stepping out of a car in our old driveway. “What the hell are you doing?” He didn’t answer but his expression held the worried look. He got out and opened my door.

My mother hugged me, meeting me at my door. “Morgan, I am so sorry.”

“Sorry for what? Drew, what did you do?” I accused, turning to him. This couldn’t be good for me nor my mother. What good would it do me to tell my mother how much I hated her for leaving me in this dump to fend for myself? I wasn’t out to hurt her. I merely stated that I needed to face my past.

She let go and held my arms. Burr. It was freezing in West Virginia, worse than New York, I thought.

“I scored a couple guns. Do you remember, James Barkley? They put the new trailer in back the road a little. He let me borrow them. You ever shoot a gun?”

“What?” She did say guns, didn’t she?

“Here, Drew. You better help her,” my mom suggested, handing Drew a hand gun. I watched the charade unfolding in front of my eyes. This wasn’t real life. My mother took her own borrowed handgun and held it with straight arms. The shot was louder than I was expecting and I jumped. The glass breaking in the small kitchen window shattered.

“Nice shot,” Drew said, wrapping his arms around me.

“I can shoot a gun. I shot Derik,” I reminded him in a rasp. Why the hell did he have so much control over me? We had several layers of winter clothes between us and I still melted in his arms.

“You suck. He’s still breathing,” Drew reminded, spilling hot words to my ear.

“I know this place isn’t the problem,” my mother said after I shot the front door, splintering the frozen, rotten wood. That was the heart of that house. I was making sure it wasn’t still breathing. “It took Drew calling me to realize I was still holding on, too. I’m so sorry, Morgan.”

“You did apologize. What do you mean?” I asked.

“Shoot again,” Drew said, keeping my arms straight with his. I chose the wall where I knew the old wood burner used to sit. I hated that thing. It was never enough to keep the drafty trailer warm. Poor little Justin was always sick and I was the one left to take care of him.

My mother shot again, too. Hers went through her old bedroom window. “I have never talked to you about this, because it was too hard for me. I was stupid to think I could give you some half ass apology and be okay with it. I’m not going to make this about me, it’s not. I just want you to know there hasn’t been one passing day that I haven’t remembered and regretted something that I did to you and Justin. Not one, Morgan.”

My tears fell while I emptied my gun into the condemned trailer. I’m not even one hundred percent sure I heard what she was saying. I did forgive her. I didn’t blame her. She did what she was conditioned to do. Just like me, my mother did what her environment allowed her to do. I learned early on how to submit to Drew’s every need, and my mother learned early on how to follow in the footsteps of the rest of this poor town.

There was no doubt in my mind that she would have never taken the money and ran had she known he was going to hurt me. I knew she wouldn’t. By the time we’d unloaded three rounds of ammo, the house was full of bullet holes.

“Come on,” Drew said taking my cold, ungloved hand with his. Now what...? “Here,” he offered, handing me one of those silver lighters with the hinged lid.

“What?” I asked puzzled.

“Light it. The gas is already on it.”

I looked back to my mom and she nodded. The sound of the striker against the flint was deafening, but the loud wooooof, from the flame was louder. Drew pulled me back a little and we watched the trailer being engulfed in flames. The heat I felt on my face was immediate.

“Can you let it go now, Morgan? No matter how much you think everyone deserves your anger, vitriol venom, and your resentment, I’m here to tell you it serves no positive purpose. You’re only hurting yourself, so stop being a baby. You and only you are responsible for your reality. Not me, not your mom, and not your past. It’s up to you to let it go and leave it here.

“It’s gone, it’s up in flames. Nobody can change the past. It’s a pointless, destructive, pathetic waste of your potential and emotional energy. You’re wasting your life because of things your mother nor I can change. I’m going to be okay, Morgan. Your mother is going to be okay. You can hold on to this for the rest of your life, but we’re going to be okay, because we have families that depend on our happiness. I’m not going to live back there and let it destroy me from the inside out like you’ve let happen to you.

“You seem to forget I was abused by a man of great power for a good many years. My life sucked and then I made yours suck. I’m sorry. I bet your mother grew up in a bad situation, too. We all come from somewhere, Morgan. And if you’re not careful, you’re going to waste away a lonely old woman. You’ll die being an angry, bitter, resentful, tortured soul, and I’m not going to stay around and watch it. I’m going to go raise two happy, healthy boys, and I want nothing more than to do that with you, but not like this.

“This is history and you never have to think about it again, not unless you want to. Stop with the self-perpetuating past and let’s be happy, Morgan, please.”

Wow. As much of an ass that Drew was, he really did care. He arranged all of this for me, to help me.

Or maybe not…

“Come on, let’s get out of here before we go to jail,” Drew said, pulling my hand.

“I’ll call you later, Morgan. I love you.”

“I love you, too, thanks for being here, Mom,” I said, hugging her goodbye.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” Drew coaxed, waving his hand to the opened car door, the sirens growing closer. 

“Drew, you really didn’t get this cleared with the county before you did it?” I questioned,

“No, I can’t do everything in five days,” he joked, stepping on the gas.

I wasn’t sure how I felt with our next stop. Although I hadn’t seen the house in person, I knew it was the one I wanted him to buy. I guess I was a little confused.

“Are you dropping me off?”

“No way. You still owe me ten days,” Drew said in his cocky, dominate Drew tone. “I’m kidding, Morgan. I’m just trying to make you happy. But, I did buy it as you wished. You can’t stay here yet. It’s not ready. The old man that lived here wasn’t much on updating. I have a contractor working on it. He said he could have it done by the first of the year. Right now, they’re only cleaning out junk and tearing shit up. You can come over and help them put it back together the way you want it.” 

“Okay, Drew. I really just want to see the boys. Please,” I begged.

“Don’t you want to go inside?”

“No. I want to see Nicky and Tadpole. Like I’m ready to scream I want to see them so bad. Please take me home, I mean to see the boys,” I begged. Okay, I got the whole letting go thing, now just give me my kids already. UGH…

“Yes, come on.”

The five-minute drive seemed to take five hours. I wasn’t letting either of them go for the entire night. I was planning to hug them tight for hours, and if Drew insisted I sleep with him, they were going to be between us. That wasn’t quite the way things turned out.

“Aahhhh! What are you doing here?” I screamed.

“Oh, you know, just stopping by,” Alicia teased, hugged me, and got the hell out of the way when both boys yelled ‘Mommy!’ I dropped to the floor and hugged them, holding back the happy tears begging to be released.

Nothing was turning out as I planned. Alicia had been there for the past five days while Drew took care of things. He had all my things moved to the bedroom across from the library. What the hell? He had no intentions on me sleeping with him. Vincent didn’t get to come because of school, but Christina was there, as cute as always.

I actually had a great evening, except for Drew stepping out. Alicia and I made homemade pizza with the kids and then sat in front of the Christmas tree, soaking in the flames of the fire while the kids and Dasher piled around us on the beanbags.