Page 14 of Every Little Kiss
CHAPTER 4
“I’m sure he was just testing his boundaries,” Liv said to the 120 pounds of coiffed hair andWhen I was a mothercensure staring her down from the other side of the kitchen island.
Carolyn Preston was as known for her generous nature as she was for her unsolicited advice. She’d give a stranger her last dollar—and then her opinion on how to fix his life. She was an expert in every field, quoted Wikipedia as if it were delivered on stone tablets, and insisted on making tuna casserole even though she knew Liv hated tuna.
She was Paxton’s biggest advocate, Liv’s biggest critic—and back from Palm Beach for the summer. When word reached her that Liv needed a sitter, Carolyn had packed up and rented a place across town—even though Liv had offered her the guest room. Liv appreciated the help, but the self-help pamphlets, which were strategically placed throughout the house, she could do without. Saturday night, after a particularly craptastic day at the hospital, she’d reached for her secret stash of red velvet cupcakes only to find a bag of gluten-free bagel chips in their place—and an article on the deadly history of Red Dye No. 5. That morning she’d found her laundry clean and folded on her bed, with a book titledThe Proper Widow’s Handbook to Grievinglying atop her black lace nightie.
“I considered bringing the cookie to Paxton’s room, but what would that teach him?” Carolyn threw her hands in the air as if this one cookie was the difference between Paxton speaking or not.
“It was just his first day of camp,” Liv said, hanging her bag off the back of a kitchen chair and heading straight for the fridge. “You know Pax—he has to warm up to the idea.”
“He doesn’t need to warm up—he needs to toughen up,” Carolyn said, sounding more upset than angry. “And giving him these pep talks in front of his peers isn’t helping him any.”
Liv gave her a big eyebrow raise. “Are you checking up on me again?”
“Of course not!” Carolyn sounded offended, as if she hadn’t tailed Liv to the therapist’s office, only to interrogate the poor therapist about her grandson’s condition after they’d left. “I just asked the counselor when I picked him up if you were hovering.”
Liv reached past the soda and grabbed the bottle of wine in the back. “What do you want me to do, slow the car down to a soft roll and kick him out?”
“You can park, but maybe let him walk into the building himself. That’s what I did with Sam. He cried himself sick when I dropped him off at preschool, but instead of coddling him and rewarding the negative behavior, I gave him the confidence to handle it on his own. And I think Sam turned out just fine,” Carolyn said proudly.
Sam had turned out to be a brilliant surgeon who was confident and resourceful and had this amazing ability to connect. It was what had drawn Liv to him in the first place. The way he could focus solely on one person, in the moment, made her feel special—safe. It was this intense tunnel vision that had allowed him to earn his patients’ trust and grow his practice so fast.
But over time, he began to give so much of himself to his profession that there wasn’t enough left over for Liv and Paxton. A problem that was at the heart of nearly every argument they’d ever had.
Including their last.
Liv plucked a wineglass from the cabinet and sat at the counter. “Paxton isn’t like Sam. He’s his own person, and he needs to heal in his own time.”
“Well, while he’s hiding away from everyone, the world is moving on. I just don’t want him to get left behind.”
Liv wanted to point out that her son was probably hiding because of the awful tuna smell wafting from the oven, but she didn’t say anything. Mainly because she was too angry over the whole “world moving on” bit.
Maybe for other people moving on was easier. For Liv, the journey had been painful and hard-earned, so she couldn’t fault her son for resisting. He hadn’t just lost his father—he’d lost half of his little world. And every step forward meant one step farther from that peaceful, happy time. Farther from the dreams and a future neither one of them wanted to say goodbye to.
Her marriage might not have been perfect, but it was hers. And she’d loved Sam—even when he’d driven her crazy. She often wondered if that was the problem. That if things had been perfect before their time together had come to an end, if their family had been solid, then maybe moving on wouldn’t feel like such a betrayal.
Liv had still been mourning the dreams she’d had for their marriage when the sheriff showed up on her doorstep and took a sledgehammer to the already splintered foundation.
She was doing her best to piece together the fragments, but there were missing pieces, and she’d accepted that. Her world would never be the same, but at least it was starting to resemble something close to normal.
A new kind of normal, Liv liked to think of it. They might not function like other families, but they’d both gotten dressed this morning and left the house. That constituted forward progress, in her book.
“I know, and he’ll get there,” Liv promised. “It will just take longer and have a few more bumps in the road than most kids. But you had to have known that when you signed him up for the camp.”
“I didn’t sign him up for that camp,” Carolyn said, as if horrified by the idea.
Surprised by this information, Liv clarified, “You said he needed to go to camp, be around kids.”
“Yes. Music camp or science camp, something that would give the boy structure, direction. Not a free-for-all fun day where the biggest achievement is who can belch the loudest.”
Liv would be thrilled if Paxton won a belching contest, because that was what most six-year-old boys did. But right then, she was more interested in who had covered Paxton’s tuition. Needed to know why she’d received a letter from the local parks-and-recreation office stating that Paxton had been gifted a coveted spot in the summer camp. And why Carolyn had insisted on spending the summer here when she’d been so anxious to leave Sequoia Lake not so long ago.
“So you didn’t pay for his camp as an early birthday present?” she asked, because if it hadn’t been Carolyn, then who was their fairy godmother?
Ever since Sam’s death, little presents had shown up on Liv’s doorstep. Paxton’s birthday, Christmas, even Easter. It was never anything extravagant, just perfect little presents to make the holidays easier to swallow.
Liv had asked her friends, coworkers, even the ladies from Living for Love, but everyone had sworn that they weren’t the secret Good Samaritan. The only person left was Sam’s mom.
