Yours, Mine & Ours

Chapter Seven

Rain shivered down the windows, starting at daybreak. Clouds bunched and punched, building into a dark gloomy morning even before breakfast. As Mike poured coffee, he studied his son.

Teddy had come home yesterday in a rare silent mood. He’d been contentious, crabby, couldn’t settle in to play anything, wouldn’t talk. Mike hadn’t pushed him. Hell, the kid was as male as he was. Neither of them wanted to talk about feelings…but Mike figured a good night’s sleep might help clear the air.

He’d set up the playing field to make talk easier. Let Teddy turn on cartoons-which Mike hated; he didn’t like kids doing the whole veg-out-in-frontof-the-TV thing. But cartoons and scrambled eggs invariably brought out conversation, particularly when Teddy was allowed to eat in the living room.

His tough guy was curled up on the couch, still wearing his dinosaur pj’s, Slugger glued to his side-a sure sign that Teddy was upset. Still, the kid had the remote. And a deep bowl of the scrambled eggs-this, because Mike had learned early on that the deeper the bowl, the less chance of spilled eggs all over the house.

Mike took the recliner with his plate and a mug of coffee. “So, hey. You never said anything about the zoo yesterday. You did go, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“So, was it as fun as you thought it’d be?”

“It was fun for one whole second. Until George started sneezing and sneezing.” Teddy, who rarely had power over the remote, was channel surfing at dizzying speeds. “He was the one who said he wanted to go. That was the thing. He kept saying we’d have fun. Only, he already knew he was ’lergic to animals.”

Mike was already forming a wincer of a picture. “Okay. Then what happened?”

“We had to leave. That’s what happened. Because he couldn’t stop sneezing. But he said he’d make it up to me. We’d go to a nice place for lunch.” Teddy froze on a different cartoon, then hit the trigger again.

“And?”

“And I thought he meant McDonald’s. Chuck E. Cheese. Burger King. Someplace good. Instead it was this place where you had to wait and wait and wait. It had a tablecloth, and I didn’t mean to pull it, but it was itching at my knees. So his drink got acc’dentally spilled. It wasn’t my fault.”

“What else happened?”

“We went back to their place. Mom played cards with me. Go Fish. Crazy Eights. Then I said, ‘You wanna go swimming?’ She said, ‘Maybe another time.’ I said, ‘You wanna do a movie or something?’ She said, ‘Sure.’ Only, she just turned on the TV. Not like going to a movie. And when she got a movie on, then she just left, started doing things. Talking on the phone. Talking to him. Cooking. Junk like that. Dad?”

When Teddy left the trigger at a news channel, Mike knew exactly how upset his tough guy was. “What, sport?”

“Mom doesn’t want to be with me. She doesn’t even like me. I want to be here. With you. All the time. I don’t want to go with her anymore. And you know what else?”

“Tell me.”

“George said I was rude. And he said I wasn’t ’siplined.”

’Siplined? Mike thought. “Disciplined?”

“That’s what I said,” Teddy said crossly. “And I said to mom on the way back, ‘I don’t get it. Why you’re with him when you could be with Dad.’ That’s when he said I was rude.”

Mike winced. “You asked your mom while he was right there in the car, huh?”

“Well, yeah. I didn’t ask before. I wasn’t thinking about it before. I asked her when I was thinking about it.” Teddy put the bowl on the floor, then burrowed deeper into the cushions. Slugger burrowed after him. Cat suddenly leaped on the couch, looking fierce and lionlike. “This is how I like it, Dad. Us guys together. No more girls.”

Mike remembered last night…whenever it was…when his house and Amanda’s house were both closed down for the night, and he’d just stood at the window for a moment, inhaling the quiet…and there she was.

He wasn’t touching her. Wasn’t thinking about her. He’d been thinking about his kid. And her kid. And what divorces did to kids, and why he needed to get back to the Celibacy Principle. But then he’d looked at her and felt that…yearning.

Yearning to be with her.

