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She lets out a small sound of amusement that doesn’t quite reach laugh status. “Next time, presuming this exact scenario repeats itself, you might want to say they were 3 Musketeers. The wrapper’s silver.”
Dammit, she’s right, but I don’t want anyone to think I’m a person who salivates over 3 Musketeers bars. So I settle for not saying anything.
There’s a twinkle in her eye as she says, “I have to admit I’m curious about how the unicorn crown figured into this.”
“No comment.” I swallow. “And you’re making me a drink after this. A strong one.”
“Will you tell me eventually?” She sweeps some hair that fell out of her bun behind her ear. “I’m not a person who can go around comfortably not knowing things.”
“Presuming there were something to tell, I imagine I’d tell you eventually,” I say, ignoring the little voice inside that suggests I sound as politic as a tie-wearing lawyer. I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself, and say, “Now, what did Danny want you to ask me?”
Her lips twitch. “He wanted me to make sure Shane didn’t back you into anything. But I’m guessing the only thing he backed you into was a wall.”
I have a visceral memory of crowding him into that wall. I swallow. “He is a bossy bastard.”
Her eyebrows lift. “Good thing you like bossy bastards, huh?”
“Well, I don’t like this one.” But I can’t say it with the usual conviction. “He thinks he knows better than everyone, especially better than me.” There, that I can say without a quaver in my voice. I can even summon some righteous indignation.
She laughs and shakes her head slightly. “Well, I can believe that. All men think they know better. Even your brother.”
She’s got me there.
“Well, anyway,” she continues. “There was no coercion, so…”
I cough. “No, nope. No coercion whatsoever.”
She puts a hand on her hip and eyes the door. “You know, I doubt your mother is going to whimper and go away. I wouldn’t be surprised if she just showed up on your doorstep someday. Or ours.”
My heart instantly starts thumping faster, because my gut tells me she’s right. When my mother wants something, she won’t stop until it’s hers…or every possibility of getting it has been so thoroughly obliterated there’s nothing left but dust falling through her fingers.
I haven’t seen my mother in years. The last time was at a coffee shop, when I was seven months pregnant with Izzy. It wasn’t planned, or at least not by me. My eyes were dull from crying, and I could barely register where I was, let alone why I was there. I was desperate. Tired. Lonely. And so deeply, deeply sad. I’d thought Rand would change his mind in the beginning…and then hated myself for wanting that. Because only a bad person would turn his back on his wife and child.
So when my mother approached me in the coffee shop, I agreed to bring my peppermint tea over to the table and sit with her.
“Rand left you,” she said. “That’s what happens when you reach for the sun, Ruthie. You get burned. Anyone could see that man was too good for you. A man like that was never going to stay with a girl who went to community college. No matter. You were smart to get pregnant. He’ll be paying child support for eighteen years. You won’t need to get a job.”
When I told her that I’d had Rand sign papers forsaking his rights to Izzy, she’d called me stupid and shortsighted. A fool. She’d claimed I was taking something away from my daughter before she was even born. When I explained that I didn’t want to risk that he’d ask for half custody just so he could pay me less, she said I should let Rand have her half the time—he had plenty of money to hire nannies.
I’d told her I wasn’t taking parenting advice from someone who barely knew how to be a person, let alone a parent, and that was that.
“You may be right,” I tell Mira through numb lips. I know what my mother would say if she found out about Shane—you got yourself another big fish, Ruthie. Now what are you going to do about it?
“Maybe it’ll make you feel better to have it all out with her, you know?”
I swallow, then add, “I know you’re the type of person who likes to face everything head on, Mira, but my mother is never going to understand what she did to Danny and me. She’s never going to care.”
“But you care,” she says, giving me an uncharacteristically serious look. “Danny does. Maybe it’s time to air your grievances and then shut that door forever.”
It’s the caring that pulls us all down in the end. If I didn’t care so damn much, none of it would hurt the way it does. That’s what I’m thinking when my phone buzzes. I pull it out, and it’s an alert from my bank—a transfer of five hundred bucks. I sent Shane my bank info earlier, and he hasn’t hesitated to make use of it. Another buzz, a message from him.
Guess what? Leonard and Burke happened to have some extra equipment lying around, and Danny’s going to set up the security system and monitor it. They’re doing it for free, so I transferred the agreed-upon amount.
Well, will you look at that. He found a workaround. There’s a reluctant smile on my face as I hustle Mira out of the bedroom, and I can feel that ring against my chest as if it’s making an imprint on me.
Chapter Twenty-One
Shane
