Unexpected Family (17 page)

Casey looked at Aaron, who shrugged.

“It’s our first.” Jeremiah took another deep breath and reached deep inside for his heretofore unseen internal Dr. Gilman. He’d been seeing the psychologist for months now—something had to have rubbed off.

“We need to talk,” Jeremiah said. “Not yell. Not go stomping off when we get mad, we need to sit here—” He spread his hands across the faded and scarred wood of the old table. The table he grew up at, the table his sister inherited and was now his again—full circle. “And talk stuff out.”

“Good,” Aaron said, and Jeremiah fought the urge to throw his arms around the kid.

Jeremiah turned to Ben, who sneered. “Yeah, you mean me,” he said. “I’m the one who has to talk.”

“I just want to know why—” He thought about saying, “You lied to me,” but the Dr. Gilman in his head vetoed that.

Too accusatory. You’ve gone that route before.

He thought about asking, “Why Walter and why not Lucy?”

Too close to your own hot buttons and not quite the problem, is it?

“Why do you want to work with Walter?”

Ben blinked at him, as if surprised, and the Dr. Gilman in his head nodded in approval. But Ben just shrugged.

“What kind of work do you do with him?”

“We’re cleaning up all his moldy saddles and stuff.”

It was Jeremiah’s turn to be surprised. That was not fun work.

“And you like that?”

“Better than gardening.”

Careful,
he thought,
careful here.

“You know, you could have just told Lucy you didn’t want to garden.”

“I did.”

Jeremiah could just imagine how that went and he hung his head for a second looking for another way into the boy’s head.

“Walter tells me stories about Mom.”

Jeremiah’s head jerked up.

“What stories?” Aaron asked, his eyes alight.

“Ones about Pirate—”

“Who is Pirate?” Casey asked.

“Mom’s dog growing up,” Aaron told him. “Mom said he used to chase the mailman so much that he would leave the mail down at the bottom of the drive.”

“That’s not all,” Ben said. “Pirate nearly killed Duchess, Walter’s old dog.”

Jeremiah sat back in his chair, blown sideways by the boys’ reactions to these stories. Aaron’s eyes glittered and Ben—Ben was smiling.

You don’t talk about her anymore,
he thought.
You don’t want to upset the boys so you just stopped talking about your sister. Their mom and dad. They died and then you put the memories away where the boys couldn’t reach them.

You thought it was the right thing.

“First of all,” he said, sitting back. “Pirate was my dog! Your mom stole him.”

He could see on their faces that they weren’t sure what he was doing. They looked as if the ice under their feet wasn’t totally solid.

“How’d she steal him?” Casey asked.

“She used to go to bed at night with dog treats under her pillow and Pirate would sleep on her bed because she fed him all night. He used to sleep like a person, too. You know how dogs usually sleep all curled up?”

Casey jumped away from the table to demonstrate, curling up like a doughnut, while Aaron and Ben watched. Their mouths curving slowly into smiles.

“Well, Pirate used to sleep stretched out, on his back with his paws in the air. He used to push her out of bed all the time.”

“But she still let him sleep in her bed?” Aaron asked.

“Every night. She really loved that dog.”

The boys smiled at one another over this piece of their mother he’d handed back to them.

“Did I ever tell you about your mom and dad’s wedding?”

“No!” Aaron said, and Casey got up off the floor and crawled into Jeremiah’s lap. It took Jeremiah a second to swallow back the barbed lump in his throat and he pressed his lips to Casey’s curls, until the moment passed.

The boys all leaned forward, toward him as if he was fire and they were cold.

I’m sorry,
he thought,
I should have told you these stories all along.

“Your mom,” he whispered, “wore white cowboy boots under her wedding dress. And your dad nearly threw up at the altar.”

He skipped the part about how he and Conner, their dad, had gotten drunk as skunks behind the church before the ceremony.

“Did Mom get mad?” Aaron asked.

“Furious.”

“How’d she even know?” Ben asked. “If he didn’t actually throw up?”

“Your dad burped. And it did not smell good.”

Casey howled and Jeremiah laughed, remembering. Before he knew it, Aaron was laughing and so, remarkably, was Ben.

