He’d let her go for the time being, secure in the knowledge she loved him, grateful, so grateful he’d been given this second chance. To build a life. To be a parent. To make a new family with a woman he loved, and show his little girls by example just how beautiful life could be.
And life would be beautiful here in this house now that Rowena had transformed it: turned its gray walls bright with color, banished the gray of dreams lost and brought hope back into the lives of Cash and his children. Made Charlie believe in magic again. Feel safe.
And Charlie did. He’s seen it in his little girl’s eyes when he’d held her on his lap in Rowena’s van, as she’d dropped them off and he’d carried Charlie in to bed. His bed, not hers.
It was the only one big enough to fit the dual guardians who not only stubbornly insisted on keeping the runaway in sight, but had to be touching her at all times just to make sure she couldn’t escape. It had moved Cash to the core, seeing Destroyer plastered against one side of his daughter, keeping watch, while Mac snuggled in on the other side of her sister, her little hand holding tight to Charlie’s pajama top just to make sure her slippery older sister didn’t disappear again.
Even Lisa seemed subdued by what had happened. Cash was thankful his ex-wife had greeted their oldest daughter with tears and hugs, as relieved as Cash was to see Charlie safe. And yet, even that couldn’t bridge the gap between two warring parents. Cash knew he had to do that himself.
“I lost my temper tonight,” he admitted. “Let all that poison between us spill out. And Charlie paid the price.”
“She always paid the price, didn’t she, Cashel?” Lisa gripped her hands together, her voice shaking. “Somewhere deep inside I blamed her for the fact that we had to get married. And I was jealous when I saw the way you looked at her. But when Mac came along—it was so much easier for me to love her. God, what an ugly thing for a mother to admit. But tonight, while Charlie was missing I had to face the truth about myself. The reason I ran.”
“Because it was too hard for you to see Mac in pain.” He’d always known the reason. Lisa had told him long ago.
“No. That’s what I told you. Told myself. Because it was easier than admitting the truth.” Tears welled up in Lisa’s eyes. “I left because I was terrified someday Charlie would look in my eyes and guess the truth. That if one of my girls had to be hurt so badly in that accident, I wished it had been her.”
Lisa looked at him, and he could sense what she expected to see. Revulsion. Disgust. Hate. But in that moment what he felt was grateful. Cash realized he’d known how she felt the whole time. She’d been trying to protect Charlie, in her own way. One he never would have chosen. And yet, trying to protect a child, even in the most misguided way, was something he could understand.
“You didn’t want Charlie hurt, Lisa,” he said at last. “You wanted Mac well. We both wanted that.”
“I kept thinking God was punishing me,” Lisa confessed, twisting her engagement ring around her finger. “Because I loved MacKenzie too much and Charlie too little. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent with my therapist, trying to believe I could make things better. But I didn’t know until tonight how cruel I’d been. When I thought of Charlie alone out there in the dark, thinking I didn’t want her…it hurt me so badly, Cash. Then I knew for the first time how much I loved her, too. If I could go back and change the way I held my heart back from her, I would. But all I can do is try for the rest of my life to show her just how much she means to me.”
“There are plenty of things we’d both change, Lisa,” Cash said. “Tonight Charlie could have been killed because you and I were too busy hurting each other to do what parents are supposed to do—love their children together even if they can’t stay married to each other.”
“We’ve never been good at working together. Everything in our marriage was a contest. Either you won or I did. Never both. What are we going to do now? About treatment in Chicago? About custody?” Lisa asked. “And how am I ever going to make it up to Charlie now that I’ve hurt her so badly?”
Cash lowered his face into his hands. He had plenty of his own fences to mend when it came to his little girl. But Rowena would help him figure out how to heal things in time. “We’ll have to put our own needs aside. Think of what’s best for the girls. Both of them.”
“Even if that means moving them to Chicago?”
“I want Mac to walk as much as you do, Lisa. And I feel like she really is starting to make progress. She’s pulling herself up, and—”
Cash stilled, hearing the creak of the bedroom door. A metallic thump he recognized as Mac’s wheelchair whacking into the wall.
“It’s the girls,” he warned, getting to his feet. As if she didn’t know. He saw Lisa fight to hide the misery in her face.
“Let me do it!” he heard Mac grouse as the wheelchair banged against something again.
“You’re gonna scratch the wall,” Charlie warned. “Daddy worked real hard to paint it.”
“I don’t care about any old paint! Even pink!” Mac insisted.
Cash headed through the living room, then down the hall to see what all the commotion was about. Not only had Mac wrestled her way into the wheelchair, she’d gotten Charlie to put on her leg braces and her sturdy-soled shoes. The kid was definitely dressed for battle and not planning to go back to bed anytime soon.
“You’re supposed to be asleep,” he said. But the only one who seemed to care about his opinion was the dog. Destroyer dropped down onto his belly and laid his head on his paws.
“Well, I’m not sleeping,” Mac insisted with her best “off with their heads” regal glare. “I got important stuff to say and you an’ Mommy got to listen.”
