Worth Fighting For

“I’m at the Athens Motel tonight,” he said. “I’ll check into the Riverview tomorrow morning.” He saw her relax. Melt a little, as though whatever pins had been keeping her shoulders up around her ears, whatever stress was making her lips tense, her fingers clench slowly faded away.

He kissed her lightly on the forehead.

Love, he thought, was just a disaster waiting to happen.

DAPHNE TOED OFF her mucky galoshes and stepped into her kitchen in her bare feet. The rainy spring had done wonders for her asparagus and between that and her trouble finding reliable delivery guys, her mornings were insane. She woke up at dawn and ran a marathon by 8:00 a.m. Luckily her mother, Gloria, had been coming over in the mornings to help Helen get ready for school.

“Hi, Helen,” Daphne said, tugging her daughter’s long ponytail and taking in her ensemble. Helen’s fashion sense this morning involved the top of a genie costume that she’d worn in a school musical two years ago. It was pink, sparkly and showed about an inch of her little girl’s belly.

Damn teen pop stars and MTV and hormones in meat and milk or whatever was making little girls grow up way too fast these days.

“You’re not wearing that to school,” she said, point-blank.

“Mom.” Helen groaned.

“Sorry, kiddo. Go on up and change.”

Helen cast one more pleading gaze at her grandmother, who only laughed. “I told you, you wouldn’t get away with it,” Gloria said. Helen flounced up the stairs, the spangles on her shirt twitching and twirling.

“I swear she’s seven going on seventeen.” Daphne sighed, taking the mug of coffee her mother slid across the counter at her.

“It’s not much different than when you were a kid,” Gloria said, arching one dark eyebrow. Daphne did not take after her petite, dark-haired Italian mother, despite how much she wished she had. Instead, she was the spitting image of her lying, cheating, Swedish father. Blond hair, broad shoulders and a fierce temper. She was a genetic delight. “The clothes are just smaller.”

Daphne smiled and tried to drink as much caffeine as she was capable in the few minutes she had before driving Helen to school. Mornings were still chilly these days and she warmed her palms around the Del Monte seed mug.

“She asked for two sandwiches in her lunch again today,” Gloria said and Daphne frowned.

“Didn’t she have breakfast?” she asked. Helen’s appetite usually hovered around birdlike, except for the occasional growth spurts in which case her appetite approached don’t-get- in-my-way territory.

Gloria nodded. “She ate all her yogurt. But that’s every day this week she’s asked for an extra something.” Strange. Daphne checked her watch. She’d have to ask

Helen about it on the road.

“Helen is also turning into a gossip columnist,” Gloria said, wiping off the last of the breakfast dishes and setting them back in the oak cabinet.

Daphne nearly choked on her coffee. “I wonder where she gets it?” She cast a look at her mother who, as the resident gossip queen, had given up amateur status and gone pro a few years ago. Gloria took “news” very seriously.

“Very funny. But she’s all wound up over what’s happening down at the Riverview. Thanks to her friend Josie, she’s an expert on Patrick’s youngest.”

“Jonah,” Daphne said, trying to hide behind her coffee cup, so her mother wouldn’t pick up the blushes she couldn’t control. Mom was like a drug-sniffing dog when it came to those sorts of things. She could take a wayward glance or a blush and turn it into a torrid love affair in less time than it took Helen to change her clothes.

“Sounds like quite a guy.” Gloria pretended to be nonchalant but “why don’t you marry him and give me more grandbabies” was written all over her. She did this whenever a young man got within dating distance.

“That’s one way of putting it,” Daphne hedged. Utterly inappropriate or a low-down scumbag were a couple of others. She checked her watch. “Helen! Let’s go, slowpoke!” she shouted, wanting to flee the kitchen before her mother started into her biannual monologue about men, ticking clocks and loneliness.

A real laugh riot, that monologue.

“Sweetheart?” Gloria said. Daphne groaned and just laid her head on the counter, like a woman at the guillotine. “Would it kill you to date?”

“Yes,” she said into the yellow Formica. “It would kill me.”

“I’m being serious,” Gloria insisted, pulling Daphne up by the back of her shirt. “This Jonah fellow is a young man, single, apparently attractive—”

“And leaving, Mom. He’s not sticking around. He’s probably already gone. Which wouldn’t matter because he’s the last person in the world I would date.”

“Apparently every man within a thirty-mile radius shares that status.”

“Mom—”

“You didn’t even fight for Gabe Mitchell!”

Daphne rolled her eyes. Her mother could not let go of the brief relationship she had with Gabe. “There was nothing to fight for, Mom. The man was in love with his ex-wife. What was I supposed to do?”

Gloria’s face became a mix of pity and pleading and Daphne hated it. “You’re too young to spend your life covered in mud. You used to be so carefree and spontaneous. You used to be fun.”

“I’m still fun, ask Helen.”

“Grown-up fun. Sex fun.”

Daphne groaned and held up her hand. “I am too busy to date. I am too busy for—” she dropped her voice, uncomfortable even saying the word “—sex fun. I am raising Helen and trying to expand my business—”

“Excuses,” Gloria interrupted, her eyes flashing, her short brown hair practically bristling. Gloria had finally found love again with a high school English teacher who lived twenty miles away. They dated, went to movies, traveled. They weren’t married, didn’t live together and the relationship was, for Gloria, perfect.

And that perfection gave her a license to harangue Daphne on the subject of second chances on a regular basis. “You’re too scared to even try.”

A charged stillness filled Daphne, like the air before a lightning strike. Her mother was right. She was scared. Scared of being hurt. Of being rejected. Of being left behind all over again.

“You are so beautiful and strong. Any man would be lucky to have you.” Her mother’s soft voice was tempting, but reality was reality and that’s where Daphne parked her butt these days.

“You’re my mother, you are supposed to say that.” Daphne brushed crumbs from the counter into her hands, looking anywhere but at her mother. “But my track record speaks for itself.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means—” she swallowed, the words wedged behind her pride and reluctant to come out “—men don’t want me. Not permanently.” She dumped the crumbs in the garbage by the sink, wishing she could do the same with this conversation.

“Oh my God!” Gloria cried, spinning Daphne around. “How can you say that?”

“Well, for one, Dad—”

“Your father wasn’t cut out to be a father. His leaving had nothing to do with you.”

“I was seven, Mom. I went to bed and had a father but when I woke up he was gone. Trust me, that feels pretty personal. And Jake pretty much confirms it.”

Gloria sighed. “Well, you barely gave Jake a chance to be a father. Or a husband.”

“Jake wanted to leave,” Daphne insisted. “You think I pushed him out the door, but trust me, he doesn’t see it that way. I gave Jake his freedom.”

They heard Helen’s footsteps upstairs, a signal to stop before she heard them.