“I know that wedding album is around here somewhere.” He set Casey down and wandered into the rarely used den, where all the photos were kept. The boys followed and it was a good night. Magical almost. The kind of night he never thought they’d have.

Jeremiah watched the boys, heads bent over Aaron’s baby album, and he decided not to waste time feeling bad for having denied them this. Instead, he was going to go back over to Walter’s tomorrow and tell him Ben would be working with him.

Because it made Ben happy and it was about time something did.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

L
UCY
DROVE
SLOWLY
over the pass, trying to formulate her argument. Trying to screw her courage to the sticking point, but her stomach was in knots.

All she could think about was how angry Jeremiah had been. How betrayed.

What did you think was going to happen?
she asked herself.
This is the way you handle every problem in your life, you bury your head in the sand and hope it will go away. Hope something will magically change. But all that changes is that it blows up in your face.

Honestly, she should be used to this by now.

The wind whipping through the window made Lucy more nervous, so she rolled it up and tried the radio but every song jangled and the DJs sounded like children.

What did they know about life?
she thought, listening to them talk about it.
What did they know about anything?

What did she?

This past year had been such a blur of worry and constantly swimming up from rock bottom. It had exhausted her and blinded her and made her doubt every part of herself. And now that the dust had settled in a way that she’d never expected, she had sudden clarity. She could see for miles in every direction.

And all she saw was Jeremiah. How he made her feel and that was too rare to let go because of pride. On both their parts.

She’d forget about logic and focus on what she was good at. Feelings. And what she’d felt had been real, and if he didn’t agree, there was no argument to make.

She parked and started up the porch steps. The house was dark, as one would expect at nearly ten o’clock at night. She hoped he was up. It was daunting to consider having to muster up the courage to try this again in the morning.

“Lucy.” His voice nearly scared her right off the steps.

“Christ, Jeremiah,” she gasped, her heart pounding under her hand.

She heard the quiet thrum of a rocking chair against the floor and then he was there—in front of her. Solemn and steady. His hands tucked into his pockets, his red T-shirt stretched taut against his chest.

“Lucy.” He sighed. “It’s been a pretty dramatic day already. Why are you here?”

“I…” Every word that came to her mouth felt selfish.
I wanted to make you forgive me, like me, kiss me. I want it to go back to the way it was.
“I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“I’m fine,” he murmured.

“You don’t sound fine.”

“We talked about Annie and Conner for two hours. Looked at pictures. The kids loved it.”

“And you?”

“Who doesn’t love a trip down memory lane?” His smile was not convincing and the tension and pain was palpable around him, like heat waves off sun-baked asphalt. She reached for him and he stepped immediately backward.

Her hand hung there, rebuked.

“I think you should leave.”

It’s okay,
she told herself when her skin shrank, her heart stuttered.
He’s right to be angry. You just have to tell him how you feel.
“Is it because I lied?”

“No, actually. I get why you lied. I probably would have done the same thing in your position.”

“Somehow that doesn’t sound like forgiveness.”

He stepped farther away, as if containing himself and pulling back everything he’d ever shared with her. “I can’t be distracted right now. I can’t be pulled in two directions.”

“Jeremiah, you deserve a life—”

“I see a counsellor every Saturday.” He didn’t let her reply. “A shrink. With a couch and tissues…the works. And it’s a secret. No one knows. Not the boys. Not their grandparents. Because she asks me about my feelings. And I tell her. Every damn week I spill my guts.”

Lucy didn’t understand what he wanted from her. Was she supposed to denigrate him for getting the help he so clearly needed? “That’s…that’s great, Jeremiah. You’ve had a rough two years. I’m glad you have someone to talk to.”

“Yeah, well, I canceled last week. So I could have sex with you in that hotel. And I was going to do it again this Saturday. And for however many Saturdays you were going to be here. For as many Saturdays as I could get.”

He made it sound so villainous. So evil.

“I didn’t make you cancel those appointments.”

“I know. It’s me, Lucy. I can’t…I can’t have you and be what the boys need.”

“Oh, my God, Jeremiah, if you’d told me we could have had our dates on another night—”

“That’s not the point.”

