Between the Words (Words of the Heart Book 4)

  Between the Words

  HOLLY JACOBS

  Copyright The characters and events in these stories are fictitious.

  Any similarities to real people, living or dead, is coincidence and not intended by the author.

  Ilex Books 2018

  Copyright Holly Fuhrmann

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover by Kim Van Meter

  To Brenda and Craig Smith and everyone at Smith Farms.

  Thanks for the tour . . . and all the eggs!

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  I NEVER HAD big dreams.

  No, my dreams were built of small things.

  Maybe they were dreams of another era.

  I dreamed of a man who would love me.

  A man I could love.

  I dreamed of a house filled with children.

  I dreamed of a perfect life.

  And I thought I’d found that perfect life of my dreams.

  I married a man I loved and I thought he loved me, too. We had a son and then a daughter. We lived in a big house in a lovely neighborhood.

  I reveled in that small, ordinary life.

  And then on a winter Monday, in the midst of a snowstorm, someone knocked on my front door and my small, perfect life shattered.

  I couldn’t have known then that perfection is overrated.

  I didn’t understand that the biggest things in life are made up of the smallest ones. They’re built of small moments that grow from other small moments until one day you look back and realize that your life isn’t small in the least.

  And it’s certainly not perfect.

  Life is imperfect. It’s messy.

  And that imperfection is the stuff that our dreams are made of.

  If you listen between the words, watch between the moments, you’ll see that life is perfectly imperfect.

  And it turns out, so is love.

  But I hadn’t learned that on that snowy Monday as I opened my front door . . .

  Prologue

  Alice

  On the plus side: Strangers can turn out to be friends we haven’t met yet.

  “Haley and Jeremy,” I yelled for the umpteenth time as I checked the pantry with its shelves lined with glass storage containers. Each container had a chalkboard label on it. All those labeled jars were arranged oh-so orderly in my pantry.

  It was a little thing that made me happy. And frankly, today with two kids home for a snow-day, I was grasping at any little happy straw.

  I know that many people don’t enjoy a Friday the thirteenth, but I decided that Monday the thirteenth was no picnic either.

  Especially in January with winter winds beating at the door and lake effect storm warnings interrupting television shows and sending alerts to my cellphone.

  There was another loud thump coming from upstairs, followed by a high-pitched squeal.

  “If I have to come up there . . .” I left the threat open-ended as I shut the pantry door.

  Jeremy and Haley were gifted with wonderful imaginations and I knew that I could never come up with a threat half as terrifying as they could make up on their own.

  The thumping stopped immediately.

  I smiled to myself as I walked into the living room and lit a fire in the fireplace.

  Yes, those lake effect warnings were right. Thick, heavy flakes pelted against my windows as the cold Canadian wind blew across Lake Erie, picking up all that lake moisture and dumping it down as snow on Erie, Pennsylvania—the city that sat on the lake’s southern shore.

  My doorbell rang and almost immediately someone started thumping on the door itself.

  Who on earth would venture out in weather like this? Maybe it was Alan? In which case why wouldn’t he use is key?

  The questions tumbled over themselves as I hurried to the door. I opened it and found myself staring at a stranger. I couldn’t place the strange woman who frowned at me.

  She was a very pregnant woman. She was bundled in a black pea coat that didn’t look warm enough to begin with and was even less protection against the cold because it no longer buttoned over her huge stomach.

  Inviting strangers into the house wasn’t my standard operating procedure but given the storm that was raging outside I couldn’t not invite her in. And frankly her pregnancy was so obvious that I felt confident she couldn’t be much of a threat to me even if she’d wanted to be.

  “Come in,” I said and ushered her into the foyer.

  I shut the door behind her. “It’s awful out there. I can’t believe you were out driving in this storm.”

  The woman didn’t say anything as she took off her gloves and her black woolen hat, which let her long blonde hair spill out. It stood starkly against her jacket as she studied me and shot me a look that had me rethinking inviting her in.

  “I’m sorry. How can I help you?” I asked.

  “Are you Alice Collins?” she asked. I could hear the anger that was just below the surface of her innocuous inquiry. Between those words anger reverberated, becoming as audible as the words themselves. She stuffed her hat and gloves in her coat pocket with far more force than necessary.

  “Yes,” I answered slowly.

  I had no idea what I could have done to make this stranger—and I was sure she was a stranger—so mad. “And you are?”

  “I don’t know what I thought,” she mused more to herself than said to me. “It seems like it would be easier to navigate life if all the villains wore black hats. My mother always said that if I kept expecting the villains to announce themselves, I was going to get hurt. She might not be right about many things, but she was right about that.”

