Losing Gabriel

by Lurlene McDaniel

  He gathered up the burgers and hot dogs, set the tray on a food table covered with bowls of salads, beans, chips, and cut up fruit, and called everyone in. Later, when the sun was below the horizon and darkness spreading across the sky, Lani handed out the gooey cupcakes, placing one with three sparklers in front of Gabe.

  But before she could light the sparklers, Gabe shouted, “Sing Lady! Git-tar. Sing song!”

  Sloan, sitting back in the shadows on the outer fringe of the group, looked as if she wanted to bolt, and for a moment Dawson thought she might. He tensed. Gabe wouldn’t stop begging, so with a cast of his gaze, Dawson gave Sloan permission. “How about it, Sing Lady? Want to lead us in ‘Happy Birthday’?”

  She scrambled to retrieve her guitar from the house. When Sloan returned, Lani, her fingers trembling, lit the sparklers. Sloan strummed the strings, and Gabe’s smile broke open. Others joined in singing the words, but all Dawson heard was the clear, distinct sound of Sloan Quentin’s voice rising like smoke into the night sky.

  CHAPTER 36

  “You sure you can handle all this?” were the first words out of Melody’s mouth after Lani outlined her fall schedule. They were dining downtown in Mel’s favorite restaurant, talking and nibbling on a bowl of crunchy rice noodles while they waited for their food.

  “Of course I’m sure. I’m in the classroom during the mornings Gabe’s in school. I’ll pick him up at noon, study while he naps, and leave when Dawson comes home. He wants me to stay on the job, and there’s no way I won’t.” He’d asked the day after Gabe’s birthday party, and she’d quickly agreed. She would also have to fit in her hospital work toward Step-Prep credits whenever she could, but she didn’t mention it to her sister.

  “And two nights a week, you’ll stay late so Dawson can take a course that his company’s paying for. Plus, you’ll keep working weekends at Bellmeade.” Lani had already told this to Melody. “What about sleeping? Set aside any time for that and any social life?”

  Lani drummed her fingers on the tablecloth. “It isn’t a problem, Mel. Just back off.”

  “But the real reason you’re twisting your life into a pretzel is so that you can continue to care for Gabe. Wasn’t this supposed to be only a summer job?”

  “You know how I feel about Gabe; plus, starting preschool will be an adjustment. He needs continuity.”

  “What about his mother? Isn’t she still at the house? Why can’t she pick up some of the slack?”

  Lani glanced around for their waitress, hoping she’d rescue her from Melody’s third degree. Giving up, she pushed back into the booth. “Sloan works too, and I’ve told you, Dawson doesn’t want Sloan left alone with Gabe.”

  “I met her at the party, Lani. She hardly seems like a monster. In fact, Gabe acted as if he likes her.”

  Mel’s evaluation didn’t brighten Lani’s mood. Truth was, Gabe did run down to the playroom if he heard the strum of the Sing Lady’s guitar. Lani began to think of Sloan as the Pied Piper of Strings. “It goes to history. Dawson doesn’t totally trust her.”

  “Is he afraid she’ll run off with their son?”

  Lani sidestepped the question with “Just last week, Sloan played with a kitten in the park, and when Gabe got around the kitten’s hair on her clothes, he started wheezing and coughing. I had to use his rescue inhaler. Sloan panicked. She shouldn’t be left alone and in charge of Gabe. We never know when he’ll run into a trigger. His bedroom is full of little stuffed animals he’s been given from the time he was a baby by well-meaning people and before his asthma was diagnosed. They’re all stored on high shelves in plastic bags so he can see them, but he can’t play with them, because stuffed toys get dusty and Gabe reacts to dust. His favorite ‘stuffed’ toy is a dog made out of leather his grandfather gave him. Doesn’t hold dust. I wipe it clean.”

  Melody rested her elbows on the table, her chin on fingers woven together to make a bridge, and Lani continued. “I’ve tried to explain to you that asthma is a very serious condition. I’m Gabe’s nurse. He’s only three, and I can’t walk away from him just now. Don’t you see?”

