Текст книги "Family Love"

Автор книги: Liz Crowe

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

Chapter Nineteen

Lucasville

One year later

 

Aiden Leonardo Love was the easiest baby on the planet. Everyone said so. He slept hours at a stretch almost immediately. His nursing was easygoing, not frantic as Dominic’s had been. He smiled at everyone and would sit and watch the world go by, content even by the time he was crawling to follow his brothers, as much as they would let him.

Lindsay had asked to know his blood type, thinking she’d be safe for the rest of the boy’s life if she could assure herself that he could be cross-matched to hers. Unfortunately, it was not the case. He turned out to be blood type O and, based on her hours spent researching it, she knew the child was not Anton’s biological son. He couldn’t be, since she was type O negative and Anton was AB positive. The only way Aiden could be a type O was if his father had type O blood as well.

She kept those results on a small computer-generated printout, folded into a small square in an old cigar box where she kept her bank book from the Louisville institution that held her Halloran family money. The box was tucked far back on a deep shelf in the bottom basement, behind a stack of blankets, which were in turn stuffed behind a bunch of board games.

Anton had been frantic that weekend of course. He hadn’t asked where she’d gotten the clothes, makeup, and books for the boys and gifts for her friends. But he’d barely had time, since she dropped everything on the kitchen floor, ran to him, and threw herself into his arms a full day before she told Tanya Norris she’d be home.

They had made love three or four times by the time she retrieved her sons from her friends’ house, no worse for wear. Just for good measure, she made him stay home the next day, and when Kieran and Dom went down for a brief nap, after a carefully timed dose of liquid allergy medicine guaranteed to keep even Dominic down for a good hour, she jumped his bones again. He napped afterward, holding her close.

“So we’re good now,” he said when he woke. “We’re clear on the money.”

She bit the inside of her cheek, then turned to him and kissed him, her mind spinning with the horror of what she had done, as well as what she might have done, but keeping the Isabella thing tucked away in case she needed to pull it out for later use.

“We are, Anton. But you should know, I don’t want that Isabella person working at the pub anymore. We clear on that?”

He blinked, licked his lips, and propped up on his elbows. She pressed her fingers to his full lips, those lips she did love, and did not want to betray, even though she had in the worst possible way. “Just fire her. And we won’t have any more reason to discuss it.”

He nodded. The next time Lindsay went into the pub with the boys for dinner, she asked after Isabella and was told she’d been let go. Joe Patterson didn’t show his face much either, to her extreme relief.

Again, life, as it was wont to do, progressed. Her pregnancy, no surprise to her or Anton, was uneventful. Aiden was born the normal way, quickly, and with the usual amount of pain. When she looked into his eyes the first time, she knew. She ordered the blood test just so she would have no reason to doubt that she’d done the worst thing ever. But had gained a true angel of a son a result. A son Anton loved just as much as he did the others—sporadically, fiercely, and with a heavy hand.

The production side of the brewery did move, about a year after Aiden’s birth, and with the help of the mystery investor. The Love Pub remained downtown, one of the few local businesses unaffected by the steady encroachment of the suburbs from Lexington. With of the monthly weight off Anton’s shoulders thanks to a marked increase in sales and cash injections from the “angel,” he was able to put a new roof on their house, fix up the living room, and buy furniture, a new dishwasher and a stove.

Lindsay didn’t touch her money, swearing to herself she would use every single penny of it on the boys’ education. She allowed herself the occasional haircut and manicure, not the way she had when she was a pampered daughter, but at least often enough that she didn’t feel like the world’s biggest drudge. But she indulged only if she could justify paying for it out of what she might save on other monthly budgeted items.

The boys grew into their personalities, and Kieran began his infatuation with basketball that would morph into an all-consuming obsession for him and his father. Dominic never quite got over losing his coveted “baby” spot to another brother, and even walked baby Aiden around their neighborhood once, trying to sell him to the highest bidder.

Most days were a set of barely controlled hours of chaos, especially after both Antony and Kieran got better at basketball. The house suffered the direct attention of three very active boys, with a youngest brother tagging along the best he could. Lindsay relaxed after Aiden’s second birthday, allowing that she’d made a mistake and the good Lord had seen fit to gift her a son to remind her of it every single day.

