“She’s very pretty,” Mac said. “That’s probably where you kids got your good looks. She looks like the pictures you have. Hasn’t changed a day.”

“I want to see her, too,” Dee Dee said.

“So do I,” Ryan said. “Think she’d maybe come to a soccer game?”

“I don’t know, son. I guess anything is possible. But I think it’s pretty likely she’s just visiting around here. I wouldn’t count on her staying long. To be honest, I don’t know what her plans are. I’ve never known. I think she’ll get in touch with me again, but I don’t know for sure.”

“Were we too much? Is that why she went away?” Ryan asked.

They’d been over this a hundred times. That question always came out of the blue at odd times. The answer was always the same. “Everything was too much, son. I worked all the time, there wasn’t enough money, the house was falling apart, your mom was so young and lonely and felt cheated by life. We argued too much. It was just too hard for her, I guess. And I’ve asked myself a thousand times what I could have done to make it better. Easier. And I don’t know.”

“I wish’t I could just see what she looks like for real,” Dee Dee said.

Mac reached across the table and squeezed his baby girl’s hand. “I hope she calls, punkin. I’ll sure tell her you want to see her.”

Dee Dee grinned. “I’m going to practice piano,” she said, scraping back her chair and heading for the basement stairs.

“Can I get on the computer?” Ryan wanted to know.

“I’ll be checking your Facebook stuff, so no funny business,” Lou said.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he replied, following his younger sister to the basement. All the kid stuff was down there.

And then they were alone, Lou and Mac.

“Eve’s pissed,” Mac said. “I should go talk to her....”

“No,” Lou said, shaking her head. “Not so fast. Let her simmer, I’ll talk to her in an hour or two. And the younger ones? They took in your shocking news, blew it off after a minute and headed for their favorite toys.” She shook her head and laughed. “To them, Cee Jay is a myth. Kids. Don’t try to guess what they’ll do next—it’s exhausting. Are you going back to work?”

“For at least a couple of hours. I’ll try to come home early.”

“I’ll handle Eve. This is a huge event in her young life,” Lou said. “I’m sure Eve didn’t think she’d ever see her mother again.”

“Right,” he said. “And we’d better hide all the sharp objects.”

“It’s very selfish of me, but I’m glad she’s angry,” Lou said. “I think I had a panic attack at the grocery store, afraid Cee Jay would take the kids away from us. I bought everything I could fit in a cart in about three minutes.”

“She’s not going to take the kids away from us,” Mac said. “Worst case, she’ll see them. No, that’s not the worst case—worst case is she’ll hurt them emotionally. Build up their hopes, let them down, reject them all over again. I’m going to try to head that off if I can.”

“How?” Lou asked.

“Hell if I know.”

Seven

Gina was beginning to relate to Ashley—she had been gripping her phone ever since Mac walked out of the diner that morning, followed by Cee Jay. In her most rational musings she saw him dealing with the many questions his kids must have had about their mother. Ryan and Dee Dee couldn’t even remember her, but Mac had told her how traumatized Eve had been, still was on some days. In her most irrational fantasies, Cee Jay was moving her beautiful wardrobe into Mac’s house, into his closet, curling up with him while the children welcomed her with tears of joy.

When there was a soft knock at the door at 9:00 p.m. she jerked it open. There he stood, holding two bottles of beer by their necks. “What a day,” he said.

She let out such a sigh of relief she almost collapsed. “You might’ve called.”

“Honey, there was no time. Well, I could have sent you a text, but I really wanted to see you, to tell you about it. I couldn’t figure out a text or voice mail short enough to send that would also explain everything. Grab a sweater or shawl—come out on the porch with me.”

She grabbed Carrie’s wrap off the hook by the front door. Her house was quiet. Carrie had gone to bed, exhausted from the hard day of running a deli and Ashley had retreated to the solitude of her room. She sat down with Mac on the porch step.

“Expecting a call?” he asked with a slight smile, glancing at her cell phone.

“I think it’s attached itself to the palm of my hand....”

He chuckled and opened a beer for her. She finally let go of the cell, laying it on the porch, wiping her sweating palm on her pant leg.

“My kids are doing better than I dared hope. Well, Eve’s acting out—completely expected. She wants to see her mother, but I suspect it’s not to welcome her home. She’s outraged, which she’s entitled to be. But Lou? She’s over-the-top—I left her with a bottle of wine that was slowly disappearing.”

Gina laughed. “Taking it hard, is she?”

“She’s afraid Cee Jay is back to wrestle the kids away from her. That’s not going to happen, but Lou’s what I would call overwrought.”

“Has Lou seen her yet? Cee Jay?”

He shook his head. “I believe you alone have had the honor.”

“You might’ve mentioned that this illusive ex of yours is drop-dead gorgeous.”

