Let Me Love You Again (An Echoes of the Heart Novel Book 2) (18 page)

“I got a call from Gladys in the school office,” Belinda said. “That Camille had gone home after having an allergy attack. I had to call the pediatrician myself to find out that you two were on your way home. I took off early to make sure everything was okay. I tried calling your cell.”

“I turned the ringer off in the doctor’s office.” Selena ran her hands through her hair. “Sorry. It’s been a long day. I was rushing
to get set up for my class this morning when Kristen stopped by to talk . . .”

She took her glass and Oliver’s through to the kitchen. Kristen’s offer was a topic for another day.

“Then Travis interrupted us,” she added, arriving at even more details to skip over. “Before we could talk long I got a page about Camille. We just got home. I know I should have called. But—”

“Yes.” Her mother pulled down the hem of the post-office blue shirt she wore to work every day. “I obviously interrupted something important with Oliver. And I should have kept my opinions to myself. I’m sorry about that, honey, really.”

Selena returned to the doorway between the living room and kitchen. She realized she was smiling—completely inappropriately. And so was her mother.

“You should have kept your opinions to yourself?” Selena repeated.

Belinda set her purse on the entryway table. “You thought you’d never hear that from me, didn’t you?”

“With or without checking the sky for flying swine?”

Belinda actually chuckled. She passed Selena, heading for the automatic coffee maker. It could be 110 in the shade, high summer, a Southern heat wave with no end in sight, and she would put on a pot of coffee the second she walked in the door. An entire pot, even if she was preparing it only for herself.

No single-cup fancy maker for Belinda. Selena had wanted to buy her mother one a few Mother’s Days back—the swankiest must-have model available in New York. It had had a feature for practically everything except giving you a mani-pedi while you waited. But coffee was coffee to Belinda. Ground beans. Boiling water. The rest was just trappings to get you hooked on buying things you didn’t know you needed until some marketing team said so.

Selena leaned against the arched doorway, watching her mother go through the soothing ritual of setting things up.

“I’ve been all over you since you came home.” Belinda measured out grounds. “And I know I could have handled things better when you were growing up.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Mom.” More than anything, Selena couldn’t take that right now.

“For how I raised you? I’m not. I did what I thought was best, the best I could. The same as you are with Camille.” Belinda finished up and faced Selena, the kitchen’s small table and three chairs between them. “But you’ve got enough people forcing their opinions on you. You don’t need more pressure from me about the choices you’re facing.”

“About?”

“About Oliver, dear. I should have butted out just now. I shouldn’t have called you about him yesterday morning. I had no business at Neat Feet trying to talk you out of doing whatever you need to do. I’m not very good at keeping my worries and thoughts to myself. But this is one time I’m going to do just that. It’s your decision to make, not mine. Just know that I’m here to talk if you ever want to. That’s all I’m going to say. About Parker and Oliver . . . about your father. When you’re ready, if you’re ever ready, I want to be here for you.”

Selena sat in one of the chairs, her legs as wobbly as the unsteady flutter of her heart. “Like you waited for me to tell you about Parker?”

Belinda frowned. “That man never loved you or your daughter. Not enough. He wasn’t going to give you and Camille the family you deserved. I could hear it in your voice, the way you described your lives together. I knew you hoped he’d change. I knew from personal experience that men like him never do. But . . .”

“You let me come to my senses on my own and ask you for help.”

Belinda joined her at the kitchen table. The legs of her chair creaked as she sat. “Me telling you that you deserved better than a man you thought was your savior wasn’t going to get either of us what we wanted. You’d never have trusted me if I’d been the one to say it first.”

Selena inhaled the comforting aroma of her mother’s coffee. She cherished the care and patience Belinda had shown her all this time, no matter the bumps in their relationship they were still working through. But she couldn’t talk about Oliver yet. Or whatever had really happened when her dad left.

