Czytaj książkę: «For Love Or Money»

For William Wright Gumser. You are our miracle. Our gift.

And I hope you know the joy you bring just by being alive. Aunt Tara loves you!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

“FORGET IT.”

“Kels, I really want to make this right.”

“Whatever.”

Sometimes a guy had to know when he wasn’t going to win. Sometimes even knowing, he couldn’t quit trying. Most particularly when his adversary was his thirteen-year-old daughter.

And in this case, he couldn’t quit even if he did win. Because he had something else he had to discuss with the woman-child sitting on the passenger side of his SUV. She’d flipped the button to activate the heated leather seats when she’d climbed in.

At which time he’d glanced at the outdoor temperature reading. A balmy 85 degrees. In the desert. California desert. And wisely kept his mouth shut.

“I’m sorry I was late. Dan Rhodes stopped in just as I was leaving. He’s starting tonight and needed a cortisone shot.”

Dan Rhodes, a Palm Desert high school basketball star and one of her late mother’s former students.

“Yeah, well, I told Melissa you’d look at her knee.”

And he’d let Kelsey down by not being at the dance studio on time to pick her up. Never mind that half the time when he showed up as scheduled, she harrumphed because she liked to hang out and watch the older girls—the ones in “company”—take class and run through routines.

“I’ll look at it tomorrow, before class,” he said now, though technically, unless her parents consented to him treating Melissa, there was nothing he could do but advise her to get it looked at. Which he’d already done. Three times in the past month.

As an orthopedist specializing in sports medicine, he’d given the girl’s dad his card. But he’d never heard from them.

“Whatever.” She was staring out the side window, her expression...bland. He’d been told—by someone among all the well-meaning counselor types who’d flooded forth to advise him after Kelsey’s mother had died—to watch out for belligerence. He’d be happy for it. For anything beyond...bland.

“Was Carlie at dance tonight?” Kelsey’s best friend had been having issues since Kelsey was chosen for junior company and she wasn’t.

Her head swung around then, eyes almost piercing as she studied him in the falling dusk. “What’s with your sudden interest in Carlie?”

Sudden? He gave his head a mental shake—ordering it to get in gear. “She’s your best friend.”

Kelsey’s snort didn’t bode well. “Not for like a year, Dad. Shows you how much you pay attention.” That last was uttered under her breath, so he pretended not to hear.

“You just want to know about Barbara.”

Carlie’s mother. They’d gone out. Once. Shortly after her divorce. When the girls had both been on a Girl Scout trip.

“If I wanted to know about Barbara, I’d call her and ask how she’s doing,” he said now, firmness entering his voice. It didn’t come often. But it was there when it needed to be. “Be angry with me for being late—that’s valid. But don’t disrespect me, Kels. I—”

“I know.” Her tone completely docile now, she cut him off. “You don’t deserve it, and I’m sorry, Daddy.” He could hear the tremor in her voice and hated that even more than the cattiness. “You’re the best and I love you.”

“I love you, too, squirt.” He cringed as the endearment slipped out before he remembered that he wasn’t supposed to use it anymore. The mandate had come down that summer. She hated it when he called her that. Made her feel like a kid, she’d said.

“You haven’t called me that in a while.”

“You told me not to.”

“Well, you weren’t supposed to really stop.”

He wasn’t going to win. No matter how hard he tried. Because she was thirteen. And he just didn’t get it.

* * *

“LOOK, JANE, I GET IT. You need to pretend that the kid’s gonna be normal someday. As soon as his muscles develop. But he isn’t gonna be. Ever. And I don’t have the cash to fund your need to make him something he ain’t. Do yourself a favor, and me and maybe him, too, and just accept what is.”

If she hadn’t been standing in the middle of a bay in Dillon’s car repair business—his father’s business before him—Janie might have clenched her fists. Or done something even worse, like start to cry.

In the olden days, back when she and Dillon had been so in love they’d been crazy with it, her tears had brought him to his knees. These days, they gave him strength.

