by Mia Carson
“Well, I think they’ll be just fine,” Theresa said as she walked with Remy into the kitchen.
“I think you’re right,” Remy agreed as she pulled out a few frozen pizzas for dinner.
“And I think I’ve seen all I need to today. I left a card for Stan. I’m not sure where he placed it, but I’ll give you one, too. You seem to have a way with Louis and Stan, so you might be able to broach the subject better than I could.”
Remy glanced at the card. “A therapist, huh? I’ll see what I can do.”
“And please, if you have any questions about Louis or if anything happens, don’t hesitate to call me,” she added. “I’ll be in touch and will stop by again in a week or so.”
“We’ll be here.” Remy walked Theresa out. She didn’t stop in to say goodbye to Louis but peeked into the room to see Stan and Louis still duking it out on the TV and laughing loudly with each other. The scene was heartwarming after the tension Remy had felt all day between the two of them. Tomorrow might not be as hard as she assumed if they were getting along this well already.
When the pizzas were ready, Remy cut them up and piled the pieces on two plates, delivering them to the sitting room. She came back with sodas and told them to take a break and eat.
“So, who’s winning?” she asked, grabbing a slice and taking a bite.
Sitting across the room from Stan and Louis, she watched them both pick up a piece of pepperoni, hold it in the exact same way, and chew, mirroring each other with the same crooked grin as they ate. Remy’s mouth slowed as she watched, fascinated to see the clear relation between the two males before her.
“I’m pretty sure Louis is,” Stan said. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to catch up.”
“Probably not,” she agreed. “Not after what I saw last night.”
“What happened last night?” Louis asked.
“Your dad lost quite a few rounds to me,” she said and realized the second the words came out she’d said the wrong thing. Louis dropped his pizza on the plate and stood. “Louis, wait a second…please? You still need to eat dinner.”
Sniffing hard and wiping at his eyes, he snapped, “He’s not my dad!” and ran out of the room.
Remy jumped up to go after him, but Stan caught her hand. “Let him go,” he told her.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t even thinking,” she muttered, aggravated. “You guys were doing so well together and I had to stick my foot in my mouth.” She started clearing the dishes filled with the uneaten food and carrying them to the kitchen. “How are your legs, by the way?”
“Sore, but that’s normal. I was more surprised that he did it than anything else.” Stan balanced one of the plates on his lap as she grabbed their glasses and moved to the kitchen. “Don’t beat yourself up over it, Remy. If you didn’t say something tonight, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been long before I did.” He set the plate on the counter and played with a piece of pizza. “I think I’m going to turn in for the night.”
“You don’t want to check on him before you do?”
“No…no, I think I’m going to give him some space. We’ll see how tomorrow goes.”
“That social worker gave me the card of a therapist,” she said as he started to roll away. “Did you want me to give him a call and set something up here at the house? A meeting to get the ball rolling between you two?”
Stan rocked back and forth in his chair and shook his head. “No, and I don’t want to talk about the need for therapy again. Good night, Remy.”
“Night,” she replied quietly, hurt by how he shut her out, too. “Well, good job, Remy. Now you have two sulking, brooding males in the house. I guess they could unite against you and find a way to bond that way.” She ate another piece of pizza angrily, drank her soda, and tucked the card for the therapist in her pocket. She fixed a plate and a glass of milk for Louis.
She stopped outside Louis’ door and knocked. “Louis? I brought you some more dinner in case you were hungry.”
“I’m not, but thanks,” he muttered through the door.
Remy frowned down at the plate in her hand. “How about I drop it off for you and if you decide you’re hungry you can eat it later?” Holding her breath, she hoped he would give her a chance again.
The door opened and Louis gifted her with a small smile. “Thanks, Remy.”
“Of course, hon, and you know,” she said as she walked into the room and set the plate and glass down on the dresser, “I’m sorry if I upset you earlier.”
“It’s okay. I know he’s my dad,” Louis said, his face scrunched up in confusion. “But I don’t feel like he’s really my dad yet. It’s weird, I guess.” He drew out a picture from his pocket, folded over and over again so it was creased, the corners bent and a few of the edges torn. “And I miss my mom.” He broke down in tears, and Remy hurried to hug him as he cried.
“It’s okay to miss her. You’ve been through a lot and I know this isn’t easy, but Stan does care about you. He wants you to be happy. This isn’t easy for him either, you know.”
“How do you know?” he uttered through his crying.
“Because I can see it in how nervous he is. He wants you to like him and he wants you to find a home here,” Remy said, sinking to her knees so she could be eye level with Louis. “You have to give each other time, that’s all.” Louis nodded and wiped his eyes. “You promise me you’ll give him a chance?”
“I will,” he promised. “You’ll be here, though, right?”
“Every day,” she said and held out her pinkie to him. “As long as you both need me around, I’ll be here.”
He wrapped his pinkie around hers and smiled. “Good.”
“Okay, get some sleep, kid. It’ll be a long few days, but we’ll get through them.” She left Louis alone and paused at the top of the stairs, considering going and talking to Stan one more time but didn’t want to push her luck and piss him off. Him shutting down completely would not bode well for her. She would wait a few days and bring up the therapist idea again when he was in a better mood.
