Nothing But This (Broken Pieces 2)

“You ready?” she asked the teen. Libby would be driving the girl home tonight, an arrangement she had cleared with Daff and Spencer Carlisle.

“I am,” Charlie said with her ready smile. She gathered her backpack and books and waited while Libby grabbed Clara’s bag and picked the baby up.

“Night, Ms. Jenson,” Charlie called as she bounded from the room.

“Libby, please.” Tina’s soft, imploring voice halted Libby’s movement for a moment.

“I’m exhausted, Tina,” she admitted quietly. “It’s been a hell of a day. I need to get Charlie home. And then I just have to switch off from all of this for a little while.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Libby sighed, her shoulders drooping. There was no mistaking the remorse in Tina’s voice. But she honestly did not know what to do about that now, and part of her resented Tina for making what should have been a positive experience for both of them so damned stressful.

“I know that, Tina.”

“Can we—” Clara’s fretful little cry interrupted whatever Tina had been about to say, and she paled at the sound.

Again that extreme negative reaction to Clara’s presence.

“I have to go. Good night.” This time Libby turned and walked away without a backward glance.

The house was freezing. Clara was fretting; she needed a change and a feed, but Libby had to take care of the heating first.

“Okay, sweetheart,” she murmured after putting Clara’s baby seat down on the makeshift coffee table. She looked around for the air conditioner’s remote, figuring the fastest way to warm up the place would be by blasting heat from the air-conditioning unit. The place had no central heating, and the old radiator heater, which had been left behind by the previous owner, had died last night.

She found the remote with a triumphant whoop, and when she turned the heat on, the air conditioner sputtered for a moment before running with a sickly whir. But at least it was working. Thank God for small miracles.

“Okay, bath time for you, munchkin,” she told Clara, keeping her voice cheerful even though she felt like bawling her eyes out. Her day didn’t look like it was going to improve much now that she was home.

For the first time, she looked around the shabby place and worried that she had bitten off way more than she could chew. The plumber still hadn’t come to fix the pipes. The hot water worked . . . until it didn’t, and—she sighed as she walked into the kitchen and stared at the wet floor in dismay—it was now apparent that the roof leaked.

Awesome.

“Just awesome,” she repeated out loud, opening and closing cupboards to look for a bucket. She knew she had one. She had bought it just last week. She finally found it in the bathroom and carried it to the kitchen to place beneath the leak.

Clara was screeching by now, and abruptly overwhelmed, Libby stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the water dripping into the bucket. She covered her face with her hands and inhaled deeply, trying to keep it together.

“I’m coming, baby,” she called soothingly, heading to the bathroom to fill the baby bath with warm water. She placed the pink-and-white plastic bath into the ancient claw-foot tub beneath the tap. The faucet sputtered when she opened it, and the water that emerged was a little brown with rust at first, before running clear. She held her hand beneath the stream, and thankfully, the water warmed after a moment.

“Thank God,” she muttered before heading back to the living room for Clara, who was not a happy little camper right now. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry.” Libby could hear the despair in her own voice as she lifted her baby into her arms. She carried Clara into the bedroom to remove her clothing.

The air conditioner was starting to heat the small house quite comfortably, which Libby was grateful for. She wrapped her plump, naked baby in a fluffy towel before heading back to the bathroom. The adorable, comfortable baby bath—a gift from Clara’s paternal grandparents—was nearly full, and Libby tugged it away from the stream of water before reaching over to close the faucet.

Nothing happened.

“No, no, no,” Libby moaned. “Please, come on!”

The spigot just kept turning without tightening, and the water continued to run. Clara’s cries were escalating now, and feeling increasingly frazzled, Libby wasn’t sure what to do. She glared at the relentless flow of water resentfully, attempting to rock Clara while not at all sure how to deal with this latest in a seemingly endless list of problems.

A loud knock sounded on the front door at that moment, and Libby bit back a juicy curse word at the intrusion. She knew exactly who that was. Seeing him again was inevitable, but of course he had to choose the absolute worst moment to show up. She’d been expecting him all day, and he came knocking after eleven at night. Closer to twelve, actually—it was way too late to be bathing Clara, she knew. But Clara was overdue for a bath, and Libby hadn’t had much time to do it that afternoon, not after dealing with various crises at the restaurant.