She just wanted to sit there with her mother, she realized, and enjoy the simplicity of the birds chirping in the backyard—the way they had when Selena was a little girl, doing her homework at this same table and dreaming of growing up and moving away and making a bigger, better life for herself. She didn’t want bigger and better these days. She wanted simple. She wanted honesty and hope and a belief in tomorrow she hadn’t felt in a long time.

“Thank you, Mom.” She didn’t know what else to say. “For waiting, and for not asking too many questions yet.”

Belinda smiled and left, only as long as it took to pour coffee and stir sugar into her cup before she sat back down. “There’s time to work up to the rest, as long as you keep letting me be part of your life.” Her steady gaze said she knew how much even that was asking. “I realize I’m set in my ways. I’m not easy to live with.”

“That’s not it.”

Even if the last thing you want is for anything about her to be about me,
Oliver had said. And Selena had no idea if
that
was it. She couldn’t see anything clearly now. She had no idea what to do next.

“I know how hard you’re trying,” she said to her mother, grateful that she wasn’t doing this alone.

“We both are.” Belinda smiled. “You’re trying not to run again before you’re able to make ends meet on your own. And I’m trying to talk less. Listen more. I know I’m not good enough at it. But I’m getting better.
We’re
getting better. We can get through this together this time. I know we can.”

Selena blinked.

If you decide you’d like to give Chandlerville a chance, call me . . .

Let me help you see a different way through this . . .

You both have secrets you think won’t hurt anyone else . . .

We can get through this together this time . . .

Selena had left New York, determined to make it on her own. Only to surround herself with people determined to help her find her way.

“You have a meeting tonight?” Belinda asked.

Selena shook her head. “Tomorrow. I’ll probably take the day off to stay home with Camille. If she’s still not feeling well by tomorrow evening, I don’t need to make a meeting.”

“Oh yes you do. I saw your face when I walked in on you and Oliver. You’ve had quite a day—Travis, Camille’s allergic reaction, then whatever was happening just now. On top of yesterday. You don’t have to talk about any of it with me. But you’re going to be where you need to be tomorrow night to feel supported.”

Selena’s sobriety and how hard she’d worked at it since before Camille was born had so far been one of the few conversations Selena and Belinda had muscled all the way through—two adults talking, instead of falling back on the dysfunctional parent-child dynamic that wouldn’t have gotten them anywhere. Since then, Belinda had made it a point to be home anytime Selena had an
AA meeting. In fact, Belinda had regularly insisted on it, just as she was now. Supporting. Pushing. Loving Selena in her own way.

“I’ll be there,” Selena promised.

Belinda sipped her coffee, her eyes full of questions that she didn’t ask. Selena rose and headed for Camille’s room. But her daughter was sound asleep still—curled up with the stuffed blue bunny she’d always called Bear, in her window seat now. Selena covered her little girl with Belinda’s tulip quilt and slipped quietly away, lingering in the doorway.

She hadn’t realized until she’d returned home that the décor she’d chosen for her daughter’s room in Manhattan had mirrored her own childhood haven. Pink and white, fussy and little-girly, cluttered enough to be cozy without feeling messy. Only here, Belinda had meticulously sewn every stitch of it herself, slaving away for entire weekends after they’d first moved in, wanting Selena to have a taste still of the bigger, grander home they’d been forced to sell across town. Now Camille had that same fanciful world to dream in. And maybe it was helping Selena’s baby believe, just a little, that everything really was going to be okay.

Selena stepped across the hall to her mother’s sewing room. Belinda’s old Singer sat atop its cabinet in front of the window, where it had always been. Selena had taken over the tiny couch in the corner and crammed her diminished wardrobe into the closet where Belinda stored old coats and outerwear that were rarely needed in Georgia.

