Right Where We Belong (Silver Springs #4)(25)

“So can I get one when I’m old enough?” Branson ventured.

She veered to the right, hugging the shoulder so that a car that’d become impatient with following her could get past. “As long as you’re at least eighteen. Then you’ll be an adult and can decide for yourself. You can’t get one any sooner than that.”

“Why not?” he asked. “You said you liked them.”

“I do, depending on how they’re done and where they’re at on a person’s body. There’s an art to it. Anyway, tattoos are permanent. You need to know yourself well before you make that commitment, be certain of what you’re doing.”

“Oh.”

She could tell he was deep in thought. Was he considering easygoing Gavin as a new role model? And was he wondering if maybe he’d rather be like Gavin than the kind of large and in-charge person his father had always been?

She’d been worried about Branson. She’d read enough online to know that bed-wetting wasn’t a good sign, but she hoped her son could recover from the blows they’d recently sustained. If not, she was going to do what she could to seek help.

“I like Gavin’s tattoos,” Alia piped up, smiling in a way that let Savanna know she also found him appealing. Alia had been so engrossed in her game Savanna had thought she wasn’t paying attention. But this proved that the whole family was a little smitten with their neighbor.

Was it only because he was new—something different? Even before Gordon had been accused of rape, Savanna had let her life fall to routine, had merely been going through the motions. She didn’t think that automatically happened in a marriage, but somehow it’d happened in hers. So what had come first? Had she neglected Gordon in some way—maybe while she was grieving the loss of her mother, father and older brother—so he’d turned to getting his thrills elsewhere? Or had he turned to getting his thrills elsewhere, thus showing less interest in her, and then she’d started focusing strictly on the kids to avoid feeling any dissatisfaction with her marriage?

Someday, maybe she’d get him to tell her why he’d done what he’d done. What led up to that type of thing? What made him hurt people—people who had little chance of fighting back? After living with him and feeling as if she knew him better than anyone, she wanted to understand why above all else. But whenever she tried to get him to level with her, he did the exact opposite—swore up and down that he was wrongly accused. That he’d play the martyr when there were women who’d suffered serious injury at his hands made her as angry as anything.

Even if she never got the answers she craved, she’d be better off if he’d just leave her alone, she decided.

Too bad she had little hope of that happening. Now that he was in jail, she was about all he had. He wasn’t likely to let her go easily.

Her phone rang. She didn’t have Bluetooth in the van, so she couldn’t have answered even if she wanted to—not while she was driving—but when she glanced down and spotted caller ID, she didn’t want to. It was Dorothy. She opened her mouth to tell Alia not to pick up, but Alia had the phone and pressed Talk before Savanna could even get the words out.

“Hi, Grandma!”

Tensing, Savanna pulled off the highway onto a side road and put the truck in Park. She was terrified that Dorothy might say something terrible to Alia, something that would come as too much of a shock to a child of six. Savanna hadn’t mentioned to her children that she and their father’s mother were still feuding, was trying to keep them from being caught in the middle.

“What’d you say?” Alia’s smile slid from her face. “You have Daddy on the line?”

“Let me talk to them,” Savanna whispered, but Alia wouldn’t relinquish the phone.

“Daddy wants to talk to me,” she said.

Apparently, Dorothy had Gordon on a three-way. Damn it! If not for Alia, this call would’ve transferred to voice mail like all the others.

Savanna curled her fingernails into her palms as she tried to decide whether to insist on taking the phone. Would it be better for her daughter to hear from Gordon—or not?

She supposed that would depend on what he had to say, whether he’d be angry and use Alia to pass whatever accusations he might launch along to Savanna, or try to comfort Alia after all she’d been through.

Alia deserved some reassurance.

Please let him give her that...

Savanna held her breath and waited.

“Hi, Daddy...Okay...I love you, too...Because we don’t live there anymore...Far, far away...Yeah, in a big truck! And someone stole our fridge!...No, this morning we had to eat the peanut butter sandwiches Mom brought for the drive, and they were all smashed...” She wrinkled her nose to show how unappealing they’d been. “Miss you, too...I don’t know...” She glanced up when she said that so Savanna knew Gordon’s question had something to do with her. “Do you want to talk to her?”

Branson, who was also watching Alia, had a dark expression on his face. As long as Gordon was being nice, Savanna hoped he’d ask to speak to his son—in case it might soothe Branson’s hurt to some degree.

“Just a minute...” Alia held the phone out to her brother. “Daddy wants to say hi.”

Savanna breathed a sigh of relief. But Branson didn’t move.

Alia tugged on his shirt. “Branson, it’s Daddy!”