Reuniting His Family

by Jean C. Gordon

  Renee pulled the baking dish with the marinated steaks out of the refrigerator and took two trays from on top of the refrigerator. “Help me carry some of the food out and I will. Grab the bag of corn on the counter.”

  “Corn on the cob?” he asked. “It’s my favorite.”

  “Corn on the cob. We can roast it on the grill.”

  Renee followed Owen out to the backyard, where Paul had the gas grill on and ready. She and Owen placed the food on the side shelf. Dylan and Robbie raced over, followed by Claire.

  “Come on, Miss Renee, and see the doghouse,” Dylan said.

  “As soon as I bring out the rest of the food and the cups and plates,” she said.

  “I’ll do that,” Claire offered.

  Renee hesitated. She couldn’t hide in the house all day.

  Dylan and Robbie grabbed her hands and dragged her to the doghouse. “It’s almost done, except for being painted.”

  “Mr. Delacroix says we’ll have to do that another day because we’re all so hungry,” Dylan said.

  It took Renee a moment to realize that Mr. Delacroix meant Paul.

  “And more than that,” Rhys said with a sheepish look on his face, “we don’t have any paint. I could say I was going to ask you and Claire what colors you wanted first, but the truth is I just plain forgot.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You’ve had a few other things on your mind the past couple of days. Claire and I can paint the doghouse.”

  “We’ll help you,” Owen said. “Maybe tomorrow after church.”

  “Next weekend would be better,” Renee said before realizing she was inviting them over for another day. “Let me take a look at this house.” She stepped back and made a show of examining their work. Rhys, standing beside the structure, occupied her field of vision as much as the doghouse did. “Nice. The doghouse is very nice.”

  Rhys moved over by the boys. “Those steaks are starting to smell really good. We’d better get cleaned up.”

  “Can we use the hose like Mr. Delacroix did?” Owen asked.

  “No, we’d better go inside,” Rhys said.

  Renee nodded, remembering what usually happened with her and her siblings as kids when they got hold of the hose on a hot summer day. Besides, their going inside would give her distance from Rhys.

  She helped Claire set the picnic table, and Rhys and the boys trooped back into the yard at the same time Paul pronounced the steaks done. Renee let the others go ahead of her, and when she and Paul walked to the table, the only two spaces were between Dylan and Rhys and across from him.

  “I saved you a seat,” Dylan said.

  She had no choice. Renee placed the disposable plate with her steak on the picnic table and slid in between Rhys and Dylan.

  “Paul, would you say the blessing?” Claire asked.

  Renee took Dylan’s hand and felt Rhys’s close around her other one. She bowed her head and closed her eyes. Her brother’s voice, so like their dad’s, took her back to the family dinners when they all lived at home. A mantle of familiarity and security blanketed her.

  She felt a small loss when Paul finished and Rhys released her hand. But the spirited conversation they kept going throughout the meal brought the warm feeling back—except when her and Rhys’s fingers brushed while reaching for the steak sauce at the same time, and the several times his knee bumped hers. Then her nerves skittered her into a less serene, if not less warm, place. She wavered between thinking the meal couldn’t be over soon enough and wishing it wouldn’t end.

  When they’d all finished, Renee stood and stepped back over the bench, managing to avoid any contact with Rhys. “I’ll take the leftovers in while you guys clean up out here,” Renee said. “You can use the corn bag for trash.”

  Paul saluted her, a holdover from when they were kids, and she stuck out her tongue at him.

  “That’s not the way to treat your elders,” Paul cautioned the three boys in mock seriousness.

  Renee rolled her eyes. “Seven minutes older.”

  She took her time getting back outside, singing along with the country song streaming up from Paul’s phone on the picnic table as she put the leftover food and condiments in the refrigerator. Before they were thrown together again at the soft-serve stand, she needed a timeout from Rhys and the roller-coaster emotions she’d felt sharing the meal with him and his sons.

  Renee bellowed out the refrain. Good thing her neighbors weren’t home to be bothered by her enthusiastic, slightly off-key rendition. She closed the refrigerator door.

