Clean Slate (11 page)

She shrugged and forked off a bit of her quiche. “You
pepper everything.”

A smile formed at the corner of his lips. It was small,
but obviously heartfelt. He continued the customization of his sandwich.
“Anyhow, back then I was young and was just starting out at the firm. I’d been
dating Kate on and off from the time we graduated from college. We got
reacquainted at a cocktail party and I learned my boss was her father.”

“Ah,” Ben said around a mouthful of his salad. He could
see where the backstory was going, even if he didn’t necessarily condone the
ending.

“When I met your mother…” He nodded toward
Moeder
.

She looked up, eyes wide, anticipatory.

“Kate and I were in an
off
period. She wanted to get married and I wasn’t ready for that. At least not
with
her
, I didn’t think. I was
young, you know? Barely twenty-five, and I got sent to Belgium to work with
this factory on cutting costs and maybe utilizing some outsourcing. Right
around the time Jerry was conceived, Kate was being extremely demanding about
us reconciling. Her father put his weight behind it, so I buckled and gave her
a ring.” He laughed and it was a dry, bitter laugh. Ben didn’t see the humor,
either.

“I didn’t want to marry her. I figured that out for
certain right around the engagement party when she told me in no uncertain
terms she’d never have children—that she’d never do that to her body.”

Moeder
stilled
her fork, and glanced down at her small chest.

Ben nudged her foot under the table again.

She shifted her gaze to the sidewalk outside, instead.

“I couldn’t back out without losing my job, and it was
damned good job for a twenty-five-year-old, right? So, we got married and I
didn’t say anything to Clara. I just kept coming by. And when Jerry was around
one, I—”

“I think we know that part.” Ben dropped his napkin onto
his food and pushed back from the table. He wasn’t hungry anymore. “But what I
don’t understand is why you changed his name?”

All accounts were that slight in particular had really
devastated his mother. There she was, pregnant again with the son of a man who
didn’t want her, and he paid her the ultimate insult by stripping the name
she’d chosen name from the child.

Louis balked. “I was fine with his name. And my parents,
oh shit, my parents.” He scraped his hair from his forehead again. “They were
over the moon, even given what the situation was. I mean, I just took him and
didn’t even clear it with Kate. I just took him because I wanted him. And what
was she going to do? Tell me
no
, that
I couldn’t have my son? Changing his name from Louis to Jeremiah was a
concession. She didn’t want people to know he was mine. For years, people
outside the family thought he was adopted. The blond never went away.”

He dragged the sugar canister across the tabletop and
poured a few teaspoons into his cooling beverage. As he stirred his coffee, he
continued. “Ben, I always knew about you, but by then had already fucked things
spectacularly and I couldn’t have seen you if I wanted to. Kate basically had
me by the dick. I tried to do right by you both, with sending the money
and—”

“What money?”
Moeder
interrupted. Emotion radiated off her in waves, and Ben wanted to fucking
applaud.

Good for her.
Let it out.

Louis threaded his brows. “The
money
. I set it up through the lawyer. There was supposed to be an
account for you to draw on for clothes or tuition or whatever. He would just
transfer it from my bank account to yours.”

Arms crossed over her chest, fingers tense around her
arms, she shook with anger. “I did it alone. Raised him.”

He put up his hands in a pacifying gesture. “I know. I
don’t dispute that, Clara, but I did send the money…I…” He leaned his chair onto
its back legs and stared at the ceiling. “All this time, and you thought I
didn’t care.”

Ben didn’t know what to think. Yeah, things had been tight
growing up, but he never went without anything. His mother just worked harder,
more hours, begged, scraped, saved, hustled—she did what needed doing.
She had to. She shouldn’t have had to.

“Not to put too fine a point on this, but…where’s the
money?” Ben asked.

Louis put his chair flat against the floor again and shook
his head. “I don’t know. I used one lawyer to draw up the papers to take Jerry,
and this second one was one Kate—” He sagged in his seat, face gone
ashen. “
Kate
.” He started shaking his
head and couldn’t stop. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Ben.”

Ben stared at his napkin, and that compulsion to rip it to
bits overtook him, so he did. What could he possibly say?

“How much money are you saying is gone?”
Moeder
queried.

