A Trade For Good (5 page)

Peter hadn't been terrified when it
all started like Sera was, that something might be really wrong
with their baby; he was just annoyed. If it was suggested that
Peter might have stayed longer if it hadn't been for Emma, all Sera
could say was 'thank you Emma'. She would make sure not to burden
the poor baby with guilt for something her stupid dad
did.

It was really hard to remember now,
but Peter had been fun at one point. Peter wasn’t the most patient
person in the world and wasn’t really suited to be the dad of four
kids, but since the only qualifications are sperm, he proudly
accepted his fate – to a point.

Before the kids were born, Sera and
Pete had done everything together. School, studying, games,
parties, breaks and even meals were always with Peter; life was
good.

That didn't change for
Sera, as far as she was concerned, life was still good, it was
different, but good. Motherhood was awesome. She felt her
contribution to the world was great; her kids were the best. She
blossomed during her pregnancies and loved every minute of it.
Life
was
good and
at least now, she didn't feel she had to constantly protect the
kids from Peter's impatience.

Peter's biggest issue was that he and
Sera had very little alone time, which basically translated to sex.
Gone were the days when Peter came home for a nooner, or they had a
quickie while the roast was cooking in the oven. Peter complained
that they couldn't even go to a restaurant anymore, but that wasn't
exactly true. It was true that they couldn't go to the nice French
restaurant they used to love, but they could definitely still do
noisy Italian. Peter didn’t want to share his wife with anyone, not
even his own children.

That wasn’t entirely true though.
Peter liked Sera when she looked good and he could show her off.
Then he didn’t mind sharing her for the world to see. By the end of
her pregnancies his excuse was that she probably felt uncomfortable
going out. The truth was he hated it when she looked like a
blimp.

Sera tried dialing again and this time
Deb picked up after the third ring. As soon as she heard her
sister- in-law on the other end she immediately felt sorry for her,
she sounded like she was totally out of breath. Not only did Deb's
voice sound tired and strained, but in the background Sera could
hear Emma’s high pitched wail and knew exactly what Deb was up
against.

Deb was gasping for breath when she
screamed "Sera, where are you?" Sera didn't think she heard fear in
Deb's voice, as much as the fact that Deb's hearing was just a tad
strained.

“I'm at work. Are you all
right?”

“Oh yeah. Aha, I’m great.”

“You’re out of breath.”

“Oh, well that, I was just
exercising.”

“Bull. You hate to exercise, not to
mention the fact that you have four kids with you under the age of
six which makes it impossible to do anything as fun as suffering
great pain with major sweating.”

“All right, all right. No,
I wasn’t exercising,
how do you do it
Sera
?”

“What are you talking about? You have
four kids too."

“Yeah I know, but you have
Emma!”

Sera laughed at her sister-in-law.
Emma was a handful, but if anyone could handle her, other than Sera
herself, it was Deb.

"Wait a minute. Did you say
you were at
work?
"

"Uh, yes. I should have talked to you
first, but this sort of just landed on my lap so to speak." Sera
smiled as she looked at the pile of papers she was holding while
she talked to Deb.

"Listen Deb, I’m sorry, I really am.
I'm sorry about this and everything else. You guys have been the
best friends I could ever ask for now that Peter's gone. You're not
just family and you know it. I hate this. I know it’s not easy with
Emma and Charlie in addition to yours, but I was hoping you could
help me find someone to watch them for a few hours a day. I may
even be able to come up with some work I can do from home to cut
down my hours..."

"Whoa, hold it. You have a
job?"

"Don't worry, I'm not asking you to
watch my kids all the time."

“Hey kiddo, this is temporary and you
can forget about paying someone to take care of them. Chad and I
will do what we can to help you and you know it.”

Sera sighed, “Don’t make offers you
will regret."

"Whatever. So about this job...Where
is it? And how did this happen? You never said you were
interviewing for a job."

“Well, I didn't exactly, consciously,
or really interview for this job."

"What the hell are you saying? English
please. I’m used to kid talk."

Sera smiled at her sister-in-law's
straight to the point attitude. She had always loved that about
her. In fact, she loved everyone in Peter's family and wondered how
Peter ended up the way he did with such a great family. Sera teased
Deb about it and always said she had married the wrong Sinclair;
Deb was one hot little number and she could cook!

"I’ve been working at my new job since
9:30 this morning. Remember I told you I was trying to settle some
financial matters this morning? Well, first on my list was a guy
who called me last night; actually he was returning my call.
Anyway, it was a $14,000.00 landscaping job Peter had set up,” Sera
paused and rolled her eyes while she heard Deb growl in response.
“Anyway, it was something I didn’t even know about until a couple
of weeks ago. Well, I owe him a ton of money for material, and he
offered me a job to repay it. I get a decent salary for the next
six months, plus at the end of that time my financial obligation is
fulfilled, and as far as employment goes I can decide what I want
to do afterwards if he’s still happy with what I’m doing, but it
may help me pay off some other debts as well."

"You know we'll help
you..."

"I know, I know, but your brother in
law did some pretty stupid stuff, and it's gonna take more than a
village to fix what he screwed up."

"Okay, tell me more about the job.
They're not screwing you because they think you're desperate are
they?"

Sera thought about how she had started
reorganizing Jeff’s files, how she had made herself comfortable in
his office, had run off crying, stuck him with a whole bunch of
materials and a debt she couldn't possibly pay, told him everything
he did that was wrong in how he ran things, and smiled.

"No, I don't think you have to worry
about that. The guy, Jeff, is really nice. He seems very decent.
He’s not very organized, and if anything, I think I could be the
one that will screw him."

