Playing For Keeps

“Yeah. I also know you barely make enough to support the ones you already have. Not to mention this problem you have with picking them up on time.”

“I told you—”

“I don’t just mean this morning. I mean…oh, never mind,” Joanna said as her daughter and twin sons finally came trooping into the kitchen, huge grins erupting on their faces when they saw their father. All three began chattering at once, even though they talked to their father every single night and spent every weekend with him. Joanna watched the interaction with an aching heart, thinking, as she had many, many times since the divorce, what a shame it was that the man was so pitifully clueless in every other aspect of his life but this.

He really did love his kids. Of that, she’d never had a single doubt. For that, she’d be eternally grateful. But their marriage had been built on the sands of impulse and boredom and infatuation; its collapse had been inevitable from their wedding day. That he seemed about to embark on the journey with someone new…

None of your business, Joanna. Let go.

So she kissed each of her dark-haired babies goodbye, slipping in an extra word of encouragement for Ryder who, thank goodness, wasn’t complaining about his stomach hurting this morning. The kids filed out the back door, Joanna barely noticing the sheet of paper on the counter in time to call Bobby back. He eyed it as if it was a snake coiled for attack. And rightfully so.

“What’s that?”

“Plumber’s bill. I already paid it, so you owe me half.”

His eyes twitched to hers. “I told you I’d fix that leak—”

“That was two weeks ago, Bobby. What was I supposed to do? Go without the second toilet until you ‘got around’ to fixing it?”

“It’s just things are kinda tight right now, y’know?”

“Oh, forget it!” Joanna snatched the bill out of his hand. “I don’t know why I bother trying to get you to do anything—”

“Dammit, Jo—there you go with the drama queen act again.” He stuck out his hand. “Give me the bill. I’ll take care of it as soon as I can.”

“And what about the roof? And taking care of Chester’s little indiscretion? And Mrs. Kellogg wants me to set up that appointment ASAP—”

“Jeez, Jo—why can’t we deal with one thing at a time?”

“Because life doesn’t hand me one thing at a time!”

He let out a heavy sigh, then gestured toward the bill again. “Give me the damn bill,” he said quietly. “I’ll call you later about the other stuff. I swear.”

She passed it back to him, even though she knew he’d put it somewhere and never look at it again.

“Da-ad!”

“I’m there, sweetheart,” he shouted to his daughter. He turned back to Jo, that damn smile spreading across olive-skinned features a little less sharply defined than they had been in his twenties despite the field of one-inch black spikes jutting from his scalp. Figured he’d manage to get younger-looking as time passed, while Jo was rapidly approaching hagdom. “You know, babe, you really gotta trust me a little more.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. And I don’t mean the calling me ‘babe’ part, although that’s not exactly winning you points, either.”

He shrugged off her comment, the gesture of a man determined to never let the turkeys—or anybody else—get him down. Then his eyes tangled with hers. “You know I wanted to have more kids. With you, I mean.”

This, she didn’t need. “Wasn’t in the cards, Bobby.”

“No. I guess not.” Then off he went, leaving Joanna to wonder if it was too early to start drinking. Oh, right. She didn’t drink. An unfortunate oversight on her part.

After a millisecond’s pang of empathy for Tori, she flew down the hall to her bedroom, stripping off the coffee-stained jersey dress as worries pelted her like sleet. Not that, in theory, Bobby’s news was a worry. Joanna hadn’t had a claim on his affections in years. He was free to marry whomever he liked and to have as many kids as he liked. But she knew Bobby and his Trust me, babe…it’ll work out, you’ll see. If he couldn’t handle his responsibilities to her and the kids when they were all still living under one roof, how the hell did he think he was going to add a new wife and child to the mix?

The man couldn’t take anything seriously if his life depended on it. Which ironically was exactly what had appealed to the twenty-year-old Joanna, exhausted from trying to live up to her parents’ expectations. She, however, had come to grips with reality. Bobby Alvarez’s view of “reality” began and ended with Survivor. Hence the divorce.

Hey. It was better than murder.

Now sporting a denim dress she prayed wouldn’t turn her into Melba toast when the cool early October morning gave way to the blistering hot October afternoon, she rammed a pair of silver combs into the chaos that was her hair and sailed back down the hall, ignoring the cyclonized kitchen as she zipped through into the converted garage that served as her workshop. She now had less than forty-five minutes to load up the van and get across town to the hotsytotsy gallery that had agreed to take a couple of her handmade Santa Clauses.

Not that she was thrilled about leaving them on consignment, something she hadn’t done since the early days when she’d been doing well to sell one or two at a craft show here and there. But the High Desert Gallery carried some of the most prestigious names in the Southwest art world. Placing her work there was a coup of no small proportion, well worth the commission she’d pay the gallery for any special orders that resulted. Her mother thought she was insane, looking to take on even more work when she could barely keep up with the orders she had. Yeah, well, Joanna thought, slinging her saddlebag up onto her left shoulder as she carefully lifted the sturdy shopping bag packed with a pair of Father Christmasses off her worktable, she’d given up sanity about the same time she’d stopped wearing panty hose.

