Authors: Ellen Hartman
Deacon pulled a button-down shirt on over his T-shirt and scooped his wallet off the table near the door. “You want something, Wes? You look awful.”
Wes shook his head. “I love it when you go all maternal on me like that.”
“Don’t mock me or I will take back my offer.”
“Fine,” Wes said. “Thanks.”
After Deacon left, Julia pulled the upholstered chair around so she could face him where he was sitting on the edge of the desk.
“You’re wearing the same clothes you had on last night.”
He glanced down. “I didn’t sleep.”
“Except your shirt is on inside out.”
“What the—” He hadn’t noticed. “Yeah. I guess I took it off while I was lying down.”
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
“Julia, what are we doing?”
“I’m counseling you. I hardly ever get to do this anymore, so I thank you for helping me stay in practice.”
“I don’t need counseling.”
“Wes, you like Posy and that’s okay. She seems like a really, really nice person.”
He clenched his hands into fists and had to force himself to relax again. “No, Julia. She lied to me. She lied to me and I believed her and told Deacon everything was okay. I can’t be with someone like that. How can I ever trust her?”
“Are you sure you’re upset that she lied to you or is it because you feel like you let Deacon down? Someday you’re going to meet someone and she’s going to be the right woman for you. You’re going to have to let her come first—before Deacon.”
“I know,” he said.
“Before the debt you think you owe Deacon, too.”
He shook his head. “I’m not putting some stranger ahead of my family,” he said, but even as the words came out of his mouth, he remembered Posy and the way she’d looked waiting for the cab, crying by herself. He’d wanted to run away with her and leave both of their families behind.
Julia leaned forward and hugged him. “Everyone always says you were wild when you were little. You know, all the running away and the fighting. I know part of it was that you were so scared and upset and missing Deacon.”
She patted his back and he felt ridiculous. He was twenty-eight years old, for Pete’s sake, and Julia was treating him like he was five. On the other hand, his night sucked, he was exhausted and upset, and Julia really knew how to give a good hug. Plus, she liked to think she was his second mother or maybe his big sister. So he indulged her. He let her hug him because it made her happy.
“Don’t you think, though, that part of it was just who you are. You’re a little wild, Wes. You’re competitive and you like to be in the spotlight and as much as you want to support Deacon, you really like to be in charge. I hope you find someone who loves those things about you.”
* * *
T
HE
THREE
F
ALLONS
WOUND
UP
going out for brunch and then they had a conference call with Victor. They decided that they would get in touch with Trish and see if she had a lawyer. They wanted to make sure she wasn’t in charge of any more fundraisers, sanctioned or not. It wasn’t as if there was a way to blackball a do-gooder-gone-wrong without dragging her name through the mud, but they wanted to see if it was possible to work out a deal. In the meantime, Wes would go full steam with the last few pieces of the Hand-to-Hand deal and bring that project home.
They had a plan hammered out by late afternoon when Deacon and Julia drove back to Milton.
He went to his apartment. He still didn’t feel like going upstairs, so when he saw Mrs. Meacham in the yard, he went in and sat with her. She seemed happy to see him, but while they were talking, she called him Wayne. He was pretty sure that was her husband’s name. He made sure she got inside okay and then he heated up some chicken and rice he found in a container in the fridge. He even sat with her while she had her dinner, but eventually she was ready to watch her evening shows and he had to head back to his own place. He was going to have to tell Jay that his mom might need to get checked. She was an awesome lady, but it made him nervous to think of her being alone in her house if her mind was starting to wander.
He grabbed a bottle of water out of his fridge and turned the TV on. He couldn’t find a game, but there was a replay of an old Celtics and Lakers championship game on ESPN Classic. He sank into the cushions on the couch and crossed his feet on the slightly beat-up coffee table. His sleepless night was finally catching up with him and he figured he could sleep right here on the couch, avoiding his bedroom and all associations with Posy for one more night.
He wondered what she was doing. Her mom was crazy and she didn’t seem to have any other family.
He remembered what he’d said when Julia told him that he might be able to forgive Posy if he remembered what
he
would do for his family.
“That’s the issue,” he said. “You’re my family. Not her.”