“Seems to me like you’re making it the point.”

He was silent for a moment, gathering his argument, and she could only stand there and wait; she had no position anymore to convince him. No weapons to sway him.

“I told you, I can’t be distracted. I can’t be torn when it comes to those boys and all you are is distraction.”

She was breathless with pain. Eviscerated by his words. Her heart and guts spilling out onto the shadowed porch.

She forced enough air into her body so she could respond. “So that’s it?”

He shrugged. “It has to be.”

Lucy wanted to protest but she knew it was pointless. She saw it in the chill of his eyes. He was gone for her. A million miles away.

Without saying goodbye or looking back, she turned and walked away, back to her car.

Funny how when this thing started all she’d wanted was distraction.
Now what,
she wondered, feeling nauseated and rejected, numb and cold in those places he’d warmed—
could possibly distract me from this?

* * *

T
HE
NEXT
AFTERNOON
J
EREMIAH
picked up Ben from school. Casey, amazingly, had agreed to stay home with Adele, the new housekeeper. It probably had something to do with the chocolate chip cookies Adele was planning to make. The boy had a thing about cookie dough.

“I could have taken the bus home,” Ben said.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

Ben gave no response to that, but it seemed as if the temperature in the truck had gone down a few degrees.
Talk
was synonymous with
yelling.
With a grounding, or extra barn work.
Talk
was a bad word at the Stones’ house.

Dr. Gilman would be ashamed.

“Where are we going?” Ben asked when they didn’t turn left at the grocery store toward home. Instead, they went right.

“Rocky M.”

“Am I in trouble again?”

Ben kicked the dashboard and Jeremiah forced himself to count to ten.
Pick your battles,
he thought, remembering some old words of wisdom from Cynthia.

“You wanted to help Walter,” Jeremiah said.

“Yeah. But you said no.”

“Well, now I’m saying yes.”

Ben’s face waivered somewhere between happy and skeptical. Distrustful.

“Why?”

“Because you want to, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“And it makes you happy?”

“Maybe.”

Ben looked away, as if hiding his happiness, a secret he had to keep in fear of Jeremiah taking it away. Jeremiah wondered how many times he had done that. Taken away the things that made Ben happy so that all that was left was unhappiness.

“I want you to be happy, Ben.”

“Yeah, right,” he sneered.

“I do. I liked seeing you happy last night and if I had known that remembering things about your mom—that talking about her—would make you happy, then I would have done it more often. I’m sorry.”

Jeremiah parked the car in silence, right in front of the Rocky M barn.

Walter was sitting in the shade just inside the barn door and glanced up. A miserable old man, sick, getting sicker every day.

What the hell am I thinking? Annie would skin me.

But Annie wasn’t here and that was the problem.

“Do you believe me? That I want you to be happy?” Jeremiah asked, watching his nephew, knowing the question was so weighted that the boy would have to say yes or risk some kind of deep conversation about happiness or lack thereof.

Predictably, after a moment, Ben nodded.

“Good.” Jeremiah popped open the truck door. “Now let’s go see if Walter still wants a nine-year-old nurse.”

* * *

J
EREMIAH
AND
B
EN
GOT
OUT
of their truck but they didn’t head toward the house. They turned toward him instead.

Uh-oh,
was all Walter could think, but he kept rubbing the linseed oil on the old reins.

“Hello, Walter,” Jeremiah said, pushing his hat up with his thumb, revealing dark curls matted with sweat.
Lord knows the man puts in an honest day’s work between the boys and the ranch.

“Jeremiah.” Walter nodded. “Ben.”

“So.” Jeremiah cleared his throat. “About the, ah, the nurse thing?”

“I don’t much like the word
nurse.
” Walter rubbed the reins with his thumb, harder than needed, but these days it was work hard or go back to drinking. And today the work was only barely saving him. His head burned for a drink.

“Okay.” Jeremiah sighed. His patronizing tone made Walter take that imaginary swig. “What would you call it?”

Walter shrugged.

“‘Helper,’” Ben supplied. “That’s…that’s what Mom called me. Her helper.”

