Luke's #1 Rule (13 page)

She still didn’t glance his way. She didn’t speak. Fine.

Dr. Michaels glanced over a chart.

“This is something you wrote last time you were here,” the doc said. Spence didn’t remember ever writing anything while in rehab. He slumped in his chair. Whatever came, he wouldn’t like it.

He was right.

“Does Bettina know about your family situation? Your family of origin?”

Spence shrugged. He wasn’t sure. Actually, he was pretty sure he hadn’t mentioned it. He didn’t like to think about that stuff.

“They live in Iowa. I’ve never met them. Spence hates them.”

No. They were not going to make him talk about that.

“Have you ever been curious about why he hates his folks?”

“They’re not my ‘folks.’” Spence’s legs did a little dance of their own. He tried to make them stop, but they wouldn’t. “We don’t talk about them.”

“Why don’t you tell your wife—”

“Soon to be ex if you don’t start talking. Now.” Bettina finally spoke.

Ex. Oh, no, not again. At least this time he’d have warning and not come home to an empty house, no wife, no kids. No clothes in Chloe’s closet, no toothbrush in her holder, no jewelry box on her dresser. She’d left a few of the kids’ things behind, but she’d taken their beds. She’d left his to lie in alone.

“I, ah, what?” His hands were shaking. He couldn’t think. Wait. Think. Remember. “Oh, wait, no, don’t leave, please, let me think, I just need a sec.” His mind blanked.

“Your parents.”

“Oh, those people. They adopted me when I was ten. I was abandoned as a baby, orphaned. Foster care for ten years. Then they needed help on the farm, more help than foster care allowed ten-year-olds, so they adopted me. I was your basic slave laborer.” He turned to face Bettina and stuck his tongue out. Then he realized what he’d done and slammed his hand over his mouth. “Jesus, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that, oh God, don’t leave. I love you.”

Bettina hadn’t said a word. She clutched her rounded belly.

“It’s okay.” The doc turned to Bettina. “Some of Spence’s motor skills are out of sync. He’ll be fine, we think. But it may take some time for him to settle down.”

“He’s behaving like a ten-year-old.” Bettina said it and then he saw realizing dawn. She’d made the connection. “In one of your suicide notes, you mentioned you had an alcoholic grandfather. Does that mean you found your family of origin? We have medical records?”

Spence swayed in his chair. Too many questions. She asked too many questions. Finally the doc spoke.
Thanks, Doc. Saved me.

“Yes, something shifted for Spence at age ten. Spence, you wrote out your history for me here, last time. I’m sorry to see you back again and with the circumstances so similar.”

“How do you mean?” Bettina massaged her back and talked to the doctor.

“It’s better if you and Spence can have this conversation where you both feel supported. I’m the silent support. Talk to your husband. Tell him how you feel.”

“Well, I hate him,” she told the doctor.

“That’s fine, but tell him, not me.”

Spence put his hand over his eyes.
Why was he such a fuck up? So he’d been an orphan, so his family hadn’t wanted him, so he was adopted, so he had to work hard, so the fuck what?

Bettina slapped the hand from his eyes. He flinched.

“What? Don’t worry. I won’t say it again. I know you heard.” Bettina looked pissed as hell, tapping her foot like his adoptive mother used to do. He closed his eyes and tried to remember, but there were a lot of blanks. “Say something, asshole.”

He closed his eyes and reached out a hand to the doctor. “Could you let me see those pages?” The doc handed them over.

Spence scanned. “No idea who natural parents were slash are. No idea of medical history.” He remembered that now. It wasn’t in the pages. He put them down. He didn’t want to see what else he’d written. “Chloe got so angry she hired a guy to find my parents. My real parents. Good ol’ dad was dead, but he had a sister who gave us the medical information. My mom had been thirteen. Raped. Hid it. Had the baby, well, had me, outside, alone, and put it, ah, put me, in a purse, an old purse. She tried to keep me in her room, but her mother saw and took me to some Catholic Sisters of Mercy or some such adoption people. I was not adopted as an infant. I already knew that.”

“Did you meet your mother?” For the first time Bettina’s voice softened a little.

“She thought it best to leave the past in the past.” True story. He got so hot, sweat beaded up all over his body, making him cold. He shivered. The doc had a thin hospital blanket on a side chair, and he nodded toward it.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Get it if you need it.”

