Single in Suburbia (36 page)

He was still contemplating her as if she were a series of numbers that didn’t add up.

“And one of those decisions is you.” Suddenly shy, Candace looked away, afraid that he might have somehow changed his mind while she was figuring out hers.

He came and sat next to her on the bench. They stared out through the chain-link face of the dugout as the grounds crew came out and started dragging the field.

Just when she was beginning to fear that she was, in fact, too late, he reached for her hand. “I’m impressed.” He smiled full out, the same flash of white he’d used on her mother that night at the fund-raiser. “And it’s glad I am that me girl has found her senses at last.”

He lifted their joined hands and kissed her knuckle. She’d barely turned her lips up in a smile before tears were skidding down her cheeks.

“Are you crying?” he asked, concerned.

She rolled her tearstained eyes and sniffed, embarrassed at the raw emotion that gripped her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s got into me.” She sniffed again. “One minute I’m furious at the tollbooth operator for telling me to have a nice day and the next I’m sobbing over the lyrics to a song.”

Dan shifted in his seat and his gaze became more intent. He squeezed the hand he’d just kissed. “So you’re telling me that your emotions are…out of whack.”

“Completely.” She sniffed and nodded. The tears continued to roll down her face. “And I’m always nauseous or exhausted, or both. Sometimes it’s so bad I can barely get off the couch.”

“Does anything else seem…different?” Something in his voice made her look up. Suddenly she saw in his eyes the very thing she’d been afraid to even think.

“You mean like the fact that I can barely eat and I’m putting on weight?” she asked. “And that everything about me is getting…rounder?”

They stared at each other for a long moment there in the dugout. And then Dan Donovan’s blue eyes started to twinkle.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not possible. I’m too old. I’ve never been able to…”

He put a finger to her lips to shush her, and his smile was heartbreakingly gentle. “I’m not exactly an expert, Candace,” he said. “I’ve only had one child.”

“Oh, you don’t think…”

“But I am the oldest of seven.” The teasing Irish lilt was back and his smile was blinding. She could feel the warmth of it all the way inside.

“We might want to stop by the drugstore and buy a kit for confirmation. But if I’m not mistaken, you may just have my bun warming in your oven.”

chapter
30

A
manda’s euphoria over Wyatt’s performance and Rob’s acceptance began to fade as the silence from the backseat became louder.

A glance in her rearview mirror confirmed that Wyatt still glowed from his triumph. He was undoubtedly reliving each and every pitch of the game in Technicolor in his mind.

Meghan also appeared lost in thought, but her face was closed and hard.

“Wasn’t Wyatt’s pitching incredible, Meg?” Amanda asked.

Meghan’s face didn’t change. “Yeah, it was great.” Her tone was polite and…frigid.

Amanda felt separated from her children by more than the car seat. The outing of Solange was a three-hundred-pound elephant wedged between them. And it was nothing compared to the looming divorce from their father.

“Did you enjoy having Grandma and Grandpop here?”

“Yeah, it was great.” Meghan’s tone was devoid of emotion; she was clearly unwilling to give Amanda the satisfaction of real interest in anything.

Amanda sighed. She was too tired and too emotionally drained to have it out with Meghan now. But somehow she was going to have to make her children understand why she’d done what she’d done. Then she was going to have to make it clear that as much as she loved them, she would not let them sit in judgment of her.

At home, they retreated to their rooms. Amanda spent what was left of the evening girding her loins for the next day. If they were going to build a cleaning business—and she still felt Maid for You was viable even without the French connection—Susie Simmons was going to have to retract her accusations. Amanda hoped the other woman would do the right thing. Her whole attitude toward Solange seemed unwarranted and her coldness to Amanda unjustified. They’d never been best friends, but they’d always been cordial. Somewhere along the way, Susie had begun to change; Amanda didn’t know why or exactly when.

Just after eleven that night, Amanda left her room to lock up downstairs. Wyatt’s room was already dark. She slipped in quietly and walked over to the bed. He slept with one arm flung out in abandon. The other clamped across his stomach. Today’s game ball sat on the nightstand within easy reach. He murmured softly in his sleep as she bent over to pull the covers up over him and kissed his cheek.

Meghan’s door was open a crack, allowing light to spill out into the hallway. Amanda paused in a sliver of brightness. Through the opening she saw Meghan standing in front of the closet mirror, the prom dress clutched to her chest, her nightgown hidden by the silver sheath.

Meghan’s face in the mirror reflected none of the joy that had shone on it when she’d come down the stairs the night of the prom. Her brown eyes were tinged with sadness and she worried her lip between her teeth.

Drawn by her daughter’s unhappiness, Amanda opened the door and stepped into Meghan’s room.

Their gazes met in the mirror. “How many toilets did you have to clean to pay for this dress?” Meghan asked.

Amanda moved closer. Meghan continued to hold the dress up like a shield.

“I’m sorry you were embarrassed,” Amanda said quietly. “But I’m not sorry that I did what I had to do.”

Meghan looked away. “I wanted this dress so badly, and I”—she glanced down at the silver sheath—“I appreciate you buying it for me.”

She picked up the hanger from the bed and carefully hung the dress back on it then placed it back in the closet. She turned to face Amanda. “But wasn’t there anything else you could do?”

Amanda’s heart actually hurt, but she would not make excuses. “I’m afraid not,” Amanda said as she moved to the door. Turning, she stood in the doorway, considering her daughter. “And if cleaning houses will allow us to keep our home and buy the occasional prom dress, I’m going to continue to do it. So I guess you’re going to have to get used to it.”

“But why can’t Dad come home? He said he’s sorry and I know he’s not seeing Tiffany anymore.”

