Feels Like Summertime (12 page)

I
can still remember vividly
the day I was notified that my husband had died. I was sitting at the kitchen table supervising a game of Monopoly the kids were playing with a few of their friends. Gabby was playing too, so I didn’t have to pay a ton of attention. She’d partnered with Trixie, who was too little to do math or read the cards, but she loved the camaraderie. She also loved to heckle her brother and his friends.

I took a sip from my glass of wine and hitched a hip on the corner of the counter. I was the luckiest wife on the face of the planet. After our youngest two children were born, we’d decided that only Jeff would remain active in the military. I still was in the reserves, and I had to give one weekend a month to my country, but I didn’t get deployed the way Jeff did. He was on his second tour, and it got harder every time he left.

I walked to the calendar on the wall and marked off another day. Jeff would be home in two weeks. I couldn’t wait.

I bent over to take a baking dish loaded with chicken nuggets out of the oven. I started to flip them all over with a fork and would have to put them back in for a little more cooking.

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” Gabby said as she set Trixie on the chair they both had been occupying.

“Thanks,” I muttered.

“Mom!” Gabby yelled a moment later. She was always so composed. She’d grown up way too fast. It was the bane of having two younger siblings and a parent who was absent; she’d taken on way too much responsibility, but she always handled it gracefully. Until now. “
Mom!
” she yelled again, and I heard her feet pounding down the hallway. “Mom…” Her voice quivered. “There are two men at the door.”

I kept flipping nuggets. “What do they want?”

“They’re military,” she said. “In class A’s.”

My hand suddenly felt numb. I dropped the fork I was holding and it clattered to the floor. “Stay with Trixie and Alex,” I said quietly to Gabby as I walked past her.

She grabbed onto my arm. “What do they want, Mom?”

“Probably nothing,” I said soothingly. “Just wait here. Watch your brother and sister.”

One of the officers introduced them. “May we come inside?” the chaplain asked. I identified him by the insignia on his uniform and the Bible he carried in his hand. I stepped to the side and they walked past me.

“I have been asked to inform you that your husband has been reported dead. He was wounded by a roadside bomb and died en route to the hospital. We regret having to impart this news to you. On the behalf of the Secretary of Defense, I extend to you and your family my deepest sympathy in your great loss.”

I wanted to drop to my knees and sob, but I had three kids who had just lost their dad. They’d lost their hero. They’d lost their future as they knew it. There would be no father to walk my girls down the aisle; there would be no father to straighten Alex’s tie before he stood at the altar. He wouldn’t teach them to drive a car. He wouldn’t be with me to supervise dates. He wouldn’t teach Alex to carry a handkerchief or to open doors for ladies. He would never arrange Trixie’s hair in uneven pigtails again.

He would never call me in the middle of the night just to say hi. He would never hold me again, because his body was being shipped back to the United States. His
dead
body.

“Is there anyone we can call for you?” the uniformed officer asked.

“I can do it.” I needed to call my parents, and I needed to call Jeff’s parents and his sister. They needed to know. But first, I had to tell my children.

The officers left me a few minutes later with a packet of information and details about the retrieval of the body. They would fly Jeff home with honors, and we could be there when he arrived. We could watch as they lowered the flag-draped casket. We could only wish he was getting off the plane and running toward us, like he normally did. He’d scoop the kids up first, and then he would grab me and spin me around. He’d whisper sweet words of love to me and my heart would swell with pride at the way he served his country, and the way he still served us. The way he loved us was pivotal. It was moving. It was perfect.

And it was no more.

Jeff was dead. He was never coming home again.

I walked into the kitchen on shaky legs. “Hey, kids,” I said quietly. My voice squeaked. I cleared my throat. “Kids,” I said again. “Let’s clean this up. Unless your last name is Stone, you need to go home.”

“But Mom,” Alex complained. Then he saw the look on my face. “Go home, guys,” he said. He was only seven, but he was so grown up in that moment. He looked over and saw Gabby standing by the stove and there were tears streaming down her face. She was fourteen the day we got the news that Jeff had died. But she may as well have been two. My stoic daughter was grieving, and I hadn’t even told her yet that her father was dead. Somehow she already knew.

Trixie slid her hand into Gabby’s. Gabby held it tightly, but she couldn’t stop the tears.

