Breaking Lacy (Nick & Lacy Book 1) Read online

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Porter,” I said, once I explained the limitations of my new situation.

  “You just continue with your practicing and composing at home. We’ll figure out a way to squeeze in your rehearsals during school hours,” he said, with an understanding smile. “Maybe during lunch, or perhaps your study hall.”

  “Thank you. And about Mr. Mason…”

  “Don’t worry about Noah Mason. I’ve already spoken to him and explained what happened to your mother. He sends his condolences and wanted me to relay that he is still very much interested in working with you as soon as you’re feeling up to it.”

  Lacy

  When I came home from school that same afternoon, I realized the extent of my father’s growing madness for the very first time. Immediately upon walking through the door, I noted he had taken down all pictures of my mother, including any family shots with her in the frame. All her personal knick-knacks were gone, along with any other traces that she’d ever been alive.

  I stormed up to daddy’s room to confront him, but he wasn’t there. Instead, I found that he’d removed all remnants of her existence from that room as well. All her clothes, toiletries, jewelry—everything was gone.

  “Daddy!”

  I thought that once daddy snapped out of his grief, he would let me pick out some of my mother’s clothes and jewelry to keep for myself, especially the heirloom matching pearl necklace and earrings she had promised to give me on my eighteenth birthday. But he had selfishly, unforgivably denied me.

  “Daddy, where are you? What have you done?”

  I found him on the first floor, in the guest bedroom beside the kitchen. He lay on the bed, curled up on his side in the fetal position, gazing at an imaginary spot on the wall. He hardly blinked when I opened the door and took in the tangible evidence of his grief-induced psychosis. My anger was quickly replaced with horror that left me paralyzed and speechless.

  Every photo of my mother that was in the house before, now hung on the walls and adorned the dressers and night-stand in this room. Her clothes hung in the closet, her knick-knacks aimlessly scattered every free surface. Her jewelry box, along with her make-up and creams, was on the vanity. The smell of her jasmine perfume permeated the air from a fresh misting not long before I arrived.

  “Leave me alone and don’t come back in here again,” he said, in a flat voice that pulled me from my shock.

  I swallowed hard, realizing that my father was never coming back.

  I closed the door softly and wordlessly obeyed.

  I was truly on my own now.

  Nick

  Friday afternoon I came home for the Christmas break to find my mother sitting alone in the kitchen, absently staring into her coffee cup. She looked up when I came in through the back door and smiled as I tossed my sea bag full of dirty clothes into the adjoining laundry room.

  “Hey, Mom,” I greeted, leaning down to give her a kiss on the cheek. “What are you doing home so early?”

  “I closed the shop for today and took Lacy with me to do some last-minute Christmas shopping.”

  I grabbed a soda before sitting down across from her, propping my feet up on one of the spare chairs. “So how is Lace? And how’re things working out with you running the shop full time for Jerry?”

  “Lacy is holding up okay. She’s strong, just like her mother was. And running the shop is going well. It’s more work than I anticipated, but at least my taking over kept Jerry from selling it. And it keeps me busy so I don’t miss her so much.” Mom took a sip of her coffee and forced a smile. “Enough. I’ll start to cry again. So, you and Chris found a place to rent? Tell me about it.”

  “It’s just a little two-bedroom house. It needs a few minor repairs that the landlady can’t afford to take care of right away, so she’s letting us rent it for dirt cheap in exchange for us taking care of the maintenance ourselves. At first, she said she’d hire a contractor, but then we’d have to wait until spring. This way we can move in right now during the holiday break and be out of the dorm before the new semester starts.”

  “Are you sure you want to move out of the dorm, honey?”

  “Positive. We’d have to move out after graduation anyway, so why wait six months when we’ve already found a place that we like now.”

  “I just worry.” Mom’s gaze fell back to her coffee cup before she added, “At least you and Claire broke up. I feel better knowing she won’t be living there with you.”

