The Perfect Match (Blue Heron #2)(55)
“Thanks for helping my son,” came a voice. Tom looked up, and fell hard.
Melissa Kellogg was beautiful, all long black hair and blue eyes. Twenty when she had Charlie, thirty now, single. “His father is a rat-bastard,” she confided in a whisper, “but I try not to let Charlie know.” She worked as a paralegal, loved her kid, had a flowery tattoo on her neck that flirted with the edge of her blouse.
By the end of the picnic, she’d asked Tom if he wanted to have dinner with the two of them.
He did.
He had dinner with them on Monday as well, and Wednesday, and Thursday, and on Friday, the elder Kelloggs took Charlie for the night, and Tom took Melissa to bed.
He never did get to those national parks.
By September, Tom had a work visa and a TA position at a small college, a step down from his post at University of Manchester, but it seemed like a small price to pay. He moved in with Melissa and Charlie in their duplex in a worn but respectable part of Philadelphia, totally smitten with both of them.
The kid never shut up; he was interested in everything, made obscure references to Jedis and Dr. Who—right up Tom’s alley, in other words. Melissa often used to comment that they were the same mental age. Charlie asked if Tom would build him a tree house, sought his advice on making a car for the soapbox derby and made so many paper airplanes that Melissa complained about not even being able to find a piece of paper for a grocery list.
For a while, it was perfect. A beautiful woman, a great kid, a not-bad job. Incredible sex. His teaching career, which had started off with him beating out thirty-seven other candidates for a fast-track tenure position back in England, didn’t matter so much anymore. For extra money, Tom did a bit of consulting for a guy who made custom airplanes for the wealthy, so it was all good. No, it seemed like Tom had walked straight into a perfect little family.
He’d been in love quite a few times before, starting out with Emily Anne Cartright, his next-door neighbor who broke up with him when they were six. But Melissa...she was special. Amazing in bed—no man would underrate that. Fiery and funny, too. She seemed to like to fight over little things, but given what happened after those spats, Tom grew to love fighting.
And she was a good mum, even if she relied a bit too much on the orange macaroni and cheese that came from a box, even if she let Charlie watch too much television and play violent video games. But she loved him, it was obvious. Fussed over his hair, cooed over his Lego creations, laughed with him at bedtime.
At first, Tom couldn’t quite believe his luck. Why this beautiful woman would be so available was a mystery. She seemed to be the entire package. She seemed...perfect.
She wasn’t, of course.
After the initial blush wore off, Tom started to see that Melissa was a bit of a malcontent. She didn’t like their house, though Tom thought it was pleasant enough. She wanted a different job. Hated her coworkers, felt the company’s policies on sick time, lunch hour and vacation were unfair. In seven years, she’d held eleven jobs, everything from a waitress to a shampooer at a posh salon to a medical assistant. When he suggested she look into something else, she’d snap that she didn’t know what she wanted, then go on to name rather ridiculous ideas, Tom thought—veterinarian or restaurant owner or architect...jobs for which she had no skills or schooling, and no willingness to get them.
And then, after a few months, he felt her discontent latch on to him. It was a terrifying spotlight to be in. She had a way of looking at him, as if calculating just when she’d ask him to move out. If he talked about kids in his classes, she often sighed or started doodling, her boredom clear. Whereas Tom loved the normalcy of their lives, of watching movies with Charlie on Friday nights and taking a bike ride through the city on Sundays, Melissa wanted to go out, hear a band, party, that American word for get pissed. Their first big fight came when her parents couldn’t babysit, and she wanted to leave Charlie home alone.
“We can’t do that,” Tom had said. “He’s too young.”
“I think I can make up my own mind about my son,” she said icily. “He’s almost eleven.”
“It’s the law,” Tom answered.
“Fine. Stay home, then. You like him better than me, anyway. I’m not just gonna sit around and grow mold.” And she had gone out, and hadn’t come back till 4:00 a.m., when Tom had been debating whether to call the police. But she’d been apologetic and sweet, took him to bed, then said she was sorry about staying out so late; she’d just had a lot of stress lately and needed to blow off steam.
Which, it became apparent, she had to do quite often.
By Christmas, Tom was aware that he probably should’ve taken things a bit more slowly with Melissa. The problem was, he was crazy about her kid, and Charlie adored him right back. And that, it seemed, was becoming a reason for Melissa to break up with him.
She was jealous.
One day, when Melissa had called out sick from work (again), Charlie burst through the door after school, yelling, “Tom! Tom! Tomtomtom!” a paper clutched in his hand.
“Don’t you mean, Mom, Mom, Mommommom?” Melissa said in a nasty voice. “Or is Tom your mommy now?” It didn’t register to her that Tom, with his teacher’s schedule, had been the adult who’d greeted him at home for months now. Nor did she ask about the paper, which had been Charlie’s spelling test: an A+, the first time he’d gotten all his words right, thanks in large part to Tom helping him study.