At Peace (The 'Burg #2)(19)

“Hey baby, have a good time?”

She was texting someone and I knew it was Dane even though he just dropped her off. Her head came up from her phone and she grinned at me.

“Yeah,” she said softly, her face just as soft.

Oh f**k.

“Dane have fun?” I asked.

She nodded and looked back down at her phone. She hit send, slid it shut and tossed it on her nightstand.

“I like him, Kate, he’s a good kid,” I told her, her head twisted to me and she studied me a second before she dealt a blow she didn’t know she was dealing and, if she did, it would cut her to the quick. Kate felt. She felt everything but she felt other people’s pain far more than her own, one of the few things she got from me.

“You think Dad would have liked him?”

I hid my flinch at her question and I did it by thinking about her question.

I’d made a pact with Tim early on that we’d always be open and honest with our girls. A pact that he regularly broke as they grew older and he found he had trouble with the facts of life and relaying them to his daughters, seeing as they were female. A pact, since I was female, I was able to keep.

“No,” I told her, her face fell and I went on. “But only because you’re his little girl and you always will be. He wouldn’t like him, not now, but he’d come around because Dane’s a good kid.”

Her face brightened, just slightly, and she asked, “You think?”

I walked in, got close to her, wrapped my hand around her head and pulled her temple to my mouth.

“I know,” I whispered and kissed her before finishing. “Get some sleep, honey.”

Her body had leaned into mine with my embrace but she pulled away when she replied, “All right, Mom.”

“Sleep tight.”

“You too.”

I walked to the side kitchen door, locked it, armed the alarm and then moved back to my room and got in bed wearing Tim’s robe, thinking that sleeping tight was an impossibility with what happened that night.

I was right.

* * * * *

“Home for dinner!” I shouted my order to my girls from my room as I heard them preparing to go to the mall and I finished preparing to go into work.

It was late morning after the Joe Incident. Bobbie had called and asked me to put in a few hours. She might have gotten a good full-time worker when Sabrina quit but that still meant she was down a part-time worker and hadn’t found anyone she liked to replace me and since Bobbie didn’t like many people that would probably take awhile. Overtime was beginning to be a regular thing but I wasn’t complaining.

“When are you done?” Keira shouted back.

“I’ll be home after five,” I answered, again on a shout.

“Cool! Later Momalicious,” Keira shouted.

“Bye Mawdy!” Kate yelled.

“Be careful!” I yelled back, flicking the covers over my bed and a small, white business card flew up into the air.

I stilled and stared at the card as I heard the door slam in the other room.

The card had settled back on my bed. I saw the print on it and it was blurry because I was not focusing as I stared at it. I was feeling the bitterness and humiliation that leached into my bones last night, bitterness and humiliation I’d made a huge effort to ignore all morning, start burning.

My breath started coming fast and shame bled into the acid that had taken root in my marrow.

Last night I wasn’t so drunk I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t so drunk I had a hangover. I wasn’t so f**king drunk I shouldn’t have stopped it.

But I didn’t. I not only let it happen, I participated and I’d begged.

Not thinking (I never did when I got angry), I snatched up the card and then went to my jeans which were still on the floor. I pulled the fifty out of the pocket then I dropped the jeans on the bed and marched out of my room. Then I marched through the house out the side door.

Joe’s truck was in the drive.

I had no intention of facing him but I had every intention of making a point.

I was heading toward his mailbox when I heard the music and I switched directions, walking up his yard to his drive, instantly changing my mind about facing him. I saw the garage door open, the music coming from there. Black Sabbath, not Kenzie Elise loud, just loud enough to hear.

There was a car in the garage, the hood up. I couldn’t see what kind of car it was, all I could see was Joe bent over it, working on the engine.

I walked right up to him and when I got close, his head turned to me but his torso stayed bent over the engine. When it did, before he could say a word, not that he was going to, I stopped and tossed the card and fifty in his direction. They fluttered through the air but I didn’t wait to see his reaction, didn’t say a word, didn’t watch where the card and bill landed, I turned and walked away.

I didn’t get very far. A firm hand curled around my upper arm and I was yanked back.

“What –?” I snapped not finishing because he whirled me around and pulled me into the garage. “Let me go!” I demanded as he reached up and, with a violent wrench, he pulled on a cord causing the apparently well-oiled garage door to rumble on its rails and crash down.

There we were, alone in his dark garage with his car and Black Sabbath.

Me and my stupid temper.