October Twilight (A Year in Paradise Book 10)

by Hildred Billings

  How in the world did she remember that? Wasn’t Tucker’s birthday… wasn’t it… drat, I can’t remember when his birthday is. Sally was either too overwhelmed to think or she was drowning in how old she had become since her first child was born. When was his birthday?

  “Your brother was well behaved leading up to his birthday, and he asked nicely. And I let him open one present! That’s different from you and Gage opening all of your presents now.”

  “Mooooooom.”

  That whine followed Sally into the house. Some school scored a touchdown on TV, and the adults hooted and hollered while flecks of beer spilled onto the couch and high-fives went around the room. Dads beamed with pride that they used to play football. Moms reminiscenced about their days in college. Candace crushed her beer can and tossed it into the recycling.

  “Do I hear a birthday girl whining?” she asked the void. Naturally, she received a response from her daughter.

  “Mom! Can Gage and I open our presents?”

  Sally almost said something, but realized that question was asked to Candace, who held the same title in the house. Usually, they had no problem differentiating which “Mom” the children meant. Context was everything, after all. Yet Sally still thought she was the mom at this event. Why wouldn’t she be? She had done everything!

  “Why, sure!” Candace rubbed the top of her daughter’s brown head. “You and your brother go pick one out and let’s get started!”

  “Candy!” Sally said.

  “What?” she shrugged, much to the amusement of the other parents. “Let the kids open one present now. We let Tucker do it as his last party.”

  Undermined. Sally had been undermined!

  “Fine.” She grabbed the pinata, already filled with Halloween candy, and hauled it outside. Candace followed the twins and their friends to the table of presents. The kids instantly went to the largest one, a gift that had both of their moms’ names written on it. Of course they want the biggest present. There was a reason Sally didn’t want them opening it yet, and it would soon be revealed. She may as well stay out of the mess and hang up the pinata.

  “Holy cow!” Gage tore off the largest chunk of wrapping paper while Candace filmed him on her phone. “Look, Paige! It’s the Legos!”

  Freakin’ Legos. They had to go and open the freakin’ Legos.

  “Whoa, whoa.” True to his self-appointed form, Tucker held up a hand before his brother and sister could go ripping open the box of Legos in the middle of the backyard. “Don’t do that here. You’re gonna lose all the pieces!” Lest Sally assume her oldest was a bastion of sobriety, he continued, “You gotta do it in the living room!”

  Thus the box of Star Wars Legos rode high on Paige and Gage’s heads as they hauled it into the living room, where the Ducks – or was it the Beavers? – scored again. To the bemusement of several adults, a ton of Legos spilled across the hardwood floors. More children than anyone could handle swarmed the set and started putting everything together.

  “See?” Candace said to Sally, who was still tying the pinata to the lowest branch of the tree. “They’re distracted now. Concentrate the kiddos into the house so we can clean some stuff up out here and prep for the cake.”

  “You have all the answers, don’tcha?”

  “Hey, hey, I never said…”

  “Could you please go into the garage and get the bat for this stupid thing?” Sally all but strangled BB8 by his hypothetical throat. “At this rate, I’m taking the first swing.”

  Candace made herself scarce. Sally did her best to calm down by telling herself it didn’t matter what the hell the kids did as long as they were happy. Breathe. This is merely a culmination of all your stress. It’s not that serious. Yeah. Sure. Not that serious. She only had half the town watching her as she met a borderline meltdown in the middle of the twins’ birthday party.

  When Candace returned with the bat, Sally begged her to oversee the pinata. Meanwhile, Sally would clean up the pizza plates, dump some abandoned glasses of Kool-Aid and head back inside for a breather. She needed to sit down at the dining table and remember that this wasn’t half as bad as actually giving birth to the little maniacs six years ago. Forty-eight hours of rolling around a hospital room screaming for someone to sedate me. Whoever told her the second one fell out right after the first was a dirty, dirty liar. Gage had taken such sweet time following his sister out the birth canal that the doctors fretted in the corner. The only reason they took direct action was because Candace threatened to arrest them for neglect.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” she said. “It’s gonna be okay.”

