by Julia Kent
Mary’s eyes widened as she blinked so hard Laura expected all of her eyelashes to float to the ground like molting feathers. Big Mike’s chest deflated, like a balloon vendor leaking helium out of a spent tank.
“And even if he wasn’t my legal husband, I’m still alive over here. Sentient. I have ears that work and I can hear you all talking about me like I’m a vegetable,” Mike added from the bed, his voice flat. There was no anger. No sarcasm. He was just stating facts.
“He’s right,” Big Mike said simply. There was no expected bite to his words.
“That’s true,” Mary agreed, frowning.
With that simple truth, Dylan shut them down.
And made Laura burst into sudden, all-consuming tears.
Oddly enough, Mary was the first to comfort her, smelling like rosewater and lotion. “Oh, dear, it’s okay. Mikey will be fine. He’s just nervous that way. Always was a runner. I remember when he was just four years old and got mad after Big Mike gave him a whupping for letting the chickens out of the coop, and Mikey ran five miles. The postman found him out on a rural route in the next county,” she said with a giggle, her fingers smooth like parchment against Laura’s forearm. She babbled when nervous, Laura thought, but she couldn’t make sense of anything more as the tears took over.
“Why are you crying?” Dylan asked in a hushed voice.
“Because I’ll never be Mike’s legal husband!” Laura wailed.
Mary’s hand froze.
“Like you,” Laura added, curling into Dylan’s side, burying her face in him.
Dr. Druce frowned and walked past Laura, checking on Mike’s chart. “Is there more to this than meets the eye?”
Laura gave her an eye roll that didn’t make the doctor flinch, but should have.
“We’re a threesome,” she declared, her voice loud and shaking. “And we’re supposed to get married tomorrow. But two years ago, Mike and Dylan got legally married to protect the custody of our kids.”
Mary and Big Mike gave her incredulous looks, Mary dropping her hand from Laura as Dylan moved closer, his arm around her like a barrier.
“I had a relative who thought his morality trumped my sense of judgment,” she continued, eyes zeroing in on Big Mike. “He made veiled threats about trying to get his hands on Jillian. That was unacceptable. Because I can’t legally marry two men, we did the next best thing.”
“You had the men marry each other,” Dr. Druce said with an appreciative sigh.
Laura broke eye contact with Big Mike and looked at the woman. “Yes. It was the only way to protect Jillian in case something happened to me.”
“Which isn’t going to happen,” Dylan soothed.
Laura broke away from him and pointed at Mike, in the hospital bed, hooked up to tubes and sensors. “Really? Because no one could have predicted this.”
“I did.” Mary’s voice shocked Mike enough that he flinched in bed, then groaned from moving his broken arm. “That’s why we didn’t RSVP,” she continued, her voice shaking, but not quite like Laura’s. The timid little old woman had a tremor in her tone.
It was anger.
“We didn’t RSVP,” she continued, “because we scared Mike off all those years ago. You scared him off,” she added, the word flung at her husband. She looked at Dylan, eyes blazing. “And you stopped them from hurting each other by inserting yourself between them.”
“I wasn’t going to hurt Pa,” Mike interjected.
Dr. Druce shushed him.
Laura gaped at Mary.
“No, you weren’t. Not with fists. But he damn sure was going to hurt you.”
“Now, Mary,” Big Mike said in a voice filled with gravel and regret. “The past is the past.”
Laura, Mike, Dylan, and Dr. Druce all managed inelegant snorts of varying frequencies.
Big Mike startled, anger in the muscles of his face, and then it relaxed as he closed his eyes.
“See?” Mary said reproachfully.”I’ve spent more than a decade away from my boy because we followed the wrong rules in our hearts. We thought we would guide him to a better place by withdrawing our love. Make him come back to his senses. Just look at all the love he went out and found for himself without us.”
“I still don’t think it’s right,” Big Mike said, but the gumption was gone. “But maybe I was wrong all those years ago.” Laura watched the old man struggle, tearing the baseball cap off his head and twisting it in gnarled, nervous hands. “But a man can’t just give up a whole life of morality suddenly on a dime.”