Or if things took a turn for the worse.
7
The therapist’s card burned a hole in Remy’s pocket over the next few days as she watched Louis and Stan be polite to each other but nothing else. They ate breakfast together in near silence except for the questions Remy asked them both. She hoped with the weather cooling off, they would enjoy some time outside, but Louis holed himself up in his bedroom playing with the Legos she’d bought him or playing video games, and after one day of not being in his workshop at all, Stan spent the next two acting as he had the first time Remy met him. Reaching the end of her rope with both of them but not sure what to do, she told Louis she would be outside in the garden if he wanted to take a break from killing zombies.
“Is Stan out there?” he asked, and she perked up when he sounded hopeful.
“He’s in his workshop, but I can see if he wants to take a break.”
“Nah, that’s okay. You don’t have to bug him.”
Remy leaned against the doorframe, wondering what she could do to get Stan out of his workshop, and her eyes widened. “You know, there are a few battleship models that need to be built up in your room. I bet if you asked Stan, he would help you with them.”
Louis paused his game and clambered to his feet. “You think?”
“You never know until you ask. Give it a shot. Just remember, you can’t go into the workshop, okay? But you can knock on the door.”
“I know, I know. There’s guns in there and I’m not allowed near them,” he said and sprinted upstairs to go grab one of the models. Remy went to the nearest intercom and paged Stan.
“Yes?” he answered after a few seconds.
“You’re going to have a visitor in a few minutes. He wants to ask you something.”
“What is it?”
“Nope, you’ll have to find out for yourself.”
She ignored his next few questions and stepped outside, walking across the overgro
wn grass towards the shed. There had to be a mower in there somewhere. Or hedge clippers, at least. If not, she would call a service this afternoon and get it taken care of. The yard would be so much fun for a kid Louis’ age if it was in better shape. She reached the shed as Stan exited his workroom, locking the door behind him as Louis stepped out the back door. Remy paused to watch then decided this was their time to be alone and ducked into the dusty and dirty shed.
Stan watched Louis walk towards him, carrying a box wrapped in plastic with an image of a battleship cruiser on the side. Feeling as nervous as Louis looked, he rolled closer and held out his hand for the box.
“Whatcha got there?” he asked, trying to sound happy instead of aggravated at himself for not being able to connect with his own son.
“A ship model. Remy said you might like to work on it with me…if you aren’t too busy.”
Stan ran his hands over the box and his eyes darted to the shed where Remy had disappeared. “She was right. I didn’t know you were such a fan of ships.” He set the box on his lap and pushed his chair to the back door with Louis walking beside him.
“Battleships, mostly, and aircraft carriers. They’re pretty sweet, too,” he said, bouncing as he spoke. “I had a few at my old house, but I couldn’t bring them with me.”
“You know,” Stan said, hating how sad he sounded, “I have a room here filled with ship models.”
“Really?”
“Yes. You can go check them out whenever you want to. I’ll show them to you later. I guess we’ll set this up on the kitchen table.”
“You don’t think Remy will mind?” Louis asked, peering out the back door.
“Nah, we’ll just use it as an excuse to watch a movie with dinner tonight.”
Louis laughed, and Stan’s body flooded with warmth at the sound. They opened the box and set out the pieces, talking quietly together about which pieces would go where and how they would connect. He let Louis stretch out the guide to the missile cruiser they would be constructing. Working with Louis on the ship was a great idea. He would have to thank Remy later—hell, he would buy her flowers for what she helped him achieve with his son. They were working for over an hour on the ship when Stan sensed a chance to make a comment he’d wanted to make since Louis brought the ship to him.
“You know, I was worried at first…about all of this.”
“About the ship?” Louis asked, painting the side panels for the piece carefully.
“No, about us having anything in common, you know? I’m glad we share the same love for a few things, at least.”
Louis’ hands stilled, and he lifted his head slowly, those familiar blue eyes wavering along with his smile. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said quietly.
“Louis, look, I think we need to have a serious talk about all of this.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Yes, we do. We need to clear the air and take a chance to understand each other better,” Stan pushed, but Louis leapt up from this seat and rushed for the kitchen door. “Louis, you can’t keep running away.”
Louis skidded to a stop and whipped around. “Yes, I can. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Stan opened his mouth to argue when he noticed something on the floor. Maneuvering his chair around the table, he reached it just as Louis spotted it, too, and ran over to try and grab it out of his hands. Stan kept it out of his reach until he caught a glimpse of the photograph.
“Lara,” he whispered right as Louis snatched it out of his hands. “Louis, wait.”
“No! She was my mom and you…you weren’t there for her. You weren’t there for either of us. You don’t get to see her face. You don’t get to be my dad.”
“I didn’t know,” Stan yelled back, startling them both with the force of his words and the tears burning in his eyes. “I didn’t know she was pregnant with you, Louis. She stopped passing through town one day. I never saw her again.”
“I don’t believe you,” he cried, tears streaming down his cheeks, clutching the picture to his chest. “You had to know.”
