October Twilight (A Year in Paradise Book 10)

by Hildred Billings

  Sally, dressed in a loose nightshirt and with the covers already up around her torso, sighed. “I want to sleep in tomorrow first. Would you mind getting up to take care of the kids’ breakfast? I’ve been running myself ragged and would kill for the extra hour of sleep.”

  “Tell you what, I’ll let Tucker know he can feed himself and the twins whatever cereal they want for breakfast. That way we can both sleep in.”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday, Candy. They really should have a real breakfast. You know, eggs? Oatmeal? Hell, give them some hash browns and fruit. We’ve got melon that needs to be used.”

  “I’m pretty tired, too…”

  Candace had no idea what that look was about, but she knew it wasn’t good. Sally had been giving her that look more and more lately.

  “All right.” Candace pulled back the covers on her side of the bed and crawled in naked. There were enough afghans on the bed that it made no sense for someone suffering from hot flashes to wear clothes to bed. Hell, could they crack the window? Sure, it was dipping into the low 50s at night, but that sounded great to Candace. “I’ll get up at seven and make the kids breakfast. I shouldn’t be sleeping in too late, anyway. Got my meeting bright and early Monday morning that I need to be fresh for.”

  “You have nothing going on Wednesday morning?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sally turned over, back turned to her wife. “You want to take me out Tuesday night, but aren’t worried about being up early Wednesday morning? You know we’ll have to find a babysitter too, right?”

  “Trust me, I got that part covered. I know who to hassle about it.” Christina Rath kinda owes me right now. She was also perfect as their occasional babysitter, since she lived two houses down. Girl was a senior in high school. She was old enough to stay up doing some work on a school night, especially for the sheriff. Whom had her number now, ahem.

  “Uh huh.” Sally kicked one leg back, looping it over her wife’s shin. “What movie we gonna see, huh? I don’t know what’s out right now.”

  “We’ll figure it out. The point is to spend some time together without the kids.”

  “We haven’t done that since our anniversary…”

  “I know. That’s why we gotta do it. Think of it as a chance to wind down after the birthday shenanigans.”

  Sally was silent for a moment. Then, “Don’t you worry that the kids aren’t gonna get to see you much as they get older?”

  Those words hit Candace right in the heart. “Why, no, I haven’t been thinking about that,” she said with knitting brows. “Why in the world are you asking about…”

  She didn’t have the chance to finish her sentence. The bedroom door opened, admitting one young lady dressed in her pink Moana PJs.

  “Uh, hello, there.” Candace made sure she was properly covered as her daughter ambled over, eyes heavy and hand on her stomach. “Can we help you, young lady?”

  “Paige,” Sally said with a sigh. “What have we said about knocking before you walk in?”

  “My tummy hurts,” was all she grumbled, her pathetic visage making Candace’s heart fall into her own stomach. Oh, poor sweet girl. A tummy ache on her birthday? So what if it was almost over? No kid deserved to be sick or in pain on their birthday!

  “You need some medicine?” Candace asked. “Was it something you ate?”

  They didn’t get a straight answer. Rather hard for a six-year-old to convey her woes when she was too busy throwing up pizza and birthday cake onto the bedroom carpet.

  Sally pulled the covers over her head, the sounds of her daughter’s retching serenading the couple in bed. “I baked the cake. You clean it up.”

  The “best” part? Illness and injury with the twins always came in pairs. Candace started the countdown to Gage running in with the same ailment. By the time she saw her son, his sister’s face was already over the toilet.

  Just another night in Casa de Greenhill, huh!

  Chapter 9

  SALLY

  Coordinating the pickup of her children was an art form. Really. Sally should win the Nobel Prize in physics for constantly bending the space-time continuum to be in two places at once. Because that’s what happened a couple of times a week, when she had to be at the elementary school to pick up Tucker at 3:10 and then the library to haul her kindergarteners home from an after-school playgroup.

