UNEXPECTED compile (5 page)

The floor shook with the impact of her steps as she stomped to the phone on the coffee table.

“You’re not reporting this, Karls. There’ll be an investigation, child services will come in, and they’ll take Emma away. You don’t want that do you?” He scrubbed a hand over his face, the features a more masculine version of hers and Emma’s. “I can’t afford the scandal right now. I’m up for detective.”

“I don’t give a crap about your promotion,” Karly hissed. “If you don’t do anything about this, you’re a shitty cop and an even shittier brother.”

“Please, don’t call.” Emma’s voice rang with terror. She clung to Karly with renewed fervor, blue eyes wide. Tears spilled down her freckled cheeks in twin rivulets. “I don’t want to go away. Can’t I stay here with you? I promise to be good. I’ll pick up around the house.” The small hands stroked Karly’s hair. “I can fix you peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

“No one is going away,” Karly said.

“Do what you want. Just keep my name out of it.” Mitch glared and threw his hands in the air. “I don’t know why I worry. You never listen to me anyway.”

“Because you never give me any good advice,” Karly said, returning his glare with equal force.

“Do you have any idea how much I love you?” Karly asked Emma a little while later. They were lying on the bed in Karly’s room. With the curtains closed and the window air conditioner turned to full blast, it was a cool oasis from the oppressive heat outside. Emma curled into Karly’s side, wriggling and sighing like a blissful kitten.

“Too frigging much. That’s what Mitch says,” Emma replied. Her eyelids drooped with exhaustion.

“Emma Ann, language,” Karly reprimanded, determined to keep a straight face but having difficulty.

“You say it all the time,” Emma said with her eyes closed.

“Well, I’m going to stop right now. Ladies don’t swear. You can help keep me in line.” Karly smoothed a hand over the curve of Emma’s cheek where her eyelashes fanned against the pale skin.

A fierce flood of self-righteous indignation surged through her at the bruise on the innocent face. Maybe he hadn’t hit her this time, but next time might be another story. Emma was nothing but sweetness and light and represented everything that was good in the world. She was the reason that Karly kept trying to do better, and damned if she would let a heartless son-of-a-bitch like their father ruin Emma’s life the way he had ruined hers.

“Do I have to go back?” Emma asked. Her small hand found its way into Karly’s, but her eyes stayed shut. “I want to stay with you.”

“I know, june bug. There’s nothing I would like more. As soon as I get a good job and a place for us to live, we can talk about it.” She dropped a kiss on Emma’s forehead, choking back tears. “Go ahead and take a nap. Then we’ll have some lunch before I take you home.”

CHAPTER 5

From an outside table at Giovanni’s Bistro, Randy watched the hustle and bustle of the city, drinking in the sensations of urban life on a Friday morning. Heat shimmered across the busy sidewalks in glittering waves. Car horns beeped over the rumble of traffic. An ambulance siren bleated from a few blocks away, interrupted by bursts of jackhammers from the construction site at the next intersection. He glanced at the clock on the bank building across the street. Quarter past eleven. Pilar was late.

Wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans, he tried to ignore the nervous apprehension in the pit of his stomach and focus on the headlines of the morning newspaper.
Crime rates up. Unemployment rates climbing. Gas prices at an all-time high.
No surprises there. He rolled his eyes and folded the paper, preferring to watch the crowd instead.

“Daddy!” An excited shriek from behind had him twisting in his seat just in time to see Caleb break free from Pilar’s grasp and rocket down the sidewalk. He rose from his chair and swept the little boy into his arms. Red-haired and freckled, Caleb clutched Randy’s face between chubby hands and peppered his cheeks with sticky kisses. The swell of his heart tested the boundary of his ribs, threatening to burst within its confines.

“Hi, buddy. How’s my boy? Look how big you are.” Randy closed his eyes and drank in the clean scent of the curly red hair. Caleb ducked his head and squealed with glee.