“You were able to give up your son,” Dylan said, reaching to the bed to rest one hand on Mike’s shoulder. “Why was that so much easier?”
“None of this was easy,” Big Mike said with a scowl. “Not one damned bit.”
“Mike!” Mary chided.
“I’ll say damned if I want to, Mary.”
Laura watched as if she were viewing a documentary of some ethnic group from a far-off land. Mike came from this? These were people who loved him, but somewhere along the way had been convinced—or had convinced themselves—that there was only one version of Mike. And that version was the one they’d projected onto him, and if he wasn’t that exact person, then they couldn’t have him in their life at all.
A deep sadness seeped into her bones. She couldn’t fathom rejecting Jillian or Aaron or Adam. Ever. Not for loving a consenting adult—or more than one—in a way that was out of the norm.
“I’m not going to stand here and try to explain the past,” Big Mike continued. “And we could rehash it and just get more angry at each other. Your Ma got that letter from Laura and cried and cried for weeks. Weeks. I wanted to burn that piece of paper. It made old wounds rip open.” Big Mike’s red-rimmed eyes, rheumy and guarded, met hers. “But thank you.”
“Thank you?” Laura peeped.
“Thank you, because—” Big Mike was seized by a wracking cough that made Mary rush to his side, one hand on his back, the other on his shoulder, as he reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a handkerchief, coughing into it. The spell lasted longer than it should in a healthy person, and a dawning creep began in Laura’s stomach.
They weren’t here just to cause trouble, or just to reconnect because of the wedding.
“I need to talk to my parents alone,” Mike announced. Dr. Druce gave Dylan and Laura appraising looks. Both nodded, and Laura kissed Mike on the forehead.
“Stay outside in the hall,” he whispered, eyes still closed. She squeezed his hand and Dylan, Laura, and the doctor filed out.
Big Mike began coughing again. Dr. Druce turned back and said, “Mr. Pine, why don’t we get you some hot tea with lemon and honey,” coolly reaching for the big man’s elbow, guiding him out with a kind of smoothness that made Laura appreciate the bedside manner.
And with that, they left Mike alone with Mary.
Laura hoped she was doing the right thing. The last time she tried to do the right thing with Mike, well...
Look what happened.
Chapter Twenty-One
Mike Pine
“Your father had a heart attack two months ago,” Ma whispered, her eyes focused on the horizon through the window outside, her shoulders squared. He wondered what she saw in the dark, inky night. His heart pounded in time to the throbbing pain of every bruise, each cut, all the scrapes. It soothed him, oddly enough.
The pain gave him something to focus on.
“Is that why he looks so pale?” Mike asked.
She nodded.
“Is that why you’re here?”
A wistful smile twisted her lips. “We’re here because God told us to come, Mikey.”
God didn’t make you get in the truck and drive over a thousand miles, he thought to himself. Tamping down the words took more effort than he expected, and reminded him of an entire adolescence spent shoving words back down his own throat. He knew they’d censored themselves in front of non-believers. Now the God talk would begin in earnest.
“Okay.”
“Your Pa was on the tractor and just collapsed. Thank God a farm hand, one of those nice college students from the organic farming internship program, found him before it was too late. We got him to the hospital and he spent a week there.”
“A week?” Mike knew they didn’t have insurance. His eyes took in all the grey hair, the long, deep wrinkles in Ma’s skin, and he realized they were well over sixty-five years old now. Probably had Medicare. As his mind darted to and fro to remove him from the tidal wave of emotions this stirred up, he realized he was grasping at silly details that didn’t matter.
“A week. That first night we nearly lost him. And you know what?” She reached for his hand. He could barely unroll his fist, her smooth, hardened palm so unfamiliar. They had never been a physically affectionate family. A hug at high school graduation was the last time he remembered his mother touching him. She hadn’t been there when Jill died to offer an embrace, a shoulder, an ear.
