Home In Carolina

“What about moving her back to Serenity? I can’t spend days down here packing up her apartment.”

“It’s not likely to sell overnight, and she won’t need her furniture until we’ve found her a house or apartment here. Leave everything there. When the time comes, we’ll get movers to do the packing. I’ll even go down to supervise. You won’t have to lift a finger.”

“You have an answer for everything,” she groused.

“The same answers you would have if you weren’t so resistant to this whole idea.”

“Well, when our house is chaotic, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she said.

“Nope, I definitely won’t be able to say that,” he replied so cheerfully Helen wanted to throttle him. “I love you. Talk to you later.”

“Hold it,” she commanded before he could hang up. “How am I supposed to get her up there? I doubt she’s able to maneuver well enough to fly.”

“Rent a car and let her rest in the backseat while you drive.”

The thought of listening to Flo criticize her driving for hours on end set Helen’s teeth on edge, but it was a reasonable alternative.

“Okay, fine,” she said glumly. “I’ll see you tomorrow night unless I deliberately drive off the road and drown us both in a swamp en route.”

“You won’t do that,” Erik said confidently.

“Don’t be too sure. She can get on my last nerve faster than a flea can pester a dog.”

“You have me and our baby girl to get home to,” he reminded her. “Put our picture up on the visor and glance at it whenever you’re trying to recall why you need to live.”

She smiled despite her sour mood. “That ought to do it,” she conceded. “I do love you, you know.”

“I know.”

“Even if you are a pain.”

“I prefer to think of myself as sane and reasonable.”

“And I’m not?”

“No comment, Counselor. See you tomorrow. Let me know what you need me to do on this end.”

Helen sighed and hung up. Obviously this move of her mother’s was going to happen whether she liked it or not. She might as well get with the program and make the best of it.

Ty was icing down his shoulder after his workout at The Corner Spa, when his cell phone rang. It was nearly ten at night. At this hour, a call was never good. He glanced at caller ID and saw it was his attorney, Jay Wrigley. That was even worse.

“Hey, Jay, what’s up?” he asked.

“We’ve got a problem, Ty,” he said.

Since his tone was ominous and Jay never over-reacted, Ty braced himself. “Is it my contract? Is the team balking at paying my salary because of my being on injured reserve?”

“No, those terms in the contract are airtight. It’s nothing like that.”

“What, then?”

“I had a call tonight from Dee-Dee.”

Ty sank down on a bench at the mention of Trevor’s mother. “What the hell did she want?”

It was the first time Dee-Dee had made contact since they’d finalized the custody agreement nearly two years ago. Even then, she’d sent the notarized papers by courier. She’d claimed that seeing Ty or Trevor would shake her resolve to do the right thing and let Ty raise their son.

“I’m not a hundred percent sure,” Jay said. “But I thought you ought to know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know what she wanted? She didn’t call just to chat, I’m sure of that.”

“I’m telling you, she never said. She rambled on about thinking about Trevor and missing him, but she didn’t ask about locating you. Look, I wouldn’t even have bothered you about this, but it was just so out of the blue after all this time, I thought you should know.”

“Was she drunk?”

“I don’t know her well enough to say. Actually, she sounded kind of sad, like a mom who was missing her little boy.”

Ty closed his eyes against the tide of fear washing over him. “Is there something we need to do?”

“She didn’t ask for anything. She didn’t make any threats or demands. There’s nothing to do. You might want to give Tom Bristol a heads-up about the call,” he said, referring to the family court lawyer who’d handled the custody case for Ty. “What do you want me to do if she asks to get in touch with you or to see Trevor?”

“Tell her no way,” Ty said fiercely, knowing he probably sounded hardhearted, but he was protecting his son. Trevor rarely asked about his mother. So far, when he had, he’d seemed satisfied with Ty’s explanation that she was living in another state. If Dee-Dee suddenly appeared, who knew what the emotional impact would be? He wasn’t ready to find out, especially if this was just some whim on her part.

To be sure Jay knew he’d meant what he said, he added, “After the way she abandoned him, I don’t want Dee-Dee anywhere near Trevor, not unless there’s proof that she’s changed. I can’t have her waltzing back into his life, playing mommy while it suits her and then taking off again. If the time comes that it seems like it’s in Trevor’s best interests for them to have a relationship, I’ll consider it. In the meantime, though, everybody needs to keep in mind that she abandoned that little baby on my doorstep, Jay. Maybe it was an act of kindness or one of desperation, I don’t know. But I do know I don’t want anybody to ever forget that she was capable of something so reckless.”

“Got it,” Jay said. “I’ll keep you posted if I hear from her again.”

“Yeah, do that,” Ty said. He clicked the phone shut and barely resisted the urge to throw it across the room, which was a good thing because it might well have hit Annie, who’d just walked in the door. She caught sight of him and stopped in her tracks, her expression immediately wary, either because of his expression or merely his presence.

“I thought you’d be gone by now,” she murmured, already backing toward the door. “I saw the lights on and thought you and Elliott had just forgotten to turn them off.”

“I was getting ready to leave when I got a call I had to take.”

She started to turn to leave. “Good night, then. You can cut off the lights on your way out.”

Jay’s call had left Ty feeling restless and out of sorts. He didn’t want to be left alone with his thoughts in turmoil. “Annie, don’t go,” he pleaded.

She regarded him with a torn expression. Though she was obviously still poised to flee, she’d clearly heard something in his voice that had stopped her.

“The call, was it bad news?” she asked hesitantly. Years ago she would have pestered him till he told her the problem, but now it was clear she wasn’t sure if she wanted to get involved.

Ty knew better than to tell her about Dee-Dee’s sudden, unexplained reappearance. “My attorney just wanted to alert me to a potential problem.”

“Then why did you want me to stay?”

He quickly came up with an excuse that would ring true. “Because most of my conversations these days are either about which superhero T-shirt Trevor wants to put on or how badly I’ve screwed things up with you. Since I doubt you’ll want to discuss either of those topics, I was hoping we could talk about…oh, anything else.” He met her gaze. “Maybe the weather,” he suggested hopefully.

“It’s South Carolina in the spring. It’s already hot and humid,” she said wryly. “Can I go now?”