Looking back, looking around her mother’s tidy sewing retreat, thinking about how much time Belinda had spent creating things over the years they couldn’t afford to buy outright—clothes for Selena, gifts for her friends, even band uniforms for her and her classmates . . . Selena no longer saw want or the lack of things they hadn’t had, or the coldness that had once grown
between her and Belinda. She saw her mother’s need—Belinda’s bone-deep desire to make things better for her child under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Selena saw the love she’d always had within her grasp, even when she’d believed there was something better for her somewhere else. All while Belinda had given her enough space to make her way back home.

Her mother seemed content to wait again. And to support whatever Selena decided to do next. Only for once Selena wished Belinda
would
weigh in. Selena had put a lot of people she cared about in an impossible situation—Camille most of all. And for the life of her, she couldn’t decide what to do about it.

Oliver had stomped through the front door to find his brother instead of Dru sitting on the couch, supervising the kids as they did their homework. Which was code, evidently, for driving each other and any grown-up within hearing range bat-shit crazy. Oliver had ignored everyone and hauled himself into the kitchen to root in the fridge for beer. Of course there hadn’t been any. He’d been counting on it.

He’d chugged a glass of milk instead, rinsed it out, and dumped the glass in the dishwasher. He’d just finished doing the rest of the plates and bowls and things in the sink, left over from the tribe’s after-school snack.

Teddy sounded off in the other room, waking from his afternoon snooze, prompting Oliver to wade back in. He snatched the toddler from his playpen. One look at Oliver’s face had Travis closing whatever book he’d been quietly reading.

“Homework upstairs,” he said. “Oliver will make sure it’s done, so don’t even think about ditching.”

Kids grumbled and pried themselves off the couch, the floor, the surrounding chairs, dragging their feet and marching up to their respective rooms the way convicts would to the gallows.

“Where’s Dru?” Oliver bounced a sniffling and nuzzling and soon-to-be-starving eighteen-month-old in his arms. He took a wary sniff, gratified to discover that the inevitable post-nap poopy diaper was so far a no-show.

“I cut her loose,” his brother said. “She’s exhausted after last night. I’m not on shift for another hour, and she’s got to be at the Whip early tomorrow. She doesn’t need to be hanging around here—”

“Because I keep bailing on you guys. I get it. I’ll be where I’m supposed to be from now on.”

“Do you get it? Do you even know where you need to be?”

“I know I’m here now. Which means you’re sprung. Don’t let me keep you, bro.”

“So we’ve got nothing to talk about,” Travis said mildly, his expression hotter than the hell they used to raise together. “Is that it? I haven’t seen you since before Dad’s surgery. I hear from Brad and Dru you’ve had an eventful twenty-four hours. And that was before your little jaunt next door. But I should just get the hell out of your way, with you looking like you want to wreck something, because we’ve got nothing to say to each other? What the hell, man?”

“Okay . . .” At the moment, hell sounded like a cakewalk to Oliver. “Let’s talk about you backing off.”

His brother set his book aside.
The Count of Monte Cristo
. The jerk who’d tried to pay Oliver to do his lit papers in high school had been sitting there calmly reading the classics while Oliver’s heart rate hadn’t settled since Selena and Camille walked
up to him next door. And now the kid in his arms was crying loud enough for ten babies.

“How about first,” his brother said, tossing Oliver the pacifier that had been sitting on the coffee table, “you tell me what’s got you so cranked up. Dru said you were on edge when she got here with Teddy, but you wouldn’t tell her what’s going on before you headed next door. Neither would Brad, when he let her know you two talked this morning.”

Oliver plugged Teddy’s mouth with the pacifier and glared silently at his brother.

“So things went well with Selena?” Travis asked.

“Did you know?” If Travis had, and he hadn’t said anything, Oliver was going to do bodily harm. “Is that where all of this is coming from? You knew about Camille, and instead of calling me months ago when she and Selena showed up in Chandlerville or at the very least telling me once I hit town, you’ve been playing games like helping Mom throw Selena and me together yesterday. And stopping by the school to have a friendly chat with Selena this morning. You’re my brother, damn it. This is about our family.”