“I’m not asking for a favor, Dillon,” she told him, remaining calm by thinking of her son, sitting at a table in his preschool class, his tongue sticking out of his mouth, his face just inches from the table, while he put pencil to paper. If they were lucky, he’d make a mark that was distinguishable. “Per our decree, you are responsible for half of Dawson’s medical bills.”

“Speech therapy isn’t medical.”

“The state disagrees with you.” She handed him the paperwork she’d brought, showing that medical insurance would pay for the therapy. They just had to come up with the co-pay. A measly 20 percent. And she had to have the time off work to see that he got there.

The extra hours, those in which she helped her son exercise muscles and do his therapy “homework,” she was already handling. Like every single time Dawson ate and they played the blowing-bubbles-in-your-cup-through-your-straw game. Or every time she asked him for a kiss and he licked her cheek before turning to kiss her. They were games his speech pathologist had helped her design to strengthen his low muscle tone.

“If so, then why are you only just now bringing it to me? Who’s been paying all along?” His tone, challenging as always, hurt. Still.

How could a man turn his back on his own son? Be embarrassed by him? How could Janie still hope that someday Dillon would realize how phenomenal, how perfect, their son really was?

“The state paid, Dillon. Through age three. Dawson just turned four. Now insurance pays, but not the co-pay part.”

Because Dillon provided the cheapest insurance he could get for his son.

“You’re just doing this to get back at me, aren’t you?” Wiping his greasy hands on a red towel he grabbed from his rolling toolbox, he walked toward his office. When they were both inside he shut his door.

The smell of grease and gas emanating from his overalls was one thing she did not miss. Dillon had been in college when they’d met—studying business. He’d had big plans. And then they’d gotten married and his father’d had a heart attack and he’d taken over the garage. She’d supported him on all of it. Had loved him even more for it. She just had never gotten used to the smell of grease that permeated him at the dinner table. Even after he’d showered...

You’re just doing this to get back at me. His words were no less grinding even after taking a second to step away from them.

“What on earth are you talking about?” she asked, not ready for another one of their asinine confrontations. The kind where he hurled ludicrous accusations like they were truth and she walled herself against them.

But she’d known when she’d gotten up that morning that the moment was coming. She’d been happy the night before when she’d received confirmation in writing that Dillon had to help with the co-pay. She’d given herself the night to enjoy the small victory. The small feeling of relief.

And she’d arisen that day with the knowledge that if she did not hand deliver the paperwork to her ex-husband, in front of others, he’d spend months requesting it. Over and over again. Denying, each time, that he’d received it. And if she sent it certified post, he’d refuse to sign.

She could take him back to court.

If she had the money.

“You can’t possibly think that I purposely had a child with Down syndrome so that I could somehow get back at you?”

“I’m not an idiot, Jane. Of course you wouldn’t do that.” He sat, pulling at his mustache as he looked up at her standing by the closed door.

Did he know she kept the handle within reach on purpose? Because it was the only way she could make herself confront him? Knowing that she could choose to escape at any point.

“I need money, Dillon. I’ve covered the past two months of co-pays. I need you to give me this month’s.”

Until last night’s letter had come, she’d been afraid she would have to borrow the money again.

At some point, her friends were going to run in the opposite direction when they saw her coming.

“And I think you’re still doing this therapy thing because it’s your way of making me pay. You’re just trying to get more money out of me. You don’t want me to move on, get ahead, because you can’t. But I’m not the one who insisted on going through with a pregnancy with a known birth defect...”

Of course, having once been the love of her life, he knew best how to push her buttons.

“I am not trying to keep you from getting ahead.” With extreme focus, and having had a lot of practice, she ignored the worst of his barbs.

“I didn’t want to think so, but I’m not the only one saying it anymore.”

“Who else is saying it?” She hated herself for asking. Heard the question come out of her mouth before she’d thought about it, enabling his ability to get her going...

“Wendy.”

“Who’s Wendy?”

“The woman who’s been living with me for the past three months.”

She hadn’t known. He’d known she hadn’t known.

“You’re obligated to pay this money, Dillon. Please just give me a check and I’ll leave you alone.”

And Wendy. Leave him and Wendy alone.