She and the bulging bag forged through the small sea of cats who called her rambling Albuquerque North Valley adobe home. Some minutes later she was tearing across Paseo del Norte in the Blue Bomb when her cell phone rang.

Ever since some yahoo yakking on his cell had nearly creamed her after running a red light, Joanna had been none too keen about talking on the phone while driving. But—damn—a glance at the readout revealed her mother’s number.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Glynnie Swann’s voice chirped in her ear when she answered. “Why don’t you swing by and pick me up on your way to the gallery? There’s the most adorable new toy store right by there—Patty Kohler was telling me about it the other day—and since Barbara’s oldest just had another baby, I thought this would save me a trip.”

Why wasn’t her mother at work? Why couldn’t she go get Aunt Barb’s oldest’s baby a present by herself?

“I’m really running late, Mom—”

“I’ll be right in front, so you won’t even have to get out,” Glynnie said, and hung up.

And what had Joanna done in some previous life to merit her present torment?

The word railroading had been invented expressly for her mother, Joanna thought on a weary sigh as she headed into the chamisa and sagebrush-infested Sandia foothills and toward her parents’ new house, hidden so deep among the twisting, turning roads that Joanna managed to get lost every time she drove up here. The wind coming through her open window was making the curls tickle her face; she jabbed at the automatic button, only to realize that, once again, she’d missed a key turnoff.

Even as she realized that, for something that wasn’t supposed to be bothering her, she was sure thinking about Bobby’s news an awful lot. But why? It wasn’t as if she was jealous. And she certainly wasn’t envious.

Her mouth twisted. Okay, so maybe that part wasn’t exactly true, even if she of all people understood all too well the pitfalls of marriage. Such as waking up one morning and looking at the naked man snoring beside you and wondering, Who the hell is this person and what is he doing in my bed? And, hey, just because two people shared living space, body fluids and three kids, where had she gotten off thinking that that also meant they shared the responsibility for the living space and the three kids who were the direct result of sharing body fluids?

Still, it hadn’t been all bad. The sex had been nice. And not infrequent, she thought on a despondent sigh. And there’d been laughter, at least in the beginning when she still believed she could count on Bobby to do what he’d said he’d do. She did miss that. And the sound of a man’s voice booming out to the kids when he came home from work—even if “work” had been a hand-out job from her father. She missed family dinners and Christmas mornings with everybody in their pajamas and secret winks over small heads and clandestine gropes when nobody was looking.

What she didn’t miss were the fights or the blank looks in Bobby’s eyes when she’d light into him about something and he’d look at her as though she were speaking Klingon. What she didn’t miss was who living with him had started to turn her into. Stewing in resentment was not her idea of a fun time. The thing was, she’d been more than prepared to give her fifty percent. Sixty, if push came to shove. But marrying Bobby had been like buying a jumbo bag of potato chips only to open the bag and discover it was half air. Even the make-up sex grew stale after a while. Phone calls from creditors really wreaked havoc on the afterglow, boy.

She’d felt cheated, is what. Although…well, to be truthful, not so much by Bobby as by her naive expectations. The nine years had definitely been a learning experience, that was for damn sure. But she also felt…what? Jolted awake? Something. Sort of a well-gee-there-he-goes-off-to-have-a-new-life-and-where-does-that-leave-me? kind of feeling.

Actually she knew where that left her. In a house with a leaky roof, ancient plumbing, a half-empty bed and three children with various and assorted issues probably stemming from the divorce and/or the shared custody backings and forthings. Oh, and two credit cards on the verge of meltdown. Although she supposed things could be worse: at least she had a roof, leaking though it might be, and everyone was healthy and…

And…

Well, hell. That was it?

Another frown bit into her forehead as she pulled into her mother’s driveway. Eschewing the ten-second fashion trendiness known to fell many a lesser woman, Glynnie hot-footed it out to the van in a snazzy linen suit, silk blouse and a pair of classic slingbacks that sure as shooting hadn’t come from Payless. Behind her mother loomed a two-story, rose-stuccoed monstrosity still glittering in its newness. Lots of arbitrary levels and grand arched windows and things. “Indigenous” landscaping. No grass, no trees, just lots of dirt, rocks and scruffy-looking bushes. Not exactly homey. But definitely impressive, in a Southwest bourgeois kind of way.

Joanna saw her mother’s half-pitying, half-repulsed expression long before the woman reached the ten-year-old minivan. Sort of the way you might look at a homeless person.

“You know what, honey?” Glynnie said when she reached the car. “Why don’t we take the Lexus? It’s got a full tank.”

“So does this.”

“But, Jo—”