  “Claire sent me up to see if you’re about ready to go for ice cream and to get the trash bag from the kitchen. The bag the corn came in wasn’t big enough for everything.”

  Renee snapped her mouth shut and spun around. Rhys was there. Right there.

  “It’s here.” Renee pointed to the container under the counter beside the stove. “I’ll...”

  They both stepped and bent toward the container, brushing shoulders.

  Renee looked up.

  Rhys looked down. “There are one hundred good reasons I shouldn’t do this, but I’ve been wanting to since yesterday.”

  The back of her neck pricked. It looked like she was going to get the answer to the pressing question she’d had recently.

  He touched his lips to hers.

  Renee leaned into the kiss long enough for it to knock all rational sense from her. When she’d managed to regain it, she pulled back.

  Rhys looked at her with a soft expression similar to the one she’d seen on his face when they were at his house yesterday watching Owen and Dylan’s reactions to the way he’d set up their room. Similar but different. It rocked her as much as the kiss.

  “I hope that was okay with you,” Rhys said, adding a crooked grin to the soft look still in his eyes.

  “Fine,” she said, in direct opposition to what her brain was telling her to say. Better than fine. “Tell Claire and the others I’ll be right down.”

  He grabbed the bag and, whistling the tune now playing on Paul’s phone, exited the back door.

  So that’s how kissing Rhys Maddox felt.

  * * *

  Six days. Rhys put the sandwiches he’d made in the small cooler. Six days since he’d lost control of his better judgment and kissed Renee. He tossed in three apples. Six days since he’d seen or heard from her. Rhys couldn’t count Sunday service at Hazardtown Community Church, since she’d ducked out as soon as the choir had started the recessional hymn. He knew because he’d been watching her.

  She hadn’t been at the Bridges meeting at Kids Place yesterday afternoon, either. But the Building Bridges’ director who’d covered for Renee had said she was with a child in her Newcomb group who’d had a family emergency. Rhys threw a handful of Oreo cookies in a plastic sandwich bag and added it to the cooler.

  “Dad-dy.” Dylan’s voice from upstairs interrupted another replay of his impulsive kiss.

  It had definitely been a thoughtless action, and he was paying for it with Renee’s reaction—avoidance. Still, he couldn’t say he one hundred percent regretted the kiss, only that it put him in Renee’s bad graces.

  “Dad-dy!” The volume of Dylan’s plaintive call increased as he clomped down the stairs and into the kitchen. “Owen is wearing his Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles shirt.”

  That was a problem?

  Dylan huffed. “It’s breaking the rules. Grandma Hill said we’re all supposed to wear blue shirts to match our Kids Place hats so we don’t get lost at the Great Escape.” Dylan checked out Rhys’s gray T-shirt. “I think you’re supposed to wear a blue shirt, too.”

  He didn’t want to encourage his sons to break rules, but this was the first he’d heard about the blue shirts. He didn’t have a clean blue T-shirt and didn’t know if Owen did, either. It was onl
y a fluke that Dylan had found one in his drawer.

  Rhys had only gotten a rundown of the details of the child-care center’s end-of-summer trip to the Great Escape when he’d picked up Owen and Dylan after work on Wednesday. The college student hired to supervise Owen’s older kids’ group for the summer had “reminded” Rhys that the parental consent forms had been due that day. He’d hastily filled out the forms on the spot, not knowing how he’d missed seeing them before. He always went through both boys’ backpacks every evening after dinner. Then, later Wednesday night, he’d found the forms and the parent information sheet fused together in a hard rectangle in the pocket of Owen’s jeans in the dryer.

  Owen joined them in the kitchen. “My shirt is blue under the picture.”

  “Looks blue to me,” Rhys agreed.

  “Does that mean I can wear my other blue shirt with the Tyrannosaurus Rex on it?” Dylan asked.

  “Sure,” Rhys said, “if you’re quick about changing.”

  “All right.” Dylan raced off. Both Dylan and Owen seemed to have two speeds—fast and faster.

