Soaring (Magdalene #2)(121)

“No problem, Amy. Now hate to cut this short, but wanna check on Ash. She’s been quieter than her normal lately and has been in her room all night. Gotta check on my girl.”

That didn’t sound good at all.

But it wasn’t surprising.

“Okay, I’ll let you go.”

“Sleep tight, babe.”

“I will, Mickey. See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah. And plan to be over for dinner. We’ll get your car, come back and hang out.”

I couldn’t wait.

“Sounds good. ’Night, honey.”

“’Night, baby.”

We hung up. I read a bit.

Then I went to sleep.

* * * * *

Mickey was right.

Car salesmen still screwed over women more than men. He got my Land Rover (I got black, Auden would just have to deal) for several thousand less than I could negotiate the deal.

Cillian and Aisling came with us and hung with me while I tried my hand at the negotiations. I asked for their company because I thought this was added incentive—kids in the mix—that would make the salesmen less inclined to screw me.

I was wrong.

Cillian gloated with his dad.

Through this and all the time I spent with her that day, I found Mickey was right, but it was more.

Aisling was quieter than normal to the point that she was unusually sullen.

It also looked like she wasn’t washing her hair.

This alarmed me.

But I didn’t have a chance to say anything about it until after we had dinner, Ash had retreated to her room and closed the door, and Cill had commandeered the TV to play some game on Xbox.

This forced Mickey and me to lounge on the loveseat on the deck in our jackets.

“She’s not good,” I noted.

“Nope,” Mickey replied, rocking the loveseat with me beside him, curled into him, legs up under me, one of his arms around me, the other hand around the neck of a bottle of a beer he took a tug from after he answered.

“Does she open up to you?” I asked.

“Got no clue how to talk to an almost fifteen-year-old girl with a drunk for a mom,” he replied.

“Is she…does she have moods?” I pressed carefully.

“If you mean, has she started her period? Then yes,” he told me. “That happened last summer. Her mom took care of that. She comes home with boxes of shit Rhiannon gets her. I saw Midol on her dresser, made sure there was more in the bathroom. Didn’t have any sisters but did have a wife for fourteen years, so I got a clue when those kinds of moods strike. Ash gets ’em. This is not one of those.”

“I’m not sure I’m at that place where it’s okay for me to talk to her,” I noted.

“I hear you,” he muttered.

“But we can keep an eye on the situation and if she doesn’t open up to you, regardless if I’m at that place, if you want me to, I’ll go in.”

His arm tightened around me, tucking me closer. “That’d be good.”

He wanted me to.

That made me snuggle even closer.

I did that and took a sip of my wine before I asked, “Do you think they know what’s happening with you and me?”

“On the deck havin’ a drink with you and you’re over a lot. Close with the Gettys that live next door because they moved in when I was eight and never left. They’re welcome here any time. The kids love ’em. But I don’t walk them home, sit close to them on the couch or out on my deck at night, havin’ a beer.”

“Do you think that’s what’s troubling her?” I went on, even though, in the early stages, she seemed to hope her dad and I would get together.

“Again, no clue,” he said.

“You want to meet my kids, Mickey, perhaps you should think on sharing what’s happening with Cill and Ash in an official way,” I suggested. “If it’s out in the open, you can discuss it with her.”

“Great. My Sunday plans look only slightly better than my Friday night plans did.”

I grinned, lifted my head from his shoulder and looked to his jaw. “It’s not like we’re not used to this road being rocky.”

He didn’t look down at me.

He said to the dark night, “You’re right. The f*ck of it is, you grow up thinkin’ things are gonna be a certain way and then they end up mostly f*cked with moments of decent and flashes of really f*ckin’ good.”

I snuggled my cheek to his shoulder, hating that.

Mickey had a boss he did not respect, a job he didn’t like doing that bought him taking a lot of complaints from angry people about decisions he did not make.

He’d had a wife he loved who’d become an alcoholic right before his eyes. He lost her and now she was making him live in fear for his kids not only when they were with her but what her effect was on them when they weren’t.

He needed to become fire chief.

He needed to get his business off the ground.

And Rhiannon needed to sort herself out.

As for me, I needed to do what I could to give Mickey as many flashes of really f*cking good as I could.

Mickey read my mood but he read it wrong.

“Sorry, baby, you don’t need my bitching.”

“Actually, I do,” I returned. “Because if you don’t lay it on me, it’ll eat you up inside and your kids need you whole, standing and fighting. So I’ll take whatever you got. It isn’t hard. So you have that and you have what you need to take care of your babies.”