The Motherhood Intervention: Book 3 in the Intervention Series Read online

  “She is,” Summer said, and wondered why she felt defensive, when it was partly Josie’s doing that Willow was still sitting on the couch.

  She heard Delaney’s voice before she made it all the way into the driveway, and its tone stopped Summer in her tracks, just behind the juniper bush next to the front door. I’m not hiding. I just happened to stop here.

  “I’m really worried about her,” Delaney was saying. “I mean, she’s not herself. I think we need to get her some help.”

  Josie chimed in. “I mean, she’s depressed.”

  “Do you think it’s just the baby blues?” Derek asked. “She did get a bit, well, you know, a bit emotional after she had each of the other kids.”

  “She’s been going downhill since she found out she was pregnant with Olivia,” Josie snapped. “That surprise hit her like a freight train.”

  Derek must have looked wounded, because Delaney quickly added, “She was happy about the baby, but she was stressed, that’s all.” Summer pictured her elbowing Josie. Delaney continued, “I’m sure it’s so much better now that you’ve got the nursing job and everything.”

  “The nursing job that keeps me away from the house most of the time,” Derek said.

  He sounded so sad. Summer wanted to hop out from behind the juniper bush and hug him.

  “But it puts food on the table,” Josie said, her brusque tone and accent reminding Summer of Josie’s mother, impatient with Josie’s self-pity when she got an F on her math test. “Pull yourself up by the bootstraps and fix it, mija. This is no time to feel sorry for yourself.”

  “This isn’t your fault, Derek,” Josie said.

  Doesn’t she know how much he hates when people say that? He thinks that’s code for, This is totally your fault.

  Delaney went on talking about Luke’s heart and Willow’s reappearance. Summer had to rescue her husband. He didn’t need to experience even more stress, especially not on her behalf. She took a deep breath and emerged from behind the bush, doing her best to make it seem like she hadn’t been eavesdropping.

  Josie, Delaney and Derek froze.

  “Oh, good,” Summer said. “I caught you guys. I just wanted to say good-bye, and thank you.”

  She pulled both girls into a hug, and whispered, “I’m fine. Stop worrying.”

  “You’re not fine,” Josie said. She extricated herself from Summer’s embrace so she could look her in the eye. “You’re doing too much. You’re heading straight for disaster.”

  Delaney elbowed Josie, just as Summer had pictured her doing a moment ago.

  “Not straight for disaster,” Delaney said. “You’re just overdoing it. We don’t want you to get sick.”

  “How do you know I’m overdoing it? I just got home from the hospital. All I’ve done is nurse and change diapers, and I think maybe I had a couple of sword fights.”

  “Before that,” Josie said. “Scrubbing floors? Vacuuming nonstop? Scraping the grout with your fingernails? Don’t you think we noticed you were acting out of character?”

  Summer decided to latch onto that one: “So, cleaning my house is out of character?”

  Why did I ever mention the grout? Why?

  Josie and Delaney traded exasperated looks.

  “Of course not,” Delaney said. Summer could tell she was trying to be soothing, which only served to make her angrier.

  “That’s exactly what you’re saying,” she said. “Me cleaning the floors is out of character.”

  “Summer. Snap out of it! This is out of character,” Josie said.

  Derek stood a few feet away, his stance wide and his arms crossed. He had backed up a couple of steps.

  “Well, that’s what you’re saying,” Summer mumbled.

  “Look,” Josie said. Summer cringed and she saw Delaney cringe, too. Whenever Josie said, “Look,” it meant she was about to get serious. Very serious. “You aren’t being reasonable. I’ve—both of us have—always been blown away by how much you take on. You parent four kids. Now five. You work. You play with The Sweets. You have sex with your husband on a regular basis.”

  Derek flung his arms up and stalked back into the house.

  “But when is enough, enough? You can’t do it all. You may think you are superhuman, and you may have us thinking it too, sometimes, but you’re not. You’ve just given birth. Your son is about to have heart surgery. Open. Heart. Surgery. You can’t do this alone. Okay? Let us help you.”

