Headed for Trouble - By Suzanne Brockmann Page 0,58

maybe you should arrest Maggie’s mom. Talk about neglect.”

Ouch. Arlene flinched as if the girl had struck her across the face.

Maggie looked stricken, too. “No,” she told her friend, “you don’t understand.”

“She’s never home,” Lizzie argued. “You know, this is the first time I’ve met your mom? I mean, God, Mag, your mother’s supposed to take care of you, and all I ever see is you taking care of her, sending her packages, worrying about her …”

“You don’t understand,” Maggie said again.

“You’re my best friend, and you live your life in total terror,” Lizzie said just as hotly. She turned to Arlene. “No one should have to live that way. You joined the Reserves, not the Army. This wasn’t supposed to be your career, and you shouldn’t have to go back. And you don’t have to. All you have to do is—”

“Lizzie,” Maggie said. “Stop.”

“Have a baby,” Lizzie finished.

“It was stupid,” Maggie told her friend, “thinking I could set my mom up with Jack, thinking she would just … fall in love with him.” She turned to her mother, with tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be in love to make a baby,” Lizzie said, disgust in her voice. “My little brother’s proof of that. People have kids for stupid reasons all the time. Why not have one for a good reason?”

“Liz, just go home.” Maggie was defeated. “You’re making things worse.”

“If you die,” Lizzie told Arlene, “when you die, you won’t have to be here to see what it does to Maggie. Or maybe you’ll come home without your legs, and Maggie will have to take care of you for the rest of her life and—”

“Lizzie, go home!” Maggie shouted.

And everyone leapt into action. Dolphina grabbed the outspoken Lizzie with one hand and Will with the other. “Will and I are going to walk you across the street.”

Jules and Robin were right behind them, going out the door. “Call if you need anything,” Robin told Arlene, who wasn’t paying anyone any attention. She was looking at her daughter, tears in her eyes.

Jack alone hesitated as the door closed behind them all.

“I’m so sorry, Mommy.” Maggie started to cry. “Liz doesn’t understand. Her parents are rich. They don’t—”

“It’s okay, baby.” Arlene wrapped her arms around her daughter.

“And I’m sorry about emailing Jack,” Maggie said through her tears. “He was just so nice when I met him at the wedding. When he talked about you, and he told me he’s been madly in love with you since you were like, sixteen, and all I could think was …”

Maggie kept talking, her words punctuated by her sobs, but Jack stopped paying attention to what she was saying, because Arlene lifted her head and looked at him, surprise in her eyes. Surprise and disbelief.

Great.

Yeah, it was definitely time to go.

But now Maggie was speaking directly to him, pulling free from Arlene to face him. “I’m so sorry,” she told him, tears running down her face. “I just wanted …”

“It’s okay, honey,” he told her. “I know. I got a little caught up in the fantasy, too. But you can’t just snap your fingers and make someone change everything they believe in. Your mom, she’s one of the heroes and … I had a shot at making her fall in love with me a few years ago, and I screwed it up. I wish I hadn’t, because I’m pretty sure that I could’ve talked her into marrying me and … Having a baby right now might’ve been the right choice for all of us.” He shook his head. “But she and I, we’re both different people now and … And you can’t just make someone fall in love with you, especially after letting them down in the past. Life doesn’t work that way.”

Maggie nodded, subdued. “I know.”

Arlene spoke. “You’ve really been in love with me for seventeen years?” She was standing with her arms crossed, looking at him as if he were roadkill.

“Something like that,” he said, through a mouth that was suddenly dry. “I know you don’t believe me, but—”

“It never occurred to you to tell me that? To say the words? Hey, Arlene. How have you been? I’m kinda in love with you …?”

Yeah, like he was going to walk in here, cut open his chest and toss his heart onto the floor? “I asked you to marry me.”

“Out of pity,” she countered.

“What? No,” Jack said. “I asked for the reason most men propose marriage to the woman that