Taking Back Mary Ellen Black. Lisa Childs

Mom could ladle another helping on it.

      “You work too hard,” Mom tsked, nagging Jenna, too. “You need to come around more.”

      Daddy spoke to Jenna, but he was staring at me. “Yeah, you do. You’re good for this girl.”

      “That’s not what you said when you caught us drinking—” Jenna halted when the girls displayed wide-eyed interest. “Drinking all your chocolate milk.”

      I leaned in close. “Smooth. Good save.”

      She flipped me off under the lace edge of Mom’s treasured tablecloth. Growing up with three brothers had given Jenna some of her rough edges.

      “Grandpa doesn’t care if we drink all his chocolate milk,” Shelby said.

      “Of course not, he always has more in the garage,” Jenna teased.

      “Stay away from my garage,” Daddy growled.

      She laughed as she rose to her feet. “Well, I’m late. The meal was wonderful, Mrs. Black. Thanks for…checking the oil in my car, Mr. Black.”

      I got up to walk her to the door. “So where do I report for work? And what time?”

      “You can wait until after you get the kids on the bus. Then meet me at the office. I’m on Walker between the bakery and insurance office. First Choice Mortgage.”

      “Your own place?”

      “Satellite office. The broker’s downtown. You’ll have to run down there occasionally. Do you have a car?”

      “Grandma’s Bonneville.”

      “Is that the same one you used for your driver’s license road test?”

      “Yes, the car and I know each other well.”

      “So do we, Mary Ellen Black. You’re going to be okay.”

      I nodded, emotion choking my throat. Standing on the gravel driveway next to her car, an overwhelming desire to hug her compelled me to throw my arms around her despite all the years we’d not had any contact.

      She held herself stiffly in my arms, then squeezed back for just a second before pulling away. Had she sought me out only at her mother’s urging? Or, as a divorced woman herself, had she understood how alone I felt, how much I needed a friend now? And did she need one, too? I wanted to be that friend again.

      “I missed you,” I admitted. “And I’m sorry.”

      “Eddie’s your past, Mary Ellen. Forget him.”

      I shook my head, tumbling my new hairdo. “I can’t. I have to think of the girls. He’s their father.”

      “They’re great girls. If they came out that big, I might have considered it. But raising babies, having someone completely helpless, completely dependent on me…” She shrugged, obviously uncomfortable with the topic. “You’ll figure things out, Mary Ellen. And if you don’t, you’ll get by. That’s what most of us do.” I watched her get into her shiny black Cadillac. If she were just getting by, I could handle that.

      “How come we never see Daddy anymore?” Shelby asked as I pulled the blanket to her chin. Amber, lying next to her in the old double bed that had been mine, turned from the light to face me. She wanted an answer, too, but from the sorrow in her eyes, I guessed that she already knew.

      “We don’t all live together anymore, Shelby…”

      “I know. We’re divorced—”

      “No, sweetie, just your father and I are divorced.”

      “A divorce affects the whole family,” Amber said with her usual sobering wisdom.

      “Our family got divorced?” Shelby asked.

      Before I could think of a response, Amber answered. “Yeah, but Dad was gone before that. He’s always cared about his restaurant more than us, Shelby.”

      Could I argue with the truth? The resentful ex-wife in me wanted to wholeheartedly agree, but the mother in me wouldn’t allow it. “Your father loves you both very much, Amber.” And I truly believed he did, as much as Eddie could love anyone.

      “He loves the restaurant more, Mom. I heard you say that to him a bunch of times.”

      Waiting until the girls had gone to bed to have our fights hadn’t worked, apparently, not even in a house the size of the one we’d lost. Not that we’d fought all that often. I hadn’t wanted to nag Eddie, not the way Mom nagged Daddy. But I had to face the fact that I’d had a lot of resentment, even before the divorce, more directed toward the restaurant than the twenty-year-old waitress—and apparently so did my girls.

      “I was mad when I said that, Amber. You know how when you’re mad you say things you don’t mean.” Liar. “Like when you call Shelby names…”

      Amber’s lips quirked up in a smile. “Well, sometimes I mean those. I hate sharing a bed with her. She’s a hog, and she snores!”

      “Do not!” Shelby protested vehemently.

      “How would you know? You’re sleeping when you’re snoring. You can’t know what you’re doing when you’re sleeping!”

      Heck, I didn’t know what I was doing when I was awake. There was no guidebook for how to handle divorce, nothing that applied to every situation and every child. My girls were smart. They deserved honesty. But they also deserved a father.

      “Okay, girls, how about we visit your dad?”

      “Where?” Amber asked, her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

      Since I didn’t know where he was living, I had no choice. “We’ll go to the restaurant. Tomorrow’s Saturday. We’ll have a girls’ day out. We’ll have lunch and go to the mall. I’m starting my new job on Monday. I need a few clothes. You both need some new shoes.”

      “Shoes…” Shelby sighed, her eyelids drooping as she drifted off to sleep to dream of new shoes. She was definitely my child.

      Amber studied me a while longer; I knew the cadence of crickets never echoed inside her head. “Do you want to show Dad your new hair, Mom? Do you think it’ll make him change his mind about the divorce?”

      Had she been listening to my mother? I had to find a place of our own. Of course, a reconciliation was what she wanted. Until I’d come to my senses in the form of the foreclosure notice, it had been what I wanted, too, to salvage my family. But Eddie wasn’t my family any longer; my girls were.

      “Honey, are you hoping…”

      “I’m not, Mom, okay?” She reached out to flip off the light, but I caught her hand and held it back. Then after slipping off Amber’s glasses, I stared into her eyes, swimming with unshed tears.

      “It’s okay to hope, Amber. It’s okay to dream. But dream about things you can get with your brains and your ambition. Don’t hope for your father and me to get back together. It’s not going to happen.”

      “Because of that ’ho?”

      My mother wasn’t the only one she’d been listening to; evidently Grandma had shared a new word with the girls. I bit my tongue to hold in a laugh. “Amber!”

      “Mom, once he sees you looking like that—”

      I touched a lock of the soft hair. “I didn’t do this for your father, Amber. I did it for me.”

      And it felt good. It felt damn good to do something for me.

      “We’ll go see your father tomorrow, and we’ll talk about setting something up so that you can see him more. That’s all we’re doing. Okay?” And a visit was long overdue. Eddie didn’t deserve them, wouldn’t support them, but they needed him.

      She nodded.

      “I love