  “I know I’m not superhuman!” Summer said. “Obviously. I know that. And I’ll accept help from you guys! I just don’t want help from that—that—woman! I don’t want her here!”

  She took a deep breath to bring her voice down an octave.

  “Willow ruined my childhood. She was a terrible mother. She left me in the grocery store when I was ten years old, for God’s sake. She never loved me, never wanted me, never cared about me. Of all the people in the world, she is the one I least want spending time around my children. My children. Whom I love. Why can’t you understand that?”

  Josie and Delaney inched closer to one another, and Delaney spoke next. “We can. But people can change, can’t they?”

  “No!” Summer yelled. “They can’t! Haven’t you heard her, criticizing my decision to have lots of kids, criticizing my messy house, criticizing my choice in friends? Haven’t you seen her, waltzing around with her glass of bourbon and an imaginary cigarette? Ridiculous! She hasn’t changed. At. All. And I hate her. I hate her!”

  She was so enraged she didn’t notice the twin looks of horror on her friends’ faces until she stopped shouting. They were both looking at a point over her shoulder. Naturally. Summer spun around and came face to face with Willow.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “You never did understand me,” Willow said.

  For the first time since Willow showed up on the doorstep, Summer really looked at her mother. She noticed lines in Willow’s skin. Parentheses around her mouth. Crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes. Long tracks across her forehead. The bones in her hands and shoulders stood out. And up close, her smile didn’t look as self-assured as Summer always thought it did. Willow wasn’t as confident of her role here as she pretended to be.

  So Willow isn’t the only one who isn’t paying close attention to the people around her.

  “Shut up, Winter,” Summer said.

  When Willow gave her a quizzical look, Summer shrugged. “Never mind.” Then she said, “Okay, I’ll play. What do you mean, I never understood you?”

  “We’re going to go,” Josie said from behind Summer.

  “Yes, good idea,” Delaney said. “Love you, Summer. We’ll see you later.”

  Willow sighed dramatically. Summer embraced her friends, then turned back to her mom.

  “See?” she said. “Even now, you have to point out that my friends are stealing your spotlight. But this isn’t about you, Willow. It’s about me. These are my friends. This is my moment. I just gave birth to my child. This is my life.”

  “I understand better than you think I do,” Willow said.

  “Well, why don’t you tell me about it?”

  Willow nodded. “When I was seventeen, I had it all.” Despite the tension from a moment ago, her voice sounded dreamy. “I had parents who loved me and a man who was the moon to my sun. He worshipped me. Dennis. That’s your dad’s name.”

  A strange sensation overcame Summer. Willow had never mentioned Summer’s dad’s name. In fact, it wasn’t until Summer was twelve and took sex education that she realized she even had a father.

  Willow’s eyes misted over. She blinked, and when she made eye contact with Summer again, her face had hardened. “Then I got pregnant.”

  “And your life was ruined. The end.”

  “Summer. Just hear me out. Okay?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Then I got pregnant. I was overjoyed,” Willow said. She smiled at the memory. “I mean, beyond belief. I’d always wanted to be a mother. Now I would have everything I ever
wanted. Unfortunately, a pregnancy, especially one that happened before I was married, was not part of my parents’ plan for me. To their credit, they only wanted the best for me. They didn’t believe having a child out of wedlock was it. They approached Dennis, and they told him that he was to marry me or disappear. They’d rather have me raising a child on my own, the sad victim of a careless boy, than living in sin, raising a child with someone I wasn’t married to. Can you believe that?”

  Summer tilted her head, considering.

  Before she could answer, Willow said, “Rhetorical question. Anyway. He disappeared. Not because he didn’t want to marry me, but because he wanted to marry me in his own time, on his own terms. He didn’t want anyone, especially my hoity toity parents, telling him what to do. And he knew I’d be unhappy if they disowned me. He knew, at that time, that it was impossible for me to walk away from them. We were close, believe it or not.”

  Summer could barely believe it. She’d never met Willow’s parents. Willow said they were dead, and of course, Summer believed her. Why wouldn’t she?

