Complicated Page 3

  “Yes you are,” he replied quietly.

  She glanced under her lashes at him and again looked away.

  Hix decided it was time to be done.

  “Now we’re done with this and I mean done, Bets. I know Donna has had a word with you. You ignored it. I been givin’ you no signal you should keep up with this shit, you ignored that too. So right now, you walk outta my office havin’ this straight, Deputy. You do that, we’re good. I get any hint you’re not movin’ on, we’re gonna have to have another conversation, and this one wasn’t that fun for either of us. The next one will be less so.”

  She made no reply and didn’t move.

  “Are we clear, Bets?” he pushed.

  “Clear, Sheriff.”

  He had an inkling they weren’t clear.

  That forced another sigh.

  “Good, anything I need to know about the weekend?” he asked, moving them to where they should be.

  “No clue,” she bit off. “I wasn’t on call this weekend.”

  With that, she was done and she shared that knowledge with him by walking out.

  He watched her then blew out another breath as he sat in his chair.

  He looked to his computer, lifted his hands to the keyboard and typed in his password.

  He did this thinking, Bets knew he’d been to the Dew Drop and left with Greta.

  If Hope knew that too, their conversation this morning would have gone a lot worse.

  But Sunday was a day to rest, maybe including resting the gossip.

  That meant he’d give it a few hours before Hope heard.

  The thing that freaked him was, as her very recently ex-husband who had never wanted that title, he thought he should care.

  But for some reason, he didn’t.

  Not at all.

  Acceptance

  Hixon

  AT THE END of the day, Hix drove home, for the first time in a week looking forward to what waited for him there.

  Or, more accurately, he drove to the shithole apartment he’d rented that he thought would make do until he got Hope’s head straight and went back to his real home, but it was now the only thing he had to give his kids.

  Something he had to change and fast.

  He’d made that trek every day for over a year, going the opposite direction from the house he put his family in that was in one of the few (there were only three) slightly sizeable old neighborhoods in the town of Glossop, McCook’s county seat.

  He’d left his ex-wife and three kids in a big, graceful old home that had been built just before the turn of the twentieth century. A house Hope had wanted before she even left to go to college. A house she kept at him to get after they’d moved there, even before they could afford it, but regardless, it wasn’t for sale.

  When it was, it had been a pinch, but Hix bought it for her.

  It was perfect. Four bedrooms, two and a half baths with another half in the basement, a big kitchen, a big dining room. The basement done so the kids had a place to call their own. Close to work for him.

  The day he’d moved them in had been the fifth best day of his life, behind the day he’d married his wife and the ones she’d given him their children.

  Greta lived in a house like that, thankfully in one of the other neighborhoods.

  Hers was smaller, the area she lived in not as old, not as affluent, home values not as high. But it was just as graceful, settled in among wide streets and tall trees and established houses that had been built before any post-war housing boom so they were all different, distinct and had their own style and charm.

  It didn’t suit her, a gorgeous woman in a sequined dress singing torch songs in a classy shack. That kind of woman lived in a bohemian loft or makeshift warehouse, though Glossop had none of those.

  But it was a great house.

  On that thought, as he drove, for the first time taking that trek going home or anytime, his head turned so he could look into Lou’s House of Beauty.

  He then looked ahead, not only because he didn’t want to drive into the oncoming lane.

  Because he saw her there, working on a woman in the chair closest to the window.

  Lou’s House of Beauty, owned by Louisa Lugar, was the only game in town.

  Corinne went there. Mamie too. Also Hope’s mother.

  And Hope.

  “Shit,” he muttered under his breath. His eyes filled with the road and the businesses that lined Main Street in front of him.

  But his mind was filled with seeing the back of Greta, her hands raised to work on the woman in her chair, her big mess of hair tumbling down her back.

  While driving, Hix felt that hair in his hands, on his shoulders, chest, stomach.

  “Shit,” he repeated.