To talk to her. To touch her. To hold her and be held.

This morning, of course, turned into another wake-up call. Yearning was just yearning. Sex was just sex. It wasn’t the time. Period.

“Did you hear that?” Teddy grumbled.

“Yeah.” Mike bounced up from the recliner, not certain if the sound was an actual knock on the back door-but something had provoked Slugger into going into his nose-to-the-sky warning bay. Of course, some days, a purr of a breeze could do that.

In this case, though, a pint-size rock star stood at the back door-at least Mike thought Molly’s getup was about that. The sunglasses were unnecessary for a stormy morning, but the little shirt was full of glistening stars. Her red hair was all braided and pinned up with sequins or jewels or something. Her nails were painted like rainbows and her shoes had flashing lights.

At four years old, she had a petrifying amount of estrogen.

She might even be as bad as her mother in a few years.

Right then, though, he figured they had a more immediate problem on their plate. Molly was out of breath from running. Her lower lip was trembling, her big eyes spattering tears. “Mr. Mike. I need a punger. Right now. Right right now. For my mom!”

“A punger,” Mike said blankly.

“A punger! You know! A punger!” Quickly she said, “Please! This is serious!”

“A punger,” Mike repeated, but then he got it. Plunger. Plumbing problems. Some kind of major uh-oh. “Tell your mom I’ll be right there.”

“It needs to be now.”

“I understand, Molly. I just need to get a tool kit and the plunger.”

“But don’t tell mommy I told you. She told me to sit in the living room, that she could handle it. But there was water everywhere. And she was saying bad words. I’d tell you what the words were, but I can’t say them. My mommy says that nobody says those words in her house. Or my house. My mom-”

“Okay, honey. We’re going to stop talking now, and start moving.” He pushed on shoes, then grabbed tools, locked up the baying Slugger and herded Teddy out with him. He suspected Amanda might just guess that someone had “told” on her-particularly when he showed up with a plunger and tools-but that wasn’t remotely relevant.

Keeping his hands off her was one issue.

Not helping her if she was in trouble was completely different.

He yelled a hello when he opened her back door. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Mike!” said the rock star in her loudest voice. She was still wearing the shades. “What a surprise! It’s Mr. Mike, Mom!”

“Molly Ann! Did you go next door and-”

“Me?” But to Mike, she lifted her head and whispered, “I’m in trouble.”

“I’ll fix that. You and Teddy either play or watch some TV for a little while, okay?”

It wasn’t hard to locate Amanda. The place had deteriorated since he saw it last. There seemed to be a whole bunch more purples and pale blues. Pillows. More pillows. Stuff to run into, stuff on top of tables. Flowers all over the place. But the main downstairs bathroom-where the descriptive vocabulary was coming from-had water seeping into the hall.

She must have heard him set down the tool kit, because she started talking-even though she hadn’t wasted a second turning around. “Go away, Mike. I can fix my own problems! I am not looking for someone to save me every time I get into some stupid mess!”

“Okay.”

“This would not be a good time to laugh.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t say one word! I mean it! Just go back home!”

Weeellll. He couldn’t quite say okay to that. The bathroom had definitely been redefined since his last visit. Now it seemed to be covered in butterflies. Butterfly wallpaper, butterfly pictures, butterfly toilet seat, towels embroidered with butterflies. It was almost enough to give a guy a rash-if he’d had the time to itch.

Amanda was pretty wet. Knees, feet, clothes. Towels had been used to sop up the water-or some of it. A few rolls of paper towels had been used for the same purpose. At some point she’d had a book open-Basic Plumbing Repairs-but that likely wasn’t helping her a whole lot at this point, because it was like learning to sail after your boat had already capsized.

“I do not want advice. Don’t you say one word!”

“I won’t, I won’t.” He was still trying to evaluate the situation. Not the plumbing problem. Her. Amanda was the only problem that mattered. She wasn’t crying, exactly. At least there were no sissy, sad tears leaking down her cheeks. This was more…a major, furious, sputtering type of crying.

