A Place Called Home

by Jo Goodman

  On the way home, the twins fell asleep in the backseat while Emilie stared thoughtfully out the window. Mitch watched her in the rearview mirror. “What are you thinking, Em?”

  She glanced at him. “Why do brides wear white?”

  Mitch looked at Thea. “You field this one.”

  “Coward,” she whispered. To Emilie, she said simply, “It’s tradition.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  Thea reached across the console and patted Mitch lightly on the knee. “Sometimes the best explanations are the simplest ones.”

  Emilie fiddled with her shoulder harness, pulling it away from her chest and letting it slip back. “Do you think I could wear pink?”

  “Sure,” Mitch said, keeping it simple.

  “Was I at my mom and dad’s wedding?”

  Mitch gave Thea a quick grin. “Back to you.”

  Thea turned slightly in her seat so she could see Emilie better. “No, Em, you know you weren’t at the wedding. You were born about ten months later.”

  Emilie considered that. “I wish I could have been there. I think Sara was lucky.”

  Mitch chuckled. “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  “Do you want to watch the video tonight?” asked Thea. In the course of the move to Elm and Orchard Mitch had come across a recording of Kathy and Gabe’s wedding. They stopped everything they were doing, hooked up the DVD player and TV, and sat down on the floor to watch. The quality certainly wasn’t hi-def and the camera work was jumpy, but those production values were immaterial in contrast to the power of the images. In retrospect the bride and groom looked absurdly young. There was no doubt, however, that they were deeply in love. Listening to them exchange vows again was poignant; watching them do the chicken dance at the reception was very nearly hysterical. In the end they all laughed more than they cried and the disk was carefully re-boxed and placed with other keepsakes and moved to their new home. “I know just where we put it,” Thea went on. “It’s no trouble to get it out.”

  “No,” Emilie said. Then, in adultlike tones, she added, “I think one wedding is enough today.” She turned back to staring out the window, planning her gown, bridal party, and reception right down to the number of flowers on her cake.

  Much later that night, after the kids were tucked in bed, Mitch found Thea sitting in the darkened family room watching the DVD she had offered to show Emilie. She hit the pause button and made space for him on the sofa.

  “It’s all right,” he said, putting her legs over his lap and running his hands lightly over them from knee to ankle. “There. That’s nice. You’ve got great gams, Thea Baker. Anyone ever tell you that?”

  “Your father,” she said dryly.

  Mitch chuckled. “Yeah, well, he’s always been a leg man.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “I have diverse interests. Legs and breasts.”

  “That doesn’t exactly make you a Renaissance man.” Before he could respond, she aimed the remote at him and hit the mute button. Mitch’s mouth clamped shut. “I’ll be darned. It works.” She hit it again. “Are the kids all down?”

  “Down, but not out. Case and Grant are nodding off. Emilie wanted to read in bed for a while so I said okay.”

  Thea nodded. She laid the remote on the arm of the sofa and settled more comfortably into the corner. “Mmm. That feels good,” she said softly as Mitch continued to massage her bare calves and feet. “I thought it was interesting that Emilie passed on watching this.”

  “Don’t put too much stock in it. She might decide to do a marathon of viewing tomorrow.”

  “I know. And that’s okay. I just can’t remember her passing on an opportunity to do anything related to Gabe and Kathy before. It’s hard to know whether to feel relieved or concerned.”

  “She’s working it out, Thea. So are the boys.” They had marked the first anniversary of Gabe and Kathy’s deaths quietly, honoring their memory by making a contribution to the Mothers Against Drunk Driving chapter in their community. It was a bittersweet time for Thea because it fell on the heels of her first year being drug free. “We’re all still trying to know how to think about it. Their misfortune. Our blessing. I mean, what do you do with that except thank God that you’re able to move on?”

  Thea sighed quietly. “You’re right.”

  Mitch’s brows lifted. “Can I hear that again?”

  She tossed him the remote. “Press rewind, then play.”

  “Think you’re pretty funny, don’t you?” He pushed the remote between the sofa cushions to get it out of the way and went back to rubbing her legs. “So what did you think of the wedding?” They hadn’t had an opportunity out of Emilie’s hearing to discuss it before now. “Particularly Joel’s children.”

  She pulled a face. “Do you think that’s what people look like when they have to face a firing squad?”

  Mitch laughed softly. “That was my take on it, too. They could have used blindfolds or hoods. Still, they toughed it out.”

  “They love Joel that much. It wasn’t all that easy for them when they thought he was going to marry me, but they came around. They will for Gina, too. And Sara. She’s a little beauty, isn’t she?”

