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Chapter Five

“ I think I should get the summer, if you’re going to have them during the school year. And I probably should get them at Christmas vacation and Easter too, or spring break, or whatever school districts are calling it now.” Ted sounded like he’d thought about it a good bit.

Claire wanted to be thankful that he was a good dad, that he loved her children and wanted to see them, but she really resented right now that he wanted to have anything to do with them.

After all, he hadn’t wanted to keep their family together enough to actually stop cheating on her and try to make their marriage work. It was hard not to resent that.

“I suppose that sounds fair to me.” She didn’t like it, didn’t want to go three months without seeing her kids, but…that was one of the prices she had to pay for the fact that she’d made a stupid choice and married a jerk. A cheating jerk.

They had set the custody arrangements up before the divorce was final, because the judge had allowed them to. She had wanted to sell their house before she moved, and up until that point, they had been able to have the kids stay with her during school nights and with him on the weekends .

“We’ll get the judge to add that to our agreement. I can talk to him tomorrow at work,” he said casually.

She might be thinking that he was sleeping with the judge in order to get himself a better deal, but it was a man. So she didn’t think so, although her husband was such a scoundrel, she really didn’t know what depths he would sink to.

That wasn’t fair, and she needed to stop thinking like that.

God loved him, and God wanted her to love him, although she was pretty sure God was okay with her loving him from a distance. She wasn’t sure whether Michigan was far enough away from Boston, but it was the best she could do for now.

“All right. I just registered them for school last week, and I’m pretty sure the last day is sometime in May.

I’ll let you know when I know for sure, and we can make arrangements to get them back to Boston.

Do you really want them for the entire summer?

” she asked, trying not to sound like she was desperate.

“I think that’s fair.”

He didn’t answer her question. She wanted to press him, but what was the point?

The more he thought that she wanted them, the more he would fight to get them for himself, even if he didn’t really want them.

He would do it just to punish her. But he would do it in such a nice, civilized way that someone not as attuned to his wily ways wouldn’t even know that they were being played.

That was her years ago when they’d first met, and she’d fallen for him.

“All right. I’ll get back to you on exact dates.

” She had the papers inside, but she couldn’t remember what exactly the school had said.

There was a website, and she’d been on it a couple of times, and she could get on it right now if she really wanted to, but she didn’t want to while he was on the phone. Was that terrible?

She knew it was, and she wished she was a better person, but she really wasn’t.

Movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she turned, seeing Josiah walking up to the side of the house, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the work she’d been doing on scraping paint .

Suddenly she wanted to have nothing to do with her ex and to just disappear, although most of her wanted to run out and defend what she was doing to the house. She wanted him to have seen her working and not sitting on the porch talking on the phone.

“Do you need anything else?”

“Why are you whispering?”

Of course he was going to ask that. “No reason. Sorry. Do you need anything else?” She forced herself to talk in a normal tone, although that drew Josiah’s attention, and he looked over at her.

She held the phone out from her ear a little bit, and he nodded before looking back at the house.

“No. That was it. Let me know the dates, and I can maybe meet you halfway. That’s probably going to be Pennsylvania, although we can figure it out and get an exact spot hammered out at some point.”

“All right.”

“Thanks for being reasonable.”

“Of course,” she said, like she’d ever been anything but reasonable.

Okay. So there had been a couple of times when she’d screamed at him and thrown a few things, but wasn’t that what every woman did when they found out their husband was cheating on them?

She supposed she didn’t see anything wrong with that.

After all, he’d lied to her in a big—a very big—way and destroyed everything she’d been working for for the previous decade and more.

She would consider herself crazy if she hadn’t wanted to smack him over the head with a cast-iron skillet.

Just because she’d thrown a pillow and two slippers at him didn’t make her a crazy woman.

They said goodbye and hung up.

She slid her phone back in her pocket and walked over to the ladder, pulling out the scraper she’d shoved in her other pocket and picking up the small propane torch she’d been using to heat the paint so it scraped off easier in her other hand.