The day Lindsay conceived her final child—the daughter she’d always believed she wanted—a snowstorm had socked the Love family into the house. At first it was fine. They gathered at the fireplace, toasted marshmallows, and sang songs. Lindsay let the boys set up a couple of real tents in the living room so they could pretend they were camping out. Marianne brought Rosie, and Tanya threw Paul into the fray while the women sipped coffee and nibbled the cookie dough Lindsay had ready for later treats.

At one point, Lindsay took in the atmosphere—the sound of giggling, happy children in one room, her friends in her kitchen under her snug new roof, her husband off at his successful business. Her heart felt so full, tears prickled her eyelids.

“What’s wrong, hon?” Tanya Norris patted her hand.

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m happy, I guess.” She swiped her cheeks, embarrassed.

“Happy as a fat tick on a skinny dog,” Marianne said, licking her fingers. Lindsay laughed.

“As a pig in shit,” Tanya agreed, shocking everyone at the table. She’d been a hard-core Baptist girl until she married Paul Senior. She’d once told Lindsay she joined his church because they liked to make love standing up, and she was afraid her church would think they were dancing.

A loud bang and a cry of pain broke up the happy party. “I’ll go see,” Tanya said, heading for the living room. Lindsay let her go. She was always the best mama to sort out a ruckus. She brought a sobbing Aiden with her. They fussed over him a while, gave him a dab of cookie dough and sent him out to rejoin the group.

“Dominic,” Tanya said, pouring herself more coffee. No more explanation was required. He’d taken it as his prime mission in life to torment his baby brother to tears at least twice a day. Antony had gotten to where he could manage it, usually by punching Dominic, which wasn’t really helping. But as a result, Aiden had latched on to Antony, which only seemed to anger Dom even more.

“That boy,” Lindsay said. “I don’t know what to do with him most days. Anton thinks he can whup the bad out of him, but it only seems to make him worse.”

They made the kids hot dogs on the stove and corn on the cob from Lindsay’s store of frozen vegetables. They were satisfied for about an hour after that, sprawled on the living room floor next to the crackling “campfire” in the fireplace, while Sesame Street played on videotapes Lindsay found at the secondhand bookstore. Then Dom threw his half-eaten corncob at Aiden, calling him a baby for not eating the bun of his hot dog, hitting him square in the eye, and sending him squalling into the kitchen once more.

“Let’s have a little separation time,” she said, picking her youngest boy up and loving the feel of his arms clasping her neck. She got him settled for a nap, the book she’d read him still clutched to his chest. Marianne had sent Antony to the bottom basement to fetch the Twister game, and was organizing that while Tanya cleaned up the camp meal by tossing paper plates and plastic ware into the trash, then wiping off faces and hands.

Lindsay put a tray in the oven, and soon the whole house smelled of chocolate chip cookies. Rosie and Antony took turns bossing the other kids through the game for a while, but Lindsay could sense that Dominic was getting too antsy to stay indoors much longer. Moments before she suggested the kids blow off steam in the bottom basement with the little indoor basketball hoop, the front door flew open, sending wind-blown swirls of snow into the lower foyer.

“Daddy!” Kieran shouted, and ran for his snow-coated father. Anton caught him, put him up on his shoulders and headed up to where the others were squabbling over whose turn it was to spin the wheel on the Twister game.

“Who wants to build a snowman?” he called out. The kids cheered and started shouting out ideas for clothes and decorations. Lindsay hauled out the snow gear, putting extra layers of Antony’s clothes on Paul and Rosie. She joined them once she and her friends were bundled up, just in time to catch a snowball to her shoulder.

“Look out, Mama!” Kieran called, ever her protector. She laughed and ducked around the corner, managing to nail Antony in the butt with one and Anton in the face with another. The snow was light and airy, so the balls didn’t pack much punch, which was a good thing, considering Dominic had deadly aim and hit everyone except the grownups in the face with his.

An hour later, the six or so inches of snow had increased to almost ten. They commandeered the trashcan lids, and Anton led an expedition to find a good hill in the neighborhood. Lindsay and the other moms demurred. When Anton grabbed her as she tromped by in the near-whiteout conditions and planted a cold-lipped kiss on hers, she’d pushed him away playfully. “Don’t you get my babies hurt, Anton Love.”

“No ma’am,” he said.

“No ma’am,” Antony parroted, glancing up for his father’s approval.

The women cleaned up the living room, and righted all the furniture, but left the tents up in case her boys wanted to sleep in them tonight. An hour later everyone returned, teeth chattering, fingers and toes freezing. Anton entered last, carrying Aiden, who was covering his left eye and sniveling.

