Finding Joy (The Joy Series) (Volume 2) Read online

  Nothing extraordinary had happened today. Unless you counted the visit from my father, and that had actually been quite extraordinary.

  He had been sitting in my office when I’d limped in. I expected another showdown, but he hadn’t put up the usual fight. Instead, he had seemed resigned … as if he was giving up when it came to Adam. It was uncharacteristic and still had me on edge.

  “I have to go home today, Allie girl, but your mother and I have been talking,” he had said. “We want you to come home for Thanksgiving next month. Normally, I wouldn’t need to extend an invitation like this … we’d just expect you to show up … but I guess things are different now.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad, but I’ll be spending the holiday with Adam,” I had responded. It wasn’t up for negotiation.

  “We suspected that you would say that, and we want you to bring him.” It had been an invitation, but his tone had lacked the sentiment.

  I had eyed him suspiciously. “What’s the catch, Dad?”

  He had winced in response. Until very recently, I always referred to my father as ‘Daddy.’ Even at the age of 26 and a half, I had used the childish greeting without embarrassment. Now, he had been relegated to plain old ‘Dad,’ and it wasn’t because I was finally growing up. It was because I was growing away.

  He recovered quickly, however, and resumed his brusque invitation. “There’s no catch. Just bring him. Your mother and I want to get to know him.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I had said.

  “What? Getting to know him?” my dad had snorted.

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. If you would give him a chance, you would see that none of this was his fault and that he doesn’t deserve your mistreatment. If you would give him a chance, you’d see why I love him.”

  As I had suspected it would, the ‘L’ word had caused my dad to visibly bristle. No matter what he said, he wasn’t ready to accept Adam in my life.

  But then he had leaned forward and rested his elbows on his legs. “Look, are we happy with the situation? No. Is this what we would have chosen for you? Absolutely not. But we’ve never wanted anything other than your happiness.” He’d actually seemed sincere.

  “You’re our only daughter. We just want what is best for you, and if you can honestly tell me that you think Adam is it for you, then we want to get to know him.”

  I had stared at him intently for what had seemed like minutes. Hours. I had almost believed him. Or maybe I’d just wanted to. “I can’t promise anything,” I finally said. “But I’ll talk to him.”

  He had simply nodded as he’d stood up. Then he left my office without another word. I sat in a stupor wondering if the infallible Garrett Harper had cracked or if he was putting on one of his Emmy-worthy courtroom shows. I would have to wait and see. Actions speak louder than words.

  I still hadn’t told Adam about our unlikely invitation, though he’d only been home a few minutes.

  “You’re going out tonight, right?” he asked, as he walked through the room.

  “I was supposed to go to Dawn’s with Carly tonight. She’s hosting some ‘Wine & Waxing’ thing at her house. But I’m not going.”

  “Wine and what?” he asked. A smirk played across his face.

  “You heard me. Waxing. I guess they bring in some beauty technician and we all take turns getting whatever service we want. Kind of weird, huh?”

  “So you’re saying that you all stand around and watch each other get waxed?” He arched an eyebrow at me. “Sounds kind of awesome actually.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. Typical man. “I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. I’m sure the waxing takes place in another room. I think it’s just another excuse to hang out with your girlfriends and get drunk.”

  He got a devilish gleam in his eye. “So what you’re really telling me is that there’s a chance you might come home bare and drunk? This keeps getting better and better.”

  “No,” I said, laughing at him. “I think I said I’m not going.”

  “But you’re saying there’s a chance?” He wiggled his eyebrows at me suggestively. “Come on, Allie. Why wouldn’t you go? You’re not working tomorrow. Start the weekend off with a bang.”

  I gave him a meek smile. “It just feels wrong, you know? I mean, Lizzie is out there. God knows where. I can’t just go out on the town like it never happened.”