And he meant it. Deacon and Julia were his family and he’d do anything, or give anything, for them. The trouble was, the two of them drove off back to their house in Milton where they had their life together. They were his family, but they were their own family, too. And he was alone.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
T
HE
CAB
HAD
DROPPED
Posy off at around four-thirty that morning. It had been that odd time of night when dawn was coming so close you could almost see it, but the night was still holding tight to the sky and the dark corners of the yard. The motion light on her mom’s garage had come on as she went up the driveway and she’d jumped when a pair of eyes glowed from under the bush near the front porch. Angel had slipped out of the shadows and waited for her to open the door.
“I hope you had fun,” Posy had muttered. “But you better not have eaten anyone’s lingerie tonight. I can’t deal with any more terrible behavior.”
She’d gotten in the shower and let the hot water pound down on her neck and back, wishing it would do something to relieve the tension. But all it had done was remind her of how wonderful Wes’s hands felt on her.
She was surprised that she actually fell asleep, but she’d woken again before eight, with the early-spring sunlight pouring across her face through the open curtains.
So much of what Wes had said to her the night before had been true. She hadn’t been thinking about the foundation or how her mom’s crime might impact their projects beyond the lost money. She’d been so focused on clearing up her mom’s mess.
One thing in particular was nagging at her, though, and it was a piece of information that had fallen into place with some other things Wes had said about his life and his brother. Before she met them, she’d assumed that the Fallons grew up the way she did, or almost the way she did. Some suburban life somewhere with a home and a stable set of adults. She knew their parents had died and after Deacon got drafted, he’d raised Wes, but now she thought she’d drastically underestimated the struggles they’d had before Deacon’s big break.
Wes had been right that she hadn’t really thought about the mission of the foundation or what it meant to his family beyond the fact that it was their work. The kids she’d met yesterday were in her mind now. Whatever happened with her mom was out of her hands, but she owed it to Wes to show that she’d heard what he said, that it made a difference in her.
Angel was curled into a ball in the window seat in the bay window at the front of the house, but Posy put kibble in her bowl anyway. Then she called her cousin.
She drove out to the Knoll and met Maddy in the sitting room on the first floor of her dormitory.
“Your mom is still on silent retreat,” Maddy said.
“Well, that ends today,” Posy said. “The Fallons know what she did.”
“Oh, mercy,” Maddy whispered. “What are they going to do?”
“I don’t know. Wes said he’d call me if they’re going to the police, so I hope I can be here if she does get arrested, but I know what I need to do.”
“I’m washing the floor in the big chapel today. Want to help?”
“No.” Posy laughed. “But I think penance is exactly the thing for me today.”
The sisters at the Knoll believed that hard work was good for the soul, so “washing the floor in the big chapel” meant they were on their hands and knees with brushes and buckets of soapy water scrubbing miles of flagstones. Posy’s back was killing her before the first twenty minutes were over, but she kept her head down and scrubbed doggedly. She relished the work, happy thinking that she was scrubbing away some of the wrong she’d done.
“I spent the morning reading everything I could find about the Fallon Foundation and this new project, the Hand-to-Hand thing. Then I called Wyatt and talked to him about getting the Hotel Marie involved. They do corporate giving and I thought of a way I can spin this Hand-to-Hand idea to work with the Hotel Marie’s corporate image.”
“Can Wyatt do anything about getting money, though?”
“Not him, but he thought it was a fantastic idea and he’s going to take it to the folks who make these decisions. He’s really excited about it. He told me his mom was a maid in a motel when he was a kid and he spent a lot of time hanging around the rooms while she cleaned. He’s heard about the Fallon centers, which sound like the kind of place he wished he could have gone when he was growing up.”
Posy swiped her brush across the last stone in her current row and slid her bucket back. “The Hotel Marie slogan is ‘Just like coming home.’ So, what if they gave a donation for every stay during a certain period of time? The donations could be tagged ‘From our home to yours.’ Because the Hand-to-Hand centers are all about communities helping communities. Wyatt said he thinks they’ll be able to do something.”