  “Yeah, no shit.” My mother scowled at my language, and I grinned. “That’s another reason I wanted out of the dorm. She knew where to find me there.”

  “Well, I can’t say I’m upset that you finally broke up with that girl. Must be in the air. Lacy broke up with Kevin this week too.”

  “Really!” I said, trying to suppress my smile of triumph.

  “I tried to tell him to give her some space to grieve, but you know your brother. He must have cornered her when she went back to school Monday,” said mom, as she rose to go rinse out her coffee mug.

  “Yeah. Cocky little shit thinks he knows everything,” I mumbled, distracted by my own thoughts as she left me alone in the kitchen.

  Now that Lacy and Kevin were officially broken up, it was time to move on to the next phase of my mission. Causing the breakup was only part of the plan. Now I had to figure out a way to make her mine.

  Lacy

  A car finally came up the driveway. I rushed out the front door to see who it was.

  It was dark, almost eleven o’clock, and I hadn’t seen or heard from my father since Rhonda and I returned from our shopping trip early in the afternoon. At first, I hoped that he finally snapped out of his depression and decided to go out and do a little holiday shopping of his own, but deep down I knew better.

  “Daddy? Daddy, is that you?”

  A figure emerged from the darkness, and I strained to see in the dim glow of our front porch light.

  “Lace?”

  I never would have believed it possible to have my heart leap and plunge in the same moment until Nick stepped out of the shadows.

  “I thought you were my dad.”

  He came closer to the look up at me from the foot of the stairs. “Where is your dad? Are you here alone?”

  “I don’t know where he is. I came home with your mom this afternoon and he was gone. I called the office but nobody answered. He hasn’t called. He didn’t leave a note. He-”

  The rest of my words crumbled under a wave of hyperventilation. A hundred horrible scenarios had played out in my mind over the past few hours, all of them ending with my father meeting the same fate as that of my mother’s demise.

  God, I couldn’t lose my daddy too!

  “It’s okay, Lace.” Nick ascended the stairs to place a hand on my shoulder. I sagged into the chair behind me under the weight of his grasp. “I’m sure your dad is fine. Just calm down and take a couple of deep breaths.”

  I did as he commanded and, finally, my breathing came under control enough to continue in my hysterics. “He hasn’t left the house in weeks, Nick. I don’t know where he could be. Your dad went out looking for him, and he’s not back yet either. What if-”

  “Oh, Lace…” Giving in to his brotherly need to comfort me, he kneeled and pulled me into a hug, which I returned with the fierce desperation of one clinging to a life preserver for fear of drowning. “Do you want me to stay here with you or go out looking?”

  Before I could answer, another vehicle came up our driveway, and we both turned to see Andy’s car approaching. When I didn’t see my father with him, I almost succumbed to another panic attack.

  Andy stopped the car, slid out from behind the wheel, and started toward the porch.

  “Good. I’m glad you’re here, son. I’m gonna need your help,” he said to Nick, as he came to put his arm around me. “You okay, bird?”

  “Did you find my dad?”

  Andy gave me a rueful smile. “Safe and sound, though he might not fe
el up to joining us for Christmas dinner tomorrow.”

  I let out a sigh of relief and started towards the car.

  “Hey, bird, why don’t you go on over and sit with Rhonda while Nick helps me get Jerry inside.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  Andy and Nick both came off the porch and quickly caught up to me before I could reach the car.

  “Honey, your daddy’s three sheets to the wind right now. I don’t think you need to be seeing him like that.”

  When I stared back at them both in confusion, Nick was the one to clarify. “He’s drunk, Lace. Go on over and stay with mom until I come get you.”

  “Where the hell are we, Andy?” came my father’s disembodied voice from inside the car. “This ain’t Kenzie’s.”

  My heart dropped when I saw two feet swing out from the driver side door that Andy had left open. My father tried to stand up but promptly collapsed back down to his knees again.