He said carefully, “Behind the toilet is a shutoff valve.”

“You think I didn’t know that?” She huffed. “Where?”

“Just behind there. Look. You’ll see it. Turn it off-against the clock. If it’s too tight or hard to move, I could-”

“Do not touch anything. I will do it. And don’t tell me any more, either!”

“Okay.” It was amazing…almost from the minute he’d met her, he’d been tensed up. It was that relentless attraction thing. But now, finally, he could relax. He didn’t have to worry about falling in love with her anymore. She was a shrew. A witch times ten. She had a completely unreasonable and irrational side.

“Do we know what went down the toilet that shouldn’t have?” he asked delicately.

“An American Girl doll shoe.”

“A doll’s shoe,” he repeated.

“Possibly both shoes. She was dressing the doll when she went potty. Now the shoes are gone. And right after she left the bathroom, this all-” she motioned “-started.”

“Okay. Now, has the toilet run before? I mean, constantly run?”

“I just moved in this house. It was new, but not brand-new. Is there some reason in the universe I should know that answer for sure?”

“No, no,” he said in his best tiptoe voice. “It’s just that the more we know, the better chance we have of understanding the whole problem.”

“I’m the only one who has to understand anything.”

“You’re so right.” Hell, his pulse was practically humming. At the moment, she was as easy to love as a stingray. A splotchy-cheeked, furious, unmanageable stingray. “Amanda, I don’t know if you have an auger, but I happened to bring one over. I wasn’t going to use it myself. But you could. If you wanted to.”

“I don’t even know what a flipping auger is! Go home, Mike!”

“I’m going. I promise. In just a second. I just want to show you the auger… See? On one end, it has a corkscrew. So you push that end down into the hole…then you turn the handle-clockwise-until the entire spring has been fed into the pipe as far as it’ll go. The idea is to reach the obstruction…”

She tried. The first time she didn’t quite get it, and shot him a look filled with venom. Probably snake venom.

“I won’t offer to do it, I swear,” he promised, hands in the air. “It’s just…you could try it again. In fact, you could try it a couple of times. If you wanted to. And when this is all over, you might want to put some ice on that elbow.”

“I’m not hurt.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say anything nice. It just slipped out…and yeah, you’ve got it now. That’s the how of it. So when the auger’s all the way in, you could try-only if you want to!-to slowly, slowly pull the spring back. If that doesn’t free up the doll’s shoe, you could try it a second time.”

Thank God it worked. Out came a little white shoe. Amazing how much trouble a shoe less than two inches long could cause a person in life.

She started breathing a little better. Not a lot better. But definitely an improvement over the hyperventilating, crying, fire-breathing dragon she’d been a half hour ago.

“Okay now. I’m leaving. I’m going to take a wild guess that you don’t have an indoor-outdoor vac-why would you? So I’ll just bring mine over, leave it on your deck. It should suck up this water in no time. But before I leave…maybe you might want to turn on the water again. Remember? The shutoff valve? This time you turn it the other way.”

“I hear patronizing in your voice.”

“I swear. There isn’t a patronizing thought in my head.” His tone probably sounded virtuous because he was telling the complete truth. There was nothing on his mind but fear. He just wanted to get out of the house alive.

When she did the shutoff-valve thing and the crisis was finally completely over-except for the cleanup-she started crying again.

This time, he just backed away. There was a time to hold a woman. And a time when a man knew he’d sure as hell better get out of Dodge.

He was in bare feet by then, but he picked up his sandals by the back door, went searching for Teddy and Molly. The two were lying on the floor, leaned up on their elbows, watching TV. Only not cartoons. They were watching a mother give live birth. Apparently the event had just happened.

“Holy mother of…” Mike got calm, fast. In three long strides, he grabbed the remote, clicked off the TV and set it high on the mantel. “Molly. Do yourself a big favor and don’t tell your mother what you were just watching. You can tell her another day. Just not today.”