“Dominic,” Anton muttered under his breath, shooting that son an evil eye worthy of Lindsay’s mother-in-law. “Damn kid.”

“Swear jar, Daddy,” Kieran said, shoving Dominic to the floor so hard the kid yelped—a first for him, she figured—before running to Lindsay so he could see what would be Aiden’s impressive black eye by morning. Anton dropped a coin in the huge jar on the kitchen table, and swatted Dominic’s butt as the boy ran by on his mission to find the next trouble and jump into it with both feet.

By about nine o’clock, the boys were passed out in their beds, Anton having vetoed the tent-sleeping plan, saying he wanted to watch the basketball game in peace and didn’t want the boys up that late. Lindsay was stretched out on the couch when Anton came down the steps from Dominic’s room after tucking him in-slash-warning him not to get up again. “That boy terrifies me, Linds.”

“I know, honey.” She was exhausted, but in a good way. “Would you take that game downstairs and bring me the clean clothes basket, please? I’ll fold while the game’s on.”

He leaned over and kissed her, grabbing her boob by way of gauging her interest. She let him, although she wasn’t sure what her interest level was at the moment. Four active boys in the house equaled very little private time for them lately. It’d been at least a month since they’d had more than quick, take-the-edge-off, middle-of-the-night, half-asleep sex.

He grabbed the Twister box and headed to the bottom basement, whistling the Wildcat fight song. Lindsay drifted, mesmerized by the dancing flames. When she blinked she realized she must have dozed and someone was calling her name. She sat up, rubbing her eyes, trying to figure out what time it was and why Anton hadn’t returned with the clothes basket and wasn’t in his chair, holding a beer and cursing the officials and coaches.

“Lindsay,” he called again. His voice had a strange edge that made her jump up and run to the basement, afraid he’d fallen or had a heart attack or something. The basement was dark, but a light shone in the laundry room. When she found him, he was leaning against the dryer, a sheet of paper and something else she didn’t immediately recognize in his hands. Her eyes flew to the cigar box on the washing machine. It must have gotten knocked to the floor when Antony was getting the game earlier.

“I don’t know what this is,” he said, his voice ominously low and brandishing the computer printout with her notes about blood types. “But I sure as hell know what this is.” He threw the Stockyards Bank bankbook at her. It smacked her chest and dropped to the floor, lying between them, opened to the page where she’d tucked the initial printed deposit receipt. “And you were going to tell me about this, when, exactly?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. His brown eyes glittered with fury. She stiffened and picked up the bankbook, mind spinning with possible explanations and scenarios whereby she deflected the fact of the two-hundred-thousand-dollar account with only her name on it by telling him that the printout proved he was not Aiden’s biological father. “I don’t know how carefully you studied it but if you did, you’d know I haven’t touched the money, at least not since that first day.”

“The first day,” he said, slowly. “That weekend you took off out of here like a bat out of hell, leaving my sons at your friends’ house and not answering me when I called Kathy’s number a million times. That first day?”

She put her hands on her hips, deciding to play the one card she’d kept tucked away for the past two and a half years. “Why, yes, Anton that would be the first day I had access to the money my family left me. I decided to accept it after I was privileged to watch you get your dick sucked by that whore, Isabella Josefi. In our brewery no less.”

Anton’s mouth dropped open.

She clenched her jaw, trying to figure out a way to make him believe that she honestly had not touched the money, and had every intention of using it for the boys’ college educations … something they would never, ever be able to afford otherwise.

“I’m … Isabella … it’s …”

Lindsay held up a hand. “No, I don’t need explanations. I know you fired her when I asked you to. Of course, what I don’t know is how many times you fucked her before I caught you, and if she’s still sneaking into the brewery, angling to take you from me.”

Anton’s brow furrowed. The paper with the cold, hard facts of what else she’d done that weekend crumpled in his closed fist.

He swallowed. She waited.

“I’m sorry for that. It was wrong and I know it was and I …”

“I said I don’t require your explanations.” She slipped the bankbook into her jeans pocket. “I haven’t used a thin dime of Halloran money on anything here. Just like I promised you I wouldn’t when we first got notice of it. It’s safe in the bank, drawing interest, and will be there for the boys when they need it, come college time. That’s it.”