What he needed. What he needed. “I need you.” Spence blurted to Bettina as he got up on shaky bare legs to retrieve the blanket. He wrapped himself in it. “I know I’m not supposed to say that.” He directed his comment to the doctor. “But I’m being honest, right? I need her. I need my boys, too. My family means everything to me. I never had one, not really. Those people didn’t love me. I was a paycheck.”

“Now I’m YOUR paycheck.”

Boy, she knew how to bust his balls. Wasn’t there a heart beating inside her enormous breast? The room started to telescope, and then everything went black.

****

Bettina had been checked over by her OB and released the same day. She had to call one of the teachers she liked best to come get her. The woman had wanted to know what had happened, where was Spence, was she okay? Bettina played it off. Oh sure, everything’s fine, Spence had to go out of town on business and she’d had a cramp and didn’t feel she should drive, so she’d called a cab. Silly.

She’d learned how to lie from Spence. She got pretty good at it. When she got home, she trudged up the steps, grabbing up the pages Spence had written. She took them into the bedroom with her, sat on the bed with her swollen feet up, and read.

What she saw, self-indulgent bullshit. He wasn’t thinking of her or the baby. He wasn’t thinking of his sons. He only thought “poor me.” Well, to hell with him. Bettina understood why Chloe had taken her children and left Spence. Now she had to decide. Would she do the same?

It was tempting. She had a good job. Her mother lived in Arizona, but hell, she could afford quality daycare. A nanny. It wasn’t what they’d planned, but life didn’t work like that. She let tears roll down but didn’t bother to break into sobs. The jerk wasn’t worth it. He obviously didn’t feel she and their child were worth living for.

What a line of crap she’d fed herself when she’d first met him. Oh, Mr. Wonderful, Mr. Misunderstood. She had wanted to take care of the broken man she’d married. Yes, a bad time for real estate in Detroit, he’d get back on his feet someday. But for the first few months, hell, years, she’d done all she could to make it up to the wounded child inside Spence. Then he started acting like a druggie teenager, and she’d started to become annoyed. As his behavior escalated, she got scared. Her OB had told her she must keep calm in these final weeks. No matter what stress her husband was under, she must make herself her first priority.

She could do that. She’d seen Spence do it for years. Her first act of rebellion was falling asleep in her clothes without turning down the bed first. She slept like a child, but she woke up a woman with some decisions to make.

Should she call Chloe?

Oh so tempting. With a mix of horror and chagrin, she realized Chloe was her only friend. Unless you counted what’s-her-name from the Al-Anon group. Suzy. Bettina dragged herself out of bed, stripped, and stood under the hot shower. She had to get the smell of hospital off her. While the water pounded down, she admitted something. She was no different from Suzy or any of the other people at Al-Anon. And admitting that became a first step into a new reality for Bettina.

What had Suzy said? “Get out while you can.” Bettina would certainly take that under advisement.

****

Luke woke up in Chloe’s bed, her warm body cuddled in his arms. He froze as he heard a car pull into the gravel driveway. That would be his mother, ready to begin her work day. He knew she’d go upstairs first with the fresh muffins she’d made at home. She’d set them out with cut fruit and start the large coffee urn.

It didn’t matter. She’d already seen his car in the parking lot. Unless…

“Chloe,” he whispered, gently pulling his arm out from under her shoulders. She stirred and her beautiful eyes opened an inch. “My mom’s here.”

She jumped out of bed without a word while he quietly zipped his jeans. Man, she looked good naked with her sleepy eyes and hair all messed up. He wished he could pull her right back into bed, but that wasn’t going to happen.

“I’ll just say I got here early to pick up the boys for the fishing trip.”

“Right.”

Chloe reached for her robe. They could both hear his mom upstairs, getting ready for the guests who didn’t feel like using their own cottage kitchenettes this early in the day.

Chloe headed for the bathroom. Luke finished dressing and started out toward the kitchen, wishing he at least had a toothbrush. As he walked past the bathroom, Chloe opened the door and thrust a toothbrush with a dollop of toothpaste on it at him.

