Ladies' Night Andrews, Kay (great novels .txt) 📖

of the story. About why you busted out that car window. I would like to hear it, if it’s not too painful.”

Wyatt held up his hand. The bruises were still a vivid greenish-black. “Pain? Me? Nah.”

*   *   *

“Callie and Luke were gaming me, for months. That day at the ball park was the last straw. I coach Bo’s T-ball team. Callie had the game schedule. I gave it to her myself. But all spring, she’d drop him off late for the games half the time, without his glove or his shoes, or even his uniform shirt. It got so I bought extras of everything and kept ’em with me. But I’d sent him home with the spares the week before. That day? They didn’t bring him until the second inning—and again, with no equipment. Poor Bo was so upset, he was in tears. Luke acted like it was nothing, just blew me off. Told me if I didn’t like it, too damn bad.”

Wyatt flexed his right hand and winced. “You saw how I reacted. Not my finest moment.”

He’d finished his doughnuts and his coffee. Grace broke off half her doughnut and placed it on his empty plate.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I think I just wanted a taste. To remind me of old times here. You know how that is?”

He gobbled the doughnut. “I’ll tell you a secret. I feel the same way about Krystal’s sliders.”

“Ick,” Grace said. “Not the same thing at all.”

“Krystal was where my granddad would take me on Saturdays, for lunch, when I was a kid,” Wyatt said. “Just the two of us. He’d order me two sliders, and he’d eat four. Right out of the paper sack, in the front seat of his old tan Buick Regal. Every once in a while, not that often, but sometimes, if I have Bo on a Saturday, we ride through the Krystal, get ourselves a bag of sliders, take ’em out to Holmes Beach, sit on the sand, and scarf ’em down.”

“Sweet sentiment, but still, ick,” Grace said. “Does your ex know you do that?”

“If she did, she’d probably sic the Department of Child Welfare on me.”

“Not to mention Judge Stackpole,” she added.

“You saw how he treated me,” Wyatt said, leaning back on his stool, “How did you do?”

“Let’s put it this way,” Grace said. “Not great. Mitzi—she’s my lawyer—is trying her best, but we still can’t get his lawyer to respond to us, and I’m still essentially locked out of my business. He’s supposed to be ‘giving’ me two thousand dollars a month, but I haven’t seen a dime yet. And, oh yes, that money he’s ‘giving’ me? It’s mine anyway. All this while he transforms his new girlfriend into Grace 2.0.” She fluttered her eyelashes. “Does that make me sound bitter?”

“Kind of,” Wyatt said. “But then, I’m on a first-name basis with bitter these days. Right now, it looks like Bo’s going to be moving to Birmingham by the end of summer, and so far, there’s not a damned thing I can do about it. Yeah, technically I can see him weekends, but how do I pull that off when he’s living nine hours away? I can’t afford to buy a plane ticket every weekend, and anyway I’ve got a business to run. Or what’s left of a business.”

“That’s really rotten,” Grace said. “I can’t believe any mother would deliberately deny a child the chance to see his father. It’s just cruel.”

“Callie’s into cruel these days,” Wyatt said. “She’ll do anything she can to punish me. And the weird thing is, I can’t figure out what I did to make her hate me like this. She wanted out of the marriage, I let her out. She wanted the house, I gave it to her.” He shook his head and yawned.

“Yeah,” Grace said, standing up and stretching. “It’s pretty late for me, too.”

“Thanks for listening to me vent,” Wyatt said. He hesitated. “I got the feeling, back there at Paula’s office, all of y’all were ready to tar and feather me. Just for being a guy.”

Grace shrugged. “Everybody in that room is there because a man dumped on her.”

“Hey, a guy dumped on me, too,” Wyatt said. “Remember?”

“Right.”

They paid at the cash register and walked out to their cars. Wyatt looked back at the old-timey neon GUS’S DONUTS sign. “I gotta remember this place. Bo would love it.”

“If you feed that child Krystal sliders and Gus’s for the same meal, I’ll report you to Stackpole myself,” Grace threatened.

“Hey,” Wyatt said. “Thanks for listening to me tonight.”

“You’re welcome,” Grace said, meaning it. “See you next week.”

“If Paula’s conscious. Do you think she’s really on drugs?”

“She’s definitely on something,” Grace said. “My mom would say she’s one ant short of a picnic.”

Wyatt laughed. “One brick shy of a load. I can’t believe I have to come up with three hundred dollars a session for this crap, on top of all the child support I’m paying Callie.”

“Do you think it would do any good to report her?” Grace asked, fumbling for her car keys.

“Report to who?” Wyatt asked. “Stackpole? I’ll mention what’s going on to Betsy, but I already know what she’ll say. ‘Shut up and turn up.’”

17

Grace sat cross-legged on her bed, her laptop balanced on her lap, tapping away at the keyboard.

Lately, I’ve gotten interested in the farm-to-table movement. Here on Florida’s Gulf Coast, where I live, there’s the tendency to think farms are all in the Midwest, or up north. But that’s not true. We have amazing small farms all around us. Citrus growers, of course, and small avocado groves, but once I started looking around, I was surprised to find honey producers, organic chicken and egg farmers, and even small family “row-crop” farms producing gorgeous lettuces, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, corn, and, of course, strawberries. In addition, we’re lucky here to have local seafood brought to port by fishermen who keep us supplied with fish, crabs, and shrimp caught right in the gulf and bay, and beef from the cattle farms