“I think it sounds great, Posy. Really great.” Maddy dipped her brush into the bucket and scattered water on the next row of flagstones. “So that’s one issue you’ve solved in an afternoon. What are you going to do about your mom?”
Posy almost negated all the penance she’d done with her scrubbing by saying a bad word right in the church. She bit her lip, though, and shook her head. She was going to have to confront her mother today and she couldn’t imagine that it would go anything but badly.
* * *
S
HE
KNOCKED
and her mom opened the door, a smile on her face. “Hello—” she said, but when she saw Posy, she clamped her lips together and pointed at her throat and her mouth and shook her head no to indicate that she couldn’t speak.
“Can it, Mom. I know you’ve been talking the whole time you’ve been here. Besides, we’re in trouble.”
Trish put her hands to her cheeks and widened her eyes, like the heroine in a silent movie who sees the train barreling down the tracks toward her. She shook her head again.
“Fine. If you don’t want to talk, I’ll talk and you can...play charades or whatever it is you’re doing.”
Trish pointed to the sign on the wall of her room that said, Silent Retreat in Progress. Please Respect My Quiet.
“Mom!” Posy said. “The Fallons know you took the money. The last time I saw Wes he said it was up to his brother whether or not to call the police. Do you agree with me that it is time for you to show up and start dealing with this right now?” She practically shouted the last two words. She hadn’t realized until just then how angry she was with her mom.
She liked Wes. She really, really liked Wes and whatever might have happened between them had been doomed from the start because of her mother.
“Don’t shout, Posy. You always get so dramatic.”
“I’m not being dramatic, Mom. You’re in danger of going to jail, in the worst case, and having your crimes revealed to the entire community, in the best case. Don’t you think that’s a fairly serious situation?”
“I never meant to hurt anyone,” Trish said.
Posy leaned against the spare room’s sole piece of furniture besides the bed—a desk—and crossed her arms. “But you have hurt people. I had to take out a loan to pay the money back. The Hand-to-Hand project is just getting off the ground. What will their donors do if they find out the bank account was plundered?”
“Posy, stop shouting at me. People can hear you!”
“Stop trying to shame me!” Posy shouted. “I’m sick of it.”
Her mom’s eyes widened for real that time. Posy had never said anything like that to her mother. Even when she chose to live with her dad, she never told her mom why. Never said that Trish made her feel out of step every minute of every day. Even when her mom tried to be supportive, she sometimes wound up cutting Posy down, like when she gave helpful suggestions about choosing pastel clothing so she would fade just a bit. Apparently, full force, Posy was too much for some people.
“I was not trying to shame you,” Trish said. “I was merely pointing out—”
“That I’m too loud. I know it. I’m too loud. I dress in bright colors. I try too hard. It’s not feminine. People don’t like it.” Posy was shaking. “I know it all, Mom, because you’ve told me all those things as long as I can remember. The problem is, this is me. I can’t change who I am. All I can do is try to be the best person I can. And what that means for me, right now, is to sell your inventory and your collections and try to recoup as much money as we can so you can start fresh with the surgeon in Ohio.”
“I think you should go, Posy. Come back when you’re ready to speak in a civilized way.”
“I’ll go. But I want to know. Should I go all the way to Rochester, back to my condo and my job? Or should I just go back to your house and your mess and your dog who should never have been named Angel?” Posy wanted to poke her mom, to wake her up. “Or maybe I should go right to the community center and find Wes and his brother and ask if they want to send my mom to jail.”
Her mother sat on the bed and folded her hands. It didn’t matter what Posy said to her, Trish pointed to the silent-retreat card on the wall.
She left, more angry than she’d ever been.
* * *
“
I’
VE
NEVER
SLEPT
with a woman and not called her the next day.” Wes held the phone close to his mouth. He wasn’t exactly whispering, but he was trying to stay quiet. “Not even that time I accidentally made out with my date’s twin sister. I called
both
of them the next day.”
His old college roommate, Oliver, snorted in disgust. “And then you invited them to join us at the diner for breakfast and they actually showed up.”
Wes slumped lower in the driver’s seat of his truck parked outside Posy’s house. He didn’t want her to see him. Not just yet.
“Exactly.”