  “Awww, Allie. You can’t stop living because of Lizzie. You have no idea if or when she’s going to come home. Besides, she’s not alone. I’m sure she’s okay. Whoever has her, they’re probably taking better care of her than her mom ever did.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said. I really had no choice at this point but to hope for the best. I had called Marlene this morning to find out what she knew, but she hadn’t had any information yet. We didn’t know where Lizzie had been placed, but I preferred to think she was with a real family rather than stuck in a home with other misplaced teenagers.

  “Trust me. She’s fine. And soon enough you’ll find out where she is and if you can go visit her. In the meantime, go out with Carly and her crazy-ass sister-in-law. It’ll be good for you.”

  I eyeballed my feet one more time before kicking them off the couch and onto the floor. “Okay. I’ll call her.”

  “Already on it,” Adam said. His phone was in his hand and he was already scrolling through his contacts for Carly’s number.

  I listened to his one-sided conversation as he conspired with my best girlfriend. “All right, we’ll meet you there in 45 minutes,” he said, just before ending the call.

  “I don’t think boys are invited,” I said.

  “As tempting as it is to go see what this party is all about, I only agreed to get you part of the way there. Carly is going to meet us at the Fulton stop.”

  I eyed Adam suspiciously. “I don’t need a chaperone. I think I can make it to Fulton on my own.”

  “I know you can, but I want to make sure you actually go. No moping around here. Besides, I need to run up to the school tonight. It’s on my way.”

  “Fine,” I said, sashaying toward the bedroom. “I’m going to go change into something befitting of a wax party, whatever that may be.”

  “Excellent,” he said, swatting my behind as I passed by. “I’ll pour you a glass of wine. Loosen you up a bit for all those crazy bitches that Dawn hangs out with.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered under my breath. “I’ll probably need it.”

  _________________________

  I was two glasses of wine into the party … three if you counted the one that Adam had forced on me before we had left the house. And it hadn’t been nearly enough to handle what I’d just endured.

  “Next month is at my house,” said a tall brunette that I didn’t remember from the birthday party. She tucked her purse under her arm and tossed her long hair over her shoulder. “I’ll send out the email next week.”

  “So you really do this every month?” I asked Dawn in disbelief after the brunette had left. I was more than a little horrified. I’d just had my turn with the wax ‘artist.’ I had asked for a standard bikini wax but had gotten a whole lot more. Or at least I had gotten a lot more than any ‘standard’ bikini wax I’d ever had. At this point, I didn’t need another drink. I needed rape crisis counseling.

  “Every. Single. Month.” Dawn said, reaching across me for a cherry tomato on a vegetable tray. She popped it in her mouth. “Do you want in? True Pain is very thorough, right?”

  “True Pain?” I asked. It wasn’t the first time I had heard the term this evening but it was the first time I’d understood that the term was referring to the tiny Vietnamese lady who had just mauled me over like a teenage boy after prom. “I just finished with her … so I gotta be honest … I’m not entirely sure.”

  Dawn laughed. “It can be a little traumatic the first time. ‘True Pain’ is the name Meredith gave her,” Dawn said, pointing toward a pretty blonde talking to the brunette who was
still on her way out the door. “It fits.”

  It did fit. After spending exactly 16 minutes with her, I had come to realize that True Pain was a one-woman wrecking ball. As for the wax job … well, she had a vicious eye and crazy fingers. Her wax was scalding, and her attention to detail was unforgettable.

  Carly bounced up to the kitchen island and grabbed a handful of chips. “How’d it go?” she asked.

  I glared at her in response, and she started giggling uncontrollably. “You knew!” I hit her in the arm. “You freaking knew that I was going to go back there and get raped!”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, laughing. “It’s not that bad.”

  “It’s not that bad? Have you lost your mind? It is exactly that bad.”

  “Why? What happened?” she asked, still giggling.

  “I can’t talk about it,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s going to be a long time before I can talk about it.”

  “She asked you to flip over, right?” Carly asked. She and Dawn were now laughing so hard that they were nearly gasping for air.