Louis closed his eyes and moved his lips as he seemed to
do some silent calculations in his head. When he opened his eyes again, he
scoffed. “With interest, probably enough money to sink a canoe if it were all
in hundred dollar bills. Some of it came from my parents. They left you some
money, Ben. They knew, and now I know Kate did, too.”

“Well, then,”
Moeder
said blithely
.
“Sounds like you’ve
already bought your house back if you can prove it.” She forked some food into
her mouth and chewed, expression suddenly cheerful.

Ben raised an eyebrow. What in the hell was going through
her mind?

Louis seemed equally perplexed, because now he just stared
at the woman as if he hadn’t really
seen
her there. As if he finally realized who was in front of him.

She was going to make him pay.

Good for her
.

All day long, Daisy squirmed through her mother’s
incessant questioning, but part of her expected it. From the moment she’d
pushed her feet into her shoes when leaving Ben, the sense of dread had built
in her gut and had essentially exploded on impact the moment she stepped into
the barn.

During the drive over, she thought she’d come up with the
perfect idea for the men’s soap. The turnaround would be tight, but she
couldn’t even give it her attention until Nikki signed off on the thing. The
scheme was just so out there—so unusual—no way would Nikki let it
fly. So, when Nikki called her back into her office for a discreet tête-à-tête,
Daisy had stalled and said she’d narrowed her list down to three contenders.

She scoffed.

If only she
had
three. Talk about putting all her eggs in one basket!

She tried to tune Momma out, and laid premium soaps due to
a boutique into a cushioned box.

“Daisy, you’re all over the place.” Momma wagged her
finger in Daisy’s direction. “Liz said you ain’t been going home and you’re not
turning up to work on time, so what’s the deal? What’s going on with you,
girl?”

Daisy stretched clear tape over the inner box’s flaps,
saying nothing.

“Answer me.”

Daisy stilled the tape dispenser and sighed. “Momma, I
have three bosses and you’re not one of them. Quit nagging me.”

Momma’s jaw dropped open, and a sound of abject disgust sounded
from her throat. “Who are you? That don’t sound like my Daisy.
My
sweet little girl. My girl don’t talk
back like that. Are you on some kind of drugs?”

Funny. Accusing me
of using drugs and yet was completely oblivious to Barry being loaded a good
thirty-five percent of the time.

Daisy bent to the floor, and picked up a long, flat box.
She constructed it without once looking at her mother. “I’m twenty-seven,
Momma. When you were twenty-seven, you were living with Nanna.”

“When I was twenty-seven, I had a ten-year-old,” she
retorted. “I was mature.”

“Mm-hmm. I count my blessings every day that Barry never
managed to knock me up in those few years we were married, since I’m so
immature and all.”

Momma narrowed her eyes. “I bet you were taking birth
control on the sly.”

“Yep.”

She’d felt guilty about it in the past, but even being so
young, she’d known that Barry wouldn’t make much of a father.

“Women like you are the ones who make it so damn hard for
the rest of us,” Momma said. “He was a good man, Daisy. You’re not gonna do no
better.”

Daisy opened her mouth to rebut, but the squeeze of fingers
on her shoulder prompted her to look up at Ben striding down the aisle. “Hi,”
she said when he winked.

“Hello,
liefje
.”
He continued down the aisle toward Jerry’s workstation.

Liefje
.

Daisy wiped her grin away and resumed her work.

Momma cleared her throat, and Daisy looked up at her.

“What?”

“Don’t be getting your hopes up. He don’t want you. That’s
how all them European men are. Real flirty.”

“Yes, Momma.” Daisy rolled her eyes and resumed her
packaging. Arguing was pointless. Momma would never. Daisy’s father had bounced
before she was born, and all of Momma’s prospects since then had been liars,
cheats, or indigent. The indigent ones wouldn’t have been so bad, but the fact
they were lazy as well and really looking more for a handout than a romance
pushed them into the realm of losers.

Momma had always given her relationships her all, and took
them in stride when they didn’t work out, but there was a tinge of desperation
about her need to be with someone all the time. What was wrong with being
single? For Momma, having a man claim her as his woman meant she was worth
something.

Daisy never wanted to be in that place again. When she had
belonged to someone, she’d felt
worthless
.

She could do bad all by herself. Seemed preferable.

She looked over her shoulder, down the aisle, as the tall
blonds moved.

