He sounded unhappy.
“Okay, I’ll…we have a plan.”
“Right, and just sayin’, things are tightenin’ up with your kids, you think about when you can introduce them to me so I don’t lose you when you have them, and if I call, you don’t gotta talk to me like you barely know me.”
Yes, he was unhappy.
“We’ll discuss that,” I promised.
“Yeah, we will. Text,” he ordered.
“Okay.”
“Later,” he said then hung up.
I took the phone from my ear and looked back to the couch.
Auden hadn’t moved.
I set the phone aside, grabbed my laptop and sent an email to the New Hampshire furniture people. Then I set it aside and went up to do the dishes.
I’d barely started before Auden called, “You want help?”
I looked to him to see he was up and looking over the back of the couch.
My handsome boy, my good kid, no longer my baby.
“Finish your program. There isn’t much to do here. I’m good,” I called back.
He nodded and disappeared again.
I did the dishes. Auden finished his program, deleted it and gathered his books. He told me he had to go and I walked him to the door to the garage.
When we were there, I looked up into his light brown eyes. “Tell your sister I said ‘hey.’”
“Will do, Mom. Be back to catch more, yeah?” he asked.
“Anytime, sweets. This is your home too.”
He grinned at me then bent to give my cheek a kiss and he left.
I watched him drive out, saw the garage door going down then I moved into the house, right to my phone.
Auden’s gone, I texted Mickey.
I got no text back for some time before I got, Cill’s down but Ash’s still up. Hang tight.
I hung tight, more time elapsed and finally it came.
Come over now.
I didn’t waste a lot of time getting over there now.
I’d not made it to the curb on my side of the road before I saw Mickey’s front door open with Mickey shadowed in the frame.
I was about to step up on his front stoop when he noted, “You didn’t wear a jacket.”
“It’s right across the street.”
He didn’t reply. Just looked annoyed, reached to me and grabbed my hand. He pulled me in and closed the door then tugged me to the side where there was a coat closet. He let me go to yank the door open.
“Mickey,” I whispered.
“Deck,” he whispered back.
The reason I needed a coat.
He grabbed a huge canvas coat and handed it to me. I shrugged it on, and drowning in it, with Mickey wearing only one of those attractive sweatshirts with the high collar and zip at the throat, he found my hand under the long sleeve, tugged me through the house and out to the back deck.
He stopped us at the railing close to the grill. The night dark, the air chill, we were as far away from his sleeping kids as we could get, and I was very uneasy.
“What’s going on?” I asked, still whispering.
“Told you I talked with Rhiannon after Cill’s birthday went south,” he said.
He did.
Belatedly.
I didn’t mention the last. I just nodded.
“Told her then that was uncool, and I was not good with it or what it might mean. Told her she had to give me a really fuckin’ good reason why that shit happened, reason enough not to keep our kids home and safe with me.”
“And she said?” I prompted when he stopped speaking.
“If you can believe this shit, shit that was unbelievable then but it’s more unbelievable the day after she got a DUI, she said that she had some work thing she had to go to. Someone at her job was leaving. She’d had too much to drink so she didn’t want to get in her car. Said she texted Aisling that when Ash didn’t say any of that shit to me, and she would, and my girl checked her phone about seven hundred times when we were at The Eaves.”
The only thing I could come up with to say was, “Oh, Mickey.”
He took that lameness and kept giving me the ugly, “When I asked her to explain why she didn’t contact our son after, she said she had a big late birthday thing planned for when he got back to her and she didn’t wanna ruin it. And she did do a big thing. Though if she had it planned before I got in her face or not is anyone’s guess.”
“Excuses,” I murmured.
“Absolutely,” he agreed. “Now tonight, I called her on the DUI, askin’ what the fuck is up that this shit is goin’ on and leakin’ into our kids’ lives. And she fuckin’ told me that I needed to call my buddy off. She wasn’t likin’ that I was handin’ her this crap, makin’ her out to be the bad guy in an attempt to steal our kids from her.”
I stared up at him, dumbfounded, and asked, “What?”
He nodded shortly. “That’s what the bitch said.”
“Your buddy?”
“Coert,” he bit off. “He’s the sheriff and he’s a friend of mine. Good friend. We’ve known each other awhile and we’re pretty tight. But he wasn’t the one who pulled her over. He was the one who didn’t slap a DUI on her the last time she pulled that shit, because that was her first time, but also because he’s my fuckin’ buddy, but I’m guessin’ she forgot that part.”
“So…so…” I stammered. “So she’s making this out to be you targeting her in an attempt to get custody of your children when you had nothing to do with her being picked up for drunk driving?”
His mouth got hard but he still forced through it, “That’s what she’s makin’ it out to be. Called it my ‘grand scheme.’ Said her blood alcohol level was negligible, just over the edge, proves I’m out for her and roped Coert into that shit, and if they try to put that on her permanent record, she’s fightin’ it. Also said I started this scheme even before we split. Said if I didn’t back down, stop maneuvering, she was gonna fight me tooth and nail. And she said if I tried to keep the kids from her, she’d have me arrested for kidnapping.”
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
“Yeah,” he grunted.
Now I understood why he was so unhappy.
“Mickey,” I grabbed his hand and held tight, “I don’t know what to say.”
“What’s there to say?” he asked, lifting our hands and pressing mine against his heart as he shifted closer to me. “I’m stuck. Called Arnie again. The attorney?”