Calendar Girl 12 - December (7 page)

I thought about it while turning another ornament around and around in my palm. “Yeah, I think you’re right. If we’re honest, and willing to compromise, we should do just fine.”

He grinned and kissed my cheek. “We’ll do more than fine. As long as I’m married to you, the woman of my dreams, there’s nothing that we can’t solve together.”

His words sent a flutter of happiness coiling around my heart, wrapping it in joy. I turned to my man and kissed him. Then we spent more time making out on the couch before finishing the tree. Just as Wes had me straddling his lap and his hands up my sweater covering my breasts, a loud ringing noise sounded through the cavernous room.

“What’s that?” I stopped, my hands under his sweater.

He kissed my neck sloppily. “Doorbell. Your family is here.”

“My family is here,” I said back, still in a bit of a haze. Then it hit me.
My family was here
. “Woo hoo!” I jumped up. “My family is here. They’re here!” I yelled, running on my Santa Claus-socked feet to the huge set of double doors.

I flung open the doors and was greeted by Max’s scowling face. “Jesus Christ, sugar. It’s freezing! You had to pick a snowy place to have our first Christmas, didn’t you? Just had to!” Max scolded, and I jumped up, wrapped my arms around his neck, and kissed his cheek. “All right, I guess you’re forgiven.” His cheeks pinked as I ushered them in.

“Mads,” I whispered, happy to see my girl.

“Mia!” She wrapped her long arms around me and squeezed me so hard I lost my breath. “I’ve missed you so much!” Her voice was thick with emotion. “I can’t believe we’re in Colorado! This is so cool.”

“Cool being the operative word,” Matt said, before giving me a one-armed hug. “Thanks for having us, Mia.”

“Thanks for coming, Matt.”

Max went back outside and then came up the steps with the baby car seat covered with a blue blanket. He handed me the car seat, which weighed a ton. What the hell was he feeding my nephew? The blanket moved, and I peeked in. Jackson was smiling and gnawing on his hand. I carried the baby into the warmth of the living room and set him on the floor near the tree. I pulled the blanket off so he could gaze at the lights before going back to help the family unload.

Once everyone was settled and warm drinks were served all around, the family helped Wes and me finish the tree. As I suspected, Maddy loved having a Christmas tree. Her eyes were huge as she stared at the finished product. I put my arm around her waist and tipped my head to her shoulder. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“It is, Mia. It so is. Thank you. For this, for bringing us together. It’s…I don’t know. A lot.”

“It is a lot. And we’ll enjoy it together,” I promised her.

Max came up and wedged in between the two of us so that both of us rested our heads on his massive shoulders. Exactly where the big guy liked being. Surrounded by family. He squeezed both of us closer.

“Tomorrow, we’ll talk about her,” I said to them both. “But not today. Today we celebrate being a family, have a meal together, and share in the magic of the season.”

“Agreed,” Maddy said, her voice roughened.

“Whatever my girls need. Family takes care of family.” Max tightened his arms, pulling us even closer.

I sighed and enjoyed looking at my first Christmas tree ever with my sister and brother. Even with the looming issue of our mother hanging over our heads, we still had this. Family. No matter what. Our lives were only stronger for what we’d gone through. It made us appreciate what we had even more. Days like today were new and beautiful memories I’d take with me until the day I died.

B
reakfast was done
and Wes and Cyndi were in the kitchen cleaning up. Matt was entertaining Isabel, who’d already taken to calling him Uncle Matt, which Maddy told me he adored. Matt was an only child so having a niece and nephew was apparently something he really enjoyed. It made him more likable in my opinion. He knew the value of family. However, he’d better not have any ideas about knocking my sister up any time soon.

Max, Maddy, and I sat on the sectional facing the fireplace. Maddy curled her long legs up under her while I sat cross-legged. Max was all business. Knees straight, elbows down on them, and his hands clasped in front of him.

“All right, girls, we need to decide how we’re going to deal with our mother. No more pussyfooting around. So, Mia, tell us what happened in the gallery.”

I went through as much of the story as I could remember, including striking her, which I was most certainly
not
proud of, and her pathetic attempt at claiming she didn’t know Maddy was Jackson’s biological child. How she claimed not to remember any of it, including the times she’d taken me to the casino so she could continue her long-term affair with Max’s father. I told them she even said she’d done it to keep us safe and that I didn’t know the whole story, as if she knew something that would make what she did to the three of us acceptable. Not in this lifetime.

Max lifted a fist to his lips. “I, for one, want to see her again. Say my piece. I think it would be good for us all to go together. Hear her out, make sure she hears us. Thoughts?”

A scowl I couldn’t hide slipped across my face. “You think she’s really going to care?”

Max shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. This isn’t just about her. It’s about us, what we experienced, and we have a right to tell her to her face how she wronged us. Maddy?”

Maddy’s hand reached out for mine, and I intertwined our fingers, lending my support. Sister solidarity. That’s always been our way. Now, we had a brother and we needed to open that door even wider and let Max stride through. Technically, it wasn’t just her and me anymore. It was Max, his family, Wes, Matt…they all had a stake in this reunion because it affected the ones they loved most. Namely, us.

