Soaring(72)

But it was after eight and thus not too late, so I opened up my texts and sent a group message to my kids.

Your Uncle Lawrie is thinking about bringing your cousins out for Thanksgiving. If you have time, text him or call him and tell him you’d like to see him. Love you, honeys.

I sent it and pushed away from the window, wondering if I should change before Mickey got there, when the doorbell rang.

I looked that way, saw the motion sensor outdoor light had been activated and Mickey’s body was framed in the stained glass window.

What on earth?

It wasn’t even nine o’clock. They couldn’t have ordered and eaten and gotten home in that time.

I hurried to the door as my phone in my hand sounded.

Startled, I looked down and saw a short text from Auden.

On it.

Oh my God!

I was grinning and still hurrying to the door when my phone sounded again.

I was at the door, multi-tasking by unlocking and reading a text from Olympia.

Me too.

I didn’t know if that was for Lawr or me or both.

I just knew it was more progress.

This made me happy.

And as I opened the door, I hoped by all that was holy what lay behind it would make me happy too.

I looked up to Mickey’s face, caught his expression and froze, the happiness leaking right out of me.

He said nothing, just moved inside in a way I was forced to move back. Once he got in, he stopped and so did I.

He closed the door and turned back to me.

“Hey,” he said softly.

“Hey, Mickey,” I replied in the same tone.

“Gotta get back to my kids,” he told me.

But, he’d just arrived.

“I—”

“Rhiannon didn’t show.”

I stared in shock.

His ex was supposed to be at dinner?

This knowledge forced a variety of thoughts to tumble through my head, including the fact he’d kissed me at the restaurant and one of his options after our kiss had included joining them—joining them for a dinner that would be consumed with his kids and ex-wife.

I also thought of something I hadn’t noticed. That they were at a four-top and they’d had their menus when Bradley and I arrived.

They’d also had them when we’d left.

But the priority thought that pushed all others aside was that Cillian’s mother didn’t come to his birthday dinner.

“Oh no,” I breathed, getting closer and lifting a hand to place it on his chest. “She was coming?”

“We have an agreement,” he said shortly, looking strange, speaking strange, like he was controlling something but only barely. “So the kids wouldn’t feel all the loss her bullshit could make them feel, we’d do what we could to give them their family on days that were special. Not goin’ all out, shit like her sleepin’ over Christmas Eve, which could give them ideas. But at the very least birthday dinners, Christmas dinner, Thanksgiving, we’d have them together. If one of us found someone, that’d be part of the deal and whoever that was would have to get that. We’ve been divorced a year and a half, separated a year more than that, and this has worked. She’s never bailed on our kids.”

“So,” I started cautiously, “did she call? Explain—”

“Oh yeah, the bitch called,” Mickey interrupted me to growl viciously.

His tone frightened me but I forced myself to stay in his space and keep my hand light on his chest, even though he wasn’t touching me and he was holding himself in that strange way he’d been speaking.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I noted quietly.

“It wasn’t,” he confirmed. “You haven’t seen it, but when she gets Cill, she fucks ’im up. He gets wound up, acts out, comes to me. Takes a day or two, but I give him what he needs, he settles in. He goes to her for her week, she unravels that, so when I get him back, he’s gone again. Vicious cycle. So tonight, the longer it took for her to show, he knew, they knew.”

“They knew what?” I asked carefully when he said no more.

“That she goes on benders.”

I swallowed a gasp as Mickey kept talking.

“When we were together, I covered her ass. Told myself the kids didn’t get it. That was a lie. They see everything. Worse, they feel it. Didn’t happen a lot but it happened too fuckin’ much for me. After the one I decided would be her last, she came home, I had her bags packed. Told her to kick the booze or get the fuck out. She told me she didn’t have a problem even though she was so hungover, she looked about eighty. I told her if she didn’t get her disappearing from our family home without warning for three days so she could get hammered was a problem, she needed to get her shit and get out. Then she grabbed her shit and walked right out.”