  “Having a hard time, Momma?”

  Sally looked up from the table to meet some other woman’s eyes. I barely recognize her. Whose mother was this? Oh, it was Tilly Sandmeyer. Her daughter was around there somewhere.

  “Just a little frazzled. Need a break before cake time.”

  Tilly looked out the kitchen window in time to catch Candace teaching the kids how to swing at the pinata. “At least you’ve got someone to help you with all the kids.”

  Is that so? “Candy is a great provider. I’m very grateful for that.”

  Was that the wrong thing to say? Tilly cocked her head to the side and looked like she had never heard a lesbian say that before. Still, Tilly knew a thing or two about motherhood and how maddening it was. “I’d imagine it’s really stressful being the only deputy in town. Even if it’s a small town.”

  “You would be right about that. I don’t hold it against her. But… my God, I’m so tired taking care of four kids. The twins alone…”

  “I wouldn’t wish twins or triplets on anyone!” Tilly laughed so loudly that a few lingering adults looked in her direction. “You’re a stronger woman than I am.”

  Sally grinned. “Thanks. I think I needed to hear that.” She didn’t mention that when Tucker got into his siblings’ shenanigans, she felt like she had triplets on her hands.

  “Don’t be too hard on your wife, huh? Just the other night she was at my neighbor’s house putting the fear of God into him. Guess someone finally called in about those domestic disputes. Or, knowing Deputy Greenhill, she heard it for herself!”

  Although Tilly laughed, Sally understood the severity. Yeah… Candace is always out there breaking up fights and keeping drunk drivers off the road. She was amazing at her job. Everyone told Sally that she should be proud to have such a hardworking woman for a wife. Didn’t she appreciate the money? The benefits? They owned this big, nice house and didn’t have to worry too much about healthcare. Hell, the insurance had covered most of her IVF treatments and provided short-term therapy after each of her miscarriages. Wasn’t she grateful?

  Aren’t I grateful?

  Sally gazed out the window, where a gaggle of children swung a bat at a big orange pinata. A few adults were in attendance, but Candace was the one showing each kid how to swing a bat for maximum efficiency. Her big smiles were only offset by the matching grins on her twins. They may not be genetically related to Candace, but Sally swore they had inherited her facial expressions.

  Yeah, I’m grateful. Nevertheless, Sally was also grateful for giving herself a bit of a break as she settled into her seat and basked in the peace of the kitchen. Until cake time, anyway.

  Chapter 8

  CANDACE

  Sally had been right about one thing. Lately, the twins were so rambunctious that it was like they didn’t have an internal off switch. At some point, one would think that they’d wear themselves out and collapse into a pile of snoring kiddos. Not so much, huh? Candace wanted to say it was the birthday party that had them so wound up. Maybe that was true, but she couldn’t deny that getting them into bed that night was like wrangling cattle. Screaming, hyper cattle.

  “I’ve got a headache.” Tucker hopped off the stepstool in the kitchen, a bottle of Aspirin in his hand. “Those little butts have really worn me down.”

  “Boy, what in the world are you going on about?” Candace snatched
the Aspirin out of his hands before he had the chance to dramatically swallow them. “Children’s Tylenol is in the bathroom, if you really have a headache.” He was one to talk! Then again, Tucker had helped with the baby while Candace corralled the twins in the bathroom and insisted on spraying them down with the detachable showerhead. A proper bath was out of the question, although both Paige and Gage had dirt beneath their fingernails and God-knew-what in their cracks. Don’t let her big smile and curls fool you. Paige is the dirtiest one! Birth order probably had something to do with it. Sally liked to say that the twin who blazed the trail out of the womb was the hassle.

  That wasn’t to say Gage didn’t have his moments. Just because he followed a bit more closely than other boys his age, didn’t mean he couldn’t stir up trouble when nobody was looking. What was that about him getting goop on library books again?

  Tucker hopped onto a chair at the dining table. He heaved a heavy sigh, face squishing between his hands. “Tell me again you guys ain’t having no more kids.”