  “My apologies, Lani. I forget that nursing is your career and something you’re passionate about. It’s as important to you as law is to me. If you ever need help, call me.”

  Lani relaxed, believing that her sister finally “got it,” got her. However complicated her feelings were about Dawson, Lani was Gabe’s first line of defense with his asthma when Dawson wasn’t around.

  Melody cleared her throat. “Except I won’t mess with that horse. I draw the line at mucking stalls and hugging your horse.”

  Lani laughed, was still laughing when the petite server appeared, balancing plates of food and bowls of rice and placing them on the table. The aromas of sesame-soy beef, oyster sauce, and tangy sweet and sour chicken made Lani’s mouth water. “Deal!” she said, and dug into her food.

  Sloan sat on the patio drinking beer and gazing up at the stars spread like pinpricks of cold light on a black canvas. The moon was waxing, on its way to becoming full and bright. September was gone, October half gone, and autumn coolness had crowded out summer heat. She felt restless tonight, restless and lonely, and even though she’d pulled a double shift that afternoon at the restaurant today, she wasn’t a bit sleepy.

  She worked six nights a week now, four at the restaurant, two in a sports bar, where the tips were better. Life at the house had fallen into a rhythm, with Gabe the main event, Lani and Dawson the supporting cast, and herself a walk-on player. Any extra time, Sloan spent writing music and sometimes entertaining Gabe. She tried never to think of Gabe as half hers. He wasn’t. The boy belonged totally to Dawson and partly to Lani. Sloan struggled against her growing attachment to him, told herself she had no stake in him, and her promise to move on as soon as she could was one she planned to keep.

  She missed the band, the singing, the all-nighters of arranging songs and jamming, and wondered what Bobby and Hal were doing, hoped that Sy was faring well under his father’s financial tyranny. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life waiting tables and squirreling away tip money but didn’t want to connect with them again either. They were in her past, along with the crazy plans she’d had of becoming a singing star.

  “Sloan? You all right?”

  Dawson’s voice startled her from the doorway. She glanced over her shoulder. “Boss didn’t need me tonight.” Usually he was gone when she got up in the morning and she was gone when he came home. Their paths rarely crossed. “You’re getting in late.”

  “I went to the library to study after class. If I come straight home, I’ll fall into bed and not study.”

  “Want a beer? I’m on my third, but I have more.” She held up a longneck.

  He had sent Lani home when he walked through the front door. She’d given him a quick rundown of the day, then rushed out because she had a paper to write. He didn’t know how she stuck to her schedule but was grateful she’d come up with the plan for staying on the job with Gabe. She was indispensable to him. Lani…he missed having any time alone with her. The beer Sloan held up was tempting. The long day had caught up to him. He stepped out on the patio, placing Gabe’s monitor on a small side table so that he could watch the black-and-white image of his sleeping son.

  He dragged a chair next to Sloan’s. “How are you doing?”

  “Okay.”

  He recognized her dejected mood. “I, um, hope Gabe isn’t too noisy in the mornings when you’re trying to sleep in.” Over the time she’d lived there, he had mellowed toward her because she’d kept her word about staying clear of Gabe. Except when she practiced the guitar.

  “He loves to listen to her play and sing,” Lani had told Dawson. “No harm.”

  “I never hear a thing in the mornings. You remember how hard I sleep—” She stopped because she hadn’t meant to bring up their shared past. To cover her slip, she took a long drink from her beer, stared up at the stars. The night was lovely, cool and crisp. Sloan didn’t w
ant to be alone. “So how about telling me about my mother, how she made your life miserable. I know she made mine miserable.”

  He recalled telling her it was a long story, and since she’d asked, he figured this was as good a time as any. “You sure?” She nodded. “Gabe was home from the hospital for about a week when LaDonna showed up looking for you. I told her you’d split, but she wouldn’t believe me, wanted to search the house. Course I told her no.”

  “Imagine that, LaDonna thinking I was hiding from her.” The words dripped with sarcasm. “Did she ask to see the baby?”