Cash sighed. He knew he’d have to deal with whatever was on Mac’s mind, but he’d be better prepared to face the kid’s inevitable questions once he and Lisa finished sorting things out themselves.
“It’s been a pretty tough night, kiddo,” he said. “Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
“No way.” Mac gripped the metal rail that spun her wheels and gave the chair a shove so hard one of the footplates banged into Cash’s shin.
“Ouch! Hey, you! Watch it!”
“I’m going to run you right over if I got to!”
“It’s that important, huh?”
It must’ve been. He dodged as she propelled the chair forward with another shove.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Charlie said, looking miserable again. “I just didn’t want her to get a bad surprise like I did. I was just trying to explain—”
“—why Charlie runned away,” Mac blustered, hijacking the spotlight again with one of the direst expressions Cash had ever seen. “Mommy maked her.”
Oh, God. Cash closed his eyes for a moment, surrendering to his youngest daughter’s iron will. There was no way Mac would let this subject wait until tomorrow.
Mac all but ran over Cash’s feet as she wheeled her chair into the kitchen. He hadn’t realized avenging angels came in the guise of five-year-olds wearing Hello Kitty nightgowns, but Mac fit the bill perfectly. Cash, Charlie and the dog followed in her wake.
“Remember, I told you that Mommy and Daddy made a mistake,” Cash began, but Mac wasn’t hearing any of it.
“Mommy sure made a great big giant-gantic one.” Mac leveled a baleful glare on Lisa. “Charlie says you’re making me move to your house. But she’s got to stay here.”
Lisa flushed, struck speechless. Cash knew Mac’s translation of the situation was making his ex-wife even more uncomfortable than she already was.
“Well, you’re not the boss of me!” Mac crossed her arms over her chest. “Me an’ Charlie got important stuff to do right here. We got to take care of our dog and go to school and Charlie’s got to come get me at the playground door every day and tell me all the bad things Tyler James did in fourth grade. And me and Daddy got stuff to do, too.”
“Your therapy? Maybe I could learn to do it,” Lisa said, and Cash knew she mea
nt it. She was willing to try. It surprised him. Warmed him toward her, just a little.
“Therapy stinks! It’s dancing I got to do.”
Cash felt the old knife twist in his chest. How many times had he and Mac watched that old recital tape, her little body swaying to the music, her arms going through the ballet moves even though her legs couldn’t hold her up.
Lisa was trying hard not to cry. “Dancing’s not the only thing in the world. There are lots of other things you can do. I could buy you a piano. You could play the pretty music sitting down.”
“What are you? Crazy?” Mac gaped at her in horror, as if she were Baryshnikov himself and someone had just suggested he turn in his tights to play Chopsticks. “I’m a dancer. And my daddy dances me whenever I want to. Round and round with my recital dress on.”
“In Chicago you could see real dancers do ballet on a great big stage.” Lisa tried to tempt her.
“I am a real dancer,” Mac insisted, in high outrage. “I don’t want to sit around and watch. And know what else?”
“I’m listening, MacKenzie,” Lisa said, and for once Cash could see that Lisa was.
“I’m keeping my sister. ’Cause right now I like her lots better than either one of you!”
Cash saw Charlie’s jaw drop. She stared at Mac, and he could see the conflict going on inside, that Charlie was still almost afraid to hope.
“And if you or Daddy even try to take us apart, you’ll be sorry! Me an’ Charlie won’t live with either one of you.”
Cash glanced at Charlie, saw something wonderful dawn in his little girl’s face. Her eyes started to shine.
“Mac, kids have got to live with a mom or dad or I think we’d get arrested,” Charlie said. “Besides. We don’t have anyplace else to go.”
“Oh, yes we do. The tree house! And we’d eat corn every single day and have a flashlight and everything.”
Charlie scooted over to her sister, leaned against Mac’s chair, looking as if she’d just won something precious.
“Kids, your mom isn’t trying to be mean, talking about taking Mac to Chicago,” Cash tried to explain. “She was trying to figure out what’s best for you, just like I am. We both want the same thing, Mac. You back on your feet.”
“I’m already on my feet,” Mac asserted, thrusting out her chin. “My doggy helped me.”
“He did,” Charlie affirmed. “Daddy and I saw it, right, Daddy?”
“We did,” Cash said, remembering the day she’d gotten her bear from the shelf and the sweet burst of hope he’d felt. She’d been standing now at therapy, too. A little longer every time. “You’re so brave, Mac. So strong. I know you’ll walk—”
“Walk, walk, walk. I’m sick of hearing ’bout it. If I do it right this minute will you promise to leave me alone? Will you, Mommy?”
“Sweetheart, you can’t—”
“You better promise.”
“I’d give anything if you’d walk,” Lisa said. Cash knew that he would, too. Because walking was the first step toward dancing. And he wanted that for Mac now, more than ever before.
“C’mere, doggy,” Mac ordered, regal as a queen. “Charlie, pull me. I’m stuck.”