  Chuckling, Candace sat across from him. “Your Mom Sal has made it clear that the shop is closed.” For the best. Sally was getting up there in years. Daisy had almost tested Candace’s ability to put faith out in the world. Every trip to the doctor’s was a nail-biter until that baby was born, and then… “No more kids. Daisy is gonna be the baby until we all die. Which means she’ll be the eternally spoiled rotten egg.” Paige and Gage would tag-team the crown of Middle Children Syndrome. How did that work with twins, anyway?

  “Remind me to have a low-key birthday next time, all right?” Tucker hopped off his chair and ambled to a plush chair out in the living room. He grabbed one of his chapter books from the library and sighed his happy way into the depths of the chair.

  What in the world is going on with that boy… Candace couldn’t help but laugh every time her oldest child acted like he was a seventy-year-old man. Helped that he had the round face and, ah, rounder frame to pull it off with success. He keeps that up, he’s gonna be the class-clown through high school. Unlike the twins, who would win the superlative of, “Most Likely to Accidentally Set Off a Bomb” in their yearbook. I’ll have to respond to the theoretical bomb. Who knows what that would be like in another ten years? Technology moved so quickly…

  Candace told her son he needed to get to bed in another hour, but trusted him enough to leave him to his own devices while she wandered into the shower.

  What surprised her more? Finding Sally already in the shower, or finding her furiously washing her hair like it was about to fall out?

  “Got room for one more?” Candace made sure the bathroom door was locked before taking off her shirt and inspecting her eczema in the mirror. Steam had fogged most of it up, but it wasn’t anything a good wipe of her big fingers couldn’t fix. “I could really use a wash after today. Think I sweat more in the backyard chasing kids around than I usually do chasing down drunks off the highway.” At least once every few weeks she got some rogue idiot who leaped out of his car and gave chase. Usually because he was on his third DUI strike.

  Sally said something, but Candace couldn’t hear her over the running water and the fan churning overhead.

  “What was that, Sal?”

  If Sally repeated herself, Candace really couldn’t hear.

  “Ya hear me, girl?” Candace pulled back part of the shower curtain and beheld the sight of her wife dripping wet beneath the showerhead. Her hair, which had spent most of the day frizzing from the static electricity in the air, was now limp and flat against her back. The only reason people thought Sally was so petite was because, compared to her wife, she was a tiny lady. In reality, Sally had some strong, broad shoulders and thighs that meant serious business. She concealed most of her curves beneath sweaters and sundresses, especially after the birth of their first child, but Candace always knew they were there. Outside of the littlest kids who still bathed with Mom, Candace was the only one who got to see the lovely form of her wife’s body.

  Sally wiped the water off her face and turned around. As soon as she opened her eyes, she shrieked and leaped halfway up the wall.

  “Dang, woman!” Candace nearly bumped her head against the shower rod when she pulled back. “Didn’t you hear me talking to you?”

  “The hell are you doing in here?” Apparently, she still couldn’t hear Candace. “You scared me half to death!”

  “Aw, come on, baby.” Candace stripped down to her birthday suit, leaving a pile of underwear and her jeans on the bathroom floor. “You know I didn’t mean to freak you out. Was talking to you the whole time.”

  “Sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

  Candace closed the shower curtain as soon as she was inside. Only then did she realize that neither of them had turned on the second light in the bathroom. Ah, that makes this more romantic! Mood lighting! “I got the twins to bed and Tucker is in the living room reading his book. Last I checked on the baby, she was sound asleep.” Candace was barely damp when she pressed her palm against the wall and cocked her other hand on her hip. Wasn’t very often she got to put on the charm when she was naked! “So, uh… we got a few minutes to ourselves.”

  Sally grabbed her hand towel and wiped her face. “Time for what? I ain’t in a mood.”