  “At first, I didn’t realize my parents had banned him from seeing me. I thought he didn’t want you, and as a result, he didn’t want me, either. I was heartbroken. I resented you. But a few months after you were born, Dennis came back. He sneaked into my parents’ house. He climbed right up the trellis to my bedroom window. You can imagine the fright he gave me.” She laughed. “Of course, I let him in, and he couldn’t wait to see you, to touch your tiny hands, feel your soft white hair. My heart practically burst at the sight of it.”

  Summer couldn’t picture cynical, jaded Willow with a practically bursting heart. But she could suspend her disbelief long enough to hear the rest of the story.

  “My parents heard my window open. They heard Dennis’s feet hitting the floor. After that one moment of pure bliss, wide open love, my dad thundered up the stairs. He threw Dennis out before we even had a chance to talk. I locked myself in the bedroom with you for days after that. The darkness was all-consuming.”

  She paused, shuddered, and took out a cigarette. “You were such a good baby. So quiet. So easygoing. I almost felt as if you didn’t need me. You’d be fine with anyone. You wouldn’t nurse. Stubborn little shit. Still, you were obviously thriving. You were fat and dimpled as a little piggy.”

  Just like now, Winter murmured in Summer’s ear.

  “I felt like you didn’t need me,” Willow said again. She paused, then, and raised an eyebrow. “Just like now.”

  Summer knew she should respond, should say something, but all she could think of was, I did need you. I needed you as a child and you let me down. So I made sure I didn’t need you. And now you’re on your own, just like I was. She remained silent, and Willow went on.

  “So I started drinking. I started stealing Daddy’s bourbon out of the cabinet. Mom started riding him for drinking too much. But it was me.” A wry smile formed on her lips. “I got some small satisfaction out of that, I’ll tell you. Drinking softened all the hard edges I came into contact with. It softened the hurt of Dennis leaving us. It softened the rejection I experienced when I believed you didn’t need me. I drank bourbon at every meal, and soon enough, I drank it for every meal.”

  Summer had often wondered when Willow started drinking. She seemed so health-conscious otherwise, buying organic food, refusing Summer the sugary cereal in which her schoolmates found prizes, and lecturing Girl Scouts who sold their trans-fat-filled cookies at the grocery store. Although a small amount of sympathy crept in, Summer brushed it off.

  “You can probably guess what happened next,” Willow said.

  When Summer shrugged, Willow said, “Your father came back. Dennis came back to the house one night when I was drunk. I could hear what he was saying, but my mind wouldn’t take it in. He tried to tell me Daddy had sent him away, Daddy had threatened to have him blacklisted in town if he didn’t leave us alone. My own father promised Dennis he’d never have a job in Juniper if we saw his face again. And because I was staying with my parents at that time, there was no way Dennis could contact us. But I wouldn’t hear it. I blocked him out. I was drunk. I raged at him.”

  “So you knew your mom and dad sent him away, but you stayed angry at him,” Summer said.

  Willow nodded slowly, and Summer could see her running her tongue over her front teeth.

  “I was angry at him for not standing up to them,” she admitted. “I felt so grown up at the time. I assumed he felt that way, too. But Daddy scared the shit out of him. And I was angry at Daddy for that. So I moved out. And I kept drinking.”

  “And you kept drinking and drinking,” Summer said.

  Willow only nodded.

  “Have you stopped drinking?”

  Willow shifted her weight onto one foot and put a hand on her hip. Summer was sure she didn’t mean for it to, but the movement looked blasé. “Mostly.”

  “Mostly?”

  Willow shrugged one shoulder. “I have a few drinks a night.”

  “I don’t want you drinking around my kids.”

  “Do you drink around your kids? Your friends keep mentioning your penchant for wine, so I’m sure you do.”

  “Not like you did,” Summer said.

  “Fine,” Willow said.

  “And no smoking in the house,” Summer said.

  Then, a sudden realization dawned on her. “What did you do with the baby?”

  “I left her with Luke.”

  Groaning, Summer walked back inside to find her baby and relieve her six-year-old of babysitting duty.

