Hold On (The 'Burg #6)(9)

But I caught it.

So I’d let it happen.

A couple of short meets, attended by me, moved into a couple of dinners, also attended by me.

Then, when it came clear Trent actually had pulled it together, his wife Peggy was an okay woman, and Ethan enjoyed being with them, I let them take him alone. Eventually, this led to him spending the night or entire weekends.

Ethan dug it, albeit cautiously. He’d not had a dad for a long time and he was my boy, so he was smart enough not to go all in.

And he loved the big family he had now, what with me and Mom; Feb and Colt and their kid, Jack; Feb’s brother, Morrie, his wife, Dee, and their kids; Feb and Morrie’s mom and dad, Jack and Jackie (the J&J of J&J’s), as well as all they brought with them. Then there was my girl Vi, her man, Cal, and their kids; Colt’s colleague Mike and his woman, Dusty, and all that came with them; Feb’s besties, Mimi and Jessie, who’d adopted me right along with everyone else.

In other words, I’d done what I needed to do. I’d traveled a lonesome road paved with shit and snipers aiming at me from each side, but I got my kid what he needed.

A nice house in an okay neighborhood in a small town (mostly) filled with good people. And a big family who gave a f*ckuva lot more than a passing shit.

Add Ethan’s birth dad and his growing family, and my boy, sweet and social, was in seventh heaven.

I was not.

Ethan never knew that and he never would.

Thinking on this was not much better than thinking about Merry, so I quickly made Trent a cup of joe the way he liked it. I nuked it, since I’d turned off the half-empty pot before I took off to slam my head against the brick wall of my life. When the microwave dinged, I handed him the mug and leaned a hip against the counter across the room from him, leveling my eyes on him.

“What’s up?” I repeated my question of earlier.

Trent took a sip and put the coffee on the counter beside him.

Not granite counters. Not marble. No f*cking way. There wasn’t a granite, marble, or trendy cement counter within a five-block radius.

Mustard-yellow, old-style Formica. This matched the fridge and the stove, both having been in that house since America celebrated its bicentennial.

The dishwasher had bit it and didn’t match, which sucked. But all the appliances, cabinets, countertops, and even the old-school linoleum floor were in excellent shape. I’d worked with it, and the kitchen was just as boho eclectic as the rest of the house, with vintage nostalgia thrown in.

I loved it.

I didn’t take it in right then, however.

I watched Trent reach behind him and pull something out of his back pocket.

It was an envelope, whatever was inside making it thick, and he set it beside his coffee mug on the counter before picking the mug up and taking another sip.

Only then did he look at me.

“Been savin’ awhile, me and Peg,” he said.

“Savin’ for what?” I asked.

“For that,” he answered, nodding his head down to the envelope. “Seein’ as I wasn’t around and didn’t do what I should’ve for my son, been savin’ to try to make that up just a little bit.”

Oh shit.

“There’s three thousand, five hundred dollars in there,” he went on.

Shit.

It was safe to say I was not rolling in it. But Feb and Morrie paid a decent wage; their bar was established and popular so they could. I also made tips, good ones, so I always had cash on hand. And I didn’t have to pay for anyone looking out for Ethan. When I moved to the ’burg, Mom got a job and moved there about six months after me. If she didn’t look after Ethan while I was at work, Jackie did. Or Feb, if she wasn’t working. Or Mimi, since she had a slew of kids herself, one more was no skin off her nose. Vi was always happy to be on call too. Even Jessie took a turn every once in a while. She was a whackjob (a lovable one, but definitely a whackjob) and she didn’t like kids, but she liked Ethan.

That list went on and all I had to pay was markers for my friends helping out, something I did whenever they needed me to do it.

But I’d do that anyway.

Even so, three and a half thousand dollars was a lot of cake and I could use it simply because I was the bartending single mother of a growing boy. That was probably my Oreo budget for the year, Ethan’s favorite fuel.

It did not scratch the surface of what Trent owed me in a lot of ways.

But he had a job as a janitor, his wife was a part-time assistant for a financial advisor, and they had two young kids at home. I didn’t know for sure, but looking at his piece-of-shit car, even though Peggy drove a nice, newish minivan, I had to guess he had less than me.

Saving that money probably cut and did it deep.

“And I got a raise at work,” Trent continued. “So Peg and me talked, and we figure we can swing it to give you about a hundred every two weeks to help you out with Ethan.”

I stared at him, needing to down more pills and get my ass to McDonald’s so I could also down an Egg McMuffin. Being hungover and having a totally shit morning, what I didn’t need to deal with was the possibility I actually had to express gratitude to a man I once loved who left me high and dry with a kid growing in my belly and went on to a happy life with another woman.

“Cheryl?” he called when I said nothing.

I continued to say nothing because I had no f*cking clue what to say.