Once the other kids had gone home, I walked over to Gabby and pulled her against me. “You know,” I said. She nodded into my neck, her sobs nearly choking her.

“He’s gone,” she whispered.

“Yes.” I laid my forehead against hers.

“Did he suffer?”

“I don’t think so.”

She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. “Okay.” She steeled her spine and pulled her shoulders back. Then she picked Trixie up and set her on her hip. Alex took my hand.

“Who were those men?” Alex asked.

“They came to give us some really bad news,” I said. Then I took a deep breath and told my children that their father would not be coming home. I had to tell them that life as we knew it would never be the same.

We did watch the casket as it was removed from the airplane when they brought Jeff’s body back to the United States. It was almost as though time stood still. Soldiers who were there slowly saluted, their arm movement so precise that it looked almost like someone had slowed time. The airline employees doffed their caps, and when I looked up toward the area where passengers patiently awaited their flights behind a solid glass wall, they too were honoring my husband’s life. With their tears, with their reverence, and with all the feelings in their hearts, they paid their respects to my husband and to our family.

After the casket was loaded into the hearse, we followed it to the funeral home, where I would undergo the worst and best two days of my life. Family and friends showed up in droves, their fear and their worries thick enough in the room that it could choke a mortal person. But I was no longer a mortal person. I was the widow of a soldier. I was no longer a
wife
. I was a
widow
. I was suddenly super-human. But beneath it all, I was also flawed. Though I didn’t find that out until much later, a little more than a year, when the loneliness consumed me and someone new entered my life.

Cole was confident and charming. He was nice to my children and they had fun with him. He brought me flowers, and more important, he took me out of my grief and made me feel like a woman again.

Until the day he didn’t.

K
atie wipes
a tear from her eye. “Cole was a mistake I made, and I tried to undo it.” She lays a hand on her belly. “But there was a little more involved than just having him as a boyfriend, once
this
happened.” She jabs a finger into her belly, and then she soothes it with a warm stroke of her palm. “Jake,” she says on a heavy sigh. “No matter what happened with Cole and what a monster he turned out to be, I loved my husband. I never betrayed his memory. I honored it, or so I thought at the time, by moving on with my life.”

“You can love more than one person in a lifetime, Katie,” I say.

The ambulance arrives at the hospital, and the police and Katie’s family have already arrived. They meet us as Katie is getting settled in. I stand in the hallway. “Did they find him?” I ask Pop quietly as everyone bustles around.

Pop shakes his head. “They found a blood trail leading into the woods, but no body.”

I nod. “They should be checking the local hospitals.”

“They won’t find him,” Pop says. “Not until he wants to be found.”

I knew that.

A nurse steps into the hallway. “Is the father here?” she asks, staring down at her clipboard.

Dan and Adam look at one another and then at me and Pop.

“Yes,” Pop says. He claps me on the shoulder. “Right here.”

“I’m not–” I start to say. But Adam talks over me.

“We’ll be right here if you need anything,” Adam says.

The nurse gives me scrubs to put on and booties to cover my shoes. “You can change once you’re in there,” she says.

“Gabby,” I protest. “Where’s Gabby?” Gabby was with her mother when she had Trixie. Certainly, she wants to be there for this one too.

“Gabby’s already in with Mrs. Stone,” the nurse says. “They’re just waiting for someone to hold her hand.”

“That’s all you need? Someone to hold her hand?”

The nurse nods. “Yes.” Her brow furrows. “You
are
the father, correct?”

Not even close
.

“She’ll need someone to curse and scream at. Someone to hate. Someone who can push her through this.” The nurse waits impatiently.

“Someone else should be there.” I look at Dan and Adam.

“We’re grandparents. We’re more useful out there.” Dan is holding Trixie’s hand, and Adam has his hand laid upon Alex’s shoulder.

“Sir, if you’re coming,” the nurse snaps. She turns abruptly on her heel and walks into the room.

“I’m coming,” I call out. I follow her.

Katie is sitting up on the bed and sweat beads her forehead. “Jake,” she says. “What are you doing here?” Another contraction hits her, and the doctor looks up from between her legs.

“It won’t be long now,” he says.

“That quick?” I ask.

“Baby number four tends to come a little quicker.”