  It had only been thirty-six hours since the Great Throwup of 2019, but once the twins purged the cake from their systems and got a good night’s sleep, they were back in business. Not that Sally wanted to deal with pukey kids for a week, but it would’ve been nice to have them down on their asses for a few days. Besides, she had seen so much vomit and diarrhea in the past eight years that nothing grossed her out anymore. Including those invasive vet shows on Animal Planet. Dr. Pol spent half his days with a forearm up a donkey’s ass. Whatever.

  Yet that meant the kids went to school on Monday, because Heaven forbid the Paradise Valley-Roundabout school district take Columbus Day off. Honestly, if the post office and the banks are closed, then school should be closed, too. At least the library was open as usual. Sally didn’t know what she would do if she had to bring the twins home early.

  She stopped at the elementary school first. The pickup line inched along, right behind the three school buses that served the district. Technically, the Greenhill children rode Bus 12 in the morning, but Sally didn’t see the harm in picking them up after school if it meant getting some errands done beforehand.

  Since the bank and post office were closed, however, she was ten minutes early picking up her oldest son.

  “Now this is what I call service.” Tucker popped open the passenger side door and hopped inside. They had plenty of time for him to buckle his seatbelt before they had to pull away for the next car, but did he get to it? No. Sally had to give him a death glare before he finally snapped his belt across his chest. On the front steps of the elementary school, two boys from his class waved. “Chris and Dennis don’t get this kind of…”

  “Don’t call it service,” Sally said. “Your mother doesn’t serve you.”

  Tucker snapped his mouth closed. “It was a joke,” he muttered.

  “Don’t joke about people serving you.” Sally pulled back onto Main Street. Only then did she realize that she had been cruising behind Tilly the whole time. They waved to one another before going their separate ways. “It’s not funny. People aren’t servants.”

  “Jeez, okay!”

  Sally groaned to see the bouncing kids at the library’s main entrance. Of course. They were hers, and they were coming for the backseat at full force.

  “Mom! Mom!” Gage flung himself between the two front seats, his breath reeking of chocolate. Are they feeding my kids sugar again? When would this insanity end? “Guess what! We got to eat macaroni!”

  “He means we used macaroni!” Paige slammed her art project against the back of Sally’s headrest. She didn’t have to see the dried but gooey macaroni now littering the floor of her car. “Now I want macaroni and cheese for dinner.”

  Sighing, Sally pulled away again. “We’re going to the craft store,” she announced. “Your mom needs a break already, and I’ve got to get some stuff for your Halloween costumes.”

  “Yayayayaya!”

  Those shrieks woke up the baby, who instantly devolved into a tearful fit.

  Sally endured it all the way to Crafts & Things, where she was pleasantly surprised to see her friend Joan toiling away on a lazy Monday afternoon. Since nearing the end of her second trimester, Joan had taken her doctor’s precautions to heart and spent more time at home. Her partner mostly ran the store on the weekends while friends popped in during the week. For Joan to be there must have meant she hitched a ride with Lorri before she went to work at the hardware store. Did this mean Sally should offer her a ride home? God knew the woman was barely allowed to sit up anymore, let alone walk around too much.

  Great. And she decided to bring the brood?


  Joan was used to Sally’s kids. It was one of the reasons they got along so well. Joan loved kids, and she never seemed to mind the chaotic energy that Sally’s kids brought with them wherever they went. Paige and Gage usually lived for the kids’ craft corner, but they must have been crafted out after their stint at the library, for they immediately looked at their mother like they needed a nap.

  “Can we have the tablet?” they whined at the same time.

  Normally, Sally was strict about the amount of screen time her kids got. TV was the hardest to relegate, but when the twins – or Tucker, God forbid – wanted to watch cartoons or play app games on the family Kindle, they could be quite adamant. To the point of rolling on the floor and screaming until Candace barged in and told them to knock it off.

  Today, however, she didn’t have the patience.

  “Fine.” She pulled the Kindle Fire out of her bag and handed it to Gage, who had to be reminded to use his indoor voice in the store. They raced to the community craft table and argued over what game to play. Tucker, meanwhile, opened a book in the corner. Five minutes later, he’d be asking to borrow his mom’s phone to look something up. That’s how it always went when Sally started to cave.