  In my entire life, I’d never seen my father drunk. He rarely ever drank aside from the Friday night martini-fest with the Cary’s, and then the champagne that momma or Rhonda served for toasting when our families gathered for special occasions and holidays. For a moment, while I stared at my father in his pathetic, inebriated state, I was ashamed of him, and embarrassed that Andy and Nick were there to bear witness.

  “Daddy,” I said softly, as I neared where he still stooped down by the car. He looked up at me. I could tell by the way his head bobbled that he was trying to focus. Then his eyes suddenly lit up.

  “Oh, sweet angels in Heaven!” He tried to crawl to his feet. After a few failed attempts, he finally succeeded. He stumbled his way across the few feet that separated us and threw his arms around me, holding me so hard and tight against him I could hardly breathe.

  “Oh, baby,” he murmured against the side of my head, while stroking my hair down my back. “God, I’ve missed you, baby.”

  The smell of liquor on his breath was overpowering, and I tried to ease out of his grasp. “Daddy, you need to go to bed. Let Andy help you inside.”

  “Oh, sweet angel, how I’ve missed you,” he repeated in a whisper, ignoring my request. He kissed my forehead, and then held me closer and tighter, his hands slowly trailing over my back in rhythmical, massaging strokes that delved under my hair and low about my waist.

  “Let her go, Jerry,” Andy demanded. He grabbed one of my father’s arms and pulled him away from me with such force that I lost my balance and nearly fell when daddy let me go. Andy and Nick each put an arm around daddy to help support him on their way into the house.

  “Lace, I said go on over with my mom,” Nick ordered irritably when he saw that I followed. I ignored him, and once we were all inside the house, I quickly hurried past the trio to stop them in the living room.

  I didn’t want either of them to know how sick my father was. I couldn’t have them lingering long enough to notice how daddy had exorcised the house of momma’s existence. If they stayed to help, daddy would insist that Andy take him to the spare bedroom. I couldn’t bear for them to see the extent of his madness. Daddy was drunk and might not care at the moment, but he wouldn’t want them to see the tangible evidence of his failing sanity either.

  “This is fine, Andy.” I ushered them toward the sofa. “He’s been sleeping on the couch most nights anyway,” I lied.

  “You sure, bird?”

  “Yes. Please, just help him down there and then I’ll take care of him.” Once the two Martin men had my father sitting on the sofa, I tried to guide them back toward the front door. “Thank you for finding and bringing him home, Andy, but I can handle it from here.”

  Daddy murmured something incoherent, and we all three stopped just shy of the doorway to turn and look at him. His gaze wandered over Nick and Andy, and then landed on me where I stood between them.

  My father hadn’t looked directly at me since my mother died. He would hardly speak to me at all. I understood how hard it must have been for him to look at me. He surely saw my mother each time he did, and the pain was probably too much for him. In his drunkenness, though, he looked me right in the eyes.

  At first, he didn’t speak, only stared. Then he started crying. Hard, wracking sobs the same as those he’d cried that Saturday morning that seemed light-years ago. Andy hurried back over to my father’s side. “Whatcha need, buddy? You want me to help you upstairs?”

  “Get her the hell out of here, Andy. I can’t stand the sight of her.”

  If my father had punched me in the stomach, I wouldn’t have felt an impact as harsh as that of his cruel statement. Andy and Nick both turned to stare at me, apparently as shocked by my father’s words as I was. Without looking at either of them lest I see the pity in their eyes, no longer caring what they did or didn’t see in our house, I forced my head high as I left the room to carry out my father’s wishes.

  Nick

  I hadn’t been inside Lacy’s bedroom since she was nine-years-old, when she and Kevin both came down with chicken pox. Because Grace was the only other member of either family who had already had the disease, our mothers had quarantined the two kids in Lacy’s bedroom, and Grace was the only person allowed contact with them. After almost a week, Grace finally said they were no longer contagious and that I could go up for a visit to entertain them.

