Heart Like Mine (33 page)

*  *  *

“I don’t care what the
reason
was,” I said to Ava as we pulled into the driveway of our house later that evening after taking Max to basketball and picking her up at the school. “You don’t skip class.
Ever
. If you’re upset, you go to the office and talk to the counselor. Not Bree, okay?” Victor hadn’t answered his cell, so the school had called me. Ava’s explanation to her teachers about crying in the bathroom with Bree
seemed
plausible, but the pout on Ava’s face now reeked more of annoyance at getting caught than grief over her mother’s death.

“I wish you’d stop telling me what to do,” Ava said under her breath.

“Excuse me?” I said. “What was that?”

She snapped her head around to face me. “I
said
, I wish you’d stop telling me what to do.”

I took a deep breath, trying to keep my cool but failing miserably. “Well,
I
wish you’d stop being so disrespectful. It’s totally unacceptable and I’m a little bit sick of it.” What the hell was going
on
with her? I wondered if her increasing bad attitude was grief-driven or hormonal, but at that point, I really didn’t care.

“Whatever,” she muttered as she flung open the car door and stomped inside, carrying her backpack over one shoulder.

“She’s cranky, huh, Grace?” Max said, piping up from the backseat with what I was sure he thought was helpful commentary.

“I think so, buddy,” I said with a heavy sigh. I dreaded the thought of telling Victor that she’d skipped class. Though I assumed he’d believe that she’d been in the bathroom, crying; I wasn’t so sure this was true. But voicing my suspicions probably wasn’t the best idea. Even though I knew in my gut that we should have, Victor and I hadn’t yet talked about what happened in Max’s room. A week after the blowup, we were still walking a bit on eggshells with each other, exceedingly polite and seemingly going through the motions of our relationship. We slept in the same bed, but we didn’t make love; we talked logistics about drop-offs and pickups with the kids, and how things were going at the restaurant with Spencer’s reduced capacity.

Over lunch earlier in the week, I’d talked over my reluctance to confront Victor with Sam, but he’d been less than sympathetic. “Sorry,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure you need to stop talking with me about it and talk with your fiancé. What are you so afraid of?”

I shrugged and threw my gaze to the salad in front of me. “I’m not sure. Maybe I should just try to rise above it, you know? It just feels so immature, telling him I need him to choose me over his kids.”

Sam sighed. “You’re not asking him to do that. You’re asking him to show a united front. To let the kids know that you two are a cohesive unit, not something they can divide and conquer.”

“That’s a good way to put it,” I mused. “Hey. I have an idea. Why don’t you just talk with Victor
for
me?”

“No, thank you,” Sam said sweetly as he twirled the fettuccine he’d ordered on his fork before taking a bite. He waved his utensil in the air like a conductor in front of an orchestra. “This
kind of bullshit is just another reason why Wade and I won’t be adopting.”

“I didn’t know you’d even talked about it.”

“We talked about
not
doing it. Same thing, I suppose. He’s too old, anyway.” I laughed. Wade was only thirty-two, eight years older than my brother, five years younger than me. But things were apparently different in “gay years,” as Sam once explained to me. “You have to add another six months for every year he’s been alive. So thirty-two is really forty-eight.”

“Where do you come
up
with this stuff?” I’d asked him.

“It’s in the Gay Lifestyle Handbook,” he’d joked, and I laughed again.

“You have to talk with Victor about how you’re feeling,” he said now. “It won’t get resolved until you do.”

I let loose a heavy sigh. “You sound like Melody.”

“She’s a smart girl.”

I took a sip of my iced tea. “I just don’t know how to approach it, you know? He’s going to be defensive because they’re his kids. He’s going to take their side.”

“And where does that leave you?” Sam asked. “The wicked stepmonster?” He paused and rolled his eyes. “Please. Don’t martyr yourself, Grace. If you can’t be honest about how you feel with the man you’re going to marry, then maybe you shouldn’t be marrying him.”

I knew on some level my brother was right, but as he spoke those words, I couldn’t help but be filled with a horrifying sense of panic. If I couldn’t make things work with Victor, maybe I couldn’t make them work with anyone.

