Love Songs
Page 11

She interlaced her arm through his. “I’m sure.”
“And where am I headed?” he asked as he pulled open the creaky door to his truck.
“Riverside Building. I thought it would be fun to see if Ed and Darcy would like to have lunch with us.”
“They both work in the building?”
She smiled. “Yes. I have a lot of family that works in the building.”
He nodded and walked around the front of the truck then climbed in next to her.
“What does Darcy do there?”
“She is Ed’s assistant.”
He started the truck and eased out onto the street. “So, you were going to tell me about your parents.”
“Did you stay up all night wondering about that?”
He cleared his throat. Well, he’d been up all night thinking about her, but he wasn’t going to share that information.
“You said parents, rotating house, and phone call. Your choice in which order you start your story.”
She grinned and cranked down the window. Clara sucked in a deep breath and closed her eyes. “God it’s a pretty day today.”
“A bit too hot don’t you think?”
“Nah. It’ll only be a few months and we’ll be complaining that it’s too cold.”
He chuckled as he turned at the light. “True enough. Okay, so talk.”
She turned toward him and pulled her legs up under her on the bench seat.
“My parents are high school sweethearts. They married young and started a family. My mom put my dad through college to get his teaching degrees. Somewhere between working two jobs, having three kids, and my dad taking a long time to secure a really good job, their marriage broke apart and they got divorced.”
“How old were you?”
“Six.”
He cringed. “That’s pretty little.”
She nodded. “I can’t say I knew too much about it. One day Dad moved out, but he was always around.” She smiled. “To tell you the truth I think we saw him more when he didn’t live with us.”
Clara readjusted her legs. “Mom remarried soon after their divorce was final. She married my dad’s best friend.”
“Ouch.”
“Yep. But he was a good guy. Perhaps a little lonely considering he married his best friend’s ex-wife and then had an affair and left my mom when he got his mistress pregnant.”
Warner laughed aloud. “Oh, you do have some drama in your life.”
“That would sound like it.” She chuckled. “Anyway, Matt, my step-dad, eventually left my mom, married this other woman and I think they have four kids now.”
“Wow, that’s a lot.”
She let out a sigh. “I don’t think so.” Then she turned her head to him. “Do you really think so?”
He felt the heat crawl up the back of his neck. Was she really asking his opinion on family size? What did he know about family dynamics? “Any kids are a lot.”
Her shoulders dropped and the curve of her lips turned downward. Oh, he’d messed up that answer.
“Anyway,” she waved her hand through the air as if to reject his answer. “Matt left the day before Mom found out she had breast cancer.”
“That’s insensitive.”
Her smile was back. “You’d think, but no one knew about this. She didn’t tell anyone. In fact, she decided to go through a double mastectomy alone, that way no one would worry about her.”
Warner shifted his glance to her and then back to the road. “That’s not some little in and out surgery.”
“I know, right?” Clara adjusted in the seat again. “She was out of sorts. That’s all I can say. But, my Uncle Curtis was on call at the hospital that day and he saw her being wheeled into surgery. He called Dad and he was by her side the moment she woke up. It was the beginning of our happily ever after as a family.”
“So they got back together that day and she beat cancer?” he asked as he headed toward the huge building that graced the Nashville skyline.
“Well she did beat cancer, but it took a little time for them to patch things up. Dad was engaged after all.”
Warner was grinning, he knew it. Her drama had nothing on his, but when she told her tale he realized even the most put together of families was dysfunctional.
“Your dad, he dumped his fiancée?”
“Oh, no. He’s not that kind of man. He’d made a commitment to Kathy and he was going to see it through.”
“But he was still in love with your mother.”
Clara turned her head and eased against the seat. “I didn’t say he loved my mother.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Her smile widened. “He had never stopped loving her. What a sap.” She laughed. “Anyway, he married Kathy and mom refused to go to the wedding. Instead she headed to Mexico and met some man.”
“Reality TV has nothing on this relationship.”
She winced at that and continued, “He married her, but she came to her senses before they’d even been married twelve hours. She told him she’d made a mistake and wanted out. She had a friend in the travel industry who took his ticket to Hawaii, where they were going to spend their honeymoon, and she had his ticket fixed so he’d go to Mexico instead.”
“His new wife sent him after his ex-wife?”
“Yes she did.”
“That’s gutsy.”
“I guess when you realize you made a mistake you might as well suck it up and make the best of it, right?”
That one hit home. “Yeah.”
“Kathy is married now with three kids and she’s happy as far as I know. Dad went to Mexico, got Mom, and they came home and got married—again.”
“What about the man in Mexico?”
“I don’t know about him. Just some guy who friended her. They never mentioned him much.”
Warner could understand that.
Clara pointed to the entrance to the parking garage and Warner headed that way. “Okay, this house you live in.”
Clara adjusted in her seat again, tucking her other leg under her and shaking out the one she’d been sitting on.
“The house.” She took a breath. “Keep up, okay?” She laughed. “My Aunt Arianna, who owns the theater, owns the house. When she left for Broadway she let my Aunt Regan live there, after she’d returned from living in Hawaii.”