  “It’s okay if you don’t have a blue shirt,” Owen assured Rhys. “My group leader said everyone should try to wear a blue shirt. But we weren’t supposed to tell our parents they had to go out and buy us one. Dylan gets so hooked on following all the rules exactly. It’s like he’s afraid something really bad will happen to him if he doesn’t.”

  “Breaking rules does have consequences,” Rhys said.

  “I know. But wearing a blue shirt isn’t really a rule, like not running in the halls at school.”

  Rhys wondered if Owen had been called on that one. He closed the cooler. He was a prime example of what breaking too many rules could do to a person. But it wasn’t the time to go into that, or the nuances of recommended actions versus hard-and-fast rules. Rhys understood what Owen meant, along with Dylan’s fears. While he thought he was settling in well here in Paradox Lake, he still had times when he felt he was walking on eggshells trying not to break rules he might not be aware of. The days since he’d gotten custody of his sons were good examples. It seemed the other parents knew things he didn’t.

  He checked out Owen’s shirt again. “I think your shirt and Dylan’s dinosaur shirt are good compromises. They’re mostly blue.”

  “That’s what I thought, too.” Owen studied him. “You don’t have a blue shirt, Dad?”

  “Not one that’s clean. I wore my blue one to work yesterday.” He only had six T-shirts total.

  “Gray is close,” Owen allowed.

  “All ready.” Dylan scooted into the kitchen with his T-Rex shirt on. “We’re going to get our hats when we get to school.”

  “Yeah,” Owen said, “they didn’t want the little kids losing or forgetting them, so we don’t get ours until today, either.”

  “Out to the truck.” Rhys threw the strap of the cooler over his shoulder and locked the door behind them. The Great Escape was definitely a place he wanted to take the boys. With thirty other kids wasn’t exactly how he’d pictured it, though. He’d rather go as just the three of them on a Saturday afternoon. Guys’ day out. A scene of the amusement park as it was in childhood popped into his mind—with one major difference. He, Owen and Renee were walking between the attractions with an animated Dylan pointing out things to Renee, just like he’d showed her the completed doghouse last weekend.

  Rhys brought his thoughts forward to the present and climbed into the truck. As usual, he double-checked to make sure the passenger-side airbag was turned off for the boys’ safety and tried to get comfortable on the bench seat made more cramped by Dylan’s booster seat. He turned the key. His vision of a day at Great Escape with Renee was pure fantasy, a longing for something he’d had and lost. The reality was that there was no room in the truck for the four of them to go anywhere together, and no room in his life right now for her or any other distractions from his parenting. And the more time he spent with Renee, the more of a distraction she became.

  On the forty-five-minute drive to Lake George, Rhys told Owen and Dylan about the two times he’d been to the Great Escape and what he’d liked best. Despite the delay in getting out the door while Dylan changed his shirt, they arrived at the amusement park ten minutes before the nine o’clock meeting time. Rhys didn’t see any of the others waiting at the designated spot by the entrance gate.

  He exited the truck, and Owen and Dylan slid across the seat and got out the driver’s side with him. It was easier than climbing over Dylan’s booster seat, and Rhys always kept the child lock activated on the passenger-side door. He walked them to the meeting spot.

  “Daddy, are you sure this is the right place?” Dylan looked at the people lined up at the gate. “I don’t see anyone I know.”

  “I’m sure it’s the right place,” Rhys said. “We’re just the first ones from The Kids Place to get here.”

  “Hey.” Owen pointed at a car parking in a spot near Rhys’s truck. “That looks like Miss Renee.”

  What would Renee be doing here? This was a Kids Place, not Bridges, field trip. “It’s the same color and model as her car, but I don’t think it’s her,” Rhys said.

  “Yes, it is,” Owen said.

  Rhys’s heart thumped. It was Renee. He watched her open the passenger-side door and let little Melody out.

  “Hey, Miss Renee! Over here!” Owen and Dylan jumped up and down and waved their arms to get her attention, as if the shouting hadn’t been enough.