"Really?
That good looking?"

Sera turned bright red and looked
around the office to make sure she was alone as if anyone could
have heard that.

"Deb, you’re an ass. And yes, now that
you mention it, he is pretty good looking, but for me to even think
about a guy that way is hopeless. Peter and I will never be
together again, so my days with a man are over until the kids grow
up. I'll just have to consider adding some new 'tools' to play with
at home."

Deb laughed at Sera's quick analysis.
"You know, Chad travels a great deal. I've found some ways of
fixing stuff without tools..."

"Yeah, well chocolate will just make
me fat and I can't afford any more clothes. I'm still struggling to
wear some of the stuff I was wearing before P.D. was
born.

"Joking aside, this guy I work
for...Jeff, it's funny, but I don’t really think he wants people to
know how nice he really is.”

“Are you sure you can handle being
treated nicely for a change?”

“I believe it's something I could get
used to rather quickly.”

“Okay, now that I've made you smile
for a couple of seconds, not meaning to ruin your mood, but have
you heard anything from that jerk you married?”

“Your husband’s charming
sibling? No, nothing. It's like he just disappeared. If it weren't
for the random checks deposited in our account
twice
, I'd say he disappeared
completely. And honestly, if it weren’t that I need to find him to
claim child support, I think I would rather he just never showed up
again. Except to let his mom know he's all right. I feel really
sorry for Marion.”

“Yeah well, I do too, but I feel a lot
worse for you. I think Marion does too. Yes, she's concerned, and
if it were Chad, we'd all be freaking, but let's face it, Peter
doesn't care about anyone but himself. She knows her son is a
selfish pig who got lucky and married a great girl…”

“Have I told you how much I love you?”
Sera’s eyes welled up thinking her in laws and her kids were worth
the pain of knowing Peter.

“Yeah well, me too kiddo.”

Sera cleared her eyes and sat up
straight. “Listen, I've got to go. I’m on my lunch break and since
I don’t have any food and don’t want to spend any money, I might as
well get back to work to impress the boss before he gets
back."

"Tomorrow wear that new little red top
with the flowers on the collar that I gave you. That's one way of
impressing your boss."

“I'll think about it,” Sera
smiled while making a mental note of what she could wear to a job
with three men and contractors filing through... Definitely
not
the little red top Deb
gave her. “Hey, you know how much I appreciate what you’re doing
for us, don't you? I love you guys so much even though your brother
is an idiot.”

Both women were quiet and then Sera
broke the silence to ask, “And other than being a demon, how’s my
little princess?”

“Let's see, she’s still about 27”
long, has brown curly hair, and is kind of pretty when she’s not
trying to kill me with her screaming.”

“That bad?”

“No sweetie. She’s a lot worse than
bad.”

Sera hung up relieved that she had a
family and a friend like Deb. The fact that Deb was Peter’s
brother’s wife was irrelevant. They were wonderful people and had
been invaluable since Peter had disappeared, and before. They
weren’t as impressed by Peter as she had been.

Sera knew those who didn’t know Peter
probably thought she was callous about his disappearance, but she
didn’t care. He up and left without a goodbye, aware of their
finances, and she assumed he remembered he had left not only a
wife, but four kids as well! Sera knew he was probably living it up
with Brandy, or whoever the flavor of the month was. She had been
in denial for a while and finally figured out he was not only
impatient, stubborn, and selfish, but he was unfaithful to boot.
And as for leaving her, there had been clues before he left,
threats even, but Sera hadn't had the time or energy to cater to
Peter's fits when she was still trying to get used to
Emma's.

Sera had waited a week, out of
embarrassment mostly, and then filled out a missing person's report
and explained the situation to the nice cops at the precinct. "Find
him," she had said, "and remind him that he has four kids who have
to eat at least three times a day.”

Sera had taken only a half hour for
her lunch break. She wondered if Jeff would be back today just as
she was getting ready to start working on his desk. He had
disappeared right after signing their ‘agreement’. Men disappearing
on her seemed to be the story of her life.

Chapter 5

Jeff left his office kicking
everything that got in his way. He had had a lousy morning, had
hired a total stranger without even checking first with Mitch, who
was after all part owner of Mason Landscaping, and to top it off,
now he was having his own doubts about hiring someone like
Sera.

Sera came with tons of baggage, he
didn’t know her from Adam, hadn’t done a background check on her,
gave her a salary that no employee had ever been lucky enough to
start out with, and had for all practical purposes written off her
debt.

How would Mitch feel about this? Jeff
had never bypassed Mitch since Mitch bought one third of the
company business. Once again, Jeff proved to be lacking on the
business side of the job. Once again he acted like a total idiot,
and once again – why not? – he hoped it had absolutely nothing to
do with how attractive Sera was. He really wanted to think his
judgment was more highly developed than that, although he knew from
experience that man, and especially man working too hard and on
lengthy dry spell, hadn't really evolved.

Well, it was almost one o'clock now.
Jeff had visited a site they had been having problems with,
specifically with the irrigation system, and he couldn’t stay away
from his office any longer. He had to get back to the office, talk
to Mitch, and if necessary, get rid of his new hire and deal with
the possibility of another breakdown on her part, and accepting a
great loss of money.

Jeff called a few clients from his
car, and found a few other things to keep him occupied so he didn't
get back until 4:10. When he reached his office building, he was
surprised to find Sera’s car was still parked outside He recognized
it as soon as he drove up. It was hard to believe as tired as he
was, that it had only been that morning that he was soaked to the
bone after pacing around the car for a good ten minutes waiting for
her to acknowledge him.