He brushed his teeth at the kitchen sink and hid the toothbrush in Chloe’s room in the bedside table, right next to the condoms. Crap. His mother would be emptying the wastebasket in here and yep, there was his condom, right on top of the basket. He heard her steps coming down the stairs, so he grabbed the wicker basket and knocked on the bathroom door. The running shower reminded him he needed to take a piss. Really bad.

He opened the door and stuck the wastebasket in the center of the room. He just made it into the kitchen when his mother knocked on the locked door that separated the office from the bungalow’s living quarters. She had a key, but she wouldn’t just let herself in when a guest was using the bungalow. She wouldn’t even normally knock this early but would wait for Chloe and the boys to head down to the beach before she vacuumed and changed sheets. She must know he was here. Of course. She’d seen his truck.

“Luke?”

“Morning, Mom.” He opened the door.

“You’re here early.” She walked into the kitchen.

“Finn and I are taking the boys fishing this morning. As usual he’s running a little late.”

His mother said nothing. She stared at his bare feet and bed hair. He wasn’t fooling her. Not for one minute. He shrugged.

She shook her head and tried to hide her smile. He bet she’d be on the phone to Ursula the minute she could manage it.

****

Four days after their first session, Bettina sat with Spence in front of Dr. Michaels’s desk. The doctor wrote a prescription for a pill that would make him sick if he had a drop of alcohol. He pushed it toward them, and Bettina grabbed it.

“You are not my mother, okay? I can fill my own damn prescriptions.” Truth, he wanted to hold the script. He got an anticipatory surge just seeing the square of paper.

For a week, he had done a detox in the hospital. He had been fortunate—well, he still didn’t feel fortunate, but he worked on that—Bettina had found him and called 9-1-1 before the pills he’d taken had completely engulfed his system. But now there would be no marijuana, medical or otherwise. There would be no uppers or downers. There would just be this one pill.

The doctor checked his notes. “You need sixty days, not six.”

“I’ve done this all before. It never worked then. Why should it now?”

Bettina sat rigid beside him, the prescription slip clutched in her hand. She had not met his eyes, even once. Spence sighed. He took Bettina’s hand. The one not holding the prescription. She let him.

“Listen. I’m getting clean for good. That’s it. I had my party, and it’s not over. It’s just going to be a sober party this time.”

She slowly turned toward him. “You’re not the only one who has been down this road before,” she said. “You cannot promise you’ll never fall off the cliff again.”

“It’s a wagon.” Spence attempted a weak joke.

“In your case, it’s a high steep cliff, Grand Canyon size.”

She shook her head, but he thought he detected a slight smile trying to work its way onto her face. He did not deserve this woman. He knew she would never walk away from him like Chloe had.

“Look, I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me. I hate myself. And if you want me to, I will stay sixty days. But Chloe is taking the boys to Seattle, and I need to stop her somehow.”

“Why did you agree to it in the first place? She’d have needed your permission to take them out of state.”

Bettina didn’t miss a trick. Shrewd mind behind that sweet face. He’d have to own up at some point. Might as well be now. “I did it for you. For us.”

Nobody spoke for a full minute. Spence couldn’t bear it, the avoiding, the hiding, the lies. It had to be over. For his own good. For himself. Or there might not be any more of him—the good dad, the nice husband, the sincere person—left.

Bettina just waited for him to finish answering. The doctor, too, clearly expected him to continue.

“She signed the house over to me. Paid off the mortgage.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She gave me clear title.”

“I thought the house was yours?”

“I liked you thinking that. It made me feel less of a loser.” He got a hit of relief for having come clean. Swiftly followed by dread. Bettina’s face paled. Her body shrunk from his side even more. She stared at the wall, not at him.

“What else?” When she finally spoke, she looked him in the eye. He saw fury there. And hurt.

“That’s it. I swear.”

“It’s more than enough. You could have killed yourself. You tried to…” She choked back a sob as he watched her carefully controlled façade fall apart.

Yes. Bald truth. But if he thought Bettina might take pity on him because of his suicide attempt, he now knew that wasn’t going to happen. Just another delusion.

She smacked him on his arm, and then she did it again. The doctor coughed and raised one finger as if to say “time out.”

“Bettina.” The doctor waited while she swiped away tears. She nodded and Spence knew she was ready to listen. “Will you tell Spence why you want to hit him?”