  “They sure are wound-up today, huh?” Joan had that look of curious fear. Oh, Sally knew it well. Same look I had when I was pregnant with Tucker, looking at other moms with their hyperactive kids. It especially happened in the weekly Wal-Mart runs. Pregnant Sally wandered the baby and children’s clothing aisles, watching as one tantrum after another caused a meltdown in that corner of the store. My future. My God, I knew it. Tucker had been a rambunctious little baby in her belly, too, always kicking and thumping. Sally knew from the beginning that he would be a willful boy. She lucked out that he was respectful enough.

  As they added more kids to the house… woo, boy. Joan was lucky in a way. She and Lorri only planned to have one kid. With any further luck, she’d have a kid like Tucker who, while the occasional handful as all kids were at times, wouldn’t give her too much trouble. Then again, I say this now. For all I know, Tucker will be the worst teenager of my bunch. Sally couldn’t think about that right now. It gave her a headache.

  “I swear, they’ve been injecting caffeine and sugar into their veins every time I’m not looking.” Sally popped open her crafting bag, currently propped up in the seat next to hers. “Hoping it’s a phase. They were really revved up by their birthday party this past weekend, and now we’ve got Halloween coming up…” She spread her current project, a costume for Paige, across the crafting table. “Then it starts all over again for Christmas…”

  “How’s the little baby doing?” Joan stuck her face in Daisy’s. The baby usually slept the afternoons away, and after her little tantrum in the car, she was out like a light. Sally gently rocked her in her carrier. A gurgle of compliance made her sigh in relief. “She’s getting so big. Do you have any costume plans for her?”

  “I got out Paige’s old pumpkin costume and will give it a thorough wash soon.” In that family, recycling was too important to pass up. Any clothes of Tucker’s that weren’t totally ruined by the time he outgrew them went straight to his little brother. Yeah, we’re a hand-me-down family. The only exception were a few shirts that Gage declared, “Really, really ugly!” Those went to the thrift store or the swap meets the American Legion Hall held every few months. “How about you, huh? You know if you’re having a girl or boy yet?”

  Although Joan’s face beamed with excitement, Sally knew she wasn’t getting a real answer. “Everything’s going great! Minus the endless bedrest. Lorri got me a wheelchair! Can you believe it? I feel like an invalid every time we do our weekly shopping, but then again, I’m only getting bigger every week…”

  “Hey, if it means you can get some chores done, so be it. Better to be safe than sorry.”

  “The doctor is only making me rest so much because of the… well, you know. Anyway, we’ve decided we don’t want to know the sex of the baby until it’s born. Gonna love it either way, yeah? We’re getting all these tests done so we know how it’s doing, so we might as well have one last big surprise when it finally gets here.”

  “You’re stronger than I was. Kept telling Candy we weren’t gonna find out, too, but when the doctor offered to tell me, I couldn’t help but demand an answer! Besides, my mom was on my ass about what kind of baby stuff to buy me. She’s really traditional, you know. She could swing the gay thing after a few years, but was firmly in the blue is for boys and pink is for girls camp. Joke’s on her. We’ve reused all the blue stuff for every baby, boy or girl, since.”

  “Our nursery is yellow. So it really doesn’t matter, was gonna be yellow either way.”

  “That’s how you do it.” Sally chuckled. “Screw the whole thing. Pick a color you like. You’re the one who has to look at it every day! The baby ain’t ever gonna remember that its nursery was yellow.”

  They were not joined by anyone else that day. Joan was grateful for Sally’s companionship on an otherwise dreary Monday afternoon. The twins occasionally screeched at something on the tablet, but it was the baby who kicked up the biggest fusses, needing to be changed much earlier than Sally anticipated. When she returned from the bathroom, she found her oldest son hovering by her chair.

  “Is it okay if I borrow your phone, Mom?” Tucker asked. “I gotta look up some words.”