Maddy let go of a deep sigh. “I’m scared. I don’t even know what to say to someone I don’t remember.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“Fair enough,” Max nodded. “Mia, do you think you’ve said everything you have to say to her?”

I scoffed. “I don’t know.”

“Well, how’s about this? The two of you come with me, lend some support, so I can get through what I need to say to our mother.” He said it as a statement, but it definitely held a note of stress.

Max didn’t like asking for help. Under normal circumstances, he probably never would. This request hit me like a two-ton vehicle that backed up and ran over me again. “Max…” Emotion clogged my throat.

He shook his head. “Now, I know you two were abandoned, and she hurt you badly. She did the same to me. Didn’t even stay long enough for me to get my first tooth. Hell, the woman was dust before I needed my first haircut. I’d like to see her. Put a face to a mother in name only. I could really use my sisters there. Backing me up.”

I stood up, went over to Max, sat by his side, and looped my arms around him in a loose hug. “I’m sorry. I was being selfish. It’s not just about me. It’s about all of us. You were hurt, too. And you’re right. We need to go there as one solid unit. Because that’s what we are now. A family. Right?”

“Damn, right!” His voice was so sharp, it cut like glass.

Maddy crawled over the couch and snuggled against Max’s side. “I want to be there for you. As long as you’re there for me, I’m there for you. Okay?” Her eyes were glassy and sad. The fire crackled and sparked within those pale green depths.

“It’s settled then. I’ll call Kent Banks and set something up,” I said.

Max nodded and we all sat quietly, lost in our thoughts, watching the fire.

K
ent Banks was
eager to meet with us. He said there were things that we needed to know before he’d approve of a face-to-face meeting with our mother. At that request, we ended up sitting in a booth back at Zane’s Tavern. Wes and Matt were sitting at the bar, shooting the shit with his buddy Alex. Close enough to keep an eye on us if things went to hell in a hand basket, but far enough away to give us the illusion of privacy. I’d met with Kent before. He’d seemed odd but harmless, though extremely protective of his wife. Technically, he wasn’t even married to her. I wonder if
he
knew that. I knew it because she’d never bothered to get divorced from my father all those years ago.

My father. I let out a slow breath. Another disappointment. He’d been ignoring my calls since soon after I left Vegas and we’d set him up back in his home with a couple nurses. The nurses said he was responding well to treatment, but mentally, he was relapsing into his old woe-is-me pattern. I’d had faith he’d stay strong, break out of his endless spiral of self-loathing, but maybe it was too much to hope for. At this stage, I just had to pray that he stayed away from the drink and stuck to his therapy. I’d done more than I should over this past year and definitely more than he deserved. That was on him, now.

I’d learned a very valuable lesson through all of this. Love was not always kind. It could be cutthroat, ruthless, and spineless, but that didn’t mean it disappeared. I was dealing with it, and Wes was helping me with the emotional wound that was left when the woman that gave me life left me hanging.

A swoosh of frigid air blew across my face as Kent entered. He clocked us right away. He sat down in the empty seat we’d left at the edge of the booth. None of us wanted to be that close to him, so Maddy and I shared a side, and Max made sure his large body filled up the other. If Kent noticed this tactic, he didn’t say anything.

Kent rubbed his hands together, warding off the chill. “Thank you for coming.”

Max, as the alpha male at the table and the one who had the strongest desire to see our mother, spoke first. He held out a hand in greeting. “I’m Maxwell Cunningham. You’ve met my sister Mia Saunders. This is our baby sister, Madison Saunders.”

Both Maddy and I pasted small smiles on our face but didn’t offer our hands.

“I’m sure you’re eager for me to get right to it. In order to do that, I need to start from the beginning.” Kent said, his voice low and steady.

Max nodded and gestured for him to continue. Maddy and I sat silent.

Kent inhaled slowly. “When I met Meryl, she was lost, traveling through the countryside in a vehicle on its last legs. She was filthy, hadn’t showered in days, maybe even weeks. Later, I found she only had a couple changes of clothes and very little to her name. I figured she was escaping a violent man, and at the time, she didn’t say otherwise, let me assume the worst.”

I huffed and rolled my eyes. Kent glanced at me but continued.

“I met her at the local library. I was there to pick up a book I was researching for school. She was there to get warm.”

Maddy’s hand clenched mine under the table. Hearing about another person hurting the same way we had would hit my sister’s soft soul harder than my own. Except it was unfounded. Our mother had a warm home to go to. She chose to leave it. There would be no sympathy from me.

“Eventually, I started seeing her regularly at the library. After a week, I realized she hadn’t changed clothes, her hair was still grimy, and quite frankly, she stank. But there was something in her eyes. A spark when she looked at me that enraptured me. One day, I asked her to come home with me, offered to help her out of whatever she was hiding from. Again, she didn’t deny what was going on, so I got her clean, fed, and a roof over her head. The days turned into weeks, and I enjoyed having her there. She helped me through my schooling, cleaned my house, cooked our meals, and had a knack for art.”