The contraction eases and Katie settles back against the pillows. “You remember what you said about them just walking out after you’ve had so many?”

“I was a fool, huh?”

“Yeah,” she mutters.

“Here we go,” the doctor says.

Katie holds out her hand and stares into my eyes. “Hold my hand, Jake,” she says. I don’t hesitate. I grip her hand tightly and sit down on a stool close to the head of her bed. “I got this, right?” she says.

“No,” I say. Tears sting my eyes.

“No?” Her gaze flies up to meet mine. “
No?
” she barks at me this time.

“
We
got this,” I tell her. I lean forward and kiss her on the forehead. She blinks back tears and I rest my forehead against hers. “
We
got this,” I say again. “I’m here with you, Katie. I won’t leave you.” I sit back.

“Gabby,” Katie says. Gabby is holding her other hand. “He makes it sound so easy.”

Gabby laughs. “Because pushing a bowling ball out of your vagina always seems easy when you have testicles.”

“On the next contraction, I want you to give a big push,” the doctor says.

Katie nearly squeezes the life out of my hand.

When it’s over, she leans back against the bed. “I bet you thought the first time you saw me naked would be a little better than this.”

“Does it get better than this?” I ask. I laugh. So does she.

An hour later, Katie has screamed at me, cursed me, and declared her undying hatred toward all mankind, and then she brings forth the most beautiful baby boy I’ve ever seen.

The doctor lays him on Katie’s stomach, and she stares down at him. “I was worried I wouldn’t be able to love him as much as I love the rest of them, you know?” she tells me, as tears pour down her cheeks.

“I know.” I try to sympathize. With what she’s been through, her feelings are justified.

“But I do. I love him just the same.” She turns her face into my cheek and sobs. “I love him just as much. Look at him, Jake. He’s perfect.”

I blink hard, but I can’t keep the tear from falling down my own cheek. “Perfect, Katie. He’s absolutely perfect.” And at the same time, really gross with stuff all over him, which makes the way I’m feeling even more absurd.

Gabby reaches over and wipes my cheek with a tissue. “You two are a mess,” she says. “Just wait until I tell Pop you were in here sobbing.” She pulls her gloves off and goes out the door to the waiting area, supposedly to make the announcement–a healthy eight pound two ounce little boy with his mother’s dark hair and blue eyes.

“He has your fingers,” I tell Katie as I let the little guy wrap his hand around my forefinger. And just like that, he wraps himself around my heart, too.

“Do you want to cut the cord, Dad?” the nurse asks.

I hesitate. “Um…”

“Cut the cord, Jake,” Katie says.

“Okay.” So I do. I cut his bond with his mother, and in my heart, it solidly binds him to me. I look up at his mom. “Katie Stone,” I say, remembering to use her married last name, “do you remember when you jumped into the lake with me that first night we met?”

She smiles. “Vividly.”

“Well, this is me jumping in with
you
.” I put my face right next to hers and wait for her to turn and kiss me. And when she does turn to face me, she pulls back a little with a questioning look on her face. “Kiss me, Katie,” I say.

When her lips touch mine, I know this is where I’m supposed to be.

“Are you jumping in with me because you’re afraid I’ll drown, Jake?” Her voice shakes.

I look into her eyes. “Nope. Just because I want to be with you.”

I
have learned
three very important things in the past six weeks:

1. Little boys pee on the toilet seat. Little girls do too. Katie says it’s all about drippage when it comes to girls, but I still don’t understand it. Perhaps I never will.

2. Pop is going to make a hell of a grandpa some day. What he lacks in patience, he makes up for in assholery, which can be endearing at times.

3. Katie isn’t nearly as into me as I’m into her.

Pop smacks me on the back of my head. “She has a six-week-old infant, dumbass,” he says. “She never sleeps. I’m sure of that, because I hear that thing crying all night long. A woman who’s not getting any sleep isn’t going to have any interest in romance.”

Katie and her family came to stay with me and Pop after she and the baby were discharged from the hospital. I didn’t want them to have to go back into hiding, and to tell the truth, I wanted to keep her and her family safe. It’s not a matter of
if
Cole is going to come back. It’s a matter of
when
.

