Beneath the Night Tree (17 page)

Smoothing a little gloss over my toffee-pink lipstick, I straightened up the bathroom counter and made my way into the kitchen. Daniel and Simon were both at the table, devouring what could have easily been their fourth cookie each.

“Hey, you two!” I called, greeting them both with a quick squeeze. Daniel leaned into my one-armed embrace. Simon pulled away.

I had hoped the day would soften his hard edges, but my brother didn’t seem as eager to forgive and forget as I was. That wasn’t enough to deter me. Sinking into the chair beside him, I laid a hand on his arm.

“Simon.” I tilted my head to try to catch his gaze. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you this morning.”

He shrugged. Resolutely avoided making eye contact.

“Come on, I’m apologizing here!” I said, my voice high, singsong. “I’m sorry; I’m sorry; I’m sorry!”

Simon pulled his arm out from under my grip and pushed back from the table.

“You can’t be mad!” I pressed on. “Not when Michael is coming. We’re going to have such a fun weekend!”

My brother’s eyes flashed to mine and I was startled to see fear in them. Fear? What was he afraid of? me? I had never raised a hand against him and rarely raised my voice. Had this morning’s altercation upset him enough to leave traces of panic in his dark eyes?

“Honey,” I murmured, “what’s wrong?”

But Simon didn’t answer. Instead, he spun on his heel and ran toward his room. The slam of his door almost perfectly matched the sound of someone knocking.

“Michael’s here,” I breathed, torn between elation and devastation. Where should I go first? Simon’s door? or Michael’s?

Another flurry of knocks rattled against our doorframe, and although I was kind of surprised that Michael wasn’t just walking in, I rushed through the mudroom and wrenched open the door. I planned to throw myself into his arms, kiss him, and then tell him that although all I wanted was to bask in the glow of his presence for hours, I had to take care of something. Michael would understand.

But just as I was about to launch myself at the man on my porch, I stopped dead.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded.

The smile that had lit up Parker’s face when I first swung open the door faded a little. “I’m here to pick up the boys,” he said, a look of uncertainty darting across his features.

“What are you talking about? I told you this morning that it didn’t work for us today.”

“But . . .” He sidestepped a little and looked over my shoulder into the kitchen. His eyes lit up and he waved at Daniel.

“But what?” I nearly shouted. “I told you no!”

“But Simon called me,” Parker said, keeping his voice down as if he hardly dared to disclose his source. “Around lunchtime. He said that you had changed your mind and that you wanted me to pick them up and get them out of your hair for a while.”

“I never said that.” The words tasted bitter on my tongue. “I would never say that.”

Parker lifted his hands. “I’m sorry. I thought—”

“He’s a kid, Parker. Didn’t you stop to wonder why Simon was the one calling you instead of me?”

“No, it never crossed my mind.”

I moaned. “You know nothing about children.”

“I never said I did.”

“You didn’t have to. It’s pretty obvious.” I glared at Parker, but he looked contrite, confused. “It’s not your fault,” I muttered begrudgingly. “But you have to go. You need to leave. Now.”

Suddenly a soft whine pierced the late afternoon. It came from somewhere on the porch, somewhere nearby, hidden in the depths of the lengthening shadows. “What was that?” I spat out.

“My surprise for the boys.” Parker rubbed the back of his neck with his hand and studied the slats of our porch floor.

“Excuse me?”

“I brought something to—”

“Obviously, Parker. What did you bring?”

The man before me crouched to grab a cardboard box nestled against the house. The top flaps were folded in over each other, but Parker pried them apart effortlessly and reached into the dark recess. His hands emerged with a puppy. A tiny, black and tan and white bundle with floppy ears and big brown eyes that regarded me with a newborn sorrow. The little thing mewed like a kitten and tried to bury her head in Parker’s large hands.

“You brought my boys a puppy?”

Parker shrugged and nuzzled the crying bundle against his chest.

“A puppy? And you didn’t ask me?” I was furious, ready to explode, to send Parker and his miniature mess-making machine packing. But before I could utter another word, two things happened at the same time.