  “Eventually. Franklin let her sit on the porch and hold Gabe while we sat with her.” Dawson remembered how LaDonna had held the blue wrapped bundle away from her body, as if it were a foreign object. “Gabe slept through the whole visit.”

  “Did she ask for money?” The question was blunt, but Sloan understood what motivated the woman, and it was rarely anything altruistic.

  “Not at first. But a few weeks later she showed up demanding we respect her rights as Gabe’s grandmother. She’d been drinking and was wobbly. Said she hired a lawyer to ‘get what was hers.’ That’s when she asked for money.” He recalled her standing on the front porch spewing a tirade about them trying to take away her natural rights and that it would cost them for her to sign Gabe over completely. “Dad hired a lawyer too, and it turns out that in Tennessee, grandparents don’t have many rights when there’s a stable biological parent involved. We offered her supervised visitation rights.”

  “She didn’t take the deal, did she?”

  “No. After she hit our front lawn on a couple of nights, screaming and yelling and waking up the neighbors, we had to get a restraining order. After a while she stopped coming. I drove out to the trailer park once just to check, and she was gone.”

  Sloan raised her beer in a toast. “Good riddance.”

  Dawson hurt for Sloan, for the damage to her childhood from the alcoholic mother who had all but left her to grow up on her own. Sloan couldn’t help who she’d come from. “You aren’t like her, Sloan. You got away from her, and you made it out of that bad place where she tried to keep you.” He wasn’t talking about the trailer park, but about LaDonna’s life spiral.

  “Have I? Sometimes I’m not so sure.” Her head spun as she pushed against emotions she didn’t want, a past she couldn’t change, and music she had lost. She stood abruptly, and so did he. “Time for bed.” She stepped forward and stumbled. Dawson caught her, and when he did, she burrowed into him, flung her arms around his neck, and buried her mouth into his.

  Shock, like from an electrical wire, shot through him, and then fire, a backdraft of oxygen-starved flames. He reeled from her heat. Her mouth was hot, her tongue cold from the beer. They were both breathing hard when she broke the kiss. “Stay with me tonight.” Her voice a cracked whisper. Her hands secure around his neck. “I remember how things used to be…in the beginning…”

  He remembered too. Every cell in his body remembered. It would be easy, so very easy, like falling backward into deep familiar water. In his mind’s eye, he saw Gabe’s face, and from other shadows, the incandescent smile of a brown-eyed girl who mattered to him. He gulped air, reached up, and untangled Sloan’s arms, catching her wrists but keeping her close. “No.”

  His refusal rocked her. Desperation to escape loneliness drove her to try again. “Just for a little while. I need you. It…doesn’t have to mean anything.”

  Still holding her wrists, he dipped his forehead down to touch hers. “And that’s the point, isn’t it? It should mean something.” He released her gently and stepped away.

  Sloan watched him pick up the monitor, step through the doorway, and recede into the dark.

  CHAPTER 37

  The next morning, Dawson stared bleary-eyed into his shaving mirror. He hadn’t slept much. Even the needle-fine cold water spray of the shower had done little to clear his mind of the fiery moments he’d spent with Sloan on the patio the night before. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t wanted to take her to bed. His body had wanted her, and there had been a time in his life when he’d never have walked away. But in the deciding moment, the images that popped into his mind had stopped him. Gabe. Lani. Two people who mattered more than sex with Sloan.

  “Way to go, Berke,” he grumbled to his reflection. He swept the razor down his cheek, along his jaw, and over his chin. “You have two women around you day and night and you can’t touch either one.” The razor nicked and blood appeared. Great, he groused. He snatched a square of toilet paper from the roll and stuck it on the cut.

  A glance at the digital clock on the bathroom counter showed that he was running late. Where was Gabe? Typically the boy was sitting on the side of the tub watching Dawson’s shaving ritual, but not this morning. “Gabe! Are you up?”

  No answer. Dawson shook his razor under running water, wiped the remaining lather off his face, and went down the hall to Gabe’s room, where he found his son sitting on the floor, playing with his collection of dinosaurs. “What are you doing, buddy? Get dressed. You’re going to be late for school.”

