The Newcomer (Thunder Point #2)(51)

“Me?” Lou asked.

“You! I hate you,” Ray Anne said. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you!”

Lou laughed at her. “You steal my boyfriends.”

“I haven’t done that in years,” Ray Anne said. She lifted her hand to Cliff for another glass of wine. “Your boyfriends are too old for me.”

“You’re such a slut,” Lou said, but she laughed.

“Oh, I’m not. I’m just flexible.” Then she smiled. “And open-minded.”

Lou’s phone chimed and she picked up to read a text. It said, The coast is clear.

“That was Mac. She must be gone already. Oh, that doesn’t seem like a good sign.”

“Listen, if there’s anything I can do to help, please let me know. Tell Mac I talked to her and I’d be glad to tell him anything he wants to know about our meeting.”

“That’s nice of you, Ray Anne,” Lou said while she fished a ten-dollar bill out of her wallet. “I’ll tell him.”

Ray Anne covered Lou’s hand that held the bill. “Let me,” she said. “I probably owe you a drink.” She shook her head and tsked. “I just can’t imagine a woman leaving her children and not having any contact with them for ten years,” she said. “I never wanted anything so much as to have a family. If I’d had a family, I would’ve been so happy.”

Lou was stunned. Ray Anne had never acted like a woman who wanted a family. She behaved like a woman who wanted a man, and another man, and another and another.... “Is that so?” she asked.

“Of course. I was married three times.”

“I know, but...”

“They didn’t work out,” Ray Anne said a little wistfully. “But it wasn’t all my fault.”

“Hmm. Well, I’ll tell Mac you’ve seen Cee Jay, talked to her. Listen, I’d better run—I have no idea what I’m walking in to.”

“Sure. Good luck.”

Lou started to leave. She turned back, looked at her watch and said, “Next time we can go more than an hour on the truce. If you can behave yourself.”

* * *

Mac checked on his kids, all tucked into their individual bedrooms, starting with Dee Dee. “Doing okay?” he asked her.

She nodded. “Do you think she’s coming back?”

“I don’t know, honey. Do you want her to?”

She shrugged. “It’s okay. But she has to let Aunt Lou be here because Aunt Lou lives here.”

He smiled. Can’t get anything past kids. “I’ll be sure to pass that on if I’m ever asked.”

“Can I watch TV? For a half hour?”

“Homework done?” She nodded again. “Okay, then.”

He went to Ryan’s door and opened it. Ryan was laying on his bed, his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. “How are you doing, Ryan?” Mac asked.

Ryan sat up. “Why’d she come here again?”

“To see you, she said. To see all three of you. And for you to see her, since you haven’t seen her in a long time.”

“Are we done with seeing her now?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out if she calls again.”

“Probably in ten years,” Ryan said. “Can I get on the computer?”

“Homework done?”

“I did it at school. Can I?”

“Okay. Let’s not talk about this visit on Facebook or anything. Family business, right?”

“I don’t want to tell about it,” Ryan said. “It’s too weird.”

Finally, he approached his eldest daughter’s room knowing this discussion would be a lot more complicated than the ones he’d just had. He gave two knocks on Eve’s bedroom door and then entered without an invitation. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, her phone in her hands, texting. There was no question in his mind, she would be checking in with both Ashley and Landon. She looked up at him and he could tell all the wind had gone out of her sails.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “Are you?”

“I hated that,” he said. “Hated watching that.”

“I’m sorry.”

He sat on the edge of her bed. “I’m not mad at you, Eve. It was so uncomfortable. Something tells me your mother really wants a relationship with you kids. And I’m terrified.”

“Why? Because she’s lying?”

“I don’t know if she’s lying. I think our perspectives are completely different, as they are between divorced couples. She really believes I failed her. I really believe I did everything I could. How do you change that? The only thing I really want you to know—it was never your fault. Maybe mine, maybe hers, but never yours.”

“I know,” she said weakly. “But I don’t care whose fault it was! I just want to know how you can love your children and not even send a birthday card!”

“Maybe no one ever sent her one when she was a kid,” he said. “I don’t know too much about your mother’s childhood—she was in a foster home when I met her in high school. I never questioned that experience back then—seventeen-year-old boys usually don’t ask those kinds of questions. Maybe she was ignored, maybe she had a real bad time growing up or something. A lot of the way we act as adults has to do with how we were treated as children. I might’ve had no idea what I was getting myself into, married at nineteen, but I know that once you arrived, you were like the center of my world. You and your brother and sister were always wanted. I wish I could fix it so you don’t have any pain over this—you’re innocent.”