Charlie eyed her parents nervously, then did as she was bid.
Lisa started to protest, but Cash laid a hand on her arm, stopping her.
Mac clenched her little fist in Destroyer’s plush fur and grabbed tight to her sister’s arm. She scooted her bottom forward to the edge of the wheelchair’s seat. “Fold up my feet thingies so I can reach the floor.”
Charlie bent down to flip the footrests up at her command. “Like that?”
“Egg-zacly. That’s what I like ’bout you, Charlie. You do everything just right. When I grow up, I’m going to be just like you.”
Charlie’s chest seemed to puff out just a little, her chin a little higher at Mac’s praise. “You ready to try standing up?” she asked.
“I’m sick of trying. I’m just going to do it so everybody stops bugging me crazy.”
Cash held his breath as Mac set her jaw and pulled, pulled herself hard, pulled herself up, her face turning red with exertion as she got her feet underneath her. She was balancing there on the stiff soles of her shoes, braced between the dog and her sister. Standing, stronger than she’d been since the day her legs had been crushed.
“MacKenzie!” Cash breathed in amazement. “Look at you!”
“You ain’t…seen nothing yet.” Mac’s brow furrowed and she glared down at the floor as if it were an enemy soldier. Slowly, painfully she shifted all her weight to her left foot then slid her right forward three inches. Four. Readjusting her grip on the dog and her sister, she concentrated on shifting her weight again, this time sliding her left foot up to her right.
One step.
Cash held his breath as she fought for every inch.
Two steps.
Three.
Charlie nearly dropped the kid, she looked so stunned. “Mac, you—you’re walking.”
Mac held her ground, panting, her face glowing with triumph. “Yeah. So there. Me an’ Destroyer been practicing. An’ I’m not going to Chicago and I’m keeping my sister ’cause Charlie and our doggy are lots better at making me walk than any old doctor ever is. Right, Daddy?”
“I guess so!” Cash fell to his knees. He opened his arms.
Mac let go of her hand holds and reached for him, taking one last step on her own. Into a future far brighter. Into arms she knew would always be there to catch her if she fell. Charlie piled on, too, hugging them both. He wished Rowena was here to see this. His children together, his anger at Lisa tempered, on its way to being healed. Maybe Rowena was right in the end: love could fix what was broken now that he finally believed.
Lisa stood a little way off, crying, suddenly looking so alone. The woman who’d given him these two children. That alone was a gift beyond measure.
He promised himself that he’d try harder to work with her, reason with her, make her a part of their daughters’ lives. Mac and Charlie would have Rowena—all her warmth, all her joy. But even then, they deserved the chance to know their real mother, too.
Cash held out his hand to Lisa, inviting her into the circle he and the girls made, a ring of healing. Hope. And she came, hugging Mac, hugging Charlie, her eyes thanking him.
“You did this, Cash,” Lisa whispered to him. “Thank you.”
Mac’s mouth popped open. “What’d you mean, he did it?” she complained, pulled back in Cash’s grasp. “I did it. An’ Charlie an’ Destroyer. And I’ll tell you something else right now, Mister Daddy.”
Cash laughed, standing up with his youngest daughter in his arms. “What’s that, kitten?” He perched her on the edge of the kitchen table.
“You better get busy makin’ our tree house. ’Cause maybe Charlie doesn’t like either one of you anymore. An’ maybe me an’ her’ll go out an’ live there even when it rains!”
“I like Daddy,” Charlie said, a little shyly, leaning against him. “I love Daddy.” She hesitated, and Cash could feel how big a chance his daughter was about to take. “And I love Mommy, too. But its okay you don’t want me, Mommy. I know it’s ’cause it’s my fault Mac’s legs got all smashed.”
“Your fault?” Cash asked, dumbstruck. “That’s ridiculous, honey. It wasn’t—”
“It was so. Remember how me an’ Mac always used to fight over the good seat? The side where you could see people’s yards?”
Cash remembered. “My brothers and I used to have the same fight. All kids do.”
“On the day that truck hit us it was Mac’s turn to sit in the good seat. But I wanted to see Jimmy Wong playing Frisbee with his dog. He took it to all kinds of contests and it’d jump way up in the air and catch everything Jimmy threw. I promised Mac could sit in the good seat the next two times if she’d trade that day.”
“Charlie, you couldn’t know Mac would get hurt,” Cash insisted.
But Lisa cut in. “Charlie, I know it’s
easy to blame yourself when bad things happen to someone you love. I—I’ve blamed myself for not being quicker to hit the brakes. Not seeing the truck sooner.”
“I blamed myself, too,” Cash confessed to both of them. “Maybe if I hadn’t been so desperate to get Mac out of the truck, the EMTs could have done a better job. I was so scared. All that gasoline spilled.”
“You guys are crazy!” Mac said. “The truck man was the one that was bad. He didn’t stop at the stoplight. ’Member, Charlie? Daddy said Mr. Google ’rested him.”