Family Love

“I’m disappointed in you,” he said, watching me slip the dress down over my bra-less body.

“Yeah? Well, take a dang number on that one,” I said, grabbing my shoes. “I gotta go to him. He needs me.”

Cal had on a pair of jeans and soft blue button-down shirt by the time I emerged from the bathroom. “You promised me, remember?” He spun his keys on his finger. “And I’m not letting you break it this time.” He dropped to one knee and held out a ring box.

I sighed dramatically and took it. “Lord have mercy, Calvin, you have the worst timing in the world. My parents’ marriage is breaking up, and you want to propose? And me without my coffee?” But I smiled and slipped the tasteful, classy diamond onto my finger as if there had not been ten years between this time and the last time he’d done it. “Get up, already. We have to go deal with Anton and Lindsay.”

“I adore you, Angelique Love.” Calvin kissed me in that way he always had, making me wish we could ditch all the drama and head back to bed. But I pulled away and gripped his arms.

“I am a handful,” I repeated.

“I’m aware. I have big hands. Let’s go. We can bring everyone coffee and muffins from Jen’s,” he said, naming his sister-in-law’s popular deli.

My brothers, Calvin, and I all loaded a few things into the brewery van, then carried them up the metal stairs to the apartment over the old brewery where Dom had lived for a while. They all stood around, looking lost and useless, making noises about getting some beer, or maybe pizza, until I shooed them the hell out.

Calvin shot me an odd look when I told him to go on, that I needed a few minutes alone with my daddy. But I put my palm alongside his scruffy jaw, kissed him gently, and he left without another word. I watched him a minute and surprised myself by saying a quick, mental prayer of thanks that I finally had been allowed to find my Prince Charming.

“Sit down, Daddy,” I said, once I got past that moment. He stood in the middle of the small combination dining and living room, stubborn on his face and in every line of his body.

I reached into my bag and pulled out a bottle of expensive bourbon, plunked it on the small table, and said it again. “Sit down, Daddy.”

He sat. I poured us healthy portions into a couple of juice glasses and held mine up. He didn’t join me. Just tossed the liquor back fast.

“Why?” I asked him, gesturing at the piss-poor accommodations. I had no other question, really.

“Not your business, Angel,” he growled, reaching for the bottle.

I picked it up. He sat, glaring at me. The silence took on a life of its own for a while. “It is my business. You and Mama are being ridiculous.”

He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I can’t pretend anymore that I don’t care what she did.” His slightly swollen knuckles bulged above the grip of his fingers. “I do care. But I didn’t, then. I couldn’t, you know?”

He glanced up at me, the abject plea on his face forcing me to take a step away and wonder why I’d initiated this potentially devastating discussion. “I was no better. I was worse. I … I cheated, lied, told myself to stop. Stopped. Then would start it up again. Always with the same girl.”

I raised an eyebrow, forcing myself not to voice the words in my head about And that makes what she did okay?

He groaned and put his forehead down on his hands. “I knew what that damn piece of paper was. Where she’d been figuring out the blood types. I’m not a total idiot.”

He pushed his empty glass to me and I refilled it. They’d been yelling about some piece of paper in the hotel, confusing everyone except them. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from saying anything, willing myself to listen for now.

He sighed and leaned back. “I think I knew it the minute she got home from that weekend.” I got a glimpse of him as a man, a frustrated young father, husband to a supremely aggravating woman he adored, and attractive to other women.

That freaked me out so much I gulped my drink, almost choking on it.

“Marry Calvin Morrison, Angel. He’s a good man. He’ll take real good care of you. Better than I ever did of Lindsay.”

“Daddy, that’s self-pity talking now. Stop it.”

He shot me a dark look. But I surged ahead, needing to say these things before I chickened out. “Y’all are only good if you’re together, warts and all. You say you knew, but you raised Aiden as your own. She says she knew about the … the … that woman.” I had to stop and pour myself another one to get past that fact. “And all Mama did was make you fire her, no questions asked. Why make this such a thing now? Such a huge thing. A thing that makes you move out of your own dang house?”

He got up and started pacing the small space, dragging his fingers through his almost all-silver hair.

I sat, drinking and waiting, and—surprisingly—praying in my mind. Finally, he stopped and turned. “I need space, Angelique. I have to think this thing through now that Aiden knows. Now he … he’s so mad we kept it from him that he’s gone and moved to California. And now I know she honestly believed she could keep such a thing from me.” He pointed to his chest. “Me.” He yelled, pounding it now, over and over again.

“From me! I’m the only one who ever got her, understood her, loved her the way she deserved to be loved. But I fucking knew what she’d done and who with. Not because of that damn paper with the blood types, either.”

He slumped against the fridge. “He told me. Joe Patterson. He was a good man, but a man all the same and Lindsay was a beautiful, headstrong, tempting woman.”

My father looked up at the ceiling. When he met my eyes, his were hard and set. “Joe and I had ourselves a conversation, and an understanding. And I expected her to tell me herself after that. But she never … fucking … did. She hid it behind trying to be a supermom and wife. Don’t think I don’t know that. But I love her. God save my soul from the depths of hell, I still do.”

I was gripping the bottle so hard it hurt when I let go, but I did, and got up and went to him. But he sidestepped me, ru

I dropped my arms. We stood glaring at each other for a solid minute.

“Tell her this, Daddy,” I said, my voice rough, tears burning. “You have to. You can’t just give up.” I grabbed his arms. He looked startled. “You are not allowed to give up. Not on this. Not on her.”

He plucked my hands off his arms and held them to his lips. “Oh, Angel,” he said. “My Angel. I think I already have.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

The new Love family reality hit everyone hard. Having lurched from terror at the idea of losing our mother to cancer, through her various setbacks and eventual recovery, we were all raw around the edges. Every brother had experienced his own bit of trauma in between. Plus me and my nonstop ability to screw up my life.

But this, this actual, physical separation of the one unit we’d all considered our touchstone—it was a knife in our backs. It hurt, bad. And we couldn’t reach around and yank it out to stop the pain.

I held off any talk of weddings for a few months, until circumstances dictated that we should elope and have ourselves a kitschy Las Vegas ceremony. We returned from that to learn there were attorneys involved now. My father had actually initiated a divorce. Mama was stoic, a

We hit early spring with a riot of flowers and color. I tried to get my brothers to help me host our parents’ traditional Derby Day party, but they were lukewarm about the idea. Antony was having trouble with his son Josh, he claimed. Kieran was swamped with the end of the school year approaching, plus a bunch of bizarre tension between some new suburbia kids that had moved in, upsetting the delicate balance that is a large high school’s social environment. Dom didn’t even want to discuss having that “stupid fucking party.” He seemed to be the most torn up over our parents’ looming divorce.