  ***

  Lack of sleep and general overwhelm made the next several days fly by in a haze. In general, Olivia seemed content, but she did show her redhead temper if she didn’t get to eat immediately upon requesting it through a sign language of fist-chewing. Willow toed the line, not helping so much as being another adult body in the house … but not messing anything up, either.

  Luke’s pre-surgery appointment was fast-approaching and Summer found herself increasingly anxious. She checked on him multiple times every night. She found herself checking on the other kids, too: putting a hand on Hannah’s back as she slept to make sure she was breathing, or tucking the covers snugly around Sarah’s neck like she hadn’t done in years. She adjusted and readjusted the water glass on Nate’s nightstand so he could reach it as easily as possible. She continued to overcook the chicken to ensure she killed any possible traces of salmonella.

  If she slept at all, it was during a rare moment she sat down on the couch, and she always startled awake with the feeling that something was wrong. She was exhausted. And grumpy.

  Summer chose to begin working again just a week after Olivia’s birth. When some of her clients protested, saying she should take it easy, she said, “I’m a graphic designer, not a marathon runner. I just sit at the computer and design stuff.” In the back of her mind, though, she was thinking she couldn’t afford to take maternity leave. She told herself she’d just have to push through.

  Nevertheless, the first time the three older kids were at summer camp and Willow was watching the two younger ones, she sat down to work and found she couldn’t concentrate. It was the first time Willow had watched Hannah and Olivia on her own, and Summer had to fight the urge to get up and peek on them, to make sure Willow hadn’t laid Olivia on her stomach and wasn’t giving Hannah sips of bourbon to get her down for a nap.

  Summer’s client, a local microbrewer, wanted a label for a new line he was launching at the end of summer. “Something fun,” he said. “Something that gets people in the mood to party.”

  Partying was such a foreign notion, she struggled to come up with a concept. So instead of working, she logged onto FriendZoo, where Winter helped her direct some of her anger toward innocent bystanders who should probably remove her from their friend lists.

  One acquaintance had posted a selfie from a basketball game the night before. Summer wrote in the comments: Consider checking your teeth before you post next
time. Also possibly make a dental appointment. Two words: Plaque issues.

  Another friend posted a meme that said, “My kids are my heart and soul, and they alway’s will be. ‘Share’ if you agree.”

  Summer commented: If your kids are your heart and soul, you’d better teach them proper apostrophe usage. Share if you agree.

  She got a good chuckle out of that. Until her phone dinged. Not once, but twice.

  Josie: WTF, Summer? Get off of FriendZoo now, before you wind up in the zoo. Or something. I don’t know. Just get off.

  Delaney: What are you thinking, woman? Do I have to confiscate your phone? (I am practicing my parenting techniques. How did I do?)

  Summer sighed and rubbed her hand across her forehead.

  She responded to Josie: Okay, okay. But seriously. Alway’s? Are you kidding me?

  And to Delaney: You sound great. Very threatening. I’m getting off right now.

  Josie wrote back: I know. I’m a teacher. You can’t imagine how much it peeves me to see that. But get off. Now.

  Delaney wrote back: Get off FriendZoo, or else.

  Summer responded to both of them: Fine.

  Before signing off, Winter took control of her fingers on the keyboard. Some innocent soul who called Summer a friend had posted a picture of her terribly bratty child posing for the camera wearing a stupid hat. The caption said, “Isn’t she cute?” Winter typed: She’s decidedly not. She has your husband’s nose, and that hat really makes it stand out. Probably not the best choice in headwear. Or in husbands.

  Then she signed off.

  Her phone dinged.

  Josie: Just had to get one last jab in there, didn’t you?

  Delaney: Wow. My threats are not very scary. My future child is destined to be a pain in the ass.

  Summer didn’t respond. Instead, she began work on the beer label design, starting with a bright sun in the upper lefthand corner. She had asked Willow to watch Hannah and Olivia for two hours, which was the window of time between Olivia’s feedings.

  Right on cue, Olivia howled. Summer saved her work and stood up. Maybe her subconscious would work on the beer label while she was distracted. She usually took a moment to switch from work mode to mommy mode, but when she heard Willow yell, that moment was gone.