  Lacy’s room was still pink and frilly and just as girly now as I’d thought it was when I was thirteen. There was a poster of a famous young actor and a few of her favorite music groups on the walls now that hadn’t been there before, but other than that, her tastes hadn’t changed all that much.

  As I made my way across her room to the window, I stopped short when I saw the ragged stuffed giraffe on her bed.

  I’d been barely four-years-old at the time. Only a few weeks after my birthday. My father had picked me up early from school to take me to the hospital so I could see my mother, “Aunt” Grace, and the new babies. I was excited about my baby brother, and equally excited about the baby girl I would love as dearly as any real sister. I had insisted dad take me to buy a toy for each new baby. At still such a young age, I was absorbed with animals, and elephants and giraffes were my favorites at the time. Kevin’s stuffed elephant had long ago been stashed in our attic, but here was Lacy’s giraffe, looking as loved as it was old now. I picked up the animal and smiled, pleased to discover there was a part of me that she cherished, even if it was only an innocent stuffed toy.

  I crawled out the open window, which was a feat I carried out with the greatest of care because I’d hit my hash pipe at the foot of our driveway before coming home. Lacy was in her usual spot, lying on her stomach with her head pillowed by her arms. When she heard me climbing up to join her, her head shot up.

  “Got enough pink in there, Lace?” She silently watched me come closer to sit beside her. “I’m gonna have to decontaminate myself with a shit-load of blue now.”

  She rewarded me with the faintest smile. “Would be a change from all the black you wear.”

  “That’s an awfully bold criticism from someone who lives in that much frill.”

  She lay her head back down on her arms, staring at the seam of my jeans despondently.

  “He didn’t mean it, Lace.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “You just look so much like your mom. It’s gotta be hard for him. He’ll come around.” Though I wasn’t quite sure if I believed that myself.

  Jerry had always doted on Lacy. She was his prized little angel that he’d spent a lifetime lavishing with love and affection. The Jerry I knew my entire life held Lacy up on a pedestal and would have rather died than to say or do anything to hurt her.

  I wasn’t so worried about what he said to her, though. Like my father and I had discussed before I came to Lacy’s room, our concern was the way Jerry had tried to hold her in his drunken confusion. Lacy was so relieved to have her father home safe that she hadn’t seemed to notice, but then she was used to receiving warm, loving hugs from her father. She no d
oubt thought the one he’d given her tonight was no different than a million others. But it looked different from the million others I’d ever seen.

  Before dad went back to our house to leave me alone with Lacy, we’d decided that Jerry was just too drunk to realize what he was doing, and unless Lacy confided otherwise, there was no need to embarrass him or Lacy over something that might be purely imagined on our parts.

  “So, this is your stargazing haven. You don’t mind that I came up here, do you? I’m not messing up the vibe or anything, am I?”

  I could tell from the way she held her breath that she was trying to stave off tears. She almost imperceptibly shook her head.

  “Want me to leave you alone, Lace?”

  Again, she shook her head, her lips quivering from trying to hold herself together.

  “Well, since you’re upset already, I might as well tell you something,” I said casually, as I lay down and propped myself up on my elbow facing her. When she didn’t respond, but finally glanced up at me expectantly, I said, “No disrespect to you, Lace, because I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight, but I toked up earlier and I’m pretty blitzed right now. I’m gonna have to stay up here till it wears off or you might be scraping me up out of your momma’s rose bushes in the morning.”

  She let out a sob and a laugh simultaneously.

  “You tell my mom and I’ll say you fired up with me,” I teased.

  She rose up on her elbows with a sniffle and let out a small but genuine laugh. “She wouldn’t believe you.”

  “Oh, trust me, I’ll make it sound convincing,” I said, winking.

  “Kevin got mad at you a few months ago and was going to tell Rhonda, but I talked him out of it. I was hoping you would stop when you and Claire broke up.”

  “Ahh, speaking of breakups, mom told me about you and Kev. I was beginning to think you were turning out to be a sucker just like me.”