  Mitch chose to reserve judgment. “She’s got a set of lungs on her.” He began massaging Thea’s right foot. “Gina really put Joel through the paces these last months. I wasn’t sure she was ever going to agree to marry him. Even today I thought she might back out. You know, I don’t get women. She wanted to marry him, he says no, then he says yes, will you marry me, and she says no. Explain that to me again.”

  “It’s your fault,” Thea said simply.

  “That’s a given.”

  She laughed. “Gina thought you threatened Joel in order to make him propose and she didn’t want his proposal under those circumstances. You did volunteer to beat the shit out of him, remember?”

  “Yeah, but no one took me seriously. Especially not Strahern.”

  “Gina did.”

  Mitch was skeptical. “Personally, I think she wanted him to crawl.”

  “I think she wanted him to be sure.”

  “Of whom? Him or her?”

  “Both of them. And you know what? I don’t applaud her methods, but her intention was right on target. You saw for yourself what they’ll have to cope with from friends and family. Family on both sides, I might add. The wedding had to be public and Gina didn’t want to go down the aisle being led by her belly. Besides, Sara turned out to be a great ambassador. Who’s not going to love her?”

  “Maybe it will all work out,” said Mitch. “I told Joel that being happy was the best revenge.”

  “You said that?”

  “Yeah. A long time ago. When I was planting seeds. Who knew I was so smart?”

  Thea smiled. “Or such a great farmer.”

  Mitch gave her knee a squeeze. “That’s why you married me?”

  “One of the reasons. That, and the fact you give a good foot massage.” She drew her foot back as he tried to tickle it. Laughing, she asked him for the remote. “I want to finish watching the video. I was just up to the part where you make your third toast of the evening.”

  “That’s right before I asked you to go fool around with me in the fire truck.”

  “Yep. That’s how I remember it.”

  “Damn shame you didn’t.”

  “Seems that way now.” She shrugged. “Then, I was afraid of you.”

  Mitch had started to give her the remote, but now he pulled his hand back. “Afraid of me? Did you think I meant to hurt you?”

  “No. Nothing like that. Not physically hurt me. I just wasn’t ready for you. I can’t explain it any better than that. I wasn’t prepared to be different, and you wouldn’t have liked the person I was then. Not once you got to know me better. I did both of us a favor by staying off your radar screen all those years.”

  “A lot you know. You were never off my radar screen.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Absolu
tely.” He handed her the remote. “Fess up. Didn’t you have a little crush on me back then?”

  Thea rolled her eyes. “Watch this and ask me again.” The TV flickered from blue screen to an image of a much younger Mitch standing at the bridal party’s table raising his champagne flute for a toast. “‘There once was a girl from Nantucket,’” he began. Thea hit pause and gave Mitch a wry look. “I rest my case.”

  “So it wasn’t my finest hour. But I looked good in a tux.”

  “You looked excellent in a tux,” she told him. “It was no reason to fall in love with you, though. That came much later.”

  “How much later?”

  “Years.”

  “Oh.”

  His slightly wounded ego made her smile. “It might have happened earlier,” she said. “But I was practicing a lot of denial in those days.” She watched his features soften as he accepted the truth of that. “So, do you want to know when I realized I loved you?”

  For Mitch loving Thea had come about so gradually that he accepted it as if it had always been that way, as much a part of him as the memories of his childhood. He’d never thought about it being a different experience for her, yet he somehow had always known that it was. “There was a defining moment?” he asked. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll bite. What was it? Our first kiss? The scream? That time in my Chevy truck?” He wiggled his brows up and down. “It was the Chevy truck, right?”

  “It was your neon pink toenails.”

  Mitch was silent.

  “That’s right, sissy man,” Thea said. “Your toenails. I saw them the morning of the first time I woke up in bed with you. We hadn’t even made love yet. Remember? The shower came later.”

  “Pink toenails.” Mitch said it as if he couldn’t believe it, which he couldn’t.

  “Neon.”

  “Awww,” he said, putting a hand over his eyes. “That’s not right. Now I’m going to have to go beat up someone.”

  Dropping the remote on the floor, Thea squirmed out of her corner and put herself on Mitch’s lap. She pulled his hand away from his face and raked her fingers through his brown-and-gold streaked hair. “I liked your toes,” she whispered. She kissed him lightly on the mouth. “It was the same shade I bought Emilie. What did she do? Ask you if you wanted a pedicure?”

  Mitch shook his head. “I conked out on the couch one afternoon and she and the boys did that to me.”

