“I… um. Okay,” I replied.
“Pie’s nice,” he went on. “Brothers’ll like it.”
The brothers will like it?
Wasn’t he going to have any?
Maybe he didn’t like pie.
Darn it!
My phone started ringing in my purse when I said. “Well, that’s good. But—”
“ ’Preciate you comin’ by,” he cut me off to say. Then he looked to the bar. “Got shit to do.”
I was struggling with my bag on my arm to get to my phone. I was doing this feeling a variety of things. All of them bad.
“Good to see you again, uh…” he trailed off just as my hand closed around my phone and my head jerked up when he did.
“Carissa,” I whispered.
“Yeah, good to see you. Take care,” he returned.
He’d forgotten my name.
That hurt.
It really hurt.
But…
Why?
To hide it, I looked to my phone as I heard a gravelly, “Joker.”
But I wasn’t listening because the caller was Tory.
Aaron had long since delegated communication about most everything to his fiancée. That most everything was always Travis, since that was now all Aaron and I had to talk about.
This was mean. It was also awful. And last, it was very much Aaron.
I hated it.
It wasn’t nice, but I also hated her. She stole my husband. She got to spend every week with him and every other one living my dream, being a family with my baby. She drove a sporty Mercedes Aaron bought for her and was regularly in ads in the paper for local department stores or on TV commercials for local furniture stores, sitting in loungers and on couches, her long, thin legs always bare and stretched out.
She was beautiful. She had glossy dark brown hair that I suspected was glossy without product, which was irritating. She was taller than me by probably five inches. She had a natural grace. And even though I was not even close to over the hill, heck, I couldn’t even see the hill, she was almost four years younger than me in a way that made me feel fifty years older than her.
Obviously, for these reasons and about a thousand others besides, I didn’t want to take her call.
But she had my son.
So I had to take it.
“Excuse me,” I mumbled, knowing probably no one was paying any attention to me. I took a step away, turned my side to the others, and put the phone to my ear. “Tory.”
“Uh, hello, Carissa.”
She didn’t sound right.
My skin started tingling.
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
“Okay, don’t freak. It’s all good now. It’s gonna be okay. Aaron didn’t want me to call you because it’s normal, it happens, the doctors say…”
My back shot straight and my heart clenched even as my hand gripped the phone so hard, if I had any attention left to pay to it, it would hurt.
“The doctors?” I whispered.
“Yes, they say he’s gonna be okay. But we had to take Travis to the hospital last night.”
“Hospital?” I screeched, and again, if I had any attention left to pay to it, I would have noticed the feel of the room had gone alert.
“He’s fine. Fine,” she said hurriedly. “It was just croup. So little, working so hard to cough, it was scary but it’s totally okay. The doctors took care of him. Sent him home. Aaron didn’t want me to say anything, but I thought you should know.”
My head was buzzing, my skin still tingling, my heart beating so hard I could feel it thudding in my chest as I said, “I’m coming to your house.”
“No!” she cried. “No, Carissa, don’t do that.”
“He’s my son!” I snapped. “He’s been to the hospital, he doesn’t feel good, so now I’m coming to your house.” I looked up and said to the first person I saw, which was lanky guy. “I need my car. Immediately.”
He was studying me but when I spoke, he jerked up his chin, turned, and jogged out.
“Carissa!” Tory called from my phone. “You cannot come here.”
I was marching to the door as I hissed, “Stop me.”
“Don’t make me regret telling you this. If Aaron knows you’re here without permission, he’s gonna be pissed. At me. But you know it’ll be more at you. And he’ll go off on you, Carissa.”
I had my hand to the door handle but I stopped at her words.
“No judge is going to take away my right to see my child when he’s ill,” I declared.
“Come on, Carissa,” she returned quietly, gently, but swiftly and resolutely. “By now you have to know his father knows a lot of judges and they golf together. They’ll do whatever he wants them to do.”
I closed my eyes and did it tightly, my fingers clutching the door handle even tighter.
I knew that. I’d learned that lesson, so far, twice.
“You can’t come over here,” Tory went on and I opened my eyes, staring unseeing at the door. “I don’t agree with him keeping this from you. I wanted him to call you last night. He refused. He’s at the office now, left Travis and me a little while ago to take some meetings at work. He said he’s going to come back, work from home. I don’t know when that’ll be. I just know if you’re here, he’ll lose it. You know it too. I’m sorry this is the way it is, but we both know it’s the way it is. I’m taking good care of Travis. The doctors say he’s going to be okay. He’s already better. He’s being looked after. And when Travis feels better and Aaron’s at work, I’ll bring him to your store so you can see him. Okay?”
That’s what I got.
That’s all I got.
My son was sick and in order to avoid a lawsuit and have more of him taken away from me, a lawsuit I couldn’t defend against because I couldn’t afford an attorney, I had to wait for my ex-husband’s young, beautiful fiancée to bring my baby boy to me at work. I closed my eyes again, leaned forward, and didn’t feel my forehead hitting the door.
“Carissa,” Tory prompted. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered brokenly.
It wasn’t okay.
Nothing was okay.
And worst of that nothing, my baby was not okay and I couldn’t see him.
“Okay,” she whispered back. Then, “I’m so sorry.”
I really hated her, and right then I hated that she was making it hard for me to keep hating her even when she had my baby and I didn’t.
I also hated what I had to say next.
“Thank you for calling me.”
“If anything changes, I’ll find a way to call you again. But he’s good. I promise.”
“All right.”
“See you at the store tomorrow. Yeah?”
“Yes.”
“ ’Bye, Carissa.”
“Goodbye, Tory.”
She disconnected.
I kept my phone to my ear, my forehead to the door, my hand clasping the handle, my eyes squeezed tight.
“What was that?’
The words came to me in a deep biker voice I knew but they didn’t penetrate.
My baby boy with his chubby cheeks and his granddad’s eyes was sick without me.
The words came again. “What was that?”