She didn’t want Dillon for herself. Hadn’t wanted to be married to him since the second he’d denounced their son as not worthy of being born. The doctor had offered a medical abortion because they’d caught the Down syndrome diagnosis during her first trimester. Dillon had done everything he could to get Janie to agree to the procedure. He’d even made an appointment with the doctor’s office, behind her back, to have it done.

And yet...for many years they’d been a couple she’d thought would be together forever. Hearing that he was with someone else, even though they’d been divorced since before Dawson was born...

A part of her died.

Another part needed a good cry.

“You think this therapy is so important, pay for it yourself.” He looked smug. Arms crossed. His lips not smiling but his eyes looking like he was.

How could she ever have been in love with this man?

“I can’t.”

“Well, I can’t, either.”

“Yes, you can, Dillon.” She waved around her at the four bays behind them, all full, the wall-size calendar at the side of his desk and the Dry Erase board, both also completely full. “You’re doing well. Paying your obligation for your son won’t even put a dent in your petty cash.”

“And you resent that, don’t you? That I’m doing so well? That Wendy and I can afford to take a Caribbean cruise over Christmas? That we went to Vegas for Thanksgiving...”

She hadn’t known. Had never done either. But she and Dillon had always talked about doing both.

Focus.

She thought of her baby boy’s face when he’d high-fived her that morning because he’d put his tennis shoes on all by himself, crossed the laces and considered them tied. He’d been happier than when she gave him ice cream. And she was happier, too. So much more than she’d ever have been without him. More than a cruise or any vacation would ever make her.

She was doing this for Dawson. Getting the money for Dawson.

“You’re legally obligated to pay this.” And he knew she had a friend who would see that he did. But not until he made her beg. “I need the money, Dillon.”

“You’re desperate.” Eyes narrowing, he leaned forward. “You lost another job, didn’t you?”

She could lie. But knew he’d find out soon enough. He always did.

So she didn’t lie. She just stood there. As mute as Dawson would be without the therapies Dillon wanted to deny him. He had no way of knowing what Dawson sounded like. He’d never met the boy he’d fathered. Had no idea how Dawson sounded when he tried to communicate with her. No way of knowing that the therapy was helping Dawson learn to talk clearly enough to be understood.

“When are you going to admit that I was right all along? Look at you, Janie. What’s this, three jobs in as many years? Admit that you made a mistake. That you should have taken the choice we were given back when you had that first ultrasound. You should have ended the pregnancy.”

The words still hurt. Every single time. Because they deleted the happiest person she’d ever met from the face of the earth.

Gripping the door handle, she swung around.

“Janie.”

His tone had changed. For a second there, he could have been the man she’d married.

She looked over her shoulder. Maybe to remind herself that that man had never existed.

He was standing, pulled a few bills out of his wallet and walked over to hand them to her.

“Here,” he said. “Never let it be said that I don’t stand up to my obligations.”

If it had been just her, she’d have spit on those bills. But they were hundreds. Would pay for far more than a few months’ co-pays. She took them. Looked him in the eye as she said, “Thank you.”

“You deserve better than this, Janie.” He sounded sad.

And she figured he should be. She had the absolute best life had to offer waiting for her in a preschool across town.

While he’d lost the only thing of importance he’d ever had.

And didn’t even know it.

CHAPTER TWO

“KELS?” BURKE TAPPED on his daughter’s slightly ajar door just before ten that night. He’d let her have the evening her way. They’d stopped for the rice and salad bowl she’d wanted for dinner. He’d done some work on his laptop while sitting with her through the shows she’d chosen to watch on TV—if you could call her dead stare “watching.”

He’d helped with the laundry—even though it was her night to do a load and she’d said she was fine doing it alone...

“I’m decent,” she called through the door after a full thirty seconds had passed.

They’d had that talk last summer, too—with the help of her pediatric psychiatrist, Dr. Zimmers. He wasn’t to walk in unannounced now that she was wearing a bra and having her period. Didn’t matter that Burke was a doctor. He was a bone doctor. Kelsey’s emphasis on “bone.” And she was his daughter. And she had things to be modest about now.

“Can I come in?” he called.

“I guess.”