Now Max and I followed Ava inside. She was standing in the entryway taking off her backpack. Max dropped his backpack by the front door right next to her, then they ran off to
fight over who got the shower first. “I call first!” Max yelled as he peeled off his T-shirt midrun. Everything between them was a competition. It was exhausting to witness the continuous one-upmanship—which one of them got the first shower, who had the biggest piece of pizza. The list of potential rivalries between them was endless.

Ava ran past him, shoving him into the wall. “I don’t
think
so!” she said.

“Hey. Don’t push your brother like that,” I said, already irritated from my encounter with her in the car.

“He was in my way,” Ava said. “I can’t help it if he’s slow.”

“You can help yourself from pushing him, though. So knock it off. Please.” I added the last word as an afterthought, hoping that maybe if I showed her a little respect, I might get some in return.

No such luck. She didn’t respond and instead propelled her way into the bathroom and slammed the door. Max began crying and came running toward me. “She’s so mean,” he said. “Why is she so
mean
?”

I sighed and pulled him toward me into a hug. “She’s a teenager, honey. It’s part of the territory.” What I was really thinking was:
Good question.

Max sniffled against my stomach, rubbing his nose on me. “Well, I’m never going to be that mean. Not ever.”

“I think that’s a lofty goal. But we all do mean things sometimes—it’s just part of being human. As you grow up, you hopefully learn to control it more, and try to treat people how you’d like them to treat you, you know?”

“I try that with her and it doesn’t work. She’s just
mean
.”

I rubbed the top of his head, feeling the warmth and sweat from all the exercise he’d done at basketball. “How about you
go grab some of your art stuff and we can draw together at the table?”

He looked up to me, pushing his chin into the flesh of my belly. “Are you a good drawer?”

“Not really. But maybe you can help me?” He nodded and raced off to the den, where we kept pads of paper and various markers in a drawer. I carried the grocery bags to the kitchen and pulled out the dinner we’d eat when they’d both finished cleaning up. Food, homework, then me trying to get at least three client files reviewed before midnight, when Victor would get home. I glanced over to the front door, where the kids had dropped their backpacks, and saw the edges of their gym shorts peeking out from the open zippers. They’d need to be washed tonight, so they were ready for practice tomorrow. Better to get them started now, so I didn’t forget.

I pulled Max’s clothing out first, and once again found myself baffled as to how he could stain it so thoroughly when he’d only worn it indoors. What was that, chocolate on the cuff of his shorts? Or was it blood? In the utility room off the kitchen, I sprayed the edges down with heavy-duty detergent, letting it lie flat on top of the washing machine to soak a bit while I headed back to the entryway to get Ava’s gym clothes, too.

“I’m ready, Grace!” Max called out from the dining room.

“Be right there,” I said. “Why don’t you get everything set up for us?”

“Okay!” he replied. I smiled to myself, thinking that it was almost as though the tantrum he’d had over the Wii released something inside him that he’d been pushing down. I wondered if this was what the counselor at their school had meant—kids process grief differently. His anger hadn’t been about the game at all, but destroying it was how he expressed his pain over his mother’s
death. Still, I was a little worried it wouldn’t be the last time he blew up like that.

Ava had a separate gym bag, so I kneeled down next to it and stuck my hand inside, pulling out two pairs of tiny spandex shorts that maybe could have covered one of my ass cheeks. I didn’t see her T-shirts, so I opened up another zippered compartment inside her bag and rooted around a bit until I found them. I felt another small wad of material, which I assumed was her sports bra, and pulled it out as well, setting it on the floor. An edge of something green sticking out from the bra caught my eye, and at first I thought it was just the tag, but after a second look, my mind registered what it was.

Money.

As far as I knew, Victor hadn’t given her any cash. I felt something drop down a notch inside me. I slowly unraveled the bra and saw that the bills were folded into a small square. I picked it up and straightened them out, counting as I went—just over a hundred dollars. Five twenties and a few ones and fives. I’d suspected that the money I used to pay for the groceries that afternoon was short of what I’d taken out of the bank earlier in the week, but I figured I’d simply spent it and not remembered, as I often did when I used cash instead of my debit card. I wanted to believe that’s what happened. I didn’t want this to be true. I didn’t want to be the one finding out what Ava had done. More than anything, I didn’t want to tell Victor his daughter was a thief.

