Castles in the Sand (6 page)

What on earth…?
“All…all right.”

“I think the question is, does Jesus welcome us with open arms? With our faults? Did He die on the cross for us because we did everything right?”

“No, of course not, but…but what does that have to do with Kenzie’s situation?” Susan felt as though she was racing through a maze, turning one blind corner after another and getting nowhere.

“You kicked Kenzie out of the house. On a cold rainy night. Without a car.”

An overwhelming sense of horror slammed into her like a physical blow to the chest. Hearing the truth from a stranger multiplied the awfulness of what she had done.

Pepper said, “I’m sorry. In all fairness, she said you didn’t kick her out that night. She’s the one who decided to leave right then. She knew Aidan was waiting outside in his car for her.”

Aidan was waiting? Thank goodness
.

“And Kenzie said it was her dad who sent her, not you.”

“But,” she whispered, “I sat there and let it happen.”

Compassion etched furrows in Pepper’s brow, around her mouth.

A sense of loss overwhelmed Susan. “I miss her. I think I’ve missed her for years. She never was around much and then she moved out right after high school…”

“She is a strong, determined young woman. I didn’t even have to suggest she see a doctor. She found a clinic for low-income women.”

A flush crept up her neck. Drake made a decent salary! Their daughter shouldn’t have to go to a clinic! How absurd! Should she give Pepper money? But he would never approve. Not welcome in their home meant not one penny would go to Kenzie or toward the baby’s care.

“Susan.” Pepper’s voice grew soft. “Kenzie said to tell you that she misses you.”

The words thwacked her like another harsh blow. In about two seconds she was going to fall apart.

Quickly, Susan twisted around and unhooked her handbag from the back of the chair. In one swift motion she shoved the seat from the table and stood. “I must go.”

Without one polite phrase or even a glance in Pepper’s direction, she hurried away.

“Oh, man!” Pepper groaned and slid down the chair until her nose was level with the table. She spoke aloud, oblivious to people sitting nearby in the food court. “I did not mean to do that! I told You, Lord! I told You. You shouldn’t have trusted me with this one. I wanted to stick it to her, and I did. I surely did.”

“Mom?” Mickey tugged at her arm.

“Hi, honey.” She widened her eyes at him and met his gaze. “Do you see a log in one of my eyes?”

Somberly he inspected each and then he shook his head. “Nope. No log.”

She smiled. “Thanks.” At the prodigious rate he was growing, he’d gain spiritual eyes soon enough and be only too eager to point out all sorts of logs.

“Where’s Susan?”

“She had to go home. How about we pack up your toys and shop?”

He scrunched his nose in distaste.

“To buy a maternity shirt for Kenzie.”

“For Kenzie? Yay!” As fast as his short legs would carry him, he tore off and collected the trucks he’d parked around the area.

He so obviously loved Kenzie. What was wrong with her parents?

“Oh, Lord. As I was saying, I am sorry.”

Pepper raised a hand and then held it aloft, knuckles bent inches from the door. Dropping in unannounced at Aidan’s apartment had taken on a whole new complicated dimension. Visions danced in her head. They were of herself and Mick as newlyweds behind closed doors and not expecting the in-laws.

Nope. The situation was not quite the same. She wasn’t an in-law. The kids were not newlyweds. They had no business acting as such.

Eww
. If that didn’t smack of a Reverend Drake Starr judgmental attitude, she didn’t know what did.

Beneath her raised arm, little Mickey whomped his body against the door and banged his fist on it. “Kenzie! Open up!”

He must have drained his courtesy tank on Susan. “Mickerson, that is not polite.”

“Oops. Sorry.”

Kenzie opened the door, a wide grin across her face, and knelt. “Mickey J!”

The boy jumped right into her arms, not slowed in the least by the shopping bag in his hand.

Thank You
, Pepper breathed a prayer of relief. Kenzie’s hair was in place, each spiky spring goop-laden to perfection. She was completely dressed in black jeans and a gray midriff sweater that hit just above the slightly rounded tummy. She wore shoes even. Those chunky heels. Murder on a back supporting a baby. Give her a couple months—

“Hi, Pepper. Come on in.”

“Hi.” She smiled. “Don’t mean to interrupt.”

“You’re not. I’m just getting ready for work.” She shut the door behind them. “I am so not a morning person. Thank goodness the coffee shop keeps me on the afternoon/evening shift. Sit down.”

Pepper crossed the dinky living room and noticed that the door to the bedroom was shut. She pictured Aidan behind it, headset on, playing the electronic keyboard—its sound off—and composing music. Worship music. Nontraditional, but still a proclamation that God offered hope to everyone.

Mickey jumped up and down. “Kenzie! Kenzie! Open this.” He pushed the shopping bag at her. “It’s a tourney shirt!”

Pepper laughed and sat on a worn secondhand upholstered chair. “There goes that surprise.”

Kenzie sat cross-legged on the threadbare carpet and dug into the bag. “Tourney shirt?” She pulled out a red plaid flannel. “Mickey! It’s just like yours!”

He shook his head vehemently. “No. It’s a tourney shirt. Boys don’t wear tourney shirts.”

Kenzie raised her brows at Pepper.

“Maternity.” She eyed Kenzie’s bare midriff again.

“Maternity? Really? Oh, wow! My very first!” She slid her arms into it. “Thank you!”

“You’re welcome.”

Kenzie sprang to her feet and whirled around. “It’s great. I’ll wear it today.” She leaned over and hugged Pepper. “Thank you. And thank you.” She knelt to squeeze Mickey.