Better than whatever. He missed the little girl who used to beg to sit on his lap. Or ride on his shoulders. Ride high, Daddy! He could hear that tiny little voice like it was yesterday.

But it wasn’t. Not even the day before that. More like a lifetime ago.

She was on her bed, propped up with pillows, her tablet on her lap. Wearing the flannel, black-with-pink-heart pajama pants he’d bought her just before school started. With an old T-shirt left over from when her mother was a seventh-grade English teacher and insisted the three of them show team spirit, wear team colors and go to all of the athletic activities they could make.

Palm Desert’s vibrant red clashed with the pink heart. The vibrant gold, not so much.

Her long brown hair, usually in a ponytail, hung around her face. At least she was leaving it long. She’d tried to insist on coloring it purple that summer. He’d held firm against that one.

Leaning over to glance at what she was doing on her tablet, Burke took a seat on the side of the double bed. Keeping a respectable distance.

She turned her tablet around. “It’s just Friday’s Fashion Boutique, Dad.” She named an interactive fashion app that he’d seen her use many times before. Kind of like a modern-day Barbie doll, his mother had said when his folks had come from Florida the previous Christmas.

“A good parent checks, Kels,” he reminded her. Another thing he was not going to budge on. All parental controls were in place when it came to her use of electronics and social media.

She had a phone. She could call and had limited text capability—enough to reach him when necessary. Period. And he could see the numbers she called and texted every day if he chose to check.

He didn’t. But she knew he could.

“I don’t care if you look.” She shrugged, turning her tablet back around. She didn’t fight him. Never had when it came to her limited use of social media. And from the horror stories he’d heard from his peers, nurses, even his patients, he had real reason to be thankful for that.

“Dr. Zimmers called me today,” he said, getting right to the point.

She continued to move her finger along the ten-inch glass screen. Tapping and dragging.

“She wants to put you on medication.” He named a brand. Didn’t figure it would mean anything to her.

“I’m not taking it. You can force it down my throat and then I’ll stick my finger right behind it and throw it back up.”

Thirteen-year-old drama queen had joined them.

“We need to talk about that.”

Kelsey’s gaze was resolute when she put her tablet facedown on the mattress and looked at him. In that instant, he could have been looking at himself in the mirror when he was getting ready to put his foot down with her.

“We’ve talked about it, Dad. I’m not going to start taking some upper pill because I’m sad that my mom died. Or because I get sad sometimes when I think about it.”

“You’re sleeping way too much.”

“So get me up earlier. You’re the parent. Help me out.”

He could do that. “You’re a grump in the morning.”

“You can take it.”

She had a point.

“You spend too much time alone.”

“I’m dancing again. Be happy with that for now.”

“It’s not my happiness I’m worried about,” he said. “You know how long it’s been since I’ve heard you laugh out loud, Kels? Or since I’ve heard a note of excitement in your voice?”

He could talk to her about an imbalance of neurotransmitters that could lead to serious depression if not counterbalanced.

“Then give me something to get excited about.” Her quiet words, spoken to her tablet, stopped his thought process cold.

Rather than arguing with him, or giving him the rote “whatever,” she’d actually given him a positive opening. In two years’ time, it was a first.

Expecting a request for a smartphone, a trip to Disneyland or a week off school, he said, “I’m not talking about a momentary fix, Kelsey. You know that.” Though he was tempted to give her any of those things, all of them, to reward the open, non-defensive approach. “Maybe you need to try the medication...”

If Lil, Kelsey’s mom, had been able to take something for her paranoia, would she still be alive? Not that the paranoia had been the actual cause of death. No, the onset of labor at the beginning of the third trimester had done that.

“Dad, you promised me...”

A promise he might have made a mistake in making. Lil had, by example, made her daughter petrified of “drugging herself up.” She’d been almost fanatical about medication—to the point of toughing it out through headaches so she didn’t have to take an over-the-counter painkiller. She’d had Kelsey on the same pain management regime.

It had taken Burke getting really angry, raising-his-voice angry, before Kelsey had taken the antibiotics she’d needed for strep throat the previous year.

The girl seemed to think putting drugs in her body was disloyal to her mother. But there was so much she didn’t know. Some things Burke hoped to God she never knew.