“Where is this going, Mr. Banks? This is telling us nothing other than she lied to you the same way she lied to us. She wasn’t homeless by circumstance. She was homeless by choice. Her husband, my father, never touched her with a harsh finger. Ever. She destroyed him, and she’ll destroy you, too,” I said with malice filling every crevice of space.

Kent shook his head dramatically. “No, please. Just listen. There are things you don’t know.”

Max leaned forward, his reply as sharp as a knife’s blade. “The point? Get there.”

Kent lifted his hands in supplication. “I noticed after a couple months that she started doing strange things. Irrational things. I’d come home, and the entire kitchen floor would be covered in flour, and she’d be dancing like a ballerina in it. Now, normal people don’t do those type of things at all. Meryl, on the other hand, did them regularly. Another time, she had poured Palmolive onto the wood floor and was using the floor as a slip and slide.”

“Yep, that would be our mother. She did that stuff all the time. Give us ice-cream for dinner. Take us outside in the freezing cold to dance in the rain during a storm. Pops worked a lot back then, to make sure she could have everything she wanted, so he didn’t see as much of it. When he’d come home, she’d often go off to the casino to dance in a show. They were like ships passing in the night for a lot of years.”

Kent nodded. “So you saw it. The strange behavior. More than strange, downright manic. As if some of her screws were all of a sudden loosened. She’d be higher than high to the point I’d worry she was on drugs, or lower than low, and it would take an act of God to get her out of bed.”

“That’s putting it mildly, Mr. Banks.” I remembered a million times as a child when my mother acted crazy instead of the mother she should have been. None of that mattered, though, because we loved her.

“What does this have to do with her now?” Max interrupted.

“Everything. It took a lot of convincing, but finally I got her examined. Did you know your mother is severely bipolar?” Kent asked. The table was so quiet you could hear our breathing.

“Bipolar. Like depression?” Max asked.

Kent shook his head solemnly. “She suffers from depression, yes, but it’s more than that. She has mood swings. Her moods shift so rapidly and deeply that she needs heavy medication to cope. She does really well on her meds. Can hold a job. Through the process we found she’s a gifted painter and is able to live a happy, quiet life. Here in Aspen with me. Her moods still shift, she still suffers from the depression and the mania, but on her medication, the cycles are less severe and occur less often. The medication controls them to a degree.” Kent took a deep breath, appearing to gather his thoughts, seemingly knowing that what he had to say next wasn’t going to be well received.

“I don’t know that she could have done that before. The woman she was back then, the woman she was when I met her, would have never been able to raise a child without medication. Her condition was severe and had clearly gone untreated—and there is no way to self-treat—for the better part of her life. I am not surprised at some of the things she did.”

My eyes narrowed on him.

Again, his hands came up in a placating gesture. “I’m not saying that what she did to any of you was right. What I am saying is that untreated, in a manic state, she could have thought it perfectly logical to take her children outside in the winter to dance in the rain during a storm. Mania creates its own logic, its own justification as to why something is necessary. And it can make absolute total sense.

“During those years, in her mania, while she might have felt completely justified in her actions, when the manic phase ended, and the depressive phase started, what she would then realize is that her kids were or had been wet, and cold, and hungry, and that, at best, she was a failure as a mother and, at worst, a danger to her children. She bears the cross of her mistakes every day of her life.” He shook his head when the rest of us didn’t respond.

I personally had no idea what to say. So many thoughts, feelings, and emotions clouded my judgment, clawed at my insides. I needed time to think. Time to process.

“Now, even though the other day put her into a state, she still wants to see you. She doesn’t know the rest of you are here, though I imagine she’ll want to see you as well. Explain. Apologize. But you are all adults now with an adult’s insight. You can’t forget what happened in the past, but maybe you’ll understand. She’s first, and most important, my wife. Has been for close to fourteen years—”

I cut him off. “You do realize that you are not officially married. She never divorced my father.” My voice was low, but it held a biting edge.

Kent nodded. “I get that our marriage is not legal, but legalities don’t matter much to me. I’ve been protecting that woman this long, and I will continue to do so until I take my last breath. So if all you want to do is tear her down, I think it’s best we leave well enough alone and just go our separate ways.” He laid his hands on the table in a gesture of finality.

Max stood up with a hand out. “Let me talk with my sisters. We’ll discuss this and be in contact later this evening.”

Kent stood, shook Max’s hand, and zipped up his coat. “I look forward to hearing from you. I know that you’re all hurting and that what I said today comes as a shock. It did to me, too, but sometimes life does that to you. It’s how you handle the hurt that defines your character.” Those were Kent’s departing words. After he spoke, he turned and walked out the door, not looking back.

Max sat down with a heavy sigh. “So what are you thinking?”

My eyebrows rose. “Wes, baby, a round of tequila please?” I called out.

“I got you,” he said in return, placing our order. He did have me. Lock, stock, and shiny engagement ring-laden finger.

Maddy smirked. “The last time you drank too much tequila you ended up having a sex-fest in the other room with the tatted Samoan hottie, not realizing I was there.” Maddy reminded me of the drunken night with Tai back in Hawaii. Sex-fest. Only my baby sister would come up with something so innocent to describe a filthy, dirty, porn-worthy night of fucking.