One True Theory of Love (25 page)

Phillip nodded.

“How’d you find her?” Meg asked.

“Sandi used her for her divorce.” He checked his watch. “At five dollars a minute, she’d better not expect us to pay for the time we wait.” He was the world’s most impatient man when it came to waiting for people who billed for their time.

“I didn’t realize Sandi was divorced,” Meg said. “I thought she was still married to Bud.”

“They divorced a few years back.” Phillip stood and began to pace. “Now he’s up in Montana, fly-fishing to his heart’s content.”

“How did I not know that?” Meg said.

Her father shrugged. “Now you do.
Here
she is.” Phillip said it loud enough for the approaching woman to hear.

Some women just had their act together, and Patricia Lerner was one of them. Meg could tell it from her solid handshake alone. Dark-haired with a creamy complexion, she had a slight frame that disguised what Meg guessed was a lethal ability to come out victorious in any physical or intellectual confrontation. Just by looking at her, Meg got the feeling Patricia could shoot a gun, skin a deer, take down a bad guy with her bare hands and reduce a man to tears. She looked a little bloodthirsty, to be honest. Meg felt self-conscious as Patricia gave her the once-over. The suit Patricia wore probably cost more than Meg spent in an entire year on her own clothes. Meg supposed she might be exactly what they needed to scare off Jonathan.

“Come. Let’s get to it.” Patricia strode ahead into her office. As Meg and Phillip settled into the leather armchairs that faced Patricia’s massive desk, Meg was awestruck by the view of the Catalina Mountains, which were in-your-face gorgeous in the late-afternoon sun.

For a moment, Meg was a senior back in high school, driving with Jonathan in his dad’s old Studebaker.
I love how Tucson is surrounded by mountains,
she’d said.
They’re so protective.
Jonathan looked over at her like she was crazy.
That’s funny,
he replied without smiling.
I’ve always found them suffocating.

“So.” Patricia sat forward in her chair and tapped on her desk while looking pointedly at Meg. “Your father tells me that your ex-husband contacted you. What does he want?”

Meg brought her gaze from the mountains to Patricia’s coldly capable green eyes. She never really trusted people with green eyes. She liked brown eyes. Ahmed eyes. And blue Henry eyes.

“We think possibly he wants my son.” Meg looked to her father for help.

“He’s been out of their lives for ten years,” Phillip said. “He’s the father of Meg’s son, Henry, who’s nine, but he’s never been part of his life and has never paid child support.”

“He paid it, like, three times,” Meg corrected.

“We want to make sure his sudden appearance doesn’t disrupt Henry’s life. Or Meg’s life, for that matter,” Phillip said.

“So this ex-husband’s a deadbeat,” Patricia said.

“Yes,” Phillip said.

“That’s not quite fair, Dad,” Meg said. “I never really went after him for the child support.” Having him completely out of her life, she’d reasoned at the time, was in some ways better than being slapped in the face with the reminder of him every month.

“I hate deadbeats.” Patricia’s smile was ferocious. “I hate deadbeats and cheaters.”

Beside Meg, her father coughed.

“Phillip?” Patricia said. “Can I get you some water?”

“I’m fine.” He stood, went to a little serving tray and poured himself a glass of water. He drank it down, poured another and then brought one over to Meg. Nervous her hands would shake, she opted not to take a sip.

“I want to know if he has any legal right to see my son after all this time,” Meg said. “I have full custody and he’s never asked for visitation.”

“You brought your divorce decree and child support order, yes?” Patricia looked at her expectantly.

Meg handed them over. That was another reason she’d almost arrived late. She kept both documents at the bottom of a box in her closet and she’d had to look through a few boxes until she’d found the right one.

Patricia scanned the papers. “What’s been your contact with him thus far?”

“Well, for whatever ridiculous reason, my son called him, and since then, he called me at school last week and said he was going to be in town over Thanksgiving,” Meg said. “He asked to see me. I told him no. Then he called me again last Saturday and again said he needed to see me.”

“And before this?”

“Not since before our son was born.”

“Really?” Patricia looked from Phillip to Meg. “Not a Christmas card? A quick visit while in town to see his family? He’s never once laid eyes on his son?”

“It was for the best that he stayed gone.” Phillip’s voice had an edge to it. “He really pulled a number on Meg.”

Patricia looked at Meg.

“He completely disappeared,” Meg said. “Although I’ve just recently learned he’s been in touch with my sister this whole time.”

“We’d like him to stay gone,” Phillip said. “Would an order of protection do the trick?”

Patricia leaned back in her chair and tapped her fingers idly on the desk as she thought. “Legally, he’s got a right to reestablish a relationship with his son, if that’s what he wants.”

“How is that fair?” Meg asked.

“The law isn’t always fair,” Patricia said. “It’s just always the law.”

“But it’s not in Henry’s best interest,” Meg said. “I really, honestly don’t think it is.”

“You’re probably right.” Patricia again skimmed the divorce decree and child-support order. “You do have some options if you’re willing to play hardball.”

“We’re willing,” Phillip said. “We’ll do what it takes, won’t we, Magpie?”

Meg thought of Henry and his messy-haired love. Of how Ahmed calmed him, and wanted to teach him to golf. Of the way Henry came to her classroom after school each day, loaded down with his backpack, having saved up his stories to tell her on the ride home. Of the Spanish-word insults he flung around with such glee.
No tienes cojones!

