Big Girls Don’t Cry (Dundee, Idaho #6)(36)
Author: Brenda Novak

“Don’t bother trying to make me feel better,” she replied. “It won’t work.”

“Your father’s here,” Liz said, clearly hopeful that this information might appease her children.

“So?” Mica replied. “I don’t want to see him.”

Chris obviously felt differently. Rubbing the tears from his eyes, he sat up. “Where is he?”

“We’ll find him,” Liz promised. “You’ll get to see him soon.”

Isaac wasn’t looking forward to that moment. But there was one he was dreading even more—facing Reenie again. Without question she wouldn’t be happy to know that Isaac, his sister and her children had just become members of her tight-knit community.

He thought about Liz’s tennis coach and tried to dredge up some of the positives of moving to Idaho. But they were long gone. Isaac was back to his original thought. Coming here was crazy.

Liz picked up the directions and began giving instructions. “You need to turn on Third Street. This is Second Street, so that must be it right there.” She pointed at the next light.

Two women arranging dried cornstalks at the entrance to Jerry’s Diner moved to get a good look at them as they drove by. Isaac recognized one as Judy, the waitress, and quickly averted his face. He wanted to settle in, at least, before the furor started.

“Take a left here,” Liz said.

When oncoming traffic cleared, Isaac turned into a neighborhood of older homes sitting on half-acre lots. They passed a street named Mount Glory before turning right on Mount Marcy. According to the address, the house he’d rented was halfway down the block between a rambler of white brick and a rambler of red brick. It wasn’t nearly as nice as its two neighbors, but it had potential. Right across the street sat one of the most beautiful homes he’d seen in Dundee.

“This isn’t bad,” Liz said, but her smile was brittle.

“There isn’t a large rental market here,” Isaac explained. “It looks a lot better, once you take our other options into account.”

“What were our other options?” she asked as he pulled to the curb.

He’d mentioned the choices to her before, when he was making the arrangements. But she’d been too preoccupied with packing and renting the California house to listen. “You decide,” she’d said.

“There were three mobile homes available in the trailer park south of town. But I’ve seen that park and it’s not a place you’d want to visit, let alone live. Then there was a duplex right behind the school. But Fred—”

“Fred?” she echoed.

“The real-estate agent.” Satisfied that he’d positioned the truck the way he wanted it, Isaac cut the engine. “He told me we probably wouldn’t like the duplex. The neighbors call the police almost every other week because of domestic disputes. And the man of the house tinkers with cars. There are junkers sitting all over the front lawn.”

“Wonderful.”

“See? This is looking better all the time.” He opened his door and Liz followed suit.

“Who owns this house?” she asked.

“An older couple who are doing missionary work in the Philippines.”

“How long will they be gone?”

“I don’t know. A couple of years, I think.”

She waited for him to come around. “But you said it wasn’t furnished.”

“It’s not.”

“What did they do with their furniture?”

“Fred told me they gave some of it to their children and put the rest in storage. Anyway, he promised me that the house was clean and in a good neighborhood, so I signed the lease.”

“Sounds like it was our only choice.”

“Pretty much.”

Mica, who’d climbed out behind them along with Christopher, wrinkled her nose. “It’s ugly!”

“We’re not buying it,” Liz told her. “We’re only renting.”

Mica shook her head sadly. “I can’t believe he did this to us.”

No one needed to ask who “he” was.

“It won’t be as bad as you think,” Liz told her and started up the driveway. “Come on. Let’s go see the inside.”

They skirted the rain-soaked yard and scaled the four steps to the front door, then trooped from room to room, counting bedrooms and planning where the furniture would go. Fortunately, the owners had left an old Ping-Pong table in the basement, which interested Mica. “Want to play, Chris?” she asked, as Isaac and Liz started back upstairs.

“There’s lots of room here,” Liz said.

Her words rang with false cheer, but Isaac knew it was better to play along. “Fred was right. It is clean, if a little dated.”

“I’m sure it’s better than the duplex or the trailer park.”

“No doubt.” Isaac was about to head outside. Unless they wanted to sleep on the floor, he needed to get the truck unloaded and the beds put together. They’d called Fred from Boise to tell him that they were getting close, since he’d offered to help with the heavy stuff. He hadn’t arrived yet, but Isaac saw no reason not to get started on his own. Except that Liz caught his arm before he could move away from her.

“Coming here…it—it’ll be okay, won’t it, Isaac?” she asked.

Isaac stared down at her hand. She still had Band-Aids around her nails and a bare spot where her wedding ring used to be. “You knew the move wasn’t going to be easy,” he said, trying to warm her cold fingers.

She nodded.

“Do you regret it already?” he asked. “Do you want to go back?”

She bit her lip and surveyed the brown shag carpet, the sparkly cottage-cheese-style ceiling, the dark paneling.

“You don’t like the house?”

“It’s not that. It’s…Mica wants one thing, and Chris wants another. I don’t know what to do. I feel…torn in two, completely disoriented. Maybe I’m only making things worse by coming here. If I didn’t feel such a driving need to be where Keith is, to find my equilibrium by starting where we left off and somehow catching up to where we are now.”

“You’re thinking too much. Let’s keep it simple, okay?”

“How?”

“You feel the need to talk to Keith, to be around him, so we’ll do that—for a while.”

“The last time I saw him, we were happy,” she explained. “We were both smiling and waving goodbye as he drove off to take Mica to gymnastics class. I keep thinking…if only I could see him again, speak to him face-to-face…maybe he’ll be able to give me the answers I need, help me figure out why.”