“Lara and I were never in a solid relationship. There were never any future plans,” he tried to explain the best he could to a kid. “She wasn’t interested in settling down, anyway—told me over and over again she didn’t want her life to be like that.”
Louis wiped hard at his face, shaking his head. “No, you’re lying. You just didn’t want to see us. You didn’t want me.”
“I loved her, Louis,” he said fiercely, then shut his mouth at finally admitting the truth to himself and to Louis. He stared open-mouthed at Stan as he rolled his chair closer. “I loved her, damn it, but you know how your mom was. She was a firecracker, an independent woman who never wanted anything else in her life but adventure. I guess she got that with you.”
“Then why…why wouldn’t she tell you?”
“Probably because I could never tell her how I really felt,” he muttered sadly. “Men can be stupid like that, but I did love her, Louis. If I’d known about you—ever had an inkling you were around—I would’ve been there in a heartbeat. I need you to know that.”
Louis clung to the photograph, crying, but he couldn’t speak.
Ignoring the pain in his legs, Stan stood up from his chair and sank to his knees before his son. “Louis, I would never have let your mom go through that alone. If she’d called, if she had said something…I’m sorry. I’m so sorry to both of you,” he sobbed, shattering to pieces on the kitchen floor. No other word left his mouth except for sorry, and suddenly, two small arms wrapped around his body as Louis hugged him close. Stan drew him into his arms, and son and father cried together over the time they’d lost. For Stan, part of it was realizing that the woman he loved all those years ago died without knowing how he truly felt.
But she had left Stan as Louis’ official guardian. She trusted him to take care of their son once she was gone. Why hadn’t she sent for him when she knew she was pregnant, or later when she was sick? None of it made sense, and he would never have the chance to ask her. Louis’ tears wet his shirt, but he didn’t care. For the first time in ten years, he held his flesh and blood, his son, possibly the only child he would ever have.
He heard soft crying coming from behind him and glanced up. Remy watched them from the back door. She smiled sweetly at the two of them, backed quietly out to the patio, and closed the door again. She wiped at her eyes before she turned around and disappeared into the gardens.
Louis and Stan stayed on the floor for a long while before the latter wiped his eyes and leaned back. “I think this calls for some ice cream.”
Louis smiled and stood. “Sounds good to me.”
Stan mussed his hair and Louis laughed. “You’ll just have to give me a second here to find my feet again.” He barely finished speaking when Louis pushed the wheelchair closer. “Thanks, kiddo.”
“What happened, anyway?”
Stan plopped back down in the seat and grimaced at the pain radiating down his legs. “A boating accident, a bad one. I broke both my legs, and they’re taking a long while to heal properly.” He didn’t mention it was mostly because he gave up on his physical therapy, but his son didn’t need to know all about the accident yet. He wheeled himself to the freezer and opened it. “Pick out what you want, but make sure you grab the moose tracks.”
Louis smirked, standing on his toes to reach the carton. “So that’s why Mom always said that to me.”
“Said what?”
“Don’t be like other men and eat all the good stuff. Whenever I asked her why she said that, she would roll her eyes and say someone she knew used to do it to her all the time,” he said and Stan laughed. “So it was you.”
“Afraid so.” Stan watched as Louis grabbed two bowls and spoons, and carried everything to the table. As Stan dug out the ice cream for them both, he chewed on his cheek, debating whether he should ask, but Louis was the only one who might be able to help him. “Sometime, if you’re up for it, I’d love to hear all about y
our time with your mom…with Lara.”
Louis took his bowl of ice cream, shrugging. “I’ll try.”
“Not now, when you’re ready. It might be good for you to talk about her, too.”
They ate their ice cream in comfortable silence before going back to work on the battleship. The tension between them was greatly lessened, and Stan sensed more of himself in the kid beside him, a boy with a hard past who kept everything tucked down deep inside, scared to let the world see him vulnerable. He glanced towards the table where he’d tossed the business card for the doctor. Therapy sounded like a good idea—for him and Louis. His eyes drifted out to the patio where Remy was busy tearing out dead flowers from the pots and cleaning up the flowerbeds.
Sometime soon, he would have to be sure to do something nice for her. She was a godsend he couldn’t live without.
Remy busied herself the rest of the afternoon, digging into the dirt and tearing out the dead undergrowth while trying to salvage the few plants struggling to survive. When she heard the yelling, she rushed inside, ready to break the two of them up, but was struck instead by the raw emotion on Stan’s face as he confessed his love for Louis’ mother. To see them comforting each other and having their first breakthrough touched Remy deeply, and she did all she could think to do: back away and let them have their first, real bonding moment. She should’ve been happy, but hearing Stan say he loved Lara, a woman so strong and independent, bugged her, and she viciously dug deeper into the dirt until she was a mess with sweat matting her hair to her head and making her clothes stick to her.
They’d only touched a few times, but each time, a spark came to life within her she wanted to explore further. But now…now, it seemed wrong to let him get even a hint of her attraction to him. She vowed to bury her feelings for Stan as deep as she could. For all she knew, it was simply lust. He was a very handsome man, but she was fooling herself. Stan drew her in with every smile she managed to draw out of him, or a laugh, or a gentle brush of his hand against her arm.