  Thea believed at least part of it. “You might have been napping when they started,” she said. “But I’ll bet you played possum through most of it. You let them do that to you.”

  He shrugged, a little embarrassed. “They were having a good time.”

  “See?” she said. “That just turns my heart over.” She paused a beat, her eyes darkening. “Although I like it when you make me scream.”

  He tickled her first, made her breathless and helpless with laughter, then he wrestled her easily from the sofa to the carpet. They made love there and it was uncomplicated for them, familiar in a way that made it good, then better.

  The last six months had been crowded. From proposal to wedding only took a few weeks. They kept it small and intimate by choice. A few friends, family, and the children were witnesses to the event. Wayne Anderson was Mitch’s best man. Thea asked Rosie to be her matron of honor. The reception dinner was held in the town’s historic hotel and afterward the bride and groom caught a plane to the Virgin Islands. They stayed three days, called home, and had Bill and Jennie put the kids on a plane for Orlando. The rest of the honeymoon was a family affair at Walt Disney World.

  In September the driver who crossed two lanes of traffic to collide headon with Kathy and Gabe came to trial. Mitch and Thea were in the courtroom when the sentencing was decided. It provided some closure, if not satisfaction. Thea was prepared for the sentence, but Mitch came late to the realization that no number of years would have satisfied him. He spent the better part of the week feeling nothing but numb.

  The holidays pushed them all forward. Halloween. Birthdays. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Each one a nodal event in that it was the first one without Gabe and Kathy. There was no struggle involved in enjoying themselves, only in not feeling guilty for it. In the end they discovered ways to find joy in remembrance and appreciate each other and the family they had become.

  Not that it wasn’t without its trials. Emilie threatened to run away when Mitch put his foot down about a cell phone. She actually packed a suitcase and walked out the front door, hollering they’d never hear from her again since she didn’t own a personal communication device. “Obviously she’s forgetting about her mouth,” Mitch said in a dry aside to Thea. But he went after Emilie anyway and got her to come back without promising her what she wanted. Mitch took her cell phone shopping a month later. Just because.

  The twins squabbled often, sometimes in earnest, sometimes because they didn’t know what else to do with themselves. The playroom afforded them a place to keep it contained but they found ways to bring it up from the underground. They called Thea Cruella under their breath when she sent them to opposite corners. She pretended not to hear and went to her room for a time-out. Mitch was the one who pointed out to Thea that even when she was at her wits’ end, not once did it occur to her to put their hands through a wringer. The revelation stunned her. She had smiled then, realizing she was doing much better than okay. She felt like she was becoming the mother she wanted to be.

  The Shine and Shield campaign went national in January at the Super Bowl and the ads were among the most talked about the following day. In February Thea decided to go part-time at the agency. Hank Foster had been anticipating her doing just that; he was only surprised she’d held out as long as she had. The successful acquisition and launching of the Carver Chemical account gave her the perfect opportunity to take a step back.

  But Thea and Mitch weren’t thinking about any of that now. His hand. Her breast. Their mouths. These were wonderfully selfish moments and they didn’t allow themselves to be distracted.

  Afterward they lay on the carpet half covered by an afghan Mitch had pulled off the sofa. “We can’t sleep here,” Thea said. “Emilie will be up first and she’ll find us.”

  “No problem. You can explain. Just remember to keep it simple.”

  “Mitch. She knows about what men and women who love each other do. I’ve had that conversation with her.”

  “You have?”

  “Yes. Way back when you had the FPE at Target.”

  “FPE?”

  “Feminine Protection Emergency.”

  He groaned, remembering. “Don’t talk about that now. You just can’t imagine ...”

  “Traumatic, was it?”

  “Not quite that, but ...”

  Thea turned on her side, raised herself on one elbow, and studied his face. He stared back, his features relaxed, a little amused by her regard.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s just that you did it anyway. You didn’t even hesitate. You really are one of the good guys.” She smiled faintly, tracing the line of his chin with her fingertip. “You know, there are times I’m still frightened,” she said quietly. “Even now. Maybe especially now. Because of how much I’m in love with you.”

  “That scares you?”

  “A little. Sometimes.”

  “But you stay right here.”

  She nodded. “I learned that from you. Constancy of the heart. The difference between being scared and being scared off.” Thea slipped into the crook of his shoulder again and lay there without speaking. He simply held her, occasionally brushing her with his fingertips. Her arm. Her hair. The curve of her hip. He had no need to fill the silence.

  Sometimes the best way to love Thea was quietly.

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  Copyright © 2011 by Joanne Dobrzanski<
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  ISBN: 978-1-4201-2536-8