“Who’s been working on this?” Josiah said before he turned to look at her. Then his eyes fell to the scraper that was in her hand and the propane torch in her other. “Never mind. Guess I have my answer.”

“Is that okay with you?” she asked, raising her brows high and acting like she was asking him seriously, like he had any say in it at all. She was emphasizing that, and he got it.

His mouth closed, and his lips pressed together. “Of course. You know I have no say in it. It has to be okay.”

“I’m sorry.” She wanted to say she was just talking to her ex and was in a bit of a mood, but she didn’t want to go into that. Because then she might have to go into more detail, and the last, very last thing she wanted to talk about was her ex. And that wasn’t just today, that was any day.

Of course, she was bummed because she knew it was coming, but she hadn’t wanted to admit that she probably wasn’t going to see her children most of the summer.

Maybe she could sneak in an extra week at the end of the school year and get them back an extra week before the next school year started.

But she wasn’t going to try to do that without her ex knowing.

That wasn’t the way she wanted to be treated, and she couldn’t treat him worse than what she expected to be treated by him.

That wasn’t right, even though she felt like he deserved it.

After all, if it wasn’t for him, they wouldn’t have to figure out how to divide up their kids.

“Do you have some experience in painting houses?” Josiah asked as he examined her work.

Part of her wanted to know what he thought, and part of her wanted to close her ears, because she couldn’t stand to be critiqued right now.

She already felt like a horrible person.

What had been so terrible about her that her husband hadn’t been able to stay true?

That he would rather be with someone, anyone else, rather than her?

That he would break up their entire family in order to get away from her?

That he would let her move halfway across the country and not care?

“No. This is my first time, but Google is my friend,” she said, trying to lighten the mood and make a little joke.

“She has a sense of humor after all,” Josiah said, and somehow the way he said it kept her from taking offense at it. He…wasn’t like her ex, where everything was a competition. It was obvious in the casual way he stood and in the interest he showed in her work.

“I have all sorts of hidden talents. ”

“I’ll say. You have a sense of humor, and you can paint houses. Two things I wouldn’t have guessed when I first laid eyes on you last week.”

“I heard you were working on a million-dollar yacht. I would not have guessed that about you when I first laid eyes on you last week.”

“I guess we both have hidden talents,” he said.

Suddenly she wondered if maybe he was fooling around with the wife of the owner of one of those million-dollar yachts. Or maybe he didn’t bother with the wife—he found yachts where the woman owned it and fooled around with her.

She tried to stop herself. It wasn’t fair for her to assign guilt to Josiah. They were very different, as she’d already observed, and Josiah wasn’t that kind of person.

Although she would have said Ted wasn’t that kind of person either.

“So you really think I’m doing okay?” she asked, hating that vulnerability but needing his reassurance. “I’ve been kind of worried that I’m ruining my grandma’s house.”

“No, it looks to me like you’re doing it perfectly. Better than I would have done it. Scraping paint is my least favorite job in the world.”

“Well, I don’t think the fumes are very good for me, but using this little thing has been almost miraculous. I found a video of it on social media and had to try it for myself.”

“I can never figure out which thing I need to hold in my dominant hand. I’m a lefty, and I want to hold them both over here, because my right hand is pretty much worthless.”

She laughed. “I actually had to juggle that for a little bit too, and it took me a bit to figure out that I wanted the scraper in my right hand, since it’s my dominant hand, but I need to be very careful with the torch, because I’ve burned myself a couple of times.

” She held her wrist out to show him—there were a couple of red marks, but thankfully she’d had quick enough reflexes that she’d jerked her hand back before it had truly burned her bad.

“Oh boy. Looks like that wasn’t too bad, but those things are hot. You be careful.”

“I’m definitely trying to be. I would prefer to keep the skin on my hand and not broil it off.”

He grinned. “I’m not sure why, but that reminds me that I got some ribs out, and I’m going to make my famous barbecue ribs tomorrow. I’ll have to bring you guys some. I take it the kids are in school?”

“They are. And…ribs are my favorite.”