Page 14 of At Last

“You made chiwi?”

Not wanting to deal with the aftereffects of Duke having been here and Jade not getting to see him, and since she wouldn’t be seeing him again, I lie. “Yes.”

“Okay Mama, can I have chocwet miwk?”

“Sure, baby.”

Then I turn to run back downstairs.

I ladle her a small bowl of Duke’s delicious chili, butter a slice of cornbread, and mix up a glass of chocolate milk. Everything is placed on a serving tray that has small legs at each of the corners to form a table, which I’d pulled from the cupboard above the refrigerator. We typically use them for eating breakfast in bed, or eating dinner in front of the television.

Back upstairs, inside her room, I set the tray down on her desk to prop several pillows behind Jade’s back and neck to give her more of a seated upright position. Then I set the tray on her lap and hand her the remotes to her pink princess flat screen and the one to play DVDs.

Before I leave, I load the DVD player with her favorite princess movie, move to kiss her forehead, and walk to my room to shower.

Duke’s sweet, sensual touch lingers on my body. I have to get it off. Erase him from my memory. I loved hanging with the women at the clubhouse, but they belong to the Lords. I belong to no one, and since the clubhouse belongs tohim, well, I’ll have to stay away. At least Elise got a clean bill of health. If she needs me once her husband returns, I’ll see her at her house.

The water scalds my ‘peaches and cream’ skin to bright strawberry. Not that it makes a difference, he’s not justonmy skin. In a couple of days he’d gottenunderit. I turn the water off and step onto the fluffy, powder blue bathmat, letting the water drip down my back and legs. Eventually, I pull an even fluffier powder blue towel from the bar next to the bathtub, bend so my hair hangs flipped forward in front of me, and wrap the towel around my head like a pretty, pastel turban.

I slip on my favorite lavender, terrycloth robe, tie it securely around my waist, and walk back to Jade’s room to check on her. She happily sings along with the blonde princess on the screen, so I don’t bother her. But move back downstairs to find a plastic container to store Duke’s leftover chili in.

When I find one big enough to fit it all, he’d made a large pot, I take a smaller container for Jade and me to have tomorrow. The rest I scrape into the larger container and stow it in the freezer. After, I find a zipper bag for the rest of the cornbread, wash up all the dinner dishes, make sure the doors are locked, then I sit on the sofa avoiding the spots where Duke played with me, and turn on the History Channel. A WWII documentary. Cannon fire blazes across the television. Loudboomserupt through the speakers.

What would normally hold my rapt attention, barely registers. I watch blankly, numbly. I’d feel bad about moving Jade and I again, because she’s popular here among the preschool set. She has a best friend, is going to slumber parties and everything. But maybe, even though Thornbriar needs a doctor, maybe they don’t need Caitlin Brennan as a doctor.

Eventually I nod off. Until I hear a crash from upstairs that startles me awake. I jump from the sofa, remembering that I’d neglected to take Jade’s tray, and figuring she’d fallen asleep. The tray must have crashed to the floor.

In Jade style, she remains sound asleep. Luckily she ate every drop of her chili, so even with the bowl tipped upside-down on her carpet, there’s none to stain. Sippy cup of chocolate milk drained, too. Careful to keep quiet, I collect the dishes and walk back downstairs to wash hers out.

And because the shit of the night refuses to end, when my hands are wet and sudsy, my phone rings. I wipe them on my robe and run to answer it. There’s no need to look at the number because the location tells me everything I need to know. It’s an out of country number. Sydney, Australia flashes across the screen. I huff out a breath big enough to blow the hair dangling in front of my eye out of the way.

Aiden-Freaking-Murphy.

Um,no. He abandoned us for a woman in Australia. I don’t even care if he’s dead and calling from the underworld. For three months I was stuck in Ireland by myself, closing down my grandmother’s estate, not that she had much of one left. My grandma liked to, as she’d said so many times over the years, “suck the marrow from the bones of life.”

I had a two-year-old who kept asking where her daddy was. Yet there was me, sitting by the phone hoping, praying that the jerk-face would call to tell me he’d made a terrible mistake.

So many tears shed over him, I couldn’t keep count. And then when he finally called, he didn’t want me, he didn’t even ask abouthis daughter. Oh no, Aiden wanted the freaking antique locket he’d given me on the night he asked me to move in with him. It was his grandmother’s locket. A locket he’d found out was, “worth a mint.”

What? Did he want to re-gift his gift of love? Or maybe he intended to sell it off to take his woman on a tropical vacation.

Either way, I wouldn’t send it. It was a gift. Though, Aiden was so right, itwasworth a mint. And any chance of reconciliation vanished with that phone call, after which, when I told him I wouldn’t give back the locket, he cleared out Jade’s saving’s account that we’d started for her when she was born.

Yeah, guess what looser?I keep staring at the words Sydney, Australia. Now Ican’tsend it. Because when Isold it, the mint the gold exchange paid me funded Jade and my move back to America.

He calls now every five or six months. I’ve never answered, not once. In honor of my grandmother, I took a sabbatical from work so Jade and I could travel the country a little before we had to commit to a location. But once I settled in Thornbriar and opened my practice, it wasn’t hard for him to find my number and for the calls to start up again. You can find almost anyone through the internet.

The ringing finally stops. Hopefully this time he’ll get it. I won’t answer his call. I’ll never answer his call.

---