“Yeah, when was that? When your tongue was down my throat or when your hand was down my pants? The way I see it, there was some pretty mutual using going on.”
Georgeanne glared at him through her red haze. They weren’t talking about the same thing, yet it was all tied together. “You lied to me.”
“About what?”
Instead of giving him the opportunity to lie again, Georgeanne marched into the kitchen and rewound his answering machine. Then she hit the play button and watched John’s face as his attorney’s voice filled the silent room. His features gave nothing away.
“You’re making too big a deal out of this,” he said as soon as the tape clicked off. “It’s not what you think.”
“Is that your lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“Then any further contact between us will take place through attorneys.” She was deadly calm when she said, “Stay away from Lexie.”
“Not a chance.” He towered over her. A big, powerful man used to getting his way by the sheer force of his will.
Georgeanne wasn’t intimidated. “You have no place in our lives.”
“I’m Lexie’s father, not some made-up asshole named Tony. You’ve lied to her about me all of her life. Now it’s time she knew the truth. Whatever problems we have between us doesn’t change the fact that Lexie is my little girl.”
“She doesn’t need you.”
“Like hell.”
“I won’t let you near her.”
“You can’t stop me.”
She knew that he was probably right. But she also knew that she would do anything and everything to make sure she didn’t lose her daughter. “Stay away,” she warned one last time, then turned to leave. Her steps faltered.
Lexie stood in the doorway to the kitchen. She was still dressed in her pajamas and her hair still stuck up around her head. Her gaze was locked on John as if she’d never seen him before. Georgeanne didn’t know how long Lexie had been there, but she feared what she might have heard. She grabbed Lexie’s hand and dragged her from the house.
“Don’t do this, Georgeanne,” John called after her. “We can work this out.” But she didn’t turn back. She’d given him far too much already. She’d given him her heart, her soul, and her trust. She wouldn’t give him the most important thing in her life. She could live without her heart, but she couldn’t live without Lexie.
Mae picked up the newspaper on Georgeanne’s porch, then walked into the house. Lexie sat on the couch with a raspberry-and-cream-cheese muffin in her hand while the television blared the theme song to The Brady Bunch. Raspberry-and-cream-cheese muffins were Lexie’s favorite and an obvious attempt to soothe the ouchie with sugar. But after what Georgeanne had told her when she’d phoned the night before, Mae wasn’t sure a gooey muffin would make everything all better.
“Where’s your mom?” Mae asked as she tossed the newspaper on a chair.
“Outside,” Lexie answered without taking her eyes from the screen.
Mae decided to leave Lexie alone for now and stepped into the kitchen to make herself a cup of espresso. Then she headed out back and found Georgeanne standing beside the brick porch pruning her Albertine roses and tossing the dead flowers into a wheelbarrow. For the last three years, Mae had watched Georgeanne diligently coax the tangerine roses up the pergola framing her back door. A profusion of pink foxglove and lavender delphinium crowded flower beds at Georgeanne’s feet and crammed the garden along the fence. Morning dew clung to the delicate petals and wet the bottom half of Georgeanne’s robe. Beneath the orange silk, she wore a wrinkled T-shirt and a pair of white cotton panties. Her hair hung from a ratted ponytail and the mauve fingernail polish on her right hand was badly chipped as if Georgeanne had picked at it. The situation with Lexie was worse than Mae had thought.
“Did you sleep at all last night?” Mae asked from her position on the last step.
Georgeanne shook her head and reached for another wilted rose. “Lexie won’t talk to me. She wouldn’t talk to me yesterday on the drive home, and she won’t talk to me today. She didn’t drift off to sleep until around two a.m.” She tossed another rose into the wheelbarrow. “What’s she doing in there?”
“Watching The Brady Bunch,” Mae answered as she moved across the brick patio. She set her coffee on a wrought-iron table and sat in a matching chair. “When you called last night, you didn’t tell me she was so upset that she couldn’t sleep. That’s not like her at all.”
Georgeanne dropped her hands and looked over her shoulder. “I told you she wasn’t talking. That’s not at all like her either.” She walked toward Mae and set her pruning shears on the table. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried to talk to her, but she just ignores me. At first I thought that she might be angry because she was having so much fun at the beach and I made her leave. Now I know that was just wishful thinking on my part. She must have heard John and me arguing.” Georgeanne sank down on the chair beside Mae, a ratty lump of misery. “She knows I lied to her about her father.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I have to make an appointment to talk to a lawyer.” She yawned and propped her chin on her fists. “I don’t know who yet, or where I’m going to get the money for the legal fees.”
“Maybe John won’t really go through with custody. Maybe if you talk to him, he-”
“I don’t want to talk to him,” Georgeanne interrupted, suddenly alive. She sat up straight in her chair and her eyes narrowed. “He’s a liar and a sneak, and he has no principles at all. He played on my weakness. I should have had sex years ago. I should have listened to you. You were right. I just kind of exploded and became a nymphomaniac. I guess sex isn’t the sort of thing you should put off until you explode.”
Mae felt her jaw drop. “Get out!”
“Oh, I’m out. I’m way out.”
“With the hockey player?”
Georgeanne nodded.
“Again?”
“You’d think I’d have learned the first time.”
Mae didn’t know what to say. Georgeanne was one of the most sexually repressed women she knew. “How’d that happen?”
“I don’t know. We were getting along and it just did.”
Mae didn’t consider herself promiscuous. She just didn’t always say no when she should. By contrast, Georgeanne always said no.
“He tricked me. He was nice and so good with Lexie and I forgot. Well, I didn’t really forget what a jerk he could be, I just sort of let myself forgive.”
Mae didn’t believe in forgiving and forgetting. She liked the Old Testament wrath-of-God stuff and believed in an eye for an eye. But she could see how a good-looking guy like John could make a woman overlook a few things-like being dumped at an airport after a one-night stand-if the woman was attracted to two-hundred pounds of solid muscle, which, of course, Mae was not.
“He didn’t have to go that far. I was giving him everything he asked for. Each time he wanted to see Lexie, I arranged it.” Anger mixed with the tears in Georgeanne’s eyes. “He didn’t have to sleep with me. I’m not a charity case.”
Even on her worst hair day, with dark circles and chipped nails, Mae really didn’t believe any man would consider Georgeanne a charity case. “Do you really believe he made love to you because he felt sorry for you?”
Georgeanne shrugged. “I don’t think it was a real hardship for him, but I know he wanted to keep me happy until he and his lawyer could get together and decide what to do about getting custody of Lexie.” She covered her cheeks with her palms. “It’s so humiliating.”
“What can I do to help?” Mae leaned forward and laid her hand on Georgeanne’s shoulder. She would take on the world for the people she loved. There were times in her life when she’d felt as if she had. Not so much anymore, but when Ray had been alive, she’d fought both their battles, especially in high school when big, athletic guys had thought it funny to beat him with wet towels. Ray had hated PE, but Mae had hated the jocks who ruled gym class. “What do you want me to do? Do you want me to talk to Lexie?”