  Sally pulled her phone and charger out of her purse. “You know the rules. No naughty sites, and don’t download anything on my phone.” She couldn’t believe she had to tell him that. In the third grade, no less…

  Tucker slammed the charger into an outlet by his chair. Five minutes later, his eyes were glued to the screen instead of his book. Every time. With Christmas around the corner, Sally considered getting her son a pocket dictionary to prevent the future screen time.

  With the kids as restless as dogs who hadn’t been let out all day, Sally could only stay for about an hour. Gave her the chance to catch up on her costume work, but she wasn’t anywhere close to finishing. Don’t know when I’m gonna get these costumes finished in time for Halloween. The kids wore their costumes to school, and that was before she considered the party at the American Legion Hall. Sure, some kids still went trick-or-treating before and after, but the real event was the myriad of candy-getting games and costume contests. The school and city hall promoted it to the point that all the kids assumed they were going. If they don’t have a decent costume for the contests…

  Tucker wanted to be Captain America, for frick’s sake!

  “What is that you’re looking at?” Sally hadn’t meant to snap at her son when she went to collect him to go home. Yet Tucker jerked out of his seat as if she had caught him looking at an adult site. I swear to God… I’m not ready for that talk yet. Sounded like something for Candace to do! If nothing else, she knew how to use rural legalese to scare a little fear of God into him!

  “Nothin’.” Tucker handed the phone back. He had not closed out of the web browser.

  Oh, it was nothing serious. On the surface. It was a fansite for one of those video games Tucker liked to play on the family computer. I can never remember the name. You build things. Little guys come and wreck your things. You build them again. Tucker often looked up these fansites for tips, tricks, and helpful tools that told him what to do. Harmless stuff, or so his parents had assumed after a perusal a few months ago.

  Wait… what is this?

  This wasn’t just a fansite. It was a chatroom!

  Oh, hell no.

  ***

  Sally made sure to keep the window open on her phone when they got home. After the twins went into the backyard to play with their new toys and the baby lay down for her nap, Sally sat on her bed, scrolling through the texts her son exchanged with strangers over the internet.

  “Yo, did you see the way that thing went up? Literally lit.”

  “Yeah, man. Saw it on Twitch. Never seen a more satisfying light-up in my life.”

  “Yo
u’re only thirteen.”

  “So?”

  Sally scratched her head. What did this mean? What was Twitch? What did they mean by “lighting up?”

  “Hey,” a new user said further on in the conversation. “Is there a permalink to it?”

  A link appeared. Sally was almost afraid to click. Yet she did, didn’t she?

  I don’t get it… It was a YouTube link. Yeah, it looked like the game her son played, all the way down to the cartoonish colors and the blocky appearance. But she didn’t recall her son’s hard work going up in flames every few minutes. Weren’t you supposed to stop the fires or discover clever engineering tricks to prevent them from happening? I really should ask him more questions about that game… The furthest Sally went with her interest was responding to her son’s requests to go over and see what he had built. Candace didn’t know much else about it, either. She’d put her hands on her hips and say, “Well, I’ll be. We didn’t have this when I was your age. We played Pong…”

  Sally closed out of the video and finished reading the chat.

  “Really sweet light-up, man. I’d love to see that in real life.”

  “Bruh, not here. You know where to go.”

  Sally closed the browser. For good measure, she ran the antivirus. One never knew what the kids were doing to devices those days.

  Chapter 10

  CANDACE

  Candace kicked herself when she couldn’t take Sally out to the matinee that Tuesday night. She was on her way out the station door when a call came in about a suspect fleeing into their county. That meant giving up a whole evening of the two of them. “I’ll make it up to you, promise,” Candace said before hanging up. “Even if we have to pay full price.”

  The suspect dumped his car on the side of the highway and ran into the woods. Too bad for him, almost everyone chasing him had grown up in the area and knew exactly where to find him. Still, it took three hours, and by the time he was sitting in the Paradise Valley jail cell, Candace’s stomach growled for food. Any food. She scarfed down the leftover lasagna at home like it was her last meal – then, she promptly collapsed into bed and didn’t wake up until her snoring became too much for her to bear.