First, Daniel finally broke free from Grandma’s attempts to restrain him. He slid underneath my arm to stand between Parker and me and immediately caught sight of his inapt present. The squeal that issued from his open mouth was earsplitting.

And in the distance, a car turned off the highway onto our long driveway, heralding its sudden appearance with the crunch and pop of gravel beneath tires. For a fleeting instant I prayed that it would be a UPS truck, a wrong turn, a neighbor coming by to say hi. But it wasn’t.

It was Michael.

Surprises

For a frantic moment I battled a crazy desire to push Parker into a closet and tell Michael that the man he saw standing on my porch was nothing more than a figment of his imagination. Grandma and I had watched a cheesy chick flick a couple of weeks ago, and that was exactly what the heroine did. But something told me the hide-him-in-a-wardrobe ploy would only work in Hollywood. As for little old unfamous me, I was frozen in my open doorway, about to introduce the love of my life to the man who got me pregnant.

I wanted to throw up.

But I couldn’t. Not here. Not now. “Daniel,” I said in a voice so no-nonsense, he looked at me instantly. “Go in the house. Now.”

He didn’t argue, though when I stepped out onto the porch to make room for him, he slammed the door behind me a little too aggressively. I didn’t even care. I wanted to slam doors too.

“Parker,” I whispered between gritted teeth, “I’m going to have to deal with you later.”

“Deal with me?” he sputtered before I could go on. “What do you mean, deal with me?”

My gaze was locked on Michael as he pulled onto our cement pad and turned off his car, but Parker’s words caused me to spin on him. In the weeks since he had reentered my life, any semblance of the old Parker—the grad school student who knocked me up and left me—had been buried beneath the newer, contrite guise of a changed man. But when I faced him, the old spark was in his eyes, that still-familiar smirk pulling at one corner of his carved lips.

“I’m not a child,” he told me, “and there’s nothing to deal with.”

“You had no right to—”

“Simon called; I came. End of story. I won’t make the same mistake next time.”

I bit off a curt “Whatever,” but what I wanted to do was curse.

“I’m gone,” Parker muttered under his breath.

“Take your mutt with you!”

“I will, Julia,” he said, leaning in toward me and offering up the puppy as evidence. “I’ll take the dog because she’s mine. I didn’t buy your boys a puppy; you just assumed that. I brought her along so I could teach the boys about caring for an animal.”

“You mean you didn’t . . . ?”

“Of course not. I may not be great with kids, but I’m not stupid. I rescued Holly from a neighbor who was going to drown her.”

“How very
Charlotte’s Web
of you,” I scoffed, crossing my arms over my chest. “I’ll have to start calling you Fern.”

Parker’s glare was downright chilling. “You know, you can be a real—”

“What, Parker? What can I be? What am I?” I wanted him to say it, to admit what he was thinking so I could vilify him and ban him from our lives. But as I stepped closer, Parker backed away. He backed down. I watched as the angry lines in his face faded and then disappeared altogether.

“You’re confused,” he said.

I harrumphed. “I’m confused? You’re the one who’s confused, Patrick Holt.” But my attempt at witty retaliation was utterly meaningless, and I felt like a fool as he bent to retrieve Holly’s box.

“Don’t worry,” Parker said, tucking the tiny puppy between the strips of old towels he had nestled inside. “I won’t call again. If the boys ever want to talk to me, you have my number.”

He didn’t look at me once as he left, pressing the cardboard box against his chest as if it contained a priceless treasure and taking the steps two at a time. I cringed as he almost bumped into Michael at the edge of our sidewalk, but the two men merely nodded at each other and went their separate ways. Michael coming into my life, Parker leaving it. Again.

But I didn’t have time to think about that. Suddenly Michael was before me, sweeping me into his arms and spinning me around like I was a little girl instead of a grown woman. He held me so tight, I couldn’t breathe, and when he finally pulled away, he cradled my face in his hands and kissed me like he would die for want of love. I was gasping when his mouth finally left mine, faint and tingling, and only half-aware of the sound of Parker’s engine as he drove away.