We discussed it with Adam and Dan and with the local police, and we all decided that it was safer for Katie to stay with me and Pop at the big house than for them to move again. Adam and Dan took Cabin 114 for the summer, and they’ve been around when Katie needs them. We have an increased police presence in the complex, and the place is now open for the season, which means it’s crawling with people.

Our house is also brimming with people, which seems more than strange since I haven’t spent a summer here in years. Usually when I visit, it’s the off-season and it has always been just me and Pop. We have three guest rooms, which are perfect for the Stone family. Katie and the baby took one, Trixie and Alex took the bunk beds in another, and Gabby took the third. That left me in a cold, lonely bed. But I am okay with that, since I know Katie is snug as a bug in a rug right down the hall from me. She is safe and warm and within my reach. Now I just need to reach out and grab her.

The cabins on the lake are all rented out, and people started arriving about five weeks ago. There has been a never-ending chorus of “I need this” and “I want that” and “Can you fix this” from the people who occupy the cabins. Honestly, I don’t know how Pop kept up with it all for as long as he did, particularly since he has been alone since I got out of the police academy.

It takes me and him both to keep the place operating. I have no idea what he will do when I go home.

Katie and I haven’t shared so much as a kiss since that night at the hospital. Pop says I’m a chickenshit. Maybe I am. She has a brand new baby, three kids, and a threat hanging over her head. Maybe she’s not ready for anything new with me.

But maybe she is. I won’t know until I ask, will I?

“You wouldn’t happen to want to babysit tonight, would you?” I ask Pop, wincing as I say it because I just know he’s going to throw something at my head.

He heaves a sigh. “I’ll let the ones who can wipe their own asses make my dinner.” He gets a gleam in his eye. “That big one is a decent cook.”

“Her name is Gabby, Pop,” I remind him.

He waves a hand through the air as though my words don’t matter. “Oh, who cares what her name is. She makes a mean grilled cheese. Plus, she owes me a rematch so I can win my money back.”

Pop has been losing to Gabby at cards all summer. The kid is going to go to college on the money she’s made off Pop.

“So you’ll babysit?”

“Don’t they have grandparents right down the road?” Pop grouses.

“Pop,” I say. “C’mon…”

Pop gets up and goes to the bathroom without answering me.

Dan and Adam spend a lot of time with the kids during the day, but at night, Katie likes to have them close to us. She says it’s too hard to keep up with them in the dark. She’s right, and every minute they’re gone, I worry about them.

The central security alarm I installed goes off with a quiet little beep when the front door opens. Katie walks in carrying a car seat. She goes to the fridge and gets a bottle of water. Then she walks over to me and grins up at me, setting the car seat down at my feet.

“Hi,” she sings out. She sets the water bottle on the end of the counter.

A grin tugs at my lips as she grabs the lapels of my shirt and pulls me so my body meets hers as she falls against my chest.

“Whoa,” I say. “I could get used to this.” I let my hands rest at her waist. “How was your doctor’s appointment?”

She nods. “It was good. I passed with flying colors.”

“There was a test?”

“Yes,” she says. She drops her voice down to a whisper. “The is-her-vagina-all-recovered-from-pushing-out-a-baby test.”

“Oh.” I pull my head back and look down my nose at her. “Am I supposed to ask you about your vagina?” I feel like I’m walking through a field filled with explosives. One wrong step and
BLAM!
I’ll blow my own dick off.

“I totally think you should,” she whispers.

The door alarm bings again and Alex streaks around the corner.

I kiss Katie on the tip of her nose. “Hold that thought, okay? I want to talk about your vagina some more later, preferably when we’re alone. Like maybe over dinner?” I arch my brows at her and wait like a kid who’s asking out his first date.

Her face scrunches up. “Dinner?”

“What’s for dinner?” Alex asks as he streaks back into the kitchen. He tosses the football up again and again, and a puddle is forming below him on the floor.

“Clean that up,” Katie says, and she throws him a towel out of the drawer.

“I’m taking your mom out,” I tell him.

“Oh, cool,” he says as he wipes up the last of the water, and then he streaks out the door again.

“Dad must have taken them swimming,” Katie says. Adam escorted her to the gynecologist’s office.

I nod. “He came and got them after lunch.” I reach down and unbuckle the littlest of the Stone children from his car seat and hoist his wiggly little body into my arms. “And Pop said he’d watch them tonight so I can take you out on a proper date.”

