Here in My Heart: A Novella (Echoes of the Heart) (23 page)

I don’t want your help!
she’d screamed at him, betrayed and certain he was dumping her and determined to hurt him back.
You’re a liar, just like everyone else. You said you loved me. Now you’re telling me how messed up I am.

She’d been eighteen. They’d spent their senior year in high school as teenage clichés, acting out, using alcohol and sex to dull the loneliness they’d thought no one else could understand—until they’d found each other. When he’d decided to clean up his act, with or without her, she’d shown herself to be the real bad seed, not hell-on-wheels Oliver Bowman. She’d struck out solo after that night, raging blindly onward. She’d destroyed the last of her childhood, their love, and Oliver’s place in the Dixons’ home.

“Do we get to stop for doughnuts?” Camille asked. Her watering can was empty. She was hopping up and down at Selena’s feet.
Ouch!
Make that
on
Selena’s feet, smearing dirt and Georgia clay all over Selena’s soft-soled shoes. “Mommy, you said we could get—”

“A chocolate doughnut on the way to school.” Selena led her daughter back to the house. She shoved her memories down, deep inside, into the emotionless corner of her mind where the past was a cautionary tale, instead of an old wound forever seeping fresh blood.

The toes of her favorite shoes squished, sinking into the boggy soil beneath Belinda’s perpetually dripping spigot. Selena mentally crossed off another piece of her once stylish wardrobe that was too delicate for a busy day in Chandlerville. Her linen ballerina flats used to match a chic sheath dress embroidered with a matching array of seed pearls and tiny silk bows. The dress was long gone. The shoes she’d talked herself into keeping because they were so beautiful and made her smile. Now they were another mess she could chalk up to experience.

“I’m fixing you when I get home,” she warned the spigot, twisting the dial on the hose’s timer and setting the water to shut off in half an hour. Gardening she might be a novice at, compared to her mother. But after Selena’s New York ex had left her for a younger, child-free prototype, taking his big-city money with him, Selena had mastered do-it-yourself plumbing like an all-star.

“What’s wrong?” Her six-year-old tugged at Selena’s thrift-store dress.

“Nothing, sweetheart,” Selena instantly replied to the question no child should ask as often as Camille did.

Selena turned the spigot’s handle. Water gushed from the sprinklers. She grabbed her things, set her daughter’s watering pot on the porch steps, and knelt in the grass, kissing Camille’s temple on the way down. She tightened the ribbons she’d tied around her little girl’s wispy, golden ponytails. Of course she’d managed to make them slightly off-center. Camille looked adorable anyway.

Had Oliver seen it?

Had he noticed her daughter’s blonde good looks, or how Camille’s smile naturally curved higher on one side than the other, just like his?

“We’d better snag your nutritionally barren yet organic and nut-free breakfast to go,” Selena said, rather than indulging the questions that would torture her all day. What good would it do, wishing things were different? If she were going to do anything more than stare at
all-grown-up
Oliver, she’d had her chance twice already. “We want to get to school before Karen Davenport hoards all the best craft supplies.”

“I’m going to rule the art table in day care.” Camille pumped a tiny fist into the air, celebrating her impending triumph—claiming first dibs on a crayon box she would have to share with the mean girl Selena’s job exposed her daughter to five days a week.

She was a school employee, a substitute teacher. Which meant Selena dropped Camille at Chandler’s early child-care center each morning she worked, without having to pay the fee she otherwise had no funds to cover. She was fortunate the school’s principal, Kristen Hemmings Beaumont, kept her in mind so often for the part-time opportunities a list of subs vied to fill. Practically every day for more than a month, Chandler’s newly married principal had called Selena in to cover a succession of jobs. Kristen had taken a special interest in Camille, saying she reminded Kristen of her stepdaughter, Chloe, at the same age. Even knowing next to nothing about Selena and Camille’s circumstances in New York, Kristen seemed genuinely committed to helping them reclaim their financial footing.

