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“We’ll have to help her move beyond it.”
She halted and snatched a drink from my hand. “You think I won’t?”
“All I’m saying is we won’t let her deal with this on her own.”
“I know that.” She yanked open the passenger side door before I had a chance. “And there is no we,” she hissed.
Now wasn’t the time to argue. We were both still fired up after the confrontation with that asswad. She passed an Icee to Leona, and I handed her the other two before securing her in the cab.
Bryce jumped in his own truck, squealing out of the parking space and shooting us the bird on his way. Mature. Very mature. I’d seen Mulaney angry, but there had been a wariness under her hostility in the convenience store. She was passionate, seemingly unafraid of anything, though this felt like something beyond defending Leona. The root of our problem was somewhere tangled in the past I knew nothing of but intended to find out when I could get her to open up to me.
“You okay?” Mulaney asked as I cranked the engine. She twisted to look in the darkened back seat.
I checked in the rearview, finding Leona folded in on herself.
“Is what Coach Green said true? That Luke never—” The girl choked before she could finish the sentence and bloody murder rolled through my veins. What kind of cold-hearted bastard used kids for his own—what was it exactly? Revenge? That seemed strong, considering what little I knew of what happened all those years ago sounded harmless.
What he’d done was twisted in the most sickening way.
“I’m so stupid,” Leona whispered.
I opened my mouth to argue, but Mulaney beat me to it. “You say something like that again, and I’ll make sure you spend all winter shoveling out the barn.”
The woman had no tender bedside manner, but it seemed to work.
“I believed him,” she argued. “I should’ve known better.”
“Honey, we’ve all fallen for bullshit before, and we will again.” As much as it irritated me, sometimes Mulaney’s bluntness was one of the things I liked best about her. “It pains me to say this, but it sounds like Bryce’s boy was a pawn in the game too. Think there’s any chance he ended things to make his dad happy?”
I looked over at her in surprise. That was as close to sugarcoating as I’d ever heard from Mulaney. Would she be that way with her own children? My guess was she’d threaten her son with the same thing she had Bryce if he did wrong by a girl, but she’d go right after the girl if she hurt her boy. Seeing her with Leona now, she’d handle a daughter with more tenderness than Heartbreaker probably thought she possessed.
Leona slid down farther in her seat. “No.”
“Now hold up,” I said. “It’s possible. I want to make my parents happy. Mulaney’s no different, and I bet you aren’t either.” What I didn’t say was if some boy had done this to my daughter, I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d do, but this situation had brought out a form of crazy I didn’t know I possessed. I still hadn’t ruled out stopping by Bryce Green’s place after I dropped them off.
“You wouldn’t dothatto make your dad happy,” Mulaney said, a hint of question in her voice.
“Of course not,” I defended, realizing this parenting thing was hard. I’d wanted to ease the blow to Leona but instead had justified actions that were beyond explanation.
“I know what you meant.”
Something in me twisted at the defeated tone that floated up from the back seat.
“Why don’t you come to New York with us on Sunday? Stay until everyone else comes up for New Year’s?”
“Can I?” Leona asked, perking up.
“Sure. Getting away from here might make you feel better,” Mulaney said as if speaking from experience.
“As long as you aren’t running from your problems,” I added. When it came to ours, that was all she’d done.
Mulaney looked ready to spit fire at me. “You aren’t insinuating that my niece doesn’t face things, are you?”
The mama bear claws had come out. I’d never known anyone with such a strong love for their family.
“Cool your jets. I’m merely pointing out that avoiding difficult situations doesn’t resolve them.”
“Sometimes you need perspective,” she spit back. “And it can make them go away.”