Still, antidepressant medication was not going to be as easy a win.

Maybe because he didn’t want to medicate her, long term, either. Not unless she truly needed the help.

“It’s been two years since Mom died.”

“So give me something to get excited about.”

There it was again. That opening.

In all of the advice he’d received over the past two years, most of it well-meaning, and some of it professionally sought, no one had told him that raising a thirteen-year-old was going to make him dizzy. He’d never have believed, even a year before, that his sweet, rational, logical-beyond-her-years little girl was going to morph into a confusing mass of humanity that he could no more predict than the weather.

“What, Kels? What can I give you that you’d be excited about?” Knowing as he asked the question that he’d walk through fire to get it for her. As long as he didn’t think it would do more long-term harm than good.

She grabbed her tablet. Swiped and tapped so fast he didn’t know how she could possibly even read what she was choosing. She stopped. Seemed to be skimming the page. And turned the tablet around to him.

“This,” she said. “I wanted to enter but I can’t because I’m just a kid, and besides, you’re the master chef left among us.”

Lil had been a certified chef. Official ranking. In addition to teaching, she’d put in the hours necessary in professional food service. Because her dream was to open her own catering business. She’d talked him into taking classes, too, while he’d still been in med school. As something they could do to spend a little stress-free time together. And to his surprise, cooking had been right up his alley. Engaging him scientifically and yet offering him a relaxation he’d been unable to find elsewhere.

“I’m not a master chef,” he told her. He’d obtained a culinary art certification. That was all.

He looked at her tablet.

Made a cursory visual pass. Then read every word in the headline.

She was handing him the tablet, so he took it. Heart sinking.

She wanted him to be on a reality cooking show. As in, television. Like he could just pick up a phone and volunteer.

Like he had a chance in...any chance at all of making it on the show.

“It’s that one filmed here.” Kelsey was up on her knees, beside him now. He swore he could still smell that sweet baby-powder scent that had entered their home with her thirteen years before. “In Palm Desert. Family Secrets. Remember, they had that Thanksgiving special where they chose the first one of this year’s contestants...”

He remembered.

He’d wanted to go to Disneyland over the holiday. Thanksgiving—a food day by all counts—was one of the hardest without Lil. Kelsey wasn’t bouncing back from her mother’s death at all. If anything, with the onset of puberty, her moroseness was getting worse. He’d thought to distract her by heading to the coast for the holiday.

Instead she’d been adamant, to the point of tears, which always suckered him, that they cook dinner together, with all the trappings, and spend the day watching cooking shows. To honor Lil.

“So now it’s open auditions for the other seven contestants. It’s right here in town, Dad. You want me to be excited about something? Audition for this show.” She’d scooted closer, was resting her chin on his shoulder as she looked at the tablet with him.

“You have to use your own family recipes,” she said as he sat there, feeling more lost, more alone, than ever before. “It’s the recipes that are the real competition,” she went on, her voice gaining an energy that seemed to encompass their entire world.

“There’s an audition, and then four weeks of competition between eight candidates. Then whoever wins at least one of the four competitions goes to the final round. Each week you’re given a category and you have to make your family recipe with a secret ingredient. It says here that the candidates have to appear for one day of extraneous taping, too, before the competition starts.”

She was setting him up to let her down. He could see it so clearly even if she couldn’t. There was no way he was good enough to compete against real chefs.

“You can use Mom’s recipes, Dad! It’s a way for her to get what she wanted—to have her cooking recognized and appreciated. It’s a way to keep her alive. Like make her immortal or something. You have to do this...”

It was best to be honest with her. To face the tough stuff head-on. He’d been told. And he also just knew...

“I can’t.”

She slouched back. “I knew you’d say that.” There was no accusation in her tone. Just resignation. “That’s why I didn’t say anything before. It’s probably too late anyway. The auditions are this weekend and they were only taking walk-ons, without preregistering, if they had space.”

She hadn’t been going to ask him. Until he’d told her they had to find something to be excited about.

Lil, if you can hear me, now’s the time to jump in. What happens if I try and fail? Do I send our baby girl further into the dark hole she can’t seem to climb out of?