She hadn’t been there because she’d chosen to follow his father’s shunning.
“What?”
“Big Mike wanted one thing. You.”
“Me?”
“You. He said to call you. Wanted to see you before he died.”
“Jesus,” Mike whispered.
His ma didn’t realize that wasn’t a plea for help. “Oh, He’s the one who came. Must have been watching over your father with such love. By morning, Mike was mending just fine, and said not to call you. I begged. He wouldn’t relent.”
“Nothing’s really changed, I see,” Mike said.
She shook her head slowly, eyes darting up to watch his face. “Not between you two. No. You’re both stubborn mules.”
“I learned it from the best, Ma.”
“So I prayed on it. Stood up to your Pa, and you know I don’t do that. Not often enough, I think now,” Her face folded with pain. “I prayed and asked for guidance.” Her face lit up with joy. “And then I received it. A message from the divine.”
“A message?”
She reached into her purse and pulled out a well-worn envelope with a very familiar feminine scrawl on it. Laura’s handwriting stared up at him.
“Laura’s letter arrived the very next day.” Tears spilled over those sweet blue eyes. “My prayer was answered.”
Coincidence? That’s the word Mike would use. Prayer? That was Mary’s word. Semantics didn’t matter in the end, though. What mattered was that one act led to the same result:
Ma and Pa were here.
Her soft hand smelled like the same lotion she’d used since he could remember, the cheap store-brand hand cream she used every night before bed. His parents were creatures of habit. Same hand lotion. Same food brands. Same furniture they’d bought when he was a baby. Same farm that had been in the family for generations. Same newspaper. Same church. Same recipes.
Mike was anything but same. When he’d decided to go away to Boston to college he’d rocked their world in the worst way possible. Big Mike had nearly blocked it, insisting that his state university’s agriculture program was plenty fine. Mike had wanted more. Inventing a major he wanted that wasn’t offered locally, he’d reached out to a bunch of colleges in Boston and persisted, eventually getting a partial scholarship on a tiny basketball team. Big Mike respected money, and relented.
It was bad enough that Mike had broken his family’s sense of sameness, but coming out in a loving, permanent threesome with Dylan and Jill had broken his father in half. And the only way Mike and Mary Pine had known how to mend themselves was to make Mike different.
Too different to work with their need for same.
What do you do when one of these things is not like the other?
You throw it away. As long as you pretend everything is the same, in neat little orderly rows, and hold the truth aside like a piece of rubbish that needs to be discarded, you can prop up any myth.
Mike became nothing to them. No wonder he always fled when he couldn’t handle his emotions. Running away meant you weren’t there.
You were nothing.
And now his beloved wife’s letter was the answer to a prayer?
“Why didn’t you reach out to me? Thirteen years, Ma. Thirteen fucking years.”
“Mikey! That language!”
“I am a thirty-six-year-old man, Ma!” His good fist cracked against the bed railing. “I can say fuck if I please.”
Her lips pressed into a thin, white line.
“Especially,” he hissed, “when you act like it’s my fault thirteen years have gone by without contact.”
“You never reached out, either,” she said softly.
“When Pa tried to beat the shit out of me and Dylan had to hold him back, I got a pretty clear signal that you wanted nothing to do with me.”
Her lips remained pinched as she closed her eyes, brow furrowed with pain.
They both just breathed. Each inhale felt endless. Each exhale was torture. This was pointless. Laura’s outreach to his parents was a naive act. Nothing was going to change. Nothing had changed. The only difference between thirteen years ago and now was a little three-year-old girl with hair and eyes like Mike’s, and in his mother’s eyes that was the prize.
Jillian.
“You’re here because of the children, aren’t you?”
“I’m here because of my child.”
“And the grandkids. All three of them.”
“All three are yours?”
Oh, he knew what she meant, but he wasn’t going to play her game.
“Yes. All three. And any others we decide to have will be, too.”
“You want more?”
“We’re young, Ma. We’re not sure we’re done.”