He squeezed her back, and she held him tight, her eyes shut.

In that pose, Kenzie resembled her mother. It was not so much a physical thing but rather a vague impression. Both women sent out a subtle message of vulnerability. Fragility.

Pepper thought too of how they responded to Mickey in the same way, crouching down to his level, conversing with him like the real person he was. They both expressed obvious enjoyment of his personality. Not everyone did that. Then there was the hair. Granted Susan’s was in an uptight-style bun that fit her personality and Kenzie’s in its wild springs and a different color, but each was styled in such a way that held every hair perfectly in place.

Interesting. Like mother, like daughter.

Uh-oh.

The bedroom door opened and Aidan entered the living room. “Hey, Mom. Mickey, my man!”

Her youngest rushed at her oldest. They exchanged high and low fives before Aidan grabbed Mickey in a hug and lifted him toward the ceiling. The fact they had just seen each other the previous night didn’t hamper their enthusiastic greeting.

Pepper waited. Finally Mickey settled into a corner with a stack of books. Aidan and Kenzie sat on the only other seat in the room—a fourth-hand loveseat of no identifiable color—and turned their attention to her. Expectant.

Well, yes, that was the word. In more ways than one.

“How’d it go, Mom?” Aidan took Kenzie’s hand.

“Fairly…all right. We got to know each other a little better. Bottom line, she is upset about sending you away, Kenzie. The guilt is eating her up.”

“She said that?”

“Not exactly.” She thought of the moment Susan’s mask slipped and her preacher-wife tone disintegrated. “She got very real when I said—almost in the same breath—that Jesus welcomes us to the cross when we’re in our direst need and that she sent you away.”

Aidan thrust a fist in the air. “Way to go, Mom!”

“No, not way to go, Mom. I got huffy. I hate being huffy. I especially don’t want to be huffy with Kenzie’s mother, with your semi-mother-in-law. Good grief, in the near future we’ll have to share the same waiting room in the maternity ward. Not to mention birthday parties and holidays for the rest of our lives.”

Kenzie’s mouth formed an O shape. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

It’s called consequences, my dear
. “Anyway, I broke the ice. I filled her in on how you are. I found out she’s hurting and regrets her actions. But the next step is up to you.” She pressed her lips together before another huffy tone slipped out.

“Did she have my dog with her?”

“No.”

“I bet Pugsy is there, though, at the beach house. Dad would never take care of him. Actually it’s really weird Mom’s at the beach without Dad. They always go right after Easter. My Aunt Nattie and Uncle Rex rent the house for them.” She smiled. “It’s a funky place. You’d never guess it was south of the Mission restaurant. It looks like a squished red chili behind a white picket fence. Right on the boardwalk between all this cool modern stuff.”

So the house didn’t belong to the Starrs. They didn’t even pay for the rent.
Okay. I can live with that
.

Kenzie went on. “Mom loves it, but I can’t believe she’s there by herself. She never does anything without my dad. Why would he allow her to go alone?”

Allow her? Eww
.

The girl shook her head. “I know I’ve hurt her. Hurt both of them. But I always seem to hurt them without even trying. I’ve never lived up to their standards. They hate my music. They—”

“Hon,” Pepper said, “back up to ‘I know I’ve hurt her.’ Start and stop right there.”

Kenzie gazed at her for a long moment. “You’re saying I should apologize. But I already have!”

Pepper shrugged. “That first time hardly counts. Right, Aidan? I don’t even think I heard the ‘I’m sorry’ until twenty-four hours later.”

He raised his brows in reply.

Pepper knew the expression. It meant
Back off. Give me some space
. She glared, hoping he read her mind as well.
You little twerp
.

Since when had they become mind readers?

Since Kenzie.

In that split-second Pepper realized something had changed forever. She had refused to read the tea leaves, but it had been coming for months. The offbeat style of rapport she shared with her son vanished on the spot. Aidan had a wife—so to speak. All dialogue encompassed her. He didn’t communicate “Give
me
some space.” He meant “Give
her
some space.” He spoke for Kenzie because his mother had stepped over a boundary she didn’t know was there. Until now.

Pepper felt…displaced. She wasn’t so sure she liked that.

Half a block from a busy intersection, Susan stood outside a bakery at a pay telephone. The scent of cinnamon rolls swirled with that of sea salt. Pugsy sat at her feet, content to soak up sunshine and watch people eat lunch at a sidewalk café across the street.

Susan arranged stacks of coins on the little shelf beneath the phone. She picked up the receiver and enough quarters for a toll call. She dropped them into the slot. They plunked. She listened to the dial tone, pressed the “1,” and held her finger above the “8.” It hovered there momentarily.

And then she replaced the receiver. The money clanked into the opening at the bottom of the phone. She scooped it out and carefully stacked it on the little shelf.

It was her fourth such repetition of the activity.

Or was it the fifth?

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome
.

Was she going insane?

She wasn’t sure.

Lord
.

Her daughter was fine. Living in sin, yes, but physically safe and sound. Pepper seemed like a nice woman. She would be a mother’s eyes and ears and make sure Kenzie had enough to eat and was warm enough. Food and shelter—the basics were covered.

Drake should be informed.

I don’t want to tell him
.

The thought sprang from nowhere and waggled around a bit.

Was it something a submissive wife would think?

She wasn’t sure.

But there it was.

Susan gathered the coins and placed them in her blazer pocket. Kenzie was fine. That was enough for one day.

She only wished she had remembered to ask Pepper how it was she managed to sleep at night.