  “Hi,” she said. “You guys the only ones here?”

  Her greeting was friendly, not standoffish. Had he imagined she’d been avoiding him since he’d kissed her?

  “Yep,” Owen answered for him.

  “We didn’t know you were coming,” Rhys blurted. Swift. Not “Hi, how are you?” or something else pleasant and conversational.

  “Neither did I, until last night.” Renee smiled at Melody, and Rhys wanted that smile for himself.

  “Melody’s grandmother unexpectedly got called into the hospital, mandatory overtime. They’re short-staffed on nurses, and someone called in sick. Melody didn’t want to come without her, and her grandmother didn’t want her to miss the trip. She called me early this morning to see if I could come as Melody’s special friend.”

  So he wasn’t the only one from the Bridges group who called on Renee. Nor was he the only one she helped as part of her job. But, as much as he fought it, he was beginning to think he might want to be more than part of her job.

  “You didn’t come with the rest of the group. Most of them were meeting at the church and driving down together.” Obviously she hadn’t come with the others. She was here. They weren’t. Maybe Bridges had a learning module on making conversation for tongue-challenged parents.

  “It was easier to pick up Melody and come here directly.”

  Rhys shifted his weight, and Dylan saved him this time.

  “Look, Melody’s grandmother let her wear her blue Frozen shirt, like you let me wear my dinosaur shirt,” Dylan said with a note of relief in his voice.

  “I told you it was okay to wear a shirt with a picture on it,” Owen said.

  The way Renee smiled at Owen and Dylan reawakened the longing he’d battled earlier. He could deal with the frequent contact he had to have with Renee if he could limit it to contact as a family unit with others around, rather than one-on-one adult contact.

  “Miss Renee,” Owen asked, “did you get your doghouse painted?”

  “No.” She bit her lip. “We’re not getting the dog.”

  Dylan rocked forward on the balls of his feet. “Then what are you going to do with the doghouse we built? Can we have it in case we get a dog?”

  Renee laughed before he could reprimand Dylan. “We’re not going to get Precious. Her owner is going to be able to keep her, after all. My sister and I are go
ing to go to the shelter and pick out a different dog.”

  “Can we come with you?” Dylan asked.

  “And paint the doghouse?” Owen asked.

  “Guys,” Rhys warned. “You’re not supposed to invite yourself places.” Spending another afternoon at her place wouldn’t further his idea of keeping their contact to group things.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  He held his breath for her to continue, but Owen jumped in. “We can’t paint tomorrow because Dad has to work, ʼcause he took today off. But we can next Saturday.”

  “Maybe we should check that with your dad.”

  He released the breath. She was passing the ball to him. He searched her eyes for an indication of her leanings and came back clueless. “Yes, we can finish the doghouse next Saturday.” He had agreed to do the whole job, after all.

  “Can I paint, too?” Melody asked.

  Yes. Melody and her grandmother. More people to distract Rhys from Renee.

  “Sure, sweetie. I’ll talk to your grandmother when I drop you off at home.” Renee faced Rhys. “I have some things to do that morning, so why don’t you all come over about one in the afternoon?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “And then can we come with you to get your dog?” Dylan asked.

  “That’ll be another day,” Renee said.

  Rhys wet his lips. From Dylan’s wide grin, his son had taken that as a yes. He should suggest they make the dog adoption a Bridges activity, during a regular Thursday meeting time. He could ask Pastor Connor if they could use the church van.

  The entrance gate opened, interrupting the conversation. The people around them began moving into the park.

  “I wonder what’s keeping the others,” Renee said.

  As if in answer, both of their cell phones pinged with a text from Karen.

  Accident on the Northway. We’re nearing the Great Escape exit.

  A few minutes later, the rest of The Kids Place contingency arrived. Once everyone’s admission fee had been paid, Karen Hill gathered the group and explained that the parents and special friends were free to take their kids off on their own or to stay with the teachers’ groups. “We’ll meet back here at two o’clock,” she said.