  I definitely regretted inviting the crazy, semi-raving pregnant girl into the house.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “But even villains have mothers,” she mused as if I hadn’t spoken. She looked at me, as if looking for conformation on my villainess or maybe some indication that I did, in fact, have a mother. “Somewhere in you there has to be a kernel of understanding and decency.”

  “I don’t really know—” I started again.

  She interrupted. “I am Olivia Weiss.”

  She said her name as if it should mean something to me.

  It didn’t.

  “I came here today to tell you to leave Alan Thompson alone. We’re engaged and planning to get married soon. But you have to know that. I don’t know how you can live with yourself. Really, I don’t.”

  I knew what her words implied, but I didn’t want to believe.

  Couldn’t believe.

  “Wait. You’re having a baby?” I asked dumbly because it was obvious she was indeed having a baby. The question was, “Whose baby?”

  Now she was looking at me as if I were the crazy one. “A
lan’s of course.”

  The small, perfect world I’d worked so hard to build for my family shattered in that moment. I looked at the girl . . .

  Yes, she was no more than a girl in her mid-twenties to my thirties. A young woman who wore her anger and indignation like a mantle.

  “Olivia,” I started.

  I wanted to hate her, this girl-woman. She’d barged into my home and shattered the perfect life I thought I had. But from her comments I knew she didn’t know who I was. And with perfectly clear insight that seemed out of place given my muddled emotions, I knew that Alan had lied to her just as he’d lied to me. There was no way to hate her for that. “I’m—”

  “Mom,” Jeremy hollered as he thundered down the wooden staircase. “Haley took my hockey pucks. All of them. She says she’s holdin’ them for ratsom—”

  “Ransom,” Haley corrected him with the smugness of a younger sister correcting an older brother.

  “Yeah, ransom. She says I can’t have ’em back unless I come to her stupid tea party.”

  “We don’t use the word stupid here,” I corrected without thinking.

  This was normal. The kids tattling and spatting was part of my normal, perfect life.

  That life had been shattered for me, but I knew I needed to protect the kids. “I think you two should work this out for yourselves. Haley, we don’t hold other people’s things for ransom and Jeremy, I’m pretty sure Haley played hockey with you last night. It might be time to do something she enjoys.”

  “Yeah, that’s only fair,” Haley informed her eight-year-old brother. She was seven and I knew she resented being the younger sibling. It felt as if she’d been born trying to catch up to Jeremy. She walked at ten months and ran minutes later.

  She’d been running after her older brother ever since.

  “Upstairs,” I said. “Work it out and don’t come down until I call you.”

  They trudged up the stairs, muttering to each other.

  Their unity against me had ended their quarrel.

  I turned to look at Olivia. She was white as a sheet.

  “That was Alan’s son,” she managed.

  I nodded. Jeremy was the spitting image of his father.

  “So,” she said slowly, as if trying to come to terms with what she’d just discovered. “So, I am the other woman?”

  Some women, given her condition, would swoon or at least bend beneath the pain of what they’d just learned.

  Olivia Weiss was not some women. She held herself ramrod straight as the reality of what she’d just learned sank in.

  “I am the other woman,” she said firmly.

  Yes, some women would hate this usurper—this young woman who had shattered their fairytale life.

  But I couldn’t hate her.

  I felt a connection with her.

  We were two women who’d thought we’d found the love of our lives . . . with the same man.

  “You didn’t know,” I stated, not asked.

  She shook her head, her hands resting on her huge stomach.

  Then it hit me—she was carrying my children’s sibling.

  If Alan were here, I’d gladly . . .

  I’m not sure what I’d do to him. Jeremy would probably have some inventive torture, but I was at a loss.

  This morning, I’d have said I’d have done anything for Alan. But at this moment, I was pretty sure that I could do anything to Alan.

  “Take off your coat and come sit down. Alan will be home soon and I have a lot to say to him. I suspect you might have a thing or two to say as well.”

  I sounded calm to my own ears. I’m not sure why or how.

  “You’re inviting me in instead of kicking me to the curb?” she asked.

  Despite the fact my world was crashing down, I found myself nodding.

  “The way I see it—not that I’ve had much time to digest this.” That was an understatement if ever there was one. “But then neither have you. As I see it, this whole thing is on Alan. I don’t know you and you don’t know me, but we didn’t do this.” I waved my hands between us.

  I paused a moment, then added, “I can assure you that I will be kicking him to the proverbial curb.”

  Alan Thompson.

  My high school sweetheart.

  The man I’d promised to spend my life with.

  The man I’d promised to love forever.

  I was kicking him out.