  Apparently. Candace had worked with this before. Sally could often work herself up into a fervor of anxiety and impatience that rivaled the baby’s. Usually, all Candace had to do was wrap her arms around her wife’s torso and rock her back and forth for a few minutes. People often said that Candace had a healing quality to her touch. That’s why the sheriff sent her in to deal with hotheaded suspects who needed to cool down in a jail cell. Okay, so she didn’t touch them unless she had to, of course, but her powers often transferred to her stature and her voice. She knew how to turn it on. She also knew how to turn it off when things got serious.

  Getting serious was exhausting after a while. When she was home – and the kids were in bed – she wanted to touch her lady and give her kisses. There weren’t many opportunities to be romantic through the week. Not when the baby was crying, the twins were restless, and Tucker undermined their authority in the most passive-aggressive of ways. Sometimes, when the kids cooperated and got their butts to bed in a timely manner, Candace was too exhausted from work and Sally too frustrated that they collapsed into bed.

  Candace knew that time was running out for the kind of intimacy they were accustomed to early on in their relationship. I was starting menopause when Tucker was born. It wasn’t something she often talked about, including to Sally, who was the one who picked up the estrogen prescriptions and made Candace’s doctor appointments. Eh, Candace was used to menopause now. She always got hot when sleeping, so what were the hot flashes to her? Her diet could always be better, but at least she stayed fit for work. Nah, she worried more about her sex drive and her mental health. Both of her parents had dementia before eventually passing on in their seventies. Grandma Greenhill stuck around long enough to see the twins be born, but by that time, she barely remembered her own daughter’s name.

  Who knew how much time she really had left? That’s why she made the most of her life now. She spent as much time with the kids as she could, and God knew she made as much love to her wife as He allowed!

  …And as much as she allowed, since Sally was the Red Light, Green Light in the relationship. So far, tonight was a Red Light.

  “I ain’t in the mood,” Sally said, shooing Candace off her. “Let me finish rinsing off, would ya? Before you go pawing at me…”

  “If I were pawin’, I’d be grabbing ass and cuppin’ tit, now wouldn’t I?”

  “Oh, yes, you would.”

  Candace backed off, of course, but she asked to at least have a shot of the detachable showerhead so she could soap up her skin. “Hey, the worst of it is over. I know Halloween is around the corner, but the birthday party was way more stressful. You really knocked it out of the park with that cake, by the way. Was a big hit with all the kids, and d
idn’t taste too bad, either. You think they liked the pinata? Oh, by the way, there are some Legos already popping up in the living room carpet, so…”

  “Candy,” Sally said, back turned to her wife, “I can’t right now. I want some quiet.”

  Was that a jab at her or not? Candace honestly couldn’t tell. I am a bit of a big mouth… Once Candace got going, she didn’t know how to stop. Yak, yak, yak, that’s me. If I like you. She liked most people. This was a woman who sat outside the cell on a Saturday night and talked college football with the latest dumbass locked up for starting a fight at the bar. She had her limits, of course. Foulmouthed assholes who took things too far got the silent treatment. People in trouble for serious crimes against human decency got the coldest shoulder that side of Portland. Except that was the rare person in Paradise Valley. Most were decent, once you got past the drink and the anger.

  “Tell you what,” this was the last thing Candace would say before the end of their shower. “When you’re done washing up, go lie down and I’ll come give you one of my award-winning massages.”

  That got a small smile out of Sally. “That is how you got me into bed the first time.”

  So she remembers? Nope. Candace wouldn’t say it. Her wife wanted some quiet, and quiet she would get.

  Sally hopped out of the shower soon after. Candace got the whole tub to herself, which meant cranking up the heat and allowing a Tom Jones song to eke out of her throat. Not loud enough for the whole house to hear, of course, but enough for her to enjoy the sound as it bounced off the shower walls. Meanwhile, she thought up a brilliant plan to make her wife feel a little better.

  “Sal,” she said, walking into the bedroom with only a towel wrapped around her waist. “Hear me out. You, me, the matinee on Tuesday, and dinner wherever you want. You want Dairy Queen ice cream? We’ll make it happen. I’ll also take you to the nice place out of town. You know, it was good enough for Jalen Stonehill and that actress of hers, so it’s good enough for some clowns like us.”