“I won’t, Mr. Mike. Princess and Darling and me are going stay out of Mommy’s way for a while.”

“Good. Teddy. With me.”

“But, Dad. Did you see all that blood? Wasn’t it gross? Can we watch it at our house?”

“Zip it, Theodore. Not one word until we’re back in our own house. Not one. Not even a little one. You have no idea how serious I am.”

“Me, too, Dad,” his son assured him. “I’m really serious.”

Mike wanted to laugh…and then did. When a day started out this rough, it could only go up-because it sure couldn’t get any worse.

The morning couldn’t possibly get worse, Amanda was sure. But of course it did. The bathroom was still going to take hours to clean up, and Darling had an appointment with the vet at 10:00 a.m.

And then, out of the blue, her mother showed up. Gretchen regarded the whole plumbing mess, offered to hire a cleaning service to immediately come and take care of it, and that caused an argument. It wasn’t a bad argument, or a mom-daughter sniping event, nothing like that. It was just that her mother couldn’t hear a “No, thank you” with a megaphone.

Eventually Gretchen mentioned the reason for her visit-she wanted to take Molly swimming. That was totally a good thing, except that it took time to get gear together for an afternoon at a pool. And her mom was barely out the door before the phone rang.

It was her attorney, who wanted a meeting related to Thom’s filing for joint custody. That wasn’t exactly bad. She wanted to be prepared for the court date. It was just that any thought of Thom’s sharing custody put a worried dent in her heart.

As if the morning didn’t have enough complications, she’d barely finished with the floor and had a first load of towels and rags in the washer when there was a knock at the front door. A large truck had backed into her driveway. All the heavy things she’d ordered were being delivered-from the bricks to the patio stones, to the shiny green riding lawn mower.

The delivery guys took nearly an hour-but Amanda’s mood brightened immediately.

It was the lawn mower. She’d almost forgotten about it. Her parents hadn’t moved to the suburbs until she was in college; she’d just never been exposed to lawn-care issues. But now, the machine immediately made her think of Mike.

Ever since he’d come over that morning-and damn him, been a hero for her yet again-she’d wanted to gallop over there and heartily apologize. Only, darn it, it wasn’t that simple. It was probably a good thing that something happened to force distance between them.

He’d seen her at her worst. That was good. It’d stop him from looking at her with those…well, with those eyes. Those eyes that communicated that he thought her damned incredible. Not just attractive, but compelling. Interesting. That he valued being with her. That he went crazy when he touched her.

So. Possibly her behaving like the witch of the universe was a secret godsend. But the lawnmower was another godsend-because it would give her the chance to make up.

Once the delivery man left, she sat on the lawnmower seat with a coffee mug and the instruction manual. Then turned her new baby on. A few stripped gears later, and she had the hang of it…or she would, once she got the speed thing under control.

Her mood moved from low to a reasonable soar. She didn’t need a man to do work. Just because she wasn’t mechanical didn’t mean that she couldn’t learn-or teach her daughter to learn.

She’d show Mike competence. She’d be competent. He didn’t have to know what it was all about-how desperately she wanted to change, how much she never wanted to lean on a man again. Maybe plumbing crises were never going to be her thing, but this adorable riding mower was downright fun.

She finished her lawn, which she had to admit, represented a little learning curve. A few spots were higher than other spots. She’d sort of bumped a couple of trees. There was one small strip of grass in the front yard that she’d sort of missed. But she’d learned. And now she headed next door.

His yard was bigger than hers, but simpler. Naturally she wasn’t going anywhere near the water-garden construction site, but he had a long, long backyard. For once, she was doing something for him. Not just making up for being a bitch this morning…but actually doing something nice. Decent. Something a friend would do.

Best yet, he was gone-so he’d come home to a freshly mowed lawn-and not even know it was her.

She was within a few swipes of finishing in the front, when her brand-new baby started coughing. Then sputtering. Then gave out a death sigh and just plain stopped.

She’d run out of gas.