Somebody to Love(61)
“Who takes three weeks for a vacation? And then Ethan’s taking that precious boy to see you.”
“Well, he is my son.”
“We’re so alone. To think we left Valle de Muerte to be abandoned by our family.”
Parker bit down on a laugh. She got quite a kick out of the Mirabellis, who’d always been good to her, so long as she could ignore the many, many, many nudges, hints and suggestions on how to raise Nicky and why she should’ve married Ethan—at least that battle hymn had stopped since he married Lucy—and how Parker should eat much, much more.
“So what’s new up there? In Maine?” Marie said the word suspiciously, as if not quite certain Maine was a true part of the United States.
“Oh, not too much.” Parker opted not to mention her stint in the clink. “Lots of work to do before Nicky gets here.”
There was a gusty sigh. “You could come home,” Marie suggested. Parker had told her and Gianni about her father—hard to miss when CNN had done a special on him—and the change in her finances, but Marie didn’t always pay attention to facts she deemed unpleasant.
“As soon as I get this house ready to be sold, I’ll be back. Nicky and I will be home at the end of August at the latest.” She had to be; Nicky started kindergarten after Labor Day. All-day kindergarten. The thought caused her heart to spasm.
“August. I could be dead by August.”
“True, true. Well, I have work to do, so I should get going, Marie,” Parker said, having fielded enough guilt for the day. She loved the Mirabellis. She was also very grateful not to be their daughter-in-law and could therefore hang up, whereas Lucy could not. “I’ll call you soon.”
“You’re eating enough? You’re too skinny.”
“Aw! Thanks! I’ve gained eleven pounds this year.”
“Well, it’s not enough. We love you, sweetheart. Gianni says hello. You know how he is—he won’t talk on the phone. Bye-bye.”
Parker hung up and went outside. It was two days after her inadvertent drug dealing, and before Marie’s call, she’d been working at improving the house’s curb appeal, mainly by hacking up the roots of the sumac trees and scrubby pines. She’d buy some hanging baskets, since she knew the wholesalers now, and put out some pots of geranium and sweet-potato vine. Who knew? Maybe it would trick someone into buying the place.
James had been right about her sentence of community service. Yesterday, when the judge had found out that she was a children’s author, he ordered her to do a library program on the Holy Rollers, the favorite books of His Honor’s six-year-old grandchild. Frankly, Parker would rather have spent another day in jail with Crazy Dave (who was out with no fines at all, go figure). Lavinia had been told to file for a medical-marijuana-growers’ license, and would also be having dinner with the judge on Saturday with a possible session of “slapping uglies” afterward.
As for James, he was on the roof right now, doing God knew what. Looking beautiful, apparently. Killer tan, too, no matter that she’d bought him his own 100-factor sunscreen. His hair was curling from sweat, and the skin on his back glistened. She did love a sweaty man.
That’s icky, said Golly.
“You’ll appreciate it when you’re older,” Parker muttered. Yes, she was thirty-five years old and hadn’t been laid in three years. Time to look away. Time to focus.
Funds were running low. A part-time job at the flower shop was not doing much other than covering groceries. To her own eyes, the cottage didn’t look much better. In fact, it looked worse. The sides were stripped and covered in Tyvek, the shingles having yet to be delivered. The grass, which she’d hacked away at like some Amazon explorer, was uneven, rife with weeds and dry, thanks to a notable lack of rain this summer.