When he opened his eyes, he met the cool brown stare of Pilar over Caleb’s shoulder. Not so very long ago, those liquid eyes had glowed with affection and desire. Today they held nothing but contempt and irritation. Balancing Caleb on one hip, Randy withdrew a chair for Pilar then took a seat beside her. Caleb settled on his lap.

“Nice of you to make it,” she said.

“I’ve been here for thirty minutes,” he replied.

The shrug of her slender shoulders suggested disbelief. The tone of her voice indicated she was ready for a fight. He choked back any further comments and waited patiently for her to say something, anything, to get the unpleasantness over and done. When she didn’t speak after a full minute, he cleared his throat and gave it a try.

“You look good,” he said and meant it. Her waist-length, glossy hair was piled into a messy updo, loose tendrils framing her oval face. Caramel skin glowed with a healthy tan, enriching the auburn highlights in her hair. A loose halter-top flowed over her small breasts in the minimal breeze. She’d never been more beautiful.

“Save it,” she said with a wave of her hand, refusing to meet his eyes. “Let’s just get this over with.” She opened her purse, withdrew a set of familiar keys, sunlight glinting off the metal, and slid them across the table. The finality of the gesture made his gut twist with unfamiliar angst. “Your keys. And I packed up the rest of your stuff. I’ll send it over to you in a couple of days.”

“I can come and get it…” he began, but she shook her head.

“No. It’s better if you stay away.” All business, she withdrew a card from the purse before snapping it shut. “This is my attorney’s name. We’ll need to set up some sort of custody agreement and support payments. You can contact her next week. She’s expecting your call.”

The detachment of her voice rang with finality.
So this is it.
He stared at the business card, the fancy script, and the downtown address, wishing he could close his eyes and make it all go away.

“We don’t need lawyers, Pilar. I’m sure we can work this out.” When his hand rested on top of hers, she winced as if he’d struck her and pulled her hand away.

“No, Randy, we can’t. We’ve been living apart for months. You need to accept it. I’m not coming back.”

Why the hell couldn’t she look him in the face when she stabbed him in the heart? All he could see was her profile, and it told him nothing. Caleb squirmed in his lap, silenced by the tension between his parents, tiny brow furrowed with distress as he looked from mother to father.

“You could at least tell me why.” His voice cracked on the words. Searching her face, he saw the answer, knew it even before she spoke. “There’s someone else, isn’t there?”

Tears glimmered in her eyes, sparkling in the sunlight, but the set of her face remained stoic. “Yes. There is.” His gut wrenched, torn in two by the clipped precision of her words.

“Who? Who is he?” Pain shot up his arm. Looking down, he saw his free hand clenched into a tight fist, knuckles white with the strain.

“I’m not going to tell you. You’ll just do something stupid.” She heaved a heavy sigh. “He’s what I want, Randy. He’s got a good job, kids of his own.”

Whatever she said after that was lost in the heat of his anger. If Caleb hadn’t been in his lap, he would have broken something, probably his hand on the lamppost or the table. A fleeting memory of Karly holding an upraised stick, searching for something to smash, flashed through his thoughts then disappeared as quickly as it came. He sucked in a breath and tried to remain calm.

“We’ve been together for a while,” she said, eyes cast down to the pigeon pecking crumbs from the sidewalk.

“For a while? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Fuck,” Caleb repeated, eyes trained on Randy’s mouth in fascination.

“No, buddy. That’s a grownup word. Daddy shouldn’t have said that.” Caleb frowned while Randy put his hands over the little boy’s ears and leaned across the table, the words hissing out of him with a fury he didn’t know he was capable of. “So when you came by Felony a few weeks ago and seduced me? That was what? Some kind of going-away fuck?” In his arrogance, he’d taken the incident as a sign of hope when it had been nothing but a farewell.

The set of Pilar’s jaw tightened. “Sure. I guess so. We never had problems there.”

“So where is the problem? Make me understand.”

The legs of her chair scraped across the cement as she pushed the chair from the table and stood. Lips pressed tight with rage, she yanked their son from his arms. Caleb’s lower lip trembled, and his eyes filled with tears.