Jerry stood, concern marked on his face, and followed Ben into
Nikki’s office.

What’s going on? Is
it Trinity?

Daisy scanned the room and found the petite chemist in the
far corner scanning a shelf of supplies.

If not her, then who? Or what?

A moment later, the men emerged from the office and split
in two directions. Ben headed toward the exit—and toward Daisy—and
Jerry made a beeline for Trinity. Ben paused next to Daisy’s worktable. He
opened his mouth to speak, but cast his gaze over at Momma. He gave Momma a
friendly wave, then leaned in close to Daisy’s ear.

“Say no aloud, but I expect to see you at the house for
dinner at six. I don’t see enough of you.”

Shit. I have so much
to do. I should say no for real, but…maybe just a couple of hours. By the time
we’re done with dinner, the barn should be cleared out and I can get back to
work
.

She shook her head and said, “No.”

“Thanks,” he said with a mock salute right as Jerry caught
up. They left together.

“What’d he want?” Momma asked. She gave Daisy a hard stare
over the top frame of her reading glasses.

Daisy had never been good at making up lies on the spot,
so she went with the first whooper she could come up with. “He left something
personal on the bus after the amusement park trip. Wanted to know if I’d by
chance seen it.”

“What was it?”

“Momma, don’t pry. I don’t tell other people’s secrets.”

“You used to tell me everything.”

And look where that
got me.

* * *

Daisy actually slipped out of work a little early, drove
home to Edenton to shower and change, and arrived at Jerry and Trinity’s house
just after six. Even after pulling up her parking brake and shutting off the engine,
she gripped the steering wheel and stared.

Perhaps they’d already started eating. Walking in late
would be awkward, maybe. She briefly considered backing out and planning to
give her regrets the next day. She’d say she got held up at the barn doing
last-minute packaging for that big order.

Too late. Ben appeared in the side door, and made a
Well, come on!
gesture at her.

She bared her teeth in a grin and took one last look at
her hair in the rearview mirror.

Jesus
.

She patted down the lumps and sighed her resignation.

Maybe I’ll cut it
short like Trinity’s used to be.

The idea actually put a bit of pep in her step as she
spanned the small distance between the driveway and the door. It wasn’t that
she
hated
her hair. She liked the
red. She liked the curls. The
amount
of hair was the problem. She never really did anything with it beyond stuffing
it beneath a variety of hats or patting it all into a shamefully sloppy braid.

She stepped into the kitchen, resolved, and already
feeling a few pounds lighter.

Ben wrapped an arm around her waist and gave her a little
squeeze. “I guess sneaking away didn’t turn you into a pumpkin,” he said.

She shrugged as he led her to the center island where
someone had already gotten into the sauce and left the caps off. Fruity stuff.
She figured the culprit was Trinity.

Clara gave her a little wave from the stove.

“We’re running on Thys Time,” Ben explained. “When we say
six, we really mean six-thirty…and even that’s being overly optimistic.” He
winked. “We’ve discovered Jerry has the Thys time management gene as well. Poor
guy.”

Daisy squinted down at Trinity’s sangria as she pondered
his words. Jerry did always seem to stumble into the Monday morning meeting
with dripping wet hair and a scowl on his face. He must have got where he
needed to and
when
he needed to due
to Trinity. That woman was absolutely anal about time management.

“I guess it won’t be the bride holding up the start of the
wedding this time, huh?” Daisy asked.

At the mention of the wedding, Clara turned around and
pressed her fists against her hips. She wore a frown, so Daisy braced herself
for whatever came next. “The wedding. Why not go?”

Daisy opened her mouth then closed it. She could see how
Clara would be a bit offended. After all, it was her son’s wedding. People
wanted their children to be liked. Normal people, anyway. At her own wedding,
Momma had snuck people onto the invitation list whom she thought would deliver
the most expensive gifts, and many of them were people Daisy, much less Momma,
had never had a conversation with. The mayor’s family. The guy who owned the
country club. The woman who owned the boutique on Broad Street. None of them
came, of course. Daisy had invited only a few close friends, and most of those
were her bridesmaids.

“It’s not the wedding itself I take issue with,” she said
finally. “It’s the reception.”

“Afraid to get hit by the—” She snapped her fingers
and grimaced. With a grunt, she shook her head and looked to Ben. “What is…with
the flowers?”