Walter noticed the way Jeremiah stared at Ben, as if he were some kind of exotic animal that had sidled up and started talking. When Ben saw this, the hurt was right there on the kid’s face.

When it came to the boy, Jeremiah was a blind man.

Walter nodded. “‘Helper’ works.”

“All right. We can all agree on that.”

“Not sure why you need to be sarcastic,” Walter said. It was one thing when Mia was sarcastic, it was her mother tongue. She didn’t know how to talk without it. But he didn’t need it from Jeremiah. Not in front of the kid.

Jeremiah took his hat all the way off and looked up at the sky as if talking to God. Walter looked over at Ben and winked.

The boy smiled. Score: one point for Walter.

“You’re right,” Jeremiah said. “I apologize. I have considered what you said and if you think Ben can help you and you want that help…I think it could work.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“But I’d want a couple of assurances.”

“Like what?”

“Like if your condition gets worse and you need real help, you tell me right away. No pride here, Walter. I won’t have Ben feeling overwhelmed or scared.”

Walter looked over at Ben and wanted to say he’d never scare the boy, but his pride was often a problem.

“I promise,” Walter said.

“And every day I get a report on his behavior—”

“I’m not a teacher, Jeremiah. The boy will work. If he doesn’t he won’t be welcome back. Past that, I don’t have much to tell you.”

Jeremiah looked like he wanted to argue but Ben piped up. “I’ll be good. I promise.”

Jeremiah ran a hand over his face, mumbling something that sounded a lot like “I cannot believe I’m doing this.” He dropped his hand. “All right. When would you like him to start?”

“Right now suits just fine. You could go pick up the other boys and bring ’em back for supper. Sandra likes that.”

The front door slammed and Jeremiah and Ben both turned toward the house. It had to be Lucy—Walter didn’t even have to look, he could see it on Jeremiah’s face. The man was as gutted as a fish.

“I’ll be back in two hours.” Jeremiah took off for the car, nearly at a run. Lucy stood on the porch, her hand up to shade her eyes from the sun. She wore a green-and-white plaid shirt and looked so much like Sandra twenty years ago, Walter had to look away.

“There’s a pile of reins in the tack room,” Walter said to Ben. “Go and grab ’em, would ya?”

Ben nodded and vanished into the barn.

A nurse,
he thought, chewing over the word and the idea, surprised when the taste was sweet. The boy felt more like a second chance.

And why,
he wondered, with a dry mouth and sweaty hands,
does that make me so damn nervous?

* * *

L
UCY
WATCHED
J
EREMIAH
drive off and told herself she’d suffered worse rejections. But none had ripped her legs out from under her. After last night’s restless sleep she’d woken up resolved to forget Jeremiah, since that seemed to be the only thing she could do. But the second she saw his truck out the window, she’d entertained, for about half a second, the idea that he had changed his mind. About her. And she’d charged out the door like a lunatic.

But it was Walter he’d been here to see and the disappointment was bitter.

His truck kicked up dust as he charged away from the ranch and when it settled there were Walter and Ben, sitting in the shade, a pile of leather between them. Bits of metal flashing in the sun.

She thought of her leather bracelet designs and realized that right under her nose might be the materials she needed. Carefully, unsure of being welcome, or truly what she was doing—only knowing she had to do something or lose her mind thinking about Jeremiah—she approached the two of them.

“Hey,” she said.

Walter looked up and then did a rather comical double take. “Lucy?”

Ben just stared at her, the little turncoat. Really, she wondered, what did Walter have that she didn’t?
Maybe I should find out,
Lucy thought.
Maybe I should find out why my own mother wants a “friendship” with this man.

Maybe I should give him half a chance.

“What…” She gestured limply toward the pile of beaten-up leather reins and bridles. “What are you doing?”

“Cleaning,” Walter said.

“Oh. Could I join you?”

She laughed at the face Walter made. Oh, so funny that face. Horrified, he was utterly horrified at the thought of spending time with her. She couldn’t totally blame him, it’s not like she’d been overly pleasant to the man.

“I guess not.” She started to turn on her heel.

Surprisingly her support came from Ben. “You can stay,” he said.