  Gabe ignored him. “No want school. Gabe stay home.”

  His uncharacteristic reluctance surprised Dawson. After the first few days of adjustment, Gabe eagerly went into the classroom. He talked constantly about his teacher, the other kids, the games, and endless art projects. Wearily, Dawson crouched in front of his son. “You like school. Pick out a shirt and get dressed.”

  Gabe continued fiddling with the plastic animals. Dawson stood, went to the bureau, and pulled out a long-sleeved Titans football jersey, one of Gabe’s favorites, and a pair of pull-on jeans, and tossed them into the boy’s lap. “How about wearing this?”

  Gabe wadded up the shirt and threw it across the room. “No like.”

  Patience ran out. Dawson lifted his son and set him on his feet. “Get dressed now, son.” Gabe stuck out his lip. “What’s your problem? Get. Dressed. Now.”

  Gabe refused to look at his dad, but he shimmed out of his pj’s and retrieved his shirt, all the while acting like a rebellious prisoner with a hateful warden. Baffled, Dawson shook his head. He’d thought the “terrible twos” were behind them. With a sigh, he held out a peace offering. “How about we go through the drive-through and get you a special breakfast before school?”

  Gabe shrugged halfheartedly, but he continued to dress.

  Sloan hustled around the playroom gathering up clothes for a load of laundry, her mind full of what had happened last night between her and Dawson. Or more accurately, what hadn’t happened. What had she been thinking? What had gotten into her? The beer. Obviously. But more than that—harsh memories of growing up, of her now total dependence on Dawson’s generosity, of a little boy she was becoming far too attached to, of her in-the-toilet life so removed from dreams of a singing career she couldn’t recover—all had turned into a perfect storm, and she’d tripped and fallen into its vortex. She had screwed up. Dawson hadn’t wanted her. He could throw her out. She wouldn’t be surprised if he did.

  She slammed down the lid of the washer, turned the dial, and heard the machine hum into service. She didn’t have to be at work until four, but she knew she couldn’t hang around the house until then. The walls were closing in. She needed to get out and wanted to leave before Lani showed up with Gabe from school.

  Sloan showered and dressed quickly, considered her options. The holidays were coming. Maybe she could use today to apply for a third job. Stores hired extra employees for the holidays and the extra money could put her over the top and toward locating her own place sooner. She pulled up her phone calendar, entered a reminder for December: Must move before Christmas.

  Once upstairs, she saw that it was raining. A perfect match for her mood. She scrambled for an umbrella, looking around the quiet kitchen, knowing that Gabe would come bounding through the front door with Lani soon. She needed to leave before the imagined noise of smothering normalcy drowned her, and hurriedly jogged to the car parked
in the driveway.

  “How you doing, Gabe?” Lani asked cheerfully. The boy was in a weird mood, withdrawn and quiet, not at all his usual self. He’d hardly said a word on the drive home and only picked at his lunch.

  “Okay.”

  “How was school today? What did you do?”

  She saw his shoulders rise and fall in a shrug.

  She went to the kitchen banquette, where he rested on his knees, hunched over the tabletop, coloring. “I didn’t know Spidey wore black. When did he start wearing black?”

  Gabe ignored her question, kept a heavy hand on his black crayon. Maybe Gabe was getting sick. The thought galvanized her. “How about we do a check on your peak flow meter.” She hurried to grab the unit that measured airflow in his lungs. He did the test three times and each time his flow registered well. He returned to coloring, his mood unimproved. She put the meter away, went to the fridge and cupboards, and started pulling out baking supplies. “How about we make a batch of chocolate chip cookies? I’ll get the batter mixed up and you can dump in the chips.” The ritual was familiar, one Gabe loved. Today he only shrugged.

  Totally baffled by his lack of interest, Lani started the process.

  “I see Daddy kissing Sing Lady,” Gabe said.

  Lani froze. She slid Gabe a look. He was bent over the coloring book, his black crayon moving over another page. “When?” She hated herself for asking.

  “Last nighttime.”

  “You mean you saw them in a dream.” Her heart was hammering now.