“No, actually, that’s not it. I grabbed the mail before I left the brewery and only now had time to read this.” He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and she caught sight of an official-looking letterhead. Her heart seemed to stop, then pounded in her ears.

It had to be Joe. He’d sent Anton a dang letter to tell him what they’d done. She’d only seen the man once, at the pub, while she was hugely pregnant with Aiden. He’d let his gaze flicker down her swollen form, then up to her eyes. He’d not been around at all after that.

She took the paper with trembling hands. But it wasn’t from Joe. It was from some attorney’s office in Louisville, and had a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo about the Love Brothers Brewing Company’s re-incorporation, with the mystery investor listed as a fifteen percent owner. She glanced up at Anton. His face was stony, his jaw set. His body seemed to quiver with rage.

She kept reading, trying to sort out what the problem was. She saw it at the bottom where the angel investor was to sign his name. The words: “JHJ Investments” were right above “James R. Halloran, Jr., President.” She stared at her brother’s name on the paper. “I … didn’t know.”

“Stop lying to me, God damn you.” He roared at her, lunging across the small room and grabbing her arms so hard there’d be bruises. She tried to wrench out of his grasp, but he wouldn’t let go. “I am just some kind of charity project for you still, aren’t I Lindsay? Miss Halloran?”

“Do not manhandle me, Anton.”

“Shut up. Just shut up and listen to me.”

“I won’t listen as long as you’re shaking me like a little kid. I mean it.” She glared at him. He dropped his arms to his sides and regarded her with an ice-cold stare.

“Fine. So here’s the deal. You have two choices.” He held up a finger. “One. Tell your brother to work out terms with me so I can pay him back. Then close that account in Louisville and return that money to him—that should be a start on it.”

She frowned. He loomed over her again. So close she could smell the wood smoke, brewery odors, and raw fury pouring off him in waves. “Two. Keep your goddamned Halloran money for yourself, pack a bag and leave.”

“That’s ridiculous, Anton.” She put some distance between them, legs shaking, horrified he might ask her about the real reason she had a piece of paper with blood types on it. “James is … I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm. He wanted to help.”

“He wanted to help you. Not me. He doesn’t give a shit about the brewery.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” Anger at his presumptive attitude was making her see red along the edges of her vision. “Huh? What in the name of all that is holy is wrong with my brother wanting to help me? It’s what brothers do, Anton. Remember? It’s what your family did for you. Taking out a loan for this place without telling me was no problem. Why are you being such a … such a …”

He glowered at her. “So you’ve made your decision then.”

She blinked. “No. I’m … it’s … it’s not that simple. Honey, listen.” She was getting nervous. Anton Love did not make idle threats. That much she knew for a fact. She reached for him. He jerked away from her. “Please, Anton, let’s talk about it. I’m not doing anything against you. It’s all for our family, our sons.” The panic blossomed into legitimate fear. She’d made peace with the path she’d chosen—no, the one she’d engineered for herself. She loved Anton and this life. She was not about to walk out now.

“I told you more than once. I will not accept Halloran money. And now …” He snatched the legal document out of her hand. “And now, thanks to you and your damn brother, I’ve been forced to, without even knowing it.”

“Wait, you think I knew about this? You’re calling me a liar, right now to my face?” She grabbed his arms. “Apologize, Anton.”

He remained silent.

“I hate you,” she whispered. “I hate your damn fool stubbornness so much it’s … it’s not right Anton. You have to let go of it.”

“Suitcase is right over there.” He didn’t move. “It’s your chance to escape this shitty life, Lindsay. Go on. Run to your brothers and your money and leave me and my boys to ourselves. We will be just fine without you.”

“I think my Daddy was right about you,” she said, angry tears streaming down her face.

“Oh? Well, what a coincidence ’cause I know my Mama was right about you.”

She lashed out before she could stop herself, slapping him hard, twice before he grabbed her wrist. They froze in this position.

“I’ll bet she’ll be real happy to see that whore Isabella in my house, in my kitchen, taking care of my sons.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Like as not. Since it means we’ll maybe eat decent meals and the house might be a little cleaner.”

She tugged her arm out of his grip. The memory of Joe, of what she’d done of her own free will that night almost blinded her with remorse at that split second. “Better blow jobs too, huh?”

He didn’t respond. He’d closed down, she knew. He’d never show her another lick of emotion now. And she was half to blame.