  “Maybe you’d rather not be here,” I said. “I mean, maybe you want him—”

  She scoffed and sounded decades older than she looked. “You’re right, you don’t know me and I don’t know you, but I would rather move back home with my family than take Alan back. And since you don’t know me, I’ll tell you that moving back home is the absolute last thing in the world I’d ever do. I’d prefer being pregnant for years. I’d rather . . . I’d rather . . .”

  She’d run out of awful comparisons, but I got it.

  “It’s been a rough pregnancy,” she added. “I don’t want to be pregnant one more minute, but . . .”

  Someone who’d never had a child might not understand the enormity of what she was saying, but I did.

  “Would you rather let him know that you know privately?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. I think I prefer seeing his expression when he walks in and finds the two of us here together.”

  She took off her coat. I realized that I should have taken it from her, but she was already taking the seat I offered and placed her coat on the chair behind her.

  So I sat as well and I tried to decide how to make small talk with my husband’s mistress. “When is the baby due?”

  The baby, who would be Jeremy and Haley’s sibling.

  I was done having children. Two was plenty, both Alan and I agreed. And yet, here he was, having a third child.

  I waited for the pain to hit me. It was there. A tiny bubble that was building deep within my core. When the pressure grew too great, it would burst and I’d be incapacitated by it. But I wasn’t willing to let it burst yet.

  I pushed it aside for the moment.

  Again with absolute clarity I knew that the perfect life I thought I’d built wasn’t perfect at all. And I knew this wasn’t what I wanted.

  I wondered what I did want, but knew I wouldn’t find an answer now.

  Olivia said, “The baby will be here soon. Any day according to the doctor.”

  We both sat in awkward silence. I knew she had to be hurting as much as I was.

  How could Alan do this to me?

  To her?

  To our kids?

  To her baby?

  “How did you find out about me?” I finally asked.

  “Alan’s cellphone rang and when he looked to see who was calling he sent the call straight to voicemail rather than pick up. He looked at me . . .” She shrugged. “I don’t know how to describe it, but I knew. I just knew. So later, I snooped.”

  She shook her head and her hair tumbled back and forth across her shoulders. “I never thought I’d be that woman,” she said softly. “I always looked down on people who snuck around checking up on a significant other—looking at their email or cellphones. If someone had asked me before that moment, I’d have said my relationship with Alan was based on trust. I would have been so smugly confident in what we had. And still, I snooped. When I did, I saw your name. You have a different last name than him, so I assumed . . .”

  “I kept my last name when we married. We hyphenated the kids’ last names.” And suddenly I wondered if I’d known even then there was a chance we might not last. I’d always known that Alan was weak, but not in this way. Not a cheater.

  Olivia nodded even as her eyes welled up with tears. “Your last name was different, so I assumed you were a mistress. I didn’t want to believe it. I listened to the voicemail. You asked him to grab a gallon of milk and some bread just in case the storm was as bad as they said and you got snowed in. Then you said, love you. It was casual and almost an afterthought.
Love you.”

  Had it been casual?

  Had I treated our love as if it were mundane?

  Love should never be an afterthought. It should be a first thought and a second thought . . . and finally a last thought.

  Olivia looked as if she wanted to cry, but like me, she tamped down her tears. She squared her shoulders and said, “I was thinking that it would be nice if all the bad guys had to wear black hats. Yet, when you opened the door, you looked nice and then the kids . . .” She paused. “I realized I was the one who should have had a black hat.”

  “You do realize what color hat you had on?” I asked and started to laugh at the thought of her black knit hat.

  She paused a moment and realized that she had indeed been wearing a black hat. She started to laugh as well.

  It wasn’t really funny, but somehow laughing eased that bubble of pain for the moment.

  That’s how Alan walked in . . . to the sound of us laughing.

  And when he saw the two of us he stood absolutely still.

  I’ve heard the term a-deer-in-the-headlights. I never really understood exactly what it meant until that moment.

  “I . . .” That’s all he said.

  Really what more could he say?

  I’d been with him long enough to be able to hear his inner debate. Which of us should he try to appease?

  “Alan, I think it would be for the best if you packed up a bag and went somewhere, anywhere, but here. Now. For good. I’ll go see a lawyer tomorrow. I don’t know what the requirements are in Pennsylvania, but as soon as we legally can, we’re divorcing. We’ll split our assets fairly. You’ll have access to our kids and I will never badmouth you to them. I’d appreciate if you’d agree to the same. And other than finalizing the divorce and working out things for the kids, we’re done.”

  “I want to explain,” he started.

  Olivia cleared her throat and he looked at her.

  “We were engaged and talking about getting married next year,” she said. “How could you have led me on? How could you have turned me into the other woman? You know how I feel about that,” was all she said before she started to cry.

  “Go pack a bag,” I told him. “Tell the kids goodnight and get out. I’ll contact you tomorrow with a lawyer’s name.”