She purses her lips. “And just what would a proper date consist of?”

I pretend to think about it. “Dinner…”

“And?” She stares hard at me.

“And dessert…”

She punches her fists into her hips. “And…”

“And maybe making out in the front seat of my truck.”

She smiles. “Oh, now we’re talking.”

Katie and I have had a very odd sort of courtship. Meaning we didn’t have one at all. She came home with me the day she was released from the hospital and we fell into a routine like an old married couple. She was nursing a newborn and tired, and not to mention three other kids to take care of. So I just started doing what I could here and there. I feed kids and herd kids to bed, read books and tend boo-boos, and I do what I imagine a husband might do. But I know deep down inside that I am not a husband, so that has created a tiny little barrier in my heart. And I don’t know what to do about it.

“What about Hank?” she asks with a nod toward the baby. She’d let Trixie pick his name. After Katie vetoed Pearl and Enid, Trixie settled on Henry, or Hank for short.

“We can take him with us. He’ll sleep until he wants to eat. Then he’ll eat and sleep some more, and you won’t have to worry about him if he’s with us.” I sit down at the kitchen table and lay him down so he can rest on my knees and look up at me. “So, what do you say?”

“Are we going to a wear-a-nice-dress kind of place?” she asks.

“Unless you want to go to a simple place. Completely up to you.” Hank had my attention. His eyes are still blue, and I have a feeling they will be startling like Katie’s.

“Let’s go to a wear-a-nice-dress kind of place,” she says. “I’ll go get ready.”

I hear her turn to go down the hall, where she runs into Pop. “Katie, girl,” he sings out. “How’s your vagina? All ship-shape?”

I roll my eyes and talk to Hank. “Pop is
so
inappropriate.” Hank kicks his feet and bats those long dark lashes at me. “You’ll like him, though, when you get a little older. He’ll buy you condoms and talk about things that should never be mentioned in polite company.”

“I heard that,” Pop says as he comes around the corner.

“You’re not supposed to talk to Katie about her vagina,” I tell him.

He quirks his brows at me. “There are things a man needs to know, Jake, and when there’s a working vagina in the house, the dynamics change. So, I just need to know when to start buying you more condoms.” He chuckles.

I pick up one of Hank’s spongy little toys and throw it at Pop. It bounces off his shoulder.

“You got a phone call today,” Pop suddenly says.

“Who was it?” I ask. Hank is holding both my forefingers and he’s making gurgling noises.

“Your wife.”

I can almost hear the squeal of brakes in my head. “What did
she
want?”

“She said she needs to see you.”

I snort. “About what?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Good.” I baby-talk at Hank. “Pop is sometimes too nosy-wosy for his own good.”

Hank coos.

“She’ll be here this weekend.”

What?
I scoop Hank up in my arms and stand. “Tell me you didn’t invite her here.”

“Do I look stupid?” He glares at me as he sits down at the kitchen table. “Don’t answer that,” he grumbles.

“So you
didn’t
invite her to come here.”

“No,” he belts out. “But she’s coming anyway. This weekend.”

I run my free hand through my hair. “Pop…”

“Time to man up, Jake. You haven’t seen her since it happened.”

“And I plan to keep it that way.”

Pop sits quietly for a moment. “You served her with divorce papers.”

How the hell does Pop know all this? Nosy bastard.

“She told me,” he goes on to say. “Now she wants to see you so you can talk.”

“I don’t want to talk to her.”

“Well,” Pop says dryly, “I want a million dollars and to come home and find Halle Berry’s sex-crazed twin who has a penchant for whips and chains in my bed. But we don’t always get what we want, do we?”

Apparently not.

Pop opens his arms. “Give me that thing while it’s being cute,” he says. “You need to get dressed for your date.”

I lay Hank in Pop’s arms and stare down at them. Hank isn’t grinning yet, but sometimes I think there’s a smile in there just bursting to come out. I kind of wish he saves that first toothless grin for me. But I’m not his dad. I’m just his mom’s friend. His mom’s
married
friend.

“You got yourself in a nice little pickle. The married woman you’re shacking up with is going to meet your wife.”

“Katie’s not a married woman,” I remind him.

“Katie will always be a married woman,” he retorts. “Now she’s just married to a dead man.”

Truer words have never been spoken.