Dazed, she turned from him. He grabbed her arm. Relieved, thinking they could maybe get past the ugly words, she opened her mouth to speak—to tell him everything she’d done the weekend she’d accepted her family’s money, so there were no more secrets between them.

But he held out the ragged little hard-sided suitcase she’d used that very weekend. She took it and stomped up the steps and all the way to her bedroom. Dropping onto the bed in tears, she tried to think of a way out of this.

She couldn’t just give the money to her brothers. That was the dumbest thing ever. She’d go for a day or two and let him try and manage this pack of heathens. If he did indeed bring that wop bitch into her house, she’d find herself the best lawyer her money could buy and snatch the boys away from him. Divorce was something so utterly foreign to him and his family; she wondered how he could be so angry that he’d suggest it. It was the opposite of everything he was raised to believe.

With a sigh, and a plan for the few days ahead, she started dumping underwear in the suitcase. As she stood contemplating her closet full of frumpy mom-wear, a gut-wrenching scream hit her ears. Running out to the hall, she met Anton, who shoved his way past her and threw open Dominic and Aiden’s bedroom door. Aiden was sitting up, thumb in his mouth, staring across the room at his brother. Dom was screaming as if the very hounds of hell were gnawing on him. He thrashed and kicked, pounding the wall with one small fist.

Lindsay stopped in the doorway, horrified, and at a total loss. Anton tried to pick him up, but the kid was stiff as a board, lashing out with his fists and feet. When he had to drop the boy onto the bed with a grunt of pain after a direct blow to his balls, Anton turned to Lindsay, the confused terror on his face matching hers.

She marched past him, sat on the bed, put her hand on her son’s flailing leg and started singing. She sang hymn after hymn. “The Old Rugged Cross.” “Shall We Gather At the River.” “Blessed Be the Tie That Binds.” Anything and everything soothing she could remember.

Dom finally stilled, opened his eyes, and blinked up at the ceiling. When he turned to face her, his shock at finding her there was clear. Tears spilled down his flushed cheeks and he launched himself at her, his sweaty little boy body clinging to her, arms and legs tight. She got up and moved to the rocking chair she’d left in the room, a vestige of Aiden’s few late-night nursing sessions.

“Mama,” he croaked out. “Bad dream. Really bad.”

“It’s all right, honey. Mama’s here. Shush, now.”

She glanced up and caught Anton’s eye. He had Aiden in one arm and was staring at her with the strangest look on his face—somewhere between sadness and abject terror. “I’ll put him in the other room,” he whispered, taking Aiden and shutting the door behind him.

She and Dom rocked and cried together until he dropped off again and became a lead weight she lugged to his bed. When she discovered he’d been so upset he wet himself, and she’d mistaken the dampness on her front for his usual sweatiness, she put him in Aiden’s bed and stripped him out of his clothes. His arms were streaked with red marks, as if he’d been scratching himself in his sleep. She touched them, pondering the mystery of this particular boy, and wondering where his road would lead him, while she dressed him in clean underpants and tucked him under Aiden’s blankets. Then she stripped Dom’s bed and took the wet things to the basement, stuffed them into the washing machine along with her shirt, and stood up, noting the crumpled paper containing the evidence of her betrayal still on the floor.

She threw it in the trash, grabbed a clean T-shirt, and headed slowly upstairs. Anton was in their room, staring out the window at the blowing snow. When he turned to face her, tears stood in his eyes. Without a word she walked to him, unbuttoned his shirt, unzipped his jeans, shoving them down to his ankles and gripped his cock. It stiffened quickly while she stared at him.

When she dropped to her knees and took him in her mouth, she prayed harder than she ever had in her life that they might figure out some way to get past this together.

He tugged her hair, grunting and thrusting, making her nearly gag, but she kept going, sensing him on the edge. Before he finished, he yanked her up, covered her lips with his, unzipped and shoved her jeans down as he lifted one of her legs so he could slide into her. She exhaled at the blessed familiarity, still erotically perfect, and wrapped her arms around his neck, meeting him thrust for thrust up against the bedroom wall, all without saying a thing.

“I love you,” he finally whispered into her neck. “Oh, God, Lindsay, please …”

“Come, Anton.”

He groaned and gave a last hard shove, then shuddered all over, spilling into her. She held on to him for dear life, whispering, “I’m sorry,” in his ear until he pulled out of her, picked her up and carried her to their bed.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed into his chest. “I love you, Anton. I didn’t, at first, you were right, but now I do … so much. Please, please don’t make me leave.”