Just as I began to stand up, I realized the shower had stopped running. Ava came rushing up behind me, trying to snatch the money from my hand. “What are you
doing
?” she yelled. “That’s mine! You don’t have any right to go through my stuff!” Her hair hung in wet little snakes around her face,
and she had already changed into pajama pants and her mother’s red sweater.

I yanked the money out of her reach. “I have every right!” My teeth ground against each other, and the squeak inside my mouth caused me to shiver. “You took this from my purse, didn’t you? Or are you stealing from someone else?”

She stared at me, her blue eyes narrowed. “I didn’t steal
anything
. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I shook my head, my lips pressed together before I spoke again, trying to control the anger I felt. “Then how did the money get into your backpack? Tell me that. Did it just magically grow legs and climb in there itself?”

“How should I know?” she said, spitting the words. “I don’t keep track of your
crap
. Maybe Max put it there.”

“I did not!” Max screamed. He’d apparently heard us yelling and came to investigate just in time to hear his sister accuse him. “You take that
back
! And I saw you stealing money from Grace’s purse! Just this morning. You didn’t see me ’cause I was hiding behind the door, but I watched you do it while she was in the shower.”

Ava stormed toward him, her fists clenched. “You shut the hell up!”

“Ava!” I said, moving to grab her with my one free hand. She twisted out of my reach and lunged at her brother, tackling him. They both landed on the hardwood floor, and Max screamed. Ava straddled him, drawing her arm back, but I managed to pull her off before she was able to hit him.

“Let
go
of me!” she screamed as she struggled to get out of my grasp, but I held her beneath her armpits and dragged her away from Max. “I
hate
you! Why don’t you just
go away
? We don’t need you here! Everything was
fine
until you came along. I
bet you’re happy my mom is dead so you can have my dad all to yourself! I know you’re
engaged
! I know you’ve been
lying
to us this whole time!”

I dropped her to the floor—it wasn’t far, just a few inches—but she shrieked as though I’d thrown her against the wall. I tried to catch my breath.
How did she find out about the engagement? Did she find my ring? Did Victor tell her and not share it with me?
I shook my head, unable to process enough of what was going on to question her. I took a step over to Max, who lay curled up on the floor in a ball, his legs and arms drawn into himself. “Max? Honey?” I said. “Are you okay?”

He shook his head and mumbled something through his tears.

“What, sweetie?” I asked.

“He’s fine!” Ava spat through her own tears. “He’s a big faker so he gets all the attention.”

I whipped my head around to glare at her. “You. Go to your room.
Now
.”

“No!” she yelled, her face crunched up in a wild mess of anger, sadness, and fear. I hated that it was me making her feel that way, but I couldn’t help what she had done. I didn’t want to be dealing with this at all, but there I was, smack-dab in the middle of it.

“Now!” I bellowed, and she cringed at the noise, sobbing as she slowly pulled herself to a standing position and staggered down the hall like she’d been shot.

Max’s cries increased, and I was suddenly concerned that Ava had really hurt him. “Max,” I said, trying again. “I need to see if you’re okay. I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to, but I just need to know that you’re not bleeding anywhere. Does it feel like anything is bleeding?”

“My
heart
is bleeding!” he cried, and my eyes stung with grief for all this little boy had suffered through. His parents’ divorce, his
mother’s death, and a sister who at times seemed hell-bent on making his life miserable. He slowly unfurled his body, and I searched for any signs of blood. Not seeing any, I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Where does it hurt most?” I asked him, and he held out his left hand. His pinkie finger was swollen and looked as though he may have landed on it when Ava leapt at him. I was afraid it might be broken. “Let’s get some ice on that, okay? Can you go sit on the couch in the den and I’ll come bring it to you? We might want to tape it to your other finger, too, just to keep you from knocking it against stuff and making it hurt worse.”