Dust Eva Everson (story reading txt) 📖

His arms slid around her. “I have to go home tonight, sweetheart.”

“Then let’s plan a getaway. We haven’t done that in a while. When is your next conference?”

He nibbled at the lobe of her ear; the obtrusive earring nearly cut his top lip. “March.”

“I can’t wait that long,” she breathed out. “Patterson, seriously, how much longer can we go on like—”

He stopped her words by pressing his mouth on hers, deepening his kiss until her body went slack against his and he was forced to hold her up. “What’s say we make good use of the time we have left this evening,” he suggested when they broke apart. “May I have this moondance?”

She nodded. Took him by the hand and guided him to the floor in front of a fire that had become a low flame emitting only the occasional crackle. Something she had never done before. Or, maybe in a long time. “Merry Christmas, baby,” she sighed with a smile.

Months later, when he looked back on that night—on that moment, that sigh, that smile, that letting her call the shots—he clearly saw his own undoing. And complicated didn’t begin to explain it.

Chapter Thirty-four

January 1988

Allison

The winter of my discontent began after our celebration on New Year’s Eve, on a Saturday to be exact. Michelle had returned from Cindie’s a few days before, her arms laden with gifts, her mouth running ninety to nothing about how fun it had been in Atlanta because, wonder of wonders, Christmas Eve brought snow and “we went outside and made snow angels.” My daughter was also bent on showing me every gift left for her under a tree she described as “skinny but loaded with lights”—a Caboodles filled with appropriate cosmetics and toiletries for an eleven-year-old, clothes that looked more Cindie’s style than Michelle’s, a 14k half-a-heart charm necklace (Cindie had the other half), and a glossy poster of Stevie Nicks.

“Stevie Nicks?” I asked from the second twin bed in her room. “Not your hero DJ Tanner?”

“I know, but don’t you think she looks like Mommy?” Michelle asked, startling me. For months she had only referred to Cindie by her given name, despite my protests but with Westley’s approval.

“Giving her life and giving her a life are not the same thing,” he’d said, thereby ending our argument. I supposed it only made sense now that, after spending a week with Cindie, she would refer to her, again, as Mommy.

“She does look like …” I swallowed. “Mommy. But … why did Santa leave you a poster of …” I looked back at the color-washed reproduction. “Stevie Nicks?”

“Mama,” Michelle said with a chuckle from her bed. “Santa? This was one-hundred percent Cindie.” She shook her head. “She thinks you won’t let me have a picture of her in my bedroom, so she bought me this.”

I glanced over at the framed five-by-seven of Cindie and Michelle taken at Six Flags Over Georgia the previous summer. “But you do have—”

“I told her that,” Michelle said with a shrug. “She doesn’t believe me.” She looked back at the now rolled-up poster of Stevie. “Do you care?”

Yes. “No. Why should I care?”

“She thinks you’re jealous of her.” Michelle kicked off her shoes before crossing her legs.

I mimicked the movement. “Of Stevie Nicks?” I asked, trying to lighten the conversation.

Michelle chuckled. “No, silly. Of her. Cindie.”

So, we were back to calling her Cindie. “Why would I be jealous of her, Michelle?”

She shrugged again. “She says because she’s my real mommy.”

I smiled the fakest smile of my life. “Sweetheart, I would be completely stupid if I didn’t know that.”

Michelle threw herself back on her bed, her feet popping out and pointing toward me. I reached over and tugged on a big toe. She sat up, propped herself on her elbows. “I love you to bits,” she said. Words I’d heard Sylvie and her say to each other time and again in a torrent of giggles. Now, amazingly, also for me.

“I love you to bits,” I told her.

At about five o’clock on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, we piled into Westley’s car and headed for a downtown park where fireworks would explode in colorful displays of welcome to the new year beginning around midnight. Leading to that, a carnival, a few local garage bands, and some housewives-turned-craft-makers selling their goods entertained a crowd growing by the hour. Sylvie had ridden to the event with us rather than her family, but the girls vacillated between Westley and me and her parents whenever our paths crossed. For hours we meandered the park and rode the rides. I purchased a large homemade basket perfect for holding my books at the foot of my chair while Westley’s great purchases included cotton candy, candied apples, and footlong hotdogs. And, as the night’s chill grew, hot coffee for the two of us and cocoa topped with mounds of whipped cream for the girls.

Near midnight, Westley returned to the car while Michelle, Sylvie, and I found the perfect spot to enjoy the fireworks. He returned moments later with a picnic basket filled with champagne for the grownups and ginger ale for the girls along with a variety of snacks I’d prepared earlier. For more than an hour we laid back on an old quilt brought from the recesses of a chifforobe at Miss Justine’s. “Perfect,” she’d said to me, “for such things as picnics and fireworks.” The four of us oohed and aahed at the displays of pyrotechnic brilliance shot into the blackness arching overhead. At one point, I looked at the girls who lay between Westley and me. Despite the noise and excitement, both were asleep, their hair tousled, their mouths agape. What little bit of their faces showed from the hoods of their jackets appeared wind-kissed.

I sat up, sent a psst Westley’s way. He looked at me. I nodded toward the girls and he sat up, too. Looked. Smiled broadly, then leaned across them to share a kiss