“Oh, honey.” Amanda closed the distance between them. In three long strides she was there, pulling her daughter into her arms.

Meghan’s body was stiff and unyielding. “I want Daddy to come home and make things like they used to be.”

“I know Meg.” Amanda held on tightly. “I know.”

Finally Meghan shuddered in her arms and began to cry, great heaving sobs that racked them both. Amanda hung on while Meghan sobbed, letting out all the agony she’d kept so tightly inside.

Closing her eyes, Amanda simply held on and let Meghan cry. “It hurts, doesn’t it? It hurts like Hell.”

Time passed, Amanda didn’t know how long. Nor did she care. When Meghan’s sobs began to grow quieter, Amanda still hung on, rocking gently as she had when her firstborn had been small enough to hold in her arms.

They clung together in the center of the room. “I wish I could put things back the way they were for you.” She smoothed back her daughter’s hair and bracketed Meghan’s tear-streaked face in her hands. “But things went too far. I can’t live with your father again. I have to go on and build something new.”

“But…”

“But your father is still your father and he loves you. And he’s going to be there for you, Meghan. You and Wyatt can spend as much time with him as you want.”

They studied each other in silence. Meghan took a step back and then she turned away.

At a loss, Amanda went to the door and stopped. “If you’re finished downstairs I’m going to go down and lock up,” she said over her shoulder. Then she left the room, pulling the door closed behind her.

It felt incredibly odd the next morning not to become Solange; odder still not to be headed to the Menkowskis’ for her usual Monday morning sex education class.

She showered and dressed and made her bed. Applying her own understated makeup rather than Solange’s more flamboyant palette, Amanda contemplated the dark curly wig and swinging silver earrings that still sat on the bathroom counter and reminded herself that she didn’t need the disguise to tap into Solange’s practical boldness. Everything she needed to get through this day lay inside her.

She was halfway down the stairs when the unexpected smell of brewing coffee hit her. She stopped mid-step as frantic whispers reached her from the kitchen below.

“Pull the waffles out of the toaster, moron, they’re going to burn.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Meghan. Warming syrup in the microwave doesn’t exactly make you the Iron Chef.”

Amanda double-checked her watch, surprised that her children were not only awake but making conversation—even of a hostile nature.

“Hurry up,” Meghan whispered. “I think she’s coming.”

Amanda waited for the scurrying in the kitchen to stop. Then she walked into the room and came to a stop in the entranceway.

The table had been draped with one of her best cloths. On it sat a place setting of her good china, a cloth napkin folded beneath her best silver. A vase of freshly picked flowers sat in front of it. The morning newspaper had been unfolded and set at the perfect angle for reading.

“Is it somebody’s birthday?” Amanda asked.

Meghan pushed Wyatt forward. They were both in their pajamas, but Wy had a dish towel draped over his forearm and a Magic Marker mustache drawn over his lip. “No,
madame,
” he said in a really poor French accent, “this is a small token of our love and…esteem.” He turned to Meghan looking for assurance that he’d gotten the word right.

At her nod, he pulled out a chair and motioned Amanda into it with a grand wave.

Meghan carried the coffeepot to the table. “Would
Madame
care for some
café
?”

Amanda smiled at their earnestness.
“Oui,”
she said in Solange’s voice. “
Madame
would.”

They made a show of vying with each other to grant her every wish. Her greatest fear, that her children wouldn’t be able to understand the choices she’d made, began to dissipate and a sense of calm settled over her. She drew her first completely easy breath since the debacle at the Simmons’s.

Their French accents disappeared midway through the fruit course and the formality decamped soon after. Wyatt cleared away the empty bowl and Meghan placed a dinnersized plate in front of her with a flourish.

They took their usual seats across from her. Amanda looked down at her plate and her heart wrenched.

Two Eggo waffles sat not on top of each other, but side by side in an apparent effort to afford enough room for the syrup-scrawled message.

We’re sorry, Mom
oozed across the top.
We love you AND Solange
was crammed underneath it.

She looked up at her children through a haze of tears.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Meghan said. “I just couldn’t believe it when Lucy called. And then people kept calling me a broom baby. I was so embarrassed that I didn’t really stop and think.”

“Oh, sweetie.” Amanda reached out to both of them, grasping their hands across the table.

“Me too,” Wyatt said. “How come you didn’t tell us what you were doing?”

Amanda blinked back the tears as she tried to explain. “I was so scared that I wouldn’t be able to hold on to the house for you. After everything that had happened, I didn’t want you to be scared too.”

Amanda looked down for a moment. The message was beginning to slip down the sides of the waffles, but she would never forget her first sight of it or the gesture they had just made.

“Daddy said that it was his fault and that you were doing the only thing you could to take care of us.” Anguish shone in her eyes. “I feel so horrible. I wanted the prom dress so much and then I made you feel bad about what you had to do to buy it for me. And I just couldn’t understand why Dad couldn’t come home. I’m not really ready to give up on that yet.”

Wyatt swallowed and his voice broke. “I don’t care if we have to get another house. I don’t care how little it is either. But I want to stay right around here so I can keep playing with the Mudhens. And see Dad.”

“I don’t care where we live either,” Meghan said. “And I’ll even help you clean if you need me to.” She looked Amanda in the eye, her jaw set. “If Lucy Simmons or anyone else doesn’t like it, they can just…well…I don’t care what they think.”

Amanda held on to her children’s hands, her heart so swollen with love for them that it hurt.

“You’ll be nice to Dad, won’t you?” Wyatt asked.

“And at least give him a chance to show you that he’s changed?” Meghan asked.

Amanda sighed. She understood their reluctance to abandon hope of a reconciliation between her and Rob. All children wanted their parents together. But now was not the time to debate that issue.