  “Yes, she asked me to flip over.” I shot her a dirty look. “No, I take that back. She commanded me to flip over. And, to be honest, I was more than a little scared. Her long fake fingernails, complete with tiger stripes, and that night-life-blue eye shadow … she scared me,” I said shaking my head.

  Meredith, the founder of the moniker, wandered up. “She’s like the dominatrix of waxing, right?”

  “So you flipped?” Carly asked through snorts.

  “Hell, yeah, I flipped. At first, I said no but then she said, ‘No. I see. You need.’ I was so horrified that I didn’t even fight back when she pulled herself up on to the table and flipped me over.”

  “She was all up in your shit, huh?” Dawn asked.

  “What are those little glasses that jewelers wear? The ones that magnify everything?”

  “The ones with a light on them?” Carly asked, laughing.

  “Yeah. Those. I’m pretty sure she whipped out a pair. I’m not kidding. I will never be the same. And I’ve had Brazilians plenty of times. It was never like this. I had to go to my happy place.”

  “That’s why we drink,” Dawn said, smiling knowingly.

  “I can see why. And, to be honest, I wish someone had slipped some Rohypnol into my drink beforehand.”

  The girls all roared with laughter. “Well, you’ll be glad later,” Carly said.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Ok, well, maybe you won’t be glad, but Adam will.”

  “Oh, no. No way. He’s not getting near me. I think I have third degree burns.”

  “So are you about ready to go?” Carly asked. “I have to work the lunch shift tomorrow.”

  “Ha ha,” Dawn mocked.

  “Shut it, Dawn,” Carly said sharply. “How you get out of working at the restaurant, I’ll never understand.”

  “I’m raising the next little generation of Morettis. They demand all of my attention. Dad knows where my true value lies.”

  “Whatever,” Carly retorted. “You’ll be drinking by noon tomorrow, and those kids will be tearing down the house. Blood will be shed, and there will be at least one small house fire before I’m done serving the lunch crowd.”

  “It’s vital that they learn self-sufficiency,” she snorted. “I’m doing them a service by making sure that they can make their own grilled cheese sandwiches.”

  At that very moment, the side door in the kitchen flew open and at least three, maybe four little Morettis streamed in. Each of the larger ones was a miniature version of one of their parents. The smallest one was the spitting image of her mother. A bedraggled George was the last to step through the door. He was loaded down with backpacks and plastic containers of food.

  “Hey, Carl. Hey, Allie,” he said, as he opened the refrigerator to put away the plastic containers. We both nodded in response.

  “Mom sent you some dinner, Dawn. She said you might need some bread to soak up the wine.” Dawn rolled her eyes at him in response.

  “Mommy,” the dark-haired, miniature-Dawn screamed as she grabbed onto her mother’s leg.

  “Hey, boog,” Dawn said, scooping her up into her arms. “Did you have fun at Nonna’s tonight?”

  “Yes,” the little girl said. “But Nick hit Felicia and gave her a bloody nose.”

  “Anything else I should know?” Dawn asked more to her husband than to the little girl. She set the little girl down on the floor.

  “Nope, that’s about it. Oh, but Pops said he would get me a puppy for Christmas.” The little girl’s face lit up at the thought.

  “Oh, he did, did he? Well, we’ll see about that.” Dawn directed a glare in George’s direction.

  “I’m going to go mix myself a drink,” he said. “Lauren, go get your pajamas on, and I’ll come tuck you in.”

  She reached for her mom’s hand and started pulling her toward the door. “Come on, Momma,” she said. “I want you.”

  Dawn rolled her eyes, but let Lauren pull her toward the stairs. “I want you, too,” she said, scooping her back up and tickling her. They thundered up the stairs with Lauren squealing every step of the way.

  “So, yeah … I bet you’re ready to go now,” Carly said. “Sorry my family is so nuts.”

  I looked at the buffet of food spread across the bar. I was suddenly in need of some comfort food. “Your family is great. I love it. It’s loud and obnoxious and real,” I said, before stuffing a miniature cupcake in my mouth.