“Hmph. I never imagined you with a big family, I guess. Not since...” Her voice trailed off.
“Not since I decided to live in a threesome with Dylan and Jill?”
She sighed. “You’re not making this easy.”
“Like Pa said, none of this is easy.” He rolled over out of instinct, trying to get comfortable, and felt a bone slip, groaning in pain.
“Do you need a nurse? A doctor? How bad is it? We came in here like a bull in a China shop and I never found out how you are.” Her brow creased, transporting Mike back to his childhood. A long time ago he made himself stop missing his parents. But when she looked at him with concern, it took him right back in time.
“Broke my arm in two places. A couple of ribs. Pulled muscles. I’ll be fine.” He stretched fully and felt his heels slip off the end of the bed.
“You were always like that. Fine. Just...fine. Never talked about your feelings, always went on those long runs. You were a good boy, Mikey.”
“I’m a good man, Ma.”
“I can see that. I can.”
His heart was breaking, one chamber beating so hard it was pulling the other three out of his body between his broken ribs, the gravity of hope yanking it toward his mother. He wanted to believe that they could reconcile. He wanted desperately to think that there could be some sort of love between him and his parents. Could thirteen years of scars be overcome and healed? Could they find a way to function without hurting each other and opening old wounds?
“MIKE!” A woman’s voice—not Laura’s—pierced the air outside. Footsteps, the swoosh of fabric curtains being pulled, and then, “MIKE BOURNHAM! Where is he?”
That must be Lydia. He frowned, then winced at the pain from a gash on his forehead. Bournham. He was the one who’d fallen as he’d tried to rescue Mike. Had something bad happened to him?
Too many thoughts. Too many emotions. His calves twitched, needing to run, but he couldn’t. He was stuck. He had to face this head-on.
“LYDIA!” someone called. That was Jeremy. The footsteps resumed, something beeped, doors clicked open, and then he heard nothing more.
Poor Bournham. Guilt washed over him. If the guy was worse off than he was, it was his fault.
“Who’s Mike Bournham?” Ma asked, genuinely
unaware of who the man had been. She wasn’t the type to read about financial giants, even ex-financial giants.
“He’s the man who found me on shore,” Mike said weakly. Exhaustion roasted his bones like he was a pig on a spit over an open fire.
“Something happen to him?”
“He fell while he was rescuing me. Fell down the cliff.”
“Oh, dear!” Ma squeezed the ends of her fingers like she often did when nervous. “I hope he’s okay.”
Me too, Mike thought, but didn’t say. Guilt flowed through him, throbbing along with his pain.
“His best friend was there. The same rescue team that got me out. I’m sure he’s—”
“SEIZURE? What do you mean, he had a seizure?” a woman screamed from outside Mike’s room.
He slumped against the bed, not realizing his own effort to sit up while talking to his mom.
“Doesn’t sound fine,” Ma said.
Laura’s head popped around the corner, through the door. “I thought you’d be worried.” Her eyes caught Mike’s and he managed a weak grin. She was right.
“That’s Lydia,” Laura explained, eyes on him, walking around so he could see her. “She just arrived. Mike Bournham had a seizure en route to the hospital.”
His stomach clenched into a hot ball. “Fuck.”
“Mikey—” His mother pressed her lips together, but he ignored her.
“Is he okay?” Mike asked.
Laura gave him a sympathetic look. “No one knows. Lydia just found Jeremy and Mike’s team is working on him.”
“Working on him?” That sounded grim.
“He’s alive. It’s just, with seizures...”
A very tall, wet-haired doctor with familiar, kind brown eyes appeared behind Laura. “He seized in the ambulance right as we moved him into it, after Jeremy and Dylan got him up the cliff. His head wound’s bad. He stopped seizing and I just left. The doctors here can do a better job than I can,” Alex explained.
“You’re not much of a doctor if you go around saying that,” Mike whispered. “Where’s your God complex?”
Mike saw his mother’s face twist with confusion, while Laura and Alex shared a relieved look.