“Shhh, honey, it’s fine. It’ll all be fine.”

Nine months later.

Lindsay stared down at the sleeping baby in her arms. Her pursed lips were full; her hair jet-black in a way Lindsay knew would grow in dark. It had been two full days since the girl’s violent birth, after which Lindsay had been out of it, floating along on strong painkillers, antibiotics, and hydration, long enough that when she woke she’d almost forgot why she was in the hospital in the first place.

Her arms felt heavy, her heart slow to beat, her reactions off as she studied her pink-swaddled daughter, Angelique Brianna Love. The girl gave a little newborn startle, her dark eyes flying open and her tiny body tensing up. Lindsay watched as if she were observing someone else holding this baby while she put the girl to her breast, only to have her fail to latch on.

Tears rolled down her cheeks as she offered comfort the only way she knew how, by feeding the girl from her body. But it didn’t work. Her milk had dried up or failed to come in at all from a combination of late pregnancy stress and three days of hard labor, culminating in an emergency C-section.

She’d not been allowed to hold Angelique right after she was born, since her own condition had been precarious, and the doctors wanted to make sure she was stable.

So “Angel,” as her father and brothers now called her, had been held for almost two days straight by her father, who couldn’t take his eyes off her. She’d been fed chemically processed, nourishing fluid from a bottle, as Lindsay had learned when she finally awoke from her morphine-induced stupor.

She had no need of Lindsay’s milk.

A nurse came in and clucked-clucked over Lindsay’s sobs, which had set the baby off on her own crying jag. “Here, honey, you rest some more, poor thing.” She took the baby and gave her to Anton. “Go to Daddy, there’s a sweetie.”

Lindsay watched Anton feed the girl a bottle, burp her, change her tiny diaper, and then hold her for hours while Lindsay recovered, or convalesced, or whatever it was she was doing. She spent a lot of time staring at the walls of her hospital room, trying to recover her equilibrium, but it eluded her. Tears flowed non-stop. She couldn’t choke down any food, even favorites her friends brought her. They’d ooh and aah over her daughter’s perfection, then pat Anton on the shoulder, and practically give the man a gold medal for “helping out.”

Finally, the doctors claimed her medically healed and sent her home. She spent a week in her room, crying, sleeping, or staring the small TV Anton put in there for her, while her husband and her boys took care of the infant. Lindsay rarely heard a peep out of her, which meant she hardly was ever put down.

“You’re spoiling her, Anton,” she’d say, angry and not understanding why. “Go on. Leave me be.”

She stared at the ugly, re-opened scar on her lower stomach, recalling the time Anton had kissed it after Dom’s birth, and their physical reconnection after that. The doctors had, without her knowledge or permission, rendered her sterile while they “had her open” after Angelique’s birth.

“It was best,” one of them, a smirking young man barely out of medical school, declared. “Another pregnancy could kill her,” he’d claimed to Anton as a way of scaring the poor man into signing the paper for a tubal ligation. She was no longer capable of conceiving. Which, on the one hand was a relief, but on the other, gave her another excuse to cry and ignore how much her family needed her.

That was what did it. Those words, coming from her best friend’s mouth. Both Tanya and Marianne were patient with her at first. They took turns with the boys, helping so Anton could work a few hours a week. Lindsay’s brothers took them, too, sometimes overnight, or on elaborate fishing and camping trips she heard about after the fact from Kieran, who spent hours at her side. Antony, Dominic and Aiden avoided her bedroom, as if they were afraid of what they’d see.

During Lindsay’s seventh week home, on a bright Sunday morning, Tanya marched in and threw open the shades, making Lindsay protest and cover her face.

“Honey,” her friend said, “this is the day the Lord has made for Lindsay Halloran Love. Your family is out there, dressed for church. I’m in here to get you up, into a shower and some decent clothes. Let’s go. I’m through babying you.”

Lindsay glared at her. “You don’t get to boss me.”

“I’m not bossing you. I’m simply no longer enabling you to ignore the fact that all your boys, and that precious baby girl, are in desperate need of their mama. Come on, now.”

Tanya smiled and held out a hand. Lindsay took it, let herself be pulled up and out of bed and back where she belonged, anchoring the Love family. Which she did, but from a different perspective, and at somewhat of a distance, managing everything she could and praying over the rest.