"It can go either way," I say. "Good or bad."
"I don't know," she says. "I like it here. So many people are leaving, getting their properties bought up by that mining company, you know? I thought about leaving, taking Olivia and going back to Kentucky. But this place feels like my home."
"Yeah, they tried to buy my mother's property too," I say.
"But you're holding onto it," she says. She doesn't ask anything else about my family, has the sense not to probe into things.
I exhale heavily. "It's complicated."
"Things are never simple."
"My family is about as complicated as it gets," I say. I don't say anything else. I don't want to bring her into my bullshit. I don't want to contaminate her with my family and whatever the hell is going on with this town. She thinks of West Bend as this oasis, this perfect place isolated from the rest of the shit that happens outside of here. She ran from enough bad shit in her life that she doesn't need mine.
I don't want to poison her.
My family is poison and I know it.
In fact, the best thing for her -- and for Olivia -- would probably be if I stayed way the hell away from her. The trouble is, I’m not sure staying away from her is something I can do.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Autumn
Sunlight streams through the windows, bathing everything in the room in a warm mid-morning glow.
Mid-morning.
I bolt upright in bed, pulling the sheets around my naked body, my heart racing. It’s mid-morning and I haven’t heard a peep out of Olivia?
Scrambling out of bed, I throw on a t-shirt and pull on my pajama pants, that were previously crumpled into a pile on the floor. There's an empty spot where Luke was last night, and the initial twinge of disappointment I feel when I see it turns to panic when I check Olivia’s room and see her empty crib.
I race down the stairs two at a time, mentally running through every possible catastrophic, terrible scenario in my head.
My thoughts are irrational, crazy, but I can’t stop them. This is like the beginning of every episode of one of those horrible news shows. I'm going to be a cautionary tale, something people tell about the mother who stupidly slept with a man who kidnapped her child.
Then I hear Olivia's laughter, her high-pitched squeal, and I burst into the kitchen to see them. Olivia sits in her high chair, clapping as she presses a spoonful of yogurt against Luke's nose. He looks at her with wide eyes, his nose dotted with yogurt, and she collapses against her high chair in hysterics again until she's nearly breathless.
"Did you sleep?" He looks up at me, casual like he does this every freaking day. As if he's in the business of entertaining toddlers.
"What are you doing?" My voice comes out harder than I intend it, but my heart is racing, pounding in my chest so hard I think it's going to explode. I look at them together, Olivia delighted with her new playmate, his nose covered in yogurt. For a second, I want to walk over there and kiss him.
"You were sleeping so soundly, and you were so tired, I figured it'd probably been a long time since you got to sleep in, so when she cried, I brought her downstairs. There's coffee over there if you want some. Bacon and eggs, too."
"How long have you been awake?" My voice is still clipped, with an edge I can’t quite seem to control, and I’m not sure why I’m so annoyed by this. I watch as Olivia applies more yogurt to Luke's nose and collapses into hysterical laughter again.
"A couple of hours."
"You've been entertaining her for a couple of hours?" He’s trying to be nice, I tell myself. The rational part of me knows that. But the protective mother in me thinks, you slept upstairs while some guy was alone with your child for a couple of hours?
"I figured if she got really upset, I'd just come up and get you."
"You should have gotten me anyway," I say, my tone clipped. "Unless you have vast childcare experience I don't know about."
It just comes out, and I look at his expression, and know I’m being mean. But I'm still on edge, still worked up by the fact that I thought that something had happened to her.
And by the fact that I feel suddenly vulnerable, finding him down here, laughing with Olivia. Taking an interest in my child.
You’re scared because he’s taking an interest in you. Because maybe he isn’t just a fling.
When Luke looks at me, his jaw is clenched. "I didn't realize you'd have a problem with it," he says, standing up and wiping the yogurt off his nose with a napkin.
I keep my tone level, my voice quiet, aware that Olivia can hear us. "You didn't realize I'd have a problem with a strange man in my house, alone with my child?"
Holy shit.
I don’t even mean to say it. The words just come out, and I immediately want to take them back. I regret them instantly. A hurt look flits over his face and then disappears behind a stony one, and I feel terrible.