Just because their lawyer was trying to figure out if they’d have to press charges against Posy’s mom was no reason for him to break his streak of gentlemanly phone calls the next day. Or maybe it was the perfect reason, but he didn’t want to break his streak. Last night, the part before her confession had been something outside his experience.
“You’re not even giving me a challenge, Wes,” Oliver said. “She’s got profiles set up all over the main social media sites.”
He lifted his head half an inch and took another look at Posy’s house.
“Well, can you tell if the stuff she told me is true? She works for the Hotel Marie? Lives in Rochester? Any basketball stats?”
“I feel like a stalker,” Oliver said. “Why are you whispering?”
“I’m not,” Wes whispered.
“Please tell me you’re not crouched under her bedroom window,” Oliver said.
Wes banged his fist on his knee. The thing about Oliver was, he wasn’t very adept at actually cultivating relationships with other people, but he was shockingly perceptive. Couple that with his abundant smarts and you got a guy who was practically impervious to misdirection.
Wes liked him precisely because Oliver had no secret layers, no hidden agendas, no capacity for or interest in lying. On the other hand, Oliver didn’t shy away from awkward questions and he was the first one to call bullshit when he saw it.
“Of course not,” Wes said. “I’m in my truck.”
“Parked outside her house, on the phone with me, trying to find out if she’s lying to you.” Oliver made the disgusted noise again. Wes almost asked him if he needed an antibiotic for his cough. “Get out and knock on the door, Wes.”
“I will,” Wes whispered. “As soon as you tell me what you found out.”
“You could have looked this up yourself, you know. Is there something you want to talk about? Is that why you’re really calling me?”
Wes considered hanging up, but in addition to being perceptive and smart, Oliver had a memory that wouldn’t quit. He’d just pick this conversation up in exactly the same spot the next time they talked.
“I... Can you just... I don’t know. I’ll call you later. After you tell me what you know.”
“This is creepy. Sitting outside her house, looking her up on the internet.”
“
I’m
not looking her up. You are. And creepy would be if I had a telescope.”
“No, creepy would be you sitting outside instead of going up and ringing the bell. You slept with her. I think you should be able to ask her a couple questions.”
A little kid rolled past on her scooter followed by a smaller kid on a plastic motorcycle and a woman who must be their mom. The woman noticed him inside the truck and he saw her glance at the front bumper as she went by. Memorizing the license plate, no doubt, so she could report the creepy guy stalking Posy Jones.
“It’s only creepy if she catches me,” Wes said. “So hurry up.”
Oliver was silent for a few seconds. This was taking too long. “Didn’t you patent a search algorithm and sell it for a small fortune?” Wes snapped.
“I thought if I stalled long enough you would tell me you didn’t care what I found because you realized there’s no way you can ever get a guarantee that the woman you’re dating isn’t lying to you.”
It was Wes’s turn to snort.
“You were waiting for me to tell you that?”
“I suppose you could have said, ‘Screw this, your search is taking too long. I’m going in.’ But the sentiment would have been the same.”
“She already lied to me, Oliver.”
“I know it. She knows it. You know it. Now make up your mind what you think about that. Can you have a relationship with her if she lied to you about her mom? Do you want a relationship? If not, why are you sitting outside her house asking me to stalk her on the internet?”
Wes didn’t have an answer for that one. He must have been silent so long that Oliver lost patience. His friend finally said, “She’s telling the truth about her job, and I give her my seal of approval based on her privacy protection standards.” He waited a beat and then said, “And a second seal of approval based on this picture of her accepting an award from the National Hospitality Organization. She has excellent legs.”
Wes hadn’t seen her legs since late last night. He missed her legs. He hadn’t realized how much before Oliver mentioned them.
“I have a perfect record,” Wes said. “I always call the next day.”
“Then call. Or go knock on the door. You didn’t drive away, did you?”
“No.”
“Go before she sees you,” Oliver said. “No woman who locks her Facebook down is going to date a stalker.”
“Lucky thing she didn’t catch me, then.”
He hung up and got out of his truck. When he started up the walk, Posy opened the front door and squinted at him. “Wes?” She shaded her eyes with her hand. “Were you watching my house?”