Page 52 of Honor ’N’ Duty

Not wanting to drip all over the house, she twisted the hem of her dress, squeezing out as much water as possible. The hot sun had already dried most of her skin. After grabbing a towel someone had left hanging over the deck railing, she went in, then closed the door behind her.

This was how it should have been with Josh, enjoying time together with family and friends. It was on the tip of her tongue to once again blame Josh for everything. For how he’d slowly but surely detached from her and Rosa as a family.

For laundering money for a drug cartel.

And for getting murdered.

But as she stood there, watching Kade with Rosa, the truth was a painful pill to swallow. There’d never been a chance of them being a real family because she’d never given their marriage a chance. Not really, and that made her just as responsible for all that had taken place since then.

She’d gone into the marriage with good intentions, but that spark—that elusive chemistry between two people needed to make a marriage work from the day they said I do right up to their golden wedding anniversary and, hopefully, beyond—had never existed between them, and she’d known that from the start.

Jamie, Deck, and Thor joined Kade, Rosa, and Smoke, and she snorted when all of them began doggie paddling side by side. That was another thing Josh hadn’t been there to do. Teach Rosa how to swim. Having been born in Puerto Rico, Laia had loved the sparkling blue Caribbean water and had insisted that Rosa learn to swim at an early age. Someday she’d take Rosa to Puerto Rico to experience the beauty and culture of the island.

Laia had never doubted Josh’s love for Rosa, but he’d never even taken her to the beach. He’d never had the time. As soon as the full impact of marrying for the wrong reasons had finally sunk in, his ardor had dwindled like an ebbing tide and he’d begun working late, traveling nearly every week to God knew where.

If she’d made a different decision six years ago, Kade could have been in her life. Kade and the children they might have had. Then again, she could never know for sure if things would even have worked out between them.

Her heart squeezed painfully at all the mistakes she’d made, the mounting pile of regrets.

And that’s my fault.

No matter how much she blamed Josh, it wasn’t fair to lay it all at his feet. It was finally time to grow up and take responsibility for contributing to who and what Josh had become. By cowing to her mother’s pressure, she’d done them both a disservice. She should have been stronger, should have stood up to Millie’s unwavering belief that marrying Josh was the right thing to do.

A phone beeped from somewhere inside the house. Laia turned from the door and dug her phone from her handbag where she’d left it on the kitchen counter. Three calls and two voicemail messages from her mother. Millie didn’t believe in texting.

She cued up the messages, the gist of which were all pretty much the same.

When are you and Rosa coming to see me? was the message that kept repeating in her mother’s perfectly enunciated English.

They’d left Puerto Rico over twenty years ago, and while her mother’s voice still retained its beautiful Spanish inflection, Laia’s had long ago disappeared.

She took a fortifying breath, then draped the towel over one of the kitchen stools and sat down to return Millie’s call. She loved her mother to tears, she really did, but Millie had been raised a strict Catholic and had tried to raise Laia the same way, which, to Millie’s eternal chagrin, hadn’t gone exactly to plan. Another reason why her mother had been so adamant that she marry Josh.

“Laia, where have you been? Why haven’t you answered my calls?” came her mother’s worried voice.

“I’m sorry, Mama. I’ve been busy.” What with evading a drug cartel and all.

“When are you and Rosa coming to see me? You didn’t come yesterday after church, and you know I don’t like my schedule being disrupted.”

Laia did know that. In fact, being a total micromanager, anything that didn’t fit into Millie’s perfectly executed plans drove her mother completely nuts. “I think we can come—”

“I made flan for you, and Rosa’s favorite—quesito—and it will all go to waste if it’s not eaten soon.”

Millie’s flan was restaurant quality, and Rosa’s favorite sweet was quesito, puff pastry filled with cream cheese and guava. “We can try to come—”

“I miss it when Rosa doesn’t read to me,” her mother interrupted, yet again. “You have to keep up with her reading skills, you know that.”

“Yes, Mama. I know.” That was the last thing in her daughter’s life her mother needed to worry about. Rosa loved reading.

Laia breathed a frustrated sigh, then plunked her elbow on the counter and her chin in her hand while her mother proceeded to tell her how to live not only her life, but how to micromanage Rosa’s life, too.

Before she knew it, fifteen minutes had gone by, and the hand holding the phone was cramped. “Mama,” she tried breaking in.

“Maybe you should enroll Rosa in one of those private summer daycare places where they teach children at a very young age all about history, art, and—”

“Mama.”

“—politics.”