The Trouble With Angels Page 0,37

you and me. It has been for a good long time. We're doing all right, aren't we?"

"What did he want?"

"To be fair, I didn't give your father much of a chance to say."

Karen looked over to Maureen. "Did you tell him if he wanted anything, he should talk to your attorney?"

The kid knew her all too well. "Something along those lines," Maureen admitted.

"Is he?"

"I don't have a clue what your father will or won't do." What Maureen did know was that the less she had to do with Brian, the better for everyone involved. Just hearing his voice was like ripping open a freshly healed wound.

But in her case the wound hadn't healed. It had festered and the poison had acted like a malignancy, spreading into every part of her life. She wasn't so blind not to know what was happening. Yet she felt powerless to stop it.

Karen continued to study her, until Maureen found her daughter's eyes disconcerting. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I'm trying to see if your face changes."

"Changes?"

"Your voice does. Whenever you talk about Dad your voice gets deep and a little scratchy."

"Really?" Maureen hadn't noticed. "What about my face?"

Karen centered her focus on her mother once more. "Say something about Dad."

"Say something about Dad," Maureen repeated. "Well, let me think. We were married right out of college and - "

"Not like that. Talk about him the way you do now."

"I don't understand." Maureen momentarily diverted her attention from the road.

Karen's voice deepened as she said, "The bastard I used to be married to always said" - she paused - "like that."

"I sound like that when I mention your father?" Hearing Karen echo the biting words she'd repeated countless times was like a cold slap in the face.

"Yup. Just like that."

Had she actually spoken those words in that tone of voice for Karen to hear over and over again? Maureen's stomach knotted with the thought of what had happened to her since the divorce. She'd turned cold and angry. Bitter and ugly.

When Brian had first asked for the divorce, Maureen hadn't shed a tear. It was as though she'd been waiting for that moment almost from the first.

Brian had always been the restless sort, full of energy. There were places to go, people to meet. Increasingly he spent more time away from home on a variety of different projects.

She remembered the feelings of profound sadness after he'd moved out, and a multitude of regrets. If only she'd been a spotless housekeeper, a better cook, a more imaginative lover. If only she'd been more understanding. If only she'd listened more often. If only she'd talked to him. If only...if only...if only.

Then one day she decided she wasn't willing to accept the blame for their failed marriage any longer.

She wasn't the one who'd violated the vows they'd spoken before God and their families.

She wasn't the one who couldn't hold down a decent job for longer than six months at a stretch.

She wasn't the one who'd walked out on the family he'd agreed to support. But then Brian never had been much for financial responsibilities.

Overnight, it seemed, the love she felt for her college sweetheart and the only lover she'd ever had turned to a fire-quenching hatred. After he'd left, she'd decided to make his life a living hell. The same hell he'd given her all the years they were married.

"Mom," Karen asked her, "are you all right?"

"I'm fine, sweetheart." They pulled onto the dirt road that led to Nichols's Riding Stables.

"Are you going to be in the barn with Mr. Nichols when I'm finished with my lesson?"

"Ah." Maureen needed to think. Thom confused her, and she'd already decided not to see him again, other than what was unavoidable. "I don't think so."

"Where do you want me to meet you?"

"I'll be the car," Maureen told her. She parked in her usual spot, and with her hands braced against the steering wheel she smiled at her daughter. "I'm sorry I called your daddy a bastard, Karen."

"Don't worry, Mom, I know my dad." Having said that, the twelve year old climbed out of the car, slammed the door, and raced toward the barn.

Thom's daughter was waiting for her, and the girls wrapped their arms around each other as if it had been months since they'd last spent time together. Like long-lost friends, the two headed inside the barn.

Maureen climbed out of the car. If she was going to avoid Thom, she couldn't sit in her car, waiting like a