“Three years and a child together, and not once,” she whispered. “Not once in all that time did you ever say you loved me. Not one time, Randy. Ever.”

Pilar vanished into the sidewalk crowd with Caleb wailing in her arms. He sat at the bistro table for a long time after, Caleb’s cries echoing in his ears. The lunch crowd came and went while he stared, unbelieving, into the distance. He wasn’t really surprised about the cheating. He’d suspected for months before their breakup but couldn’t bring himself to face the truth.

Four strong bourbons did nothing to fill the hollowness in his gut. After a while, he walked in the direction of Felony because he had nowhere else to go, and he needed time to think. She’d left him over three little words. Hadn’t he shown her how he felt a million times in a million different ways? He kept walking with his hands shoved into his pockets until the sidewalks narrowed and the crowds thinned.

A park bench opposite the post office offered a shady resting place where he sat with his head in his hands, trying to make sense of his jumbled thoughts. Two kids clattered past on skateboards. Locust whirred from the trees behind him, the insistent buzz a parody of his confusion. Why couldn’t he say those words to her if it meant the difference between having his son or not? He sat up, scrubbed his hands over his face, and blew out a long sigh. Deep down, he knew the answer. He didn’t love her. Never had.

CHAPTER 6

The ache in Karly’s feet was nothing compared to the pain in her heart when she returned Emma to her parents. It took two busses and a ten-block walk to reach the house. No one answered the doorbell, so she let herself in, Emma dragging behind reluctantly. Mom sat on the couch, still wearing her faded purple housecoat despite the afternoon hour, watching the television with an expression of disconnected ambivalence. Dad, thank goodness, was at the factory where he worked as a janitor. Karly didn’t think she could manage to sit in the same room with the man and remain civil.

“Mom?” Karly stepped in front of the television, blocking the game show from her mother’s view. “I brought Emma home.”

“Really?” Mom didn’t move, but her eyes flicked to Karly before returning to the TV. “Did you two have a sleepover?”

“No. She ran away.” Karly scowled while her mother clicked buttons on the remote control. “Did you hear what I said, Mom?”

As she waited for her mother to answer, Karly surveyed the living room as if seeing it for the first time. Although dark and dingy, the cramped space was scrupulously clean. Worn sofa cushions hid beneath a knit, multi-colored afghan. Cigarette smoke yellowed the flowered wallpaper. Framed photographs of Mitch hung on the walls and lined the bookshelves; there were no pictures of Karly or Emma anywhere in sight.

“Mom!” With a sigh of exasperation, Karly turned the television off and waved a hand in front of her mother’s blank face. She looked healthy, despite the previous night’s beating, but then her father made sure to hit where the bruises wouldn’t show. “Are you telling me that you didn’t even know Emma was gone?”

“I think maybe I was asleep,” her mother said. At last, she lifted sad eyes to Karly’s face, and her once pretty mouth twitched in a reluctant smile. “Did you two have a nice time?”

When her mother smiled, Karly caught a glimpse of the woman she used to be, before the beatings and her father’s drinking grew out of control. Once, long ago, they had been a family who laughed and enjoyed each other’s company. Today, Karly wasn’t sure who those people were or where they had gone.

Overcome with emotion, Karly sank to her knees beside Mom’s chair and touched her knee lightly. “Mom, are you okay? Did he hurt you badly? Do you need a doctor?”

“I’m fine, dear.” Her mother patted Karly’s cheek before pointing the remote at the television and resuming her game show, glazed expression in place. “You probably should leave before your father gets home. You know how upset he gets when you’re here.”

“Yeah, Mom. I know,” Karly replied, but her mother had already retreated into the safety of her fantasy world, oblivious to everyone and everything outside of
The Price is Right
. With a pang of regret, she gave Emma a kiss goodbye and promised to visit soon. The front door closed behind her with a soft click of the latch, the sounds of the TV bleeding into the front yard through the open windows. At the end of the street, away from the prying eyes of neighbors, Karly sank to her knees and cried.