  He kept driving and swung into his apartment complex that did its best not to be the shithole it was. Four buildings, two side by side and across from each other, four units in each building, two by two up and down.

  It was clean. Well-kept. But not attractive.

  Hix’s was a top unit, two bedrooms, stairs to reach it at the side so as not to obstruct the bottom unit. His parking spots were to his side and open to the elements, which was a bitch in the winter. The parking spots to the unit under him were at the front of their house.

  In the inside parking spot was Shaw’s silver Toyota Camry with its Glossop Raiders sticker in the back window that Hope had graduated from two cars ago, and they’d kept for when Shaw could drive.

  The kids were home.

  Hix focused on that and not Greta, Greta’s hair, the feel of it, her working in the salon his wife and daughters went to, or the fact that his kids were up in a shithole apartment where his son had his own room, but his girls had to share his bed and he had to sleep on the couch when they were there.

  This would end soon. He had a real estate agent looking into things for him and he’d be introducing that notion to his kids that night.

  He could live anywhere in the county.

  He also could not.

  His older kids went to school at Glossop High and Mamie to Glossop Middle School.

  So it was going to have to be Glossop.

  He parked the Bronco, got out making sure to lock her up and jogged up the steps.

  He barely got through the door before Mamie was on him.

  “Dad!” she shouted, her arms going around him in a tight hug.

  He put his hand to the top of her dark hair.

  His kids were all him, all of them. Dark hair. Blue eyes. Tall, lean bodies with long torsos, proportionate legs. None of Hope’s strawberry blonde hair or green eyes, or shorter torso with long-ass legs for any of them, and none of her curves for the girls.

  Mamie tipped her head back and demanded, “Guess what?”

  He grinned at her, standing in the still-open door. “What, baby?”

  “Madam DuBois says I get a solo at the next recital!”

  Madam DuBois, real name Margaret Leach. She was one of the many full-blown characters in town and she ran one of only three dance schools in the county, the most popular one, likely because she was the most dramatic, and likeable, teacher.

  No one called her anything but Madam DuBois, and Hix suspected no one even knew her as Margaret Leach since she’d moved there eighteen years ago after her husband died in a car accident on I-65 outside Chicago, and to put that tragedy behind her, she’d taken his life insurance money and reinvented herself.

  Hix only knew because, before he put his baby in her class, he’d ran her.

  “Why are you excited about that?” Hix asked.

  His little girl’s eyes got huge.

  “Why am I excited about a solo?” she asked back, like he was a moron.

  He shuffled her in so he could close the door, saying, “It’s not surprising to me the best dancer in the troupe gets a solo.”

  That was when she gifted him with her smile coming at him huge.

  “Yo, Dad,” Shaw called from his place sitting at the dining room table
that was in the miniscule space off the equally miniscule kitchen, a space that could loosely be called a dining area.

  His son.

  Otherwise known as Mr. Cool.

  “Yo, kid,” Hix replied.

  “Hey, Daddy!” Corinne yelled, moving from the master at the back into the bathroom in the hall and closing the door.

  Corinne had a love affair going on with the bathroom, mostly because the mirror in there had the best lighting and she was perfecting the art of painting her face and doing her hair in as many arrangements she could dream up, or watch how they were done on YouTube.

  “Hey, honey,” he yelled in return, seeing as she’d closed the door.

  Mamie let him go and danced to her brother, asking, “What’s for dinner? Chicken tenders from the Harlequin?”

  Translated, Mamie wanted chicken tenders from Harlequin Diner and wouldn’t be happy with anything but.

  Now that she got from her mother.

  “Thought I’d cook,” he told his girl and grinned as he watched her nose scrunch.

  “You’re not the greatest cook, Dad,” she replied.

  “He is, Mame,” Shaw clipped, zoning right in on ticked the second he always did, right when he thought either of his sisters were giving their dad shit.

  This was new. Or new-ish.