Oh, yes, I do have balls, Henry Clark,
Meg thought.
For you, I’ve got ’em.

She agreed with her father: they’d do whatever it took to keep Henry whole.

M
eg arrived home from the lawyer’s office to find Ahmed sitting at her patio table, reading the newspaper. She felt immediately guilty, immediately skittish. He stood and kissed her cheek.

“You usually call me back right away,” he said. “I thought maybe you regretted last night.”

“You can’t seriously think that,” Meg said. “Last night was great.”

His smile was a bit uncertain. “I thought I should check.”

Meg took his hands. “You couldn’t really have been worried.”

“No,” he said. “I guess not.”

“I was with my dad,” she said. “I went with him to see his divorce lawyer.” It was the truth. Also sort of a lie, but not a complete one. “Want to stay for dinner? Does Henry know you’re here?”

“Yes, to both,” Ahmed said. “Henry’s at Violet’s watching PBS Kids.
Fetch!
or some such thing.”

“Come on in,” Meg said. “Let me figure out dinner. Oh! I know! We can make Persian food. I got a cookbook and all the ingredients we need for a rice dish and some sort of chicken entrée. I was going to bring it all over to your house as a surprise, but we could make it here. What do you think?”

“I think I’m a lucky man.” He reached for her hand and kissed it.

“I’m the lucky one,” she said. “Imagine if I’d fallen for a Scottish man. I’d be eating haggis!”

Using recipes from the cookbook Meg had bought at Antigone’s on Fourth,
Persian Cooking for a Healthy Kitchen,
they made pistachio soup, chicken kebab, grilled tomatoes and a rice-lentil-and-rose-petal dish
.
Meg thought she’d never eaten a better dinner. Henry loved it, too, and Ahmed, usually a light eater, had three servings and told her he was in heaven.

Afterward, Henry took a shower and did his homework in his room. Meg puttered around the kitchen cleaning up, and Ahmed studied the framed pictures she had on the fireplace mantel, all of which were from their vacations at the ocean. He picked up a photo of her and Henry on Coronado Island, taken two years ago June, and studied it for a long time—long enough for Meg to sneak up and wrap her arms around him from behind. She and Henry had rented bikes that day, and each leaned against theirs. It had been toward the end of their week, and both were red-tan.

“His teeth!” Ahmed said. In the picture, Henry had two holes on the upper ridge of his mouth.

“He was the essence of childhood innocence,” she said.

“I guess they grow fast, don’t they?” He moved from her to replace the photo.

“Are you okay?” Meg said. “You seem sort of sad.”

He shook his head and stepped closer. “Not sad.”

“What, then?”

He looked at her for a long moment. “I wish you hadn’t had to run off and get Henry last night.”

Meg swallowed hard. “I wish I hadn’t had to, either.”

“I wish we lived together, so that when you left me, you’d always come right back,” he said.

Meg smiled. “And I wish you’d make breakfast for us every day. You’re a good pancake maker.”

“I felt like we were a family that day,” Ahmed said. “Did you feel it, too?”

Meg’s breath caught. “I did. I always feel it when we’re together.”

Ahmed’s hands hung at his sides, mere inches from her hips. She could almost
feel
them on her. She was about to make a move when there was a knock at the door. Henry ran from his bedroom and opened the door to find Violet outside.

“Can you come out?” she asked him.

Henry turned to Meg. “Can I, Mom? My homework’s done.”

“Sure,” Meg said. She turned to Ahmed. “Do you want to have a drink by the pool?”

Ahmed agreed, and while Henry pulled a box of Popsicles from the freezer, Ahmed got Meg’s six-pack of Corona from the refrigerator and cut a lime into slices, and they all headed down. Henry and Violet ran ahead.

“You’d miss this apartment complex if you moved, wouldn’t you?” Ahmed asked.

Meg looked at him sideways. “What are you up to?”

“Just testing the waters,” he said. “Listening for opposition and not hearing any.”

Meg’s breath came fast and she almost wanted to cry.
This is happening.
She stopped midstride, halfway to the pool, in nearly the same spot where they’d kissed that first time. “I wouldn’t miss it so much,” she said. “We could always come visit.”

Ahmed grinned at her. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

T
hey passed half an hour of pleasant catching-up conversation with the Loop Group. In recent weeks, Kat had begun taking classes online for certification as a personal trainer. She and Ahmed found much to talk about, as he’d worked with a trainer for years at Precision Personal Training. Harley was contemplating getting another tattoo, and Meg tried to talk him out of it, but as far as Harley was concerned, the word
overkill
did not belong in the same sentence as
tattoo
.

Henry, taking a break from his card game with Violet on the other side of the pool, had just asked if he could get a tattoo one day, and Meg had just answered that yes, he could get an invisible tattoo anytime he wanted. He was trying to make sense of her joke when his eyes lit up. “There’s Grandma!”

“Who’s the hottie with her?” Kat said.

Meg squinted, but the man in question was a stranger to her. “Good question,” she said. “I’ll go find out.”

As Henry ran to unlatch the pool gate, Meg downed the last of her beer and followed him. She waited as her mother hugged Henry; then she hugged her, too. “So, Mom, to what do we owe the pleasure?”

Clarabelle waved off any hint of occasion. “We were just out putting some miles on my new car. We stopped over at BeBe’s and I thought since we were in the neighborhood . . .”