Change of Heart (Edilean 9)

Later, after they’d weighed the good they had done of fixing the children’s teeth against the near exposure, they decided to continue being Robin and Marian Les Jeunes.

“So what are we going to do with your father?” Chelsea asked, and she could see that Eli had no idea.

“I’d like to get rid of him,” Eli said. “He makes my mother cry. But—”

“But what?”

“But she says she still loves him.”

At that, Chelsea and Eli looked at each other without comprehension. They knew they loved each other, but then they also liked each other. How could anyone love a man like Leslie Harcourt? There wasn’t anything at all likable about him.

“I would like to give my mother what she wants,” Eli said.

“Tom Selleck?” Chelsea asked, without any intent at humor. Miranda had once said that what she truly wanted in life was Tom Selleck—because he was a family man, she’d added, and no other reason.

“No,” Eli said. “I’d like to give her a real husband, one who she’d like.”

For a moment they looked at each other in puzzlement. Eli had recently been trying to make a computer think, and they both knew that doing that would be easier than trying to make Leslie Harcourt stay home and putter in the garage.

“This is a question for the Love Expert,” Chelsea said, making Eli nod. Love Expert was what they called Eli’s mom because she read romantic novels by the thousands. After reading each one, she gave Eli a brief synopsis of the plot, then he fed it into his computer data banks and made charts and graphs. He could quote all sorts of statistics, such as that 18 percent of all romances are medieval, then he could break that number down into fifty-year sections. He could also quote about plots, how many had fires and shipwrecks, how many had heroes who’d been hurt by one woman (who always turned out to be a bad person) and so hated all other women. According to Eli the sheer repetition of the books fascinated him, but his mother said that love was wonderful no matter how many times she read about it.

So Eli and Chelsea consulted Miranda, telling her that Chelsea’s older sister’s husband was having an affair with a girl who wanted to marry him. He didn’t want to marry her, but neither could he seem to break up with her.

“Ah,” Miranda said, “I just read a book like that.”

Here Eli gave Chelsea an I-knew-she’d-know look.

“The mistress tried to make the husband divorce his wife, so she told him she was going to bear his child. But the ploy backfired and the man went back to his wife, who by that time had been rescued by a tall, dark, and gorgeous man, so the husband was left without either woman.” For a moment Miranda looked dreamily into the distance. “Anyway, that’s what happened in the book, but I’m afraid real life isn’t like a romance novel. More’s the pity. I’m sorry, Chelsea, that I can’t be of more help, but I don’t seem to know exactly what to do with men in real life.”

Chelsea and Eli didn’t say any more, but after a few days of research, they sent a note to Eli’s father on the letterhead of a prominent physician, stating that Miss

Heather Allbright was pregnant with his child, and his office had been directed to send the bills to Leslie Harcourt. Sending the bills had been Chelsea’s idea, because she believed that all bills on earth should be directed to fathers.

But things did not work out as Chelsea and Eli had planned. When Leslie Harcourt confronted his mistress with the lie that she was expecting his child, the young woman didn’t so much as blink an eye, but broke down and told him it was true. From what Eli and Chelsea could find out—and Eli’s mother did everything she could to keep Eli from knowing anything—Heather threatened to sue Leslie for everything he had if he didn’t divorce Miranda and marry her.

Miranda, understanding as always, said they should all think of the unborn baby and that she and Eli would be fine, so of course she’d give Leslie the speediest divorce possible. Leslie said it would especially hasten matters if he had to pay only half the court costs and only minimal child support until Eli was eighteen. Generously, he said he’d let Miranda have the house if he could have anything inside it that could possibly be of value, and of course she would assume the mortgage payments.

When the dust settled, Chelsea and Eli were in shock at what they had caused, too afraid to tell anyone the truth—but if Heather was going to have a baby, then they had told the truth. One week after Eli’s father married Heather, she said she’d miscarried and there was no baby.

Eli had been afraid his mother would fall apart at this news, but instead she had laughed. “Imagine that,” she’d said. “But Miss Clever Heather did get her baby, whether she knows it yet or not.”

Eli never could get his mother to explain that remark, but he was very glad she wasn’t hurt by the divorce.

So now Eli had just seen the taillight of his father’s car pull away, and he knew without a doubt that the man had been there trying to weasel out of child-support payments. Leslie Harcourt made about seventy-five thousand a year as a car salesman—he could sell anything to anyone—while Miranda barely pulled down twenty thousand as a practical nurse. “As good as I make people feel, they don’t pay much for that. Eli, sweetheart, my only realistic dream for the future is to become a private nurse for some very rich, very sweet old man who wants little more than to eat popcorn and watch videos all day.”

Eli had pointed out to her that all the heroines in her romance novels were running corporations while still in their twenties, or else they were waitressing and going to law school at night. That made Miranda laugh. “If all women were like that, who’d be buying the romance novels?”

Eli thought that was a very good consideration. His mother often had the ability to see right to the heart of a matter.

“What did he want?” Eli asked the moment he opened the door to the house he shared with his mother.

For a moment Miranda grimaced, annoyed that her son had caught his father there. Escaping Eli’s ever-watchful eye was like trying to escape a pack of watchdogs. “Nothing much,” she said evasively.

At those words a chill ran down Eli’s back. “How much did you give him?”

Miranda rolled her eyes skyward.

“You know I’ll find out as soon as I reconcile the bank statement. How much did you give him?”