  It had been going on about eight months.

  “Shaw,” Hix said low, moving to the kitchen.

  “Your cooking rocks,” Shaw shot back.

  That was a lie.

  He sucked at cooking.

  “All he can make is hamburgers, waffles and tuna casserole,” Mamie butted in, looking at Shaw then turning her attention to Hix. “You make good hamburgers, Daddy, and waffles. But your tuna casserole is kinda ick.”

  “Mame,” Shaw bit out.

  “She’s right, son, it is ick,” Hix put in.

  “She doesn’t have to say it,” Shaw returned.

  “Maybe not, but she didn’t say it mean. I think it best we all feel cool with sharing whatever honesty we got, just as long as we don’t do it mean,” Hix replied.

  Shaw gave him a look that said he agreed but didn’t like doing it before he turned back to his books on the table.

  Hix went into the kitchen.

  To say his children had run the gamut of emotions since Hope asked Hix to move out would be an understatement.

  Shaw had started off this period of their lives pissed . . . at Hix. Surly and combative, for months, he barely spoke to Hix and never looked him in the eye.

  As things wore on and Hix fought for their family, his son, not stupid but instead attentive and protective, clued in.

  He’d then become Hix’s champion and his relationship with his mother deteriorated.

  Hix tried to step in on this and found to his surprise his efforts were rebuffed.

  But Shaw was the oldest brother of two girls and he saw them both mirror the same emotions, going from shock, to fear, to desperation, to game playing and finally sadness.

  Not to mention he watched his father run through all of the same.

  Shaw had been so ticked about all that, and it being clear his mother was the driving force of causing it, he’d missed Corinne and Mamie hitting acceptance.

  Maybe because he’d noted his father never got to that last part.

  Hix needed to do that, for his son. For his son to rebuild his relationship with his mother.

  He just needed to do that, for all his kids.

  And for himself.

  Tonight was the night to start doing that.

  A new home.

  Settling in to what they had now.

  Acceptance.

  And moving on.

  He and Mamie got to work, not on tuna casserole but on Tuna Helper, with peas, which was a vegetable all his kids would tolerate, and garlic bread, because Tuna Helper was decent but garlic bread always rocked.

  And he made them sit down at the dinner table because now he only had half the time he should have with them to know what was going on in their lives, so he felt the need to concentrate the time he had and make the most of it. This meant no more eating in front of the TV, like they’d done when their mother and father were together.

  The only exception to that was Sunday, when they did nothing but hang in front of the TV or go out together to see a movie then come home and hang in front of the TV. It was about junk food and laziness and comfort in each other’s company.

  Hope hated this new tradition and had confronted Hix repeatedly since she’d learned of it in order to share she wanted it stopped. She was not a big fan of laziness. Or junk food. Not even for a day.

  It could just be said, Hope didn’t care if the kids tolerated whatever green she put on their plates. They ate it because she said so and that was that.

  Hix had always hated watching her force their children to eat shit they didn’t like. Shaw had even once sat at the dining room table until ten at night, facing a cold bowl of homemade potato soup that until he finished it, she wouldn’t allow him to get up from the table.

  In the end, he’d forced it down, retching after every bite.

  That was when Hix had had enough.

  But they’d had a deal that they didn’t argue about parenting in front of the children. And regardless of the fact he’d shared not only after the potato soup incident, but often, that he was not a big fan of this tactic to encourage their children to eat healthy, she pulled it when they were in front of the children.

  So since his wife wasn’t big on playing fair with that, not long after Shaw and the soup, no matter it drove Hope up the wall, if one of the kids put up serious resistance, Hix would take up their plates himself, scrape whatever shit was on it that they didn’t want to eat onto his plate, and then he’d eat the stuff.

  At that point, Hope had shared repeatedly she wanted him to quit doing it.

  When he didn’t, she’d started to cook things they all tolerated.

