For You(58)
Author: Mimi Strong

“And how old did you say you are now?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Why haven’t you gotten that all sorted out, then? Gotten custody of her, officially?”

She turned to me, her face drawn and pale. “I’m scared. What if they think I killed him? Derek and I didn’t exactly get along. Plus I burned down the crime scene. At the time, I thought I could blame that on my mother as well, but that was just stupid.” She shook her head, frowning. “I was such a stupid, f**king naïve kid.”

“You were young. I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing.”

She turned away, her face and her shoulders. “I can understand if you don’t want to be with a liar, but please promise you won’t tell anyone.”

“I’m not going anywhere, and I won’t tell anyone. But maybe you should talk to a lawyer.”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “With what money?”

“I don’t know. We’ll think of something. You’ve told me everything, right? That’s the whole story?”

I reached out and touched her chin, drawing her face toward me.

She pursed her lips and stared at me a long time, her face unreadable. I started to worry she was going to say something a thousand times worse, like that she’d done worse than steal the car of a dead man and burn his body in a house fire.

Her voice flat, she said, “That’s everything.”

“What time is school?”

She blinked, seeming confused.

I turned back and located the alarm clock. It was just past eight o’clock in the morning.

“It’s ten after eight,” I said. “What time do we need to get Bell to school?”

“Nine.”

“Then I guess we should get her some breakfast, right? Should I come out of the bedroom and try to introduce myself again, or do you want me to wait in here until after you’re gone?”

“I don’t know.”

“My shoes are out there, so how about I come out, and if she’s upset, I’ll just grab my shoes and head for the door.”

She put her face in her hands. “I thought I’d feel better after I told you the truth, but now everything’s twice as bad.”

I gently pulled her hands away from her face. “Nothing’s bad. I’m here with you. I’m on your side, and I won’t let anything bad happen to you ever again. I wish I’d been there for you sooner, but I didn’t even know you back then. I felt you, in my heart, but I didn’t know you.”

She collapsed in my arms, sobbing. “It’s been so hard,” she said.

I held her tight against me and kissed the top of her head. “I’m here now. I’ve got you. Everything’s going to be all right.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Aubrey and I got Bell off to school that morning, and she was only a few minutes late. She seemed wary of me, looking to Aubrey each time before she spoke to me, but by the time we got her to school, she was relaxed enough to give me a quick hug goodbye.

Over the next two months, I got to know Bell a little better.

I was patient, but persistent.

Aubrey let me come over almost every day.

I was careful not to be too affectionate with Aubrey in front of her little sister.

To my relief, I found that I really liked Bell.

She could drive you nuts sometimes with questions, but she was a good person.

Bell liked chocolate, but not white chocolate.

She had to get completely dressed before she could decide if she liked what she was wearing.

And she thought holding her body stiff as I bench-pressed her was the greatest thing that could happen to a person.

I found myself falling in love not with one girl, but with two.

When the three of us went out, people smiled at us and asked how old our daughter was.

“Seven,” Aubrey and I would say at the same time. Seven was my new favorite number. I felt bad for allowing people to think she was my kid, but the world didn’t need an explanation.

I was still living at the house with my roommate, at least until I saved up a bit more cash from my new job. The money was really good, and my savings account would be quite ample after a couple more months.

Working for my father was no picnic, but by August, he stepped back and let me take over managing the shop sometimes. It was just a few days a week, overseeing the thirty employees, but bringing our jobs in on time and on budget would go a long way to getting my father to have confidence in me.

My older brother was running a construction company and loving that, so I was all my father had, and he knew it.

Things were finally coming together in my life, and I felt like a fool for the way I’d been living for the last few years. How had the difficult path become the one that seemed so right? I could still make my art, only now there was no pressure to always be taking new commissions. I could draw for the love of drawing, when I felt like it, because a steady paycheck would be coming from my real work.

Even my so-called real work had pleasure in it as well. I loved the smell of wood that permeated my clothes after a day at the shop. The workers were closer to my age than to my father’s, and they didn’t seem to pull as much crap on me, except for the new guys, but that’s to be expected. As long as they weren’t injuring themselves, that was the best I could hope for with some of the inexperienced guys.

Another reason I was still living with Spanky, besides it being cheap, was that I had plans to ask Aubrey and Bell to move in with me, or have me move in with them.

Even though it was fast, it felt right. I was spending three or more nights a week at their apartment as it was, and I figured my rent money could go toward that place, and Aubrey could cut her shifts at the bar. Getting to spend more time with my girlfriend was another benefit.

I planned to ask her that night at the barbecue, right after I gave her a real ring to replace the fake one she still wore to the bar. Not an engagement ring—we were moving fast, but not that fast—but a ring with a heart, and a tiny red stone. I was also going to tell her I loved her.

We’d both been stumbling around the word, but it was time for one of us to blink.

We were going to Bruce’s for a big party on the Labor Day weekend, the first weekend in September, and I had a whole talk prepared about how we were so great together, like a team. She inspired me to be a better man, and all that stuff.

My hands were sweating on the steering wheel when I pulled the car up to her building. The bike wasn’t sold yet, but I’d parked it at my parents’ garage, and spent some savings on a little Toyota. The car was four years old, low mileage, and the least sexy vehicle I could stomach. I had a look at some minivans, but my pride couldn’t take a minivan. There were three seatbelts in the back of the car, so I could easily take Bell and a couple of her friends anywhere.