“Hell, she’s always been pretty. Now she appears to be pretty and rich. I’m going to have to do some digging, see what she’s been up to. See if I can figure out what she wants. I find it hard to believe that after ten years she wants her family back.”

“Mac, she’s not pretty. She’s probably the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. She literally took my breath away. Before I knew who she was, I thought a famous actress whose name I couldn’t remember had stopped into the diner.”

“Come on,” he said doubtfully.

“Seriously. I’ve been having really awful wide-awake nightmares all day. There’s this one very bad scenario I’ve been playing over and over where you take one look at her and start peeling her clothes off and begging her to come back to you.”

He lifted a brow, then took a slug of his beer. “Well, you were there when I took my first look at her. Is that what you saw?”

“Actually, you looked very pissed.”

“To put it mildly. What nerve. She’s been gone since Dee Dee was nine months old—ten years ago now. She hasn’t called or sent a birthday card or Christmas present in ten years and then, without any warning, she sashays into town in a sixty-thousand-dollar car, looking as if she just stepped out of a fashion magazine. And she wants to know her kids? Maybe she’d like to start by getting to know their orthodontist bills.”

“What did she say, Mac?”

He took a deep breath and told her parts of their conversation. “I told her to just leave town. I threatened her with a restraining order—a completely empty threat—and she said she was going to legally challenge the custody agreement. I told her to have her lawyer call my lawyer. I haven’t talked to my lawyer since he gave me a very nice discount to file the divorce and custody papers for me five years ago. Papers she signed without a question, a call or a visit, by the way.”

“Did you tell the kids this?” Gina asked.

“I’m real careful about what I tell them. I try to tell them the truth without telling them that their mother, half of their gene pool, is a selfish unfaithful bitch who left them as babies without looking back. It’s not easy. But she’s done enough to them. I don’t need their self-esteems attached to her irresponsible and cruel choices. They’re innocent, after all.” He put an arm around her, pulling her closer. “Besides, who’s the genius that knocked up a sixteen-year-old? I have to own my part in all this.”

“I know. I do know how you feel,” she said.

“I suppose you have similar issues with Ashley’s father,” he said.

“Not so much, no. He was the new kid in town for a year or so, dropped out of high school but we hung around the football games and beach parties, and when I told him I was pregnant, he ran for his life. I don’t know if he was running from the responsibility or the fact that I was fifteen and he was eighteen—it could’ve been that. But I was thinking of my own father. He left us when I was five. They never got divorced, but five years later he died and guess what? He had a new family—and a will. He didn’t leave us any of his insurance money or pension—signed it all over to his new family even though my mom was the official widow. Now, how do you get past that? Maybe that had something to do with my own teenage issues, huh? Maybe I had abandonment issues?”

“See, that’s what scares me more than anything—Eve being like her mother. Ryan being as stupid as his father....”

“It was a hard day for you today,” she said. “Revisiting the past is always so scary.”

“I’ll tell you something, Gina,” Mac said, pulling her closer. “It would have been a lot worse if I didn’t have you. Here I was, so freaking scared to get involved again because of what happened in the past, yet today I found out what it means to have a solid relationship when the shit hits the fan. I told them today. I told the family. I told them about us. Eve was a little panicked, asked if I was going to let her mother come back and it just came out—I said their mother left our marriage a very long time ago and I love Gina. There’s no coming back, there’s only moving forward.”

She leaned against him. “God,” she whispered. “Being in love with you can be stressful.”

“Not being in love with you can be more stressful. If we ever get our families under control, we’re going away. Just for a weekend, maybe, but away.”

“They’ll all know we’re having sex,” she said.

“Well, what the hell! They’ve all been having sex!”

“Not all of them,” she said with a laugh. “In fact, I think Lou’s the only one in that boat at the moment.”

“I don’t think Eve is there yet—Lou promised me she’s got that covered. Eve’s more comfortable talking to her about that part of her life. And Ashley’s in a bad place right now, but she’ll recover and move on and...I don’t care, Gina—I don’t know how we can blend these two crazy families into one circus yet, but we deserve a little break. Don’t you think?”

She kissed his cheek. “Yes, I think so. Maybe when Ash is better and the most beautiful woman in the world has left town.”

“The most stupid woman in the world is more like it,” he said. “She doesn’t seem to understand how much advantage she would have if she took things slow. A few cards, phone calls, maybe a lunch or trip to a pizza parlor before she sics the lawyer on us.” He shook his head. “She might come up against their anger and find out she’s not snuggling up to some precious little babies who long for her. She’s facing off with some kids who were dumped on a very hurt, very angry father—and they’re not willing to suffer fools gladly. They might rip her apart. A part of me hopes they would.”

He put down his beer and pulled her into his arms, covering her mouth in a deep kiss. “Never be afraid again, Gina. Don’t be afraid of some mean woman just because she has a good haircut and fancy clothes.”

“Okay,” she whispered. “We’ve had such a hard time getting this romance off the ground....”