“I missed you,” Michael whispered, his lips pressed against my forehead and his hands wrapped around the curve of my waist. “I can’t believe how much I missed you.”

“Welcome home,” I said hoarsely. I dipped my head and laid a kiss against the warmth of his neck. Beneath my lips I could feel the unsteady pulse of his heartbeat.

“You better stop that,” he warned, “or I’m not going to want to be polite. I’ll whisk you away and forget all about saying hi to Daniel and Simon and Grandma.”

“That wouldn’t do,” I murmured, but I thought it would do just fine.
Take me away,
I thought.
Just make me disappear so I can forget about Parker’s unwanted appearance, Simon’s disobedience, Grandma’s graying skin . . .

But Michael didn’t whisk me away. He took a deep breath, gave me one last suffocating squeeze, and held me at arm’s length. “It’s so good to see you,” he said. Then, “Who was that guy with the box? some deliveryman?”

I nodded, unable to lie to his face but equally incapable of explaining everything when Parker’s presence still lingered like a faint but untraceable odor around us. I started to say,
I’ll tell you later,
but Michael had already dismissed the anonymous man on the porch and was reaching for a department store bag that he had set on the ground when he lifted me off it.

“I have some presents for the boys,” he said, and I caught a glimpse of exactly what Daniel had predicted we’d see: two new packages of shiny Matchbox cars and an oversize bag of sour apple jelly beans.

“What’s the book?” I asked, creeping my hand into the sack to extract the one unexpected item.

“A little something for Simon.” Michael batted my hand away. “And I have something for Grandma, too. Buried in the bottom.”

“What about me?” I pretended to pout, but Michael winked away my plea and took me by the hand.

“Let’s get this over with so we can spend some time alone.”

“Get this over with?” I coughed.

“You know what I mean. . . .”

Michael’s ministrations had nearly transformed my attitude, but I forgot to account for the rest of my family. Simon was still locked away in his room, and Grandma and Daniel were sitting at the table in a hunched-over tableau of worry and alarm. Grandma’s forehead was visibly creased, her eyes a study in concern. And Daniel fixed me with a vicious stare, a look that told me in no uncertain terms that I was in the doghouse. How ironic.

“Hey!” Michael greeted them, apparently oblivious to the tension in the room. He bowed to give Daniel an awkward hug and fished his gifts from the depths of the bag as if he were digging for gold. My son’s reaction didn’t match the flourish with which his gifts were presented.

“Thanks,” Daniel mumbled, turning the bag of jelly beans over in his hands. They tumbled in an avalanche of green and made a sound like water over stones.

“You’re welcome, buddy.” Michael ruffled Daniel’s hair and turned to Grandma. “I’ve got something for you, too, Mrs. DeSmit.”

She smiled a little, but the expression didn’t come close to reaching her eyes. “You didn’t have to bring me anything,” she said, standing so that she could offer Michael a hug. My boyfriend embraced my grandmother quickly, then pulled away and extracted a scarf from the bag he still held.

It was soft, cashmere if I knew anything about fabric—which, admittedly, I didn’t. But it looked luxurious all the same—knit with a fine, tight weave that could have been plaited by fairies, the pattern was so small. The fabric had been dyed a gentle pink, the sort of mild, glowing hue that came to mind when someone spoke fondly of a peaches-and-cream complexion.

“It’s beautiful,” I said before Grandma could react. Taking the scarf from Michael’s hands, I wound it around my grandmother’s neck. It made her skin look flushed, alive.

“It is beautiful,” she agreed. The braided fringe dangled against her chest and she lifted it with shaking fingers. I wished I could steady her hand. “Thank you,” she said. “You really shouldn’t have.”

For some reason, it sounded like she meant what she said.

“Oh, it was nothing.” Michael dismissed her gratitude with a flick of his wrist. “Where’s Simon?”