  “It’s real all right,” she said. “A real pain in my ass. Tell you what, let me grab some of these leftovers, and let’s get out of here.” She looked around to see if anyone was watching, but Meredith and I were the only ones left at the party. Thunderous footsteps pounded on the ceiling over our heads. The sounds of George and Dawn trying to wrangle their little monsters into bed trickled down the stairs.

  “I’m out of here, too,” Meredith said. She pointed at me and smiled. “And you have a date with a rape counseling hotline.”

  We let ourselves out and walked toward the subway station a few blocks away even though Adam had specifically requested that we take a cab home since it was so late. I wasn’t worried. I had Carly with me. Adam was a worrywart.

  As expected, the ride home was uneventful. When I unlocked the door and it swung open, I was disappointed to find a silent, dark apartment. Adam had said that he had to run to the school to pick up his books for the weekend since he was going to play hooky with me tomorrow. I would have thought he would be back by now. But maybe he had met Burke out somewhere.

  It was funny how quickly I’d gotten used to having him here. Gone were the days when I cherished the solitude of my apartment. If I was here, I wanted him to be here.

  I threw my stuff down on the table and checked my phone for a text message from Adam. I’d missed one from several hours before. But the message had just said to text him when I got home so that he knew I was safe. It didn’t say where he was or when he would be back.

  Rubber Cat did figure eights between my legs, reminding me that I wasn’t totally alone. “Hey, man cat,” I said, reaching down and scooping him in my arms. I scratched under his chin, which got his motor immediately running. “Did you pee in the potty tonight? Let’s go take a look.”

  We made our way to the bathroom, turning on lights as we went. The cat potty was a strange litter box contraption that fit over the toilet. Since we only had one bathroom and it had to be removed before we humans could use the toilet, it was a real nuisance. However, Adam swore that it wouldn’t always be this way. Even so, it was yet another factor weighing in favor of moving to a bigger apartment, one with two bathrooms.

  When I peered into the strange bowl of litter, I was surprised to find evidence that Rubber Cat had been there. “Well, high five to you, Rubber Cat,” I said, setting him down on the vanity by the sink. “Adam will be so proud.” I brushed my teeth and slipped on one of Adam’s old
concert t-shirts. With my eReader in hand and Rubber Cat on my heels, I crawled into bed.

  The buzz from Dawn’s party was long gone. If I was honest, it had disappeared the minute Dawn’s kids had shown up. Watching her interact with little Lauren had caused my stomach to tie up in knots. Although she pretended to be annoyed by her kids, I knew better. She was a mom first, a wife second, and anything else was a distant third. I didn’t know which had sobered me faster, the sad thought that Lizzie didn’t have a mom like Dawn or the nagging feeling that I didn’t have it in me to be that kind of mom either.

  I wasn’t immune to my faults. I was a selfish person, but that was exactly the person that I had been raised to be.

  Until Adam, my life had played out exactly as my parents had hoped. I’d spent the past 11 years focusing on the career I had always wanted. Even though I’d only been a practicing attorney for a couple of years, I was good at it. The job was in my blood. And the fact that my last name was on the letterhead provided additional pressure to be the best. There were so many people expecting me to succeed. And there were a lot of others watching me and hoping that I would fail. Those had been the driving forces in my life. Anything and anyone else had been secondary. Even with Adam in my life now, the balance of things hadn’t changed that much. He seemed happy to share me with the job that required me to be on call 24 hours a day.

  A kid would change all that. A baby would require so much more from me than either my job or Adam. In some ways, walking away from it all to focus on something or someone else would be a relief. But I didn’t think I could. I didn’t think I would ever be able to stay at home all day. I just wasn’t that person. I’d never be Dawn.

  Frustrated, I opened the case on my eReader and it came to life. I touched the screen to open the book Carly had been going on and on about for the past two weeks. The crazy girl had proclaimed her love for a certain lord and insisted that the feeling was mutual. After the third chapter, I picked up my phone and typed out a quick text to her.