“Bouquet?”

She nodded and turned her gaze back to Daisy. “Yes, the
bouquet.”

“No,” Daisy said. “I’m more concerned about the venue
staff than the festivities. My ex-husband is a line cook at the country club.”

Clara gave her a long blink. “You think…” She punched her
palm with the opposite fist.

“I don’t know. He’s…”

Ben gave her shoulder a squeeze, and she looked up to find
him smirking.

“What?”

“Is he larger than me?”

Daisy shook her head.

“I can take care of myself.”

“You shouldn’t have to be prepared to. We can avoid an
altercation altogether by me not being there.” She shrugged. “It’s not that
serious.”

His smile waned but he didn’t push. Neither did Clara.

They all sat down to beef dish Ben said was called
carbonade flamande
: thick chunks of
tender beef served with a sweet and sour onion broth and hearty root
vegetables. Crispy fries were mounded on the side.

“I made the fries,” Trinity said from Daisy’s left side.

“You did?”

It wasn’t that she
doubted
the woman, but…

Trinity shrugged and forked a chunk of beef into her
mouth. “Well, I peeled them. Same thing.”

They all laughed, including Clara, who was still flitting
around the kitchen poking this and that on the stove. She put one arm around
Trinity’s shoulders and the other around Daisy’s and said, “What is that
saying? The way to a man’s heart is, what?”

“Through his belly,” Trinity said with a slight tinge of
dejection in her voice.

“Well, I don’t agree. If it were so,
ik zou niet een oude heks
.”

Ben rolled his eyes.

“Does that mean what I think?” Jerry asked.

“She’s putting herself down again about the Kate thing.” Ben
set down his fork and crossed his arms over his chest. “
Moeder
, it was your choice not to move on. You could have moved
on.”

Clara grumbled and took her seat.

“You make it sound like that’s such an easy thing, Ben,” Trinity
balked. “I mean, come on. Put yourself in the woman’s perspective. I know
that’s tough with the testosterone poisoning you’re obviously experiencing, but
consider how you’d feel if over the course of a few years, you have what you
think is an exclusive relationship with someone. You have a couple of kids. And
every time you look at those kids they’re a reminder of how fucked up
everything was. Would it be so easy for you to move on?”

Ben tilted his chair back and crossed his arms over his
chest. “I don’t know. I have a hard enough time understanding how anyone could
impregnate a woman and not stick around, even with the job he had. He should
have been kinder. Let her off the hook. Tell her it wasn’t going to happen. I
think she held out for him for so many years that at some point she just
stopped waiting and stopped caring about love at all.”

Daisy pushed her chair back and the sound of the squeaking
legs against the tiles made them all look at her.

She cringed. “Sorry. I…maybe I’ll just go into the living
room and you all can continue your conversation.”

“Why?” Ben asked.

“Because it’s none of my business.”

The truth was that the entire conversation was making her
gut roil. It wasn’t so much the dirty laundry being aired, but the fact that
the boys seemed to be judging Clara for her perceived weakness. If Ben felt that
way about his mother, how did he really feel about Daisy and her own
illustrious failed relationship?

“Sorry,” she said, scooping her plate up from the bottom
and tucking a fork into her shirt pocket.

She could feel their stares on the back of her head as she
carried her food away. She’d barely gotten settled on the sofa with her plate
on her lap when Trinity sank into the neighboring cushion with her own plate.

“You didn’t have to go, you know,” she said.

Daisy swirled the end of a fry through the rich gravy and
gave Trinity an assessing glance.

“They wouldn’t talk about anything in front of you if they
didn’t want you to know it.”

“Are they always so…open? I’m not used to that.”

Trinity shrugged. “No. I think it’s just extenuating
circumstances—the three of them being together. There’s an odd dynamic.”
She chuckled. “Clara’s eyebrows shoot up every time Jerry calls her ‘Mom’.”

“Why?”

“Ben says she doesn’t think she’s earned it.”

“And…you’re comfortable with the way they question her?”

“I don’t know if
comfortable
is the word I’d use. I’m accepting of it, I guess, but something you’ve got to
understand about Ben and Clara’s bond is he’s always taken care of her as much
as she’s taken care of him. He’s probably a bit harder on her than we would be,
because he knows she needs it.”