And now she wanted me to go shopping with her and her mother.
“She’s not drinking,” Mickey announced rather than repeating the insanity of me shopping with his daughter and ex-wife.
“I’m sorry?” I whispered.
“She isn’t drinking.”
I stared.
“Ash told me. Not the whole week she had them. Not a drop. And when Rhiannon wasn’t around, Ash looked and there’s no liquor in her house. Not wine, which is what she drinks, but not anything and she keeps other shit there for when she has company.”
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
This was incredible.
“I don’t know,” Mickey stated. “Don’t got my hopes up, don’t want my kids’ up. But she’s spoken to me on the phone and I can tell, in the evenings, when she’s slidin’ toward gone, slurrin’ her words, losing track of the conversation. She’s all there. She hasn’t been all there in ten years. Now, she’s all there.”
Could it be that everything was going to turn out right?
Mickey kept going, “So, Ash wants you and Rhiannon to bond. Rhiannon knows this and she wants our daughter to have this. She said you were cool when you answered the door. She knew it was a surprise for you when she showed, not a good one, but you were nice to her. Offered to let her see the kids. Told her it was nice to meet her. It wasn’t good why we got divorced and we didn’t agree on why we got divorced. What we agreed on is that we’d do what we could to make us bein’ apart as easy as possible for the kids. She’s nice. Doesn’t have a mean bone in her body, unless she’s in denial and fuckin’ up her life. That means she will not do you dirty. I don’t suspect she wants you in her crew. I think she just wants her daughter to have somethin’ solid and real. Folks around her who give a shit and also get along. And babe,” he moved closer to me, “it’d mean a fuckuva lot you did this for me too.”
Shit, I had to do this.
Shit, I had to do this.
“I’ll do it.”
His grin was not easy.
It was warm and beautiful and utterly amazing.
“Thanks, Amy,” he whispered.
For that grin, I’d do anything.
Then again, I’d do anything for Mickey.
And Aisling.
“Do anything for your girl, Mickey,” I replied.
That got me more grin until I lost it when he was kissing me.
“You guys gonna stay in there until Armageddon or what?” Cillian shouted and Mickey broke the kiss. “Spaghetti’s ready!”
“Cill! Shut up!” Ash yelled on the heels of Cillian shouting.
“Comin’!” Mickey bellowed on the heels of Ash yelling.
Then he took my hand, pulled me out of his room and we had spaghetti.
* * * * *
“This is beautiful,” Rhiannon decreed.
“I like it,” Aisling said quietly, but from the look on her face, she didn’t like it. She loved it.
It was late Saturday morning. Rhiannon had come to Mickey’s to pick up Ash and me. It was awkward for Rhiannon and me from the get-go but I was working, and knew she was too, at hiding this from Aisling.
I just hoped we were succeeding.
We were now in Bed Bath and Beyond, our first stop.
And I was staring at bed linens that were sophisticated and grown up and I wouldn’t mind having them in my house.
The problem was that I worried they were expensive.
The comforter was a muted green with an equally muted sheen, two wide strips of pretty beading up the sides. The sheets were cream. The green euro pillow shams also had a wide strip of beading down the middle. The standard shams had two strips to the sides. The toss pillows included a neckroll in an embroidered cream, a green rectangle with two stripes of beading to its sides, and a square with beading at the corners.
“We’re getting this,” Rhiannon announced and Ash turned wide, happy eyes to her. “All of it. Even those toss pillows and the euros.”
I started panicking.
“To get it all, we’ll need another cart,” Rhiannon decided as I sidled to the shelves behind the bed display in order surreptitiously check the prices. “Can you go get one, honey?”
“Sure,” Ash agreed, giving her mom a small smile, giving me one, then moving away.
I looked to the price tags on the shelves where the linens were. I did a quick calculation and continued to panic.
Mickey had given us a budget. It wasn’t excessive, it wasn’t skimpy. But if we bought the entire ensemble, it would be more than half of what he gave us.
The linens would clash in her room now with all its other accoutrements. So we needed paint. We needed new lamps (all her lamp bases or shades were purple or pink). Her floors were wood and it was highly unlikely under that layer of clothes that the rugs were green or cream or beige or mushroom or oyster or anything that would work with the sophistication of those linens.
The decorator in me screamed. The mom in me screamed louder. Blowing more than half our budget on bedclothes meant the job would end up not right, half-assed, and Aisling would have to live in that until it could be sorted. Christmas was weeks away and I probably could get away with a lamp, a rug, or maybe some knickknacks, but Mickey wouldn’t want me to go all out.
This meant we’d have to piecemeal her redecoration efforts and that didn’t say, We love you. We know you’re growing up smart and responsible and beautiful and we want you to have space that reflects that. It said, We’re doing what we can do. Deal with it.
“Isn’t it pretty?”
The question came from Rhiannon.
I looked to her and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t contribute to the cause because that might upset Mickey. I couldn’t allow us to blow the whole budget on sheets, comforter, shams and toss pillows because that would mean we’d either have to get super cheap stuff for the rest or defer it. And I couldn’t say Aisling couldn’t have it because Rhiannon already told her she could and it was obvious Mickey’s girl loved it.
“You don’t like it?” Rhiannon asked, reading my face.
“I…well…” I drew in a deep breath. “It’s gorgeous. She loves it. So I’m really sorry to say this but this stuff is going to blow half our budget and this is the first store we’ve been to. I’m worried about—”
“This is from me.”
I wasn’t thinking that was any better.
She read that too, turned her face away and it looked like she was deciding something.