  According to Shaw, she’d slid back to her former ways after their dad left.

  That was up to her.

  At his place, such as it was, they had Sunday junk day.

  His mind heavy with memories of how Hope could be, much of it not all that great but at the time he’d accepted it and now he was wondering why, as well as filled with a lot of other crap that had been coming at him for a little over a year, it was Shaw who broke the silence after they started eating.

  “Can I go on a date on Wednesday night?”

  Dating on a school night?

  He looked to his son. “No.”

  “It’s a study date,” Shaw informed him quickly.

  “It’s a pretend-to-study-and-instead-make-out-because-Wendy’s-parents-let-you-study-in-her-room date,” Corinne teased.

  Oh Jesus.

  “Then hell no,” Hix stated.

  Shaw quit glaring at his sister and looked to his father. “Don’t listen to her, Dad. Wendy’s cool.”

  “I’ve met Wendy. I know she’s cool. I’ve met Wendy’s parents. They’re cool too. Apparently too cool,” Hix replied. “But just pointing out, you do know we’re the same gender, right?”

  Corinne giggled.

  Mamie giggled with her and Hix hoped like hell his youngest didn’t catch his drift because he was already having trouble with his older girl catching it.

  Shaw, unfortunately, didn’t catch it.

  “Of course I know,” he gritted.

  “And I also figure you know I wasn’t born your father.”

  Light dawned and Shaw looked to his Tuna Helper.

  Corinne giggled again until Hix shot her a look and she swallowed it back, barely.

  “You want, you can have her over here. Study at this table,” Hix allowed.

  “Fabulous,” Shaw mumbled, but what he didn’t do was decline that invitation.

  This meant Hix best take another look at Wendy.

  And her parents.

  “I can’t wait to date,” Mamie declared, and Hix lost all interest in
Tuna Helper.

  Even though he’d wanted to make his oldest girl wait until she was sixteen, Hope didn’t mind she started at fifteen, and Corinne really didn’t want to wait.

  So she’d had her first five dates over that past summer, with three different guys.

  Hix was counting in a way he knew he always would.

  So now that he’d passed the time where he had to endure her having her first date, as well as the ones after it, he was looking forward to the time someone he approved of slid a ring on her finger so he could stop enduring the dating portion of her life.

  “It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Corinne informed her little sister authoritatively.

  At that, Hix’s stomach almost lost the little Tuna Helper he’d fed it.

  “Why would you say that?” he asked.

  “Because boys are stupid, Dad,” she answered casually.

  “How are they stupid?” Hix pressed.

  “Because they talk about themselves all the time,” she replied. “What movies they like. What music they like. How sick some skateboard is. Blah, blah, blah.” She scooped up Tuna Helper, muttering, “Ask a girl a question about herself once in a while, why don’t you?”

  That made Hix grin.

  But he saw now that Shaw was looking sick.

  “You could just talk yourself without him asking you questions, you know,” his son began to defend his half of the juvenile gender, or more likely, the fact he hadn’t asked a girl a question about herself.

  “And sound like an up-myself douchebag?” Corinne asked.

  “Not a big fan of that word, honey,” Hix noted quietly.

  Without skipping a beat, Corinne altered her statement. “And sound like an up-myself idiot?”

  “It’s called conversation, Cor,” Shaw educated her.

  “No, Shaw, conversation is, ‘I really liked that Avengers movie. I thought it was rad. I seriously liked the fight scene in the city. The Hulk is da bomb. Hey, Cor, how did you feel about that Avengers movie?’” Corinne returned. “Instead of forgetting the last part and going on to say, ‘But whatever, I think Mr. Galveston is a jerk. That pop quiz was uncool. I totally tanked it. My dad’s gonna be so pissed.’”

  “Mr. Galveston is a jerk and that pop quiz sucked,” Shaw retorted.

  “Is your dad gonna be pissed?” Hix put in, aiming this toward his son.