Subbing so often meant Selena woke her daughter earlier than other kindergarteners, so Selena could rush to school and plan for whatever last-minute work she was to cover. The elementary school’s child-care center wasn’t the start she wanted for her daughter’s day. But it was the best solution to the logistical nightmare their schedule had become since moving back to Chandlerville. So for now, this was just the way things were going to have to be.

Selena scooped Camille into her arms again and held tight. Her earliest memories were of her parents fighting nonstop, and of one or both of them threatening to move out. And then of Selena and her mother making their way alone, finally arriving on Belleview Lane, where Belinda had remained ever since—with barely enough money in the early years to keep the lights on and food in the house. Now, that was Camille’s reality. And Selena was going to make that up to her daughter—one day, one muddy, squishy footstep at a time.

She headed for their car.

She’d affectionately named the heap she’d bought with the last of their meager savings Fred. When he slowed as he struggled up a hill, she imagined there was a rusted-out hole beneath the floor mats where she could stick her feet through, like one of the Flintstones pedaling to help the engine along. But dilapidated or not, Fred was hers. She didn’t owe anyone anything for him. And he had come through like a champ on their long journey back to Georgia, his tenacity charming Selena down to her unpedicured toes.

Slipping behind the wheel after buckling Camille’s car seat, she turned the key. The ignition sputtered, and then died. Black smoke spewed from the tailpipe.

“Uh oh,” Camille said.

Selena’s next attempt to rouse Fred from his funk ended in an emphysemic belch.

“No doughnuts?” Camille asked.

Selena laughed ruefully. She dropped her head to the steering wheel. This wasn’t happening.

She didn’t mean to glance next door to Oliver’s shiny red truck or the Dixons’ home. Her head just seemed to roll to the side. Not a single light glimmered inside the house, as if no one were awake yet to kick off the bustling chaos that would soon consume the place. Except she knew for a fact that at least one person was up. A man who’d been the first dream she’d let herself believe, and the first one she’d watched die.

She sat back, gritted her teeth, and turned Fred’s key again. Because he was going to cooperate. She wasn’t giving him a choice. The rumblings beneath his hood told her he wasn’t taking kindly to being bossed around. The engine finally caught and roared to life.

“Yay!” Camille cheered. “Chocolate!”

Soaking in the happy sound of her daughter’s celebration, Selena cajoled her ancient Ford into reverse. She steered him out of the driveway and pulled away from the morning’s rocky start. But as she turned onto Maple, heading for Dan’s Doughnuts on Main, a deluge of unwanted questions swamped her.

Had she just thrown away her last chance to clear the air with Oliver before he vanished again? Were the town rumors right about the seriousness of Joe’s heart condition? Would she be risking her principal’s good graces if she carved a few minutes away from school that morning to slip by the hospital for a visit with the Dixons—and maybe to see Oliver while she was there?

Acknowledgments

radKIDS is an amazing program for kids and young adults, advocating for and teaching safety across our country to communities, children, and parents. Any errors I’ve made through the course of this novel in depicting radKIDS instruction and philosophy are mine alone.

I hope I’ve inspired you to support and take advantage of this approach, which radKIDS calls, “Personal Empowerment Safety Education.” I’m betting there’s a program and certified instructor near you!

For more information, please visit
www.radkids.org
.

About the Author

Anna DeStefano is the award-winning, nationally best-selling author of more than twenty-five books, including the
Mimosa Lane
novels and the Atlanta Heroes and Daughter series. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, she’s lived in the South her entire life. Her background as a care provider and adult educator in the world of crisis and grief recovery lends itself to the deeper psychological themes of the stories she writes. A wife and mother, she currently writes in a charming northeast suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, not all that different from her characters’ beloved Chandlerville. She is a workshop and keynote speaker, a writing coach, and a freelance editor.

Get to know Anna at
www.annawrites.com/blog
and her
Anna DeStefano: Author
Facebook page, where she shares her inspirations, her challenges, a healthy dose of honest optimism, and tidbits about upcoming projects and events.