A White Picket Fence

by Laura Branchflower

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. She couldn’t show him. It was too humiliating.

  “Show me,” he repeated. He gripped her hips and slid her off his lap and onto the couch beside him.

  She shakily came to her feet, undoing her jeans and pushing them down over her butt. Her back was to him as she tugged down the right side of her panties to reveal the five tiny scars approximately a quarter inch in length running down the center of her right butt cheek.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it kind of made me feel better.”

  One of his hands clasped the side of her hip, his fingers curling around her exposed skin, while the index finger of his other hand traced the scars. “What did you use?”

  “A tack.”

  “When was the last time?”

  “I don’t know. At least ten months ago.”

  “Do you ever think about doing it again?”

  “Never.” She breathed in as his finger continued to caress her skin. “I didn’t want to do it. I told my grandma, and that’s why I saw the psychiatrist.”

  He tugged up her panties and then her jeans before pulling her back onto his lap, his arms wrapping around her from behind. “You don’t ever have to be embarrassed with me,” he said. He cradled her in his arms for minutes, occasionally running his lips over the back of her neck. “I could really fall for you, Hunter, you know that?”

  She ran one of her hands over the arms encircling her. “I hope so, because I’ve already fallen for you.”

  The arms around her tightened momentarily, and then he was turning her in his lap until she was once again facing him, her thighs on either side of his hips. He framed her face between his hands as he brought his lips to hers. They kissed for minutes. When he finally broke the kiss, dragging his mouth from hers, they were both breathing heavily. “I need you to promise me something,” he whispered against her ear, his voice sounding deeper than normal. “No drugs. I can’t handle you doing drugs.”

  The third day after Knight’s arrival, Lina made it through the night without the assistance of pills or a middle-of-the-night phone call to Nick or Phil. “We did it,” she whispered as she scratched the furry head staring up at her from beside the bed. She’d woken up at 2:00 a.m., sitting up in the bed terrified, but instead of reaching for the phone, she’d forced herself to go to him.

  She’d sat down beside his dog bed, trying to catch her breath, running her hand over his coat as she concentrated on her breathing, and telling herself what she knew Phil would if she called him, to breathe in and out deeply, to imagine herself at a beach with seagulls crying overhead as she breathed in the sea air. The first two nights it hadn’t worked, and she’d ended up calling Phil and taking a pill, but on the third night, probably because she was starting to care about the dog, his presence calmed her, and ten minutes later she was climbing back into her bed and falling asleep.

  “It means I can sleep without someone beside me,” Lina explained to Adele when they met later that day. “Do you know how freeing that is?”

  “But now you have to be with a dog? How are we going to travel? You can’t just bring a dog to a Caribbean resort.”

  “He didn’t calm me down. I mean, he was there, but I calmed myself down. It was always Phil’s voice or lately medication, but last night, for the first time, I did it.”

  “So we can go to the Caribbean without the dog?”

  “What are you talking about? I never said anything about going to the Caribbean with you.”

  “Not now, but this winter. We can go to one of those singles resorts. Oh my God, we’ll have so much fun.”

  “I’m not really in the mood to have fun.”

  “What do you mean? I thought you were doing okay without him.”

  “It’s been nine days. I think I’m doing well. I just…” She sighed. “I feel unsettled. I have this underlying anxiety that won’t go away.”

  “That’s normal.” Adele covered her hand. “Totally normal. You’ve been with him your whole adult life. Your world has been upended. You just need to give it a little time.”

  “My whole life revolved around him. Taking care of him was my main focal point, and without him I feel a bit lost. It’s like my center is gone. There’s this huge void.”

  “Then come to work for us. You are so good at staging my houses. You may as well make money at it, and it would get you out of the house.”

  “Dad made you get a job?” Logan slammed down his spoon and roughly pushed his cereal bowl away from himself, causing milk to spill on the table.

  “No, honey. He wouldn’t make me get a job. I got a job because I wanted one.” It was the following morning, and Lina had just told him about her new position.

  “Why?” His eyes were narrowed with suspicion.

  “Because staging homes is fun, and I’ll get to work with Adele. Plus, I’ll finally be using my education. You know my degree is in interior design, right?”

  “Who’s going to drive us around if you’re working?”

  “It’s part-time, and I’ll only do it when you’re in school. Nothing will change for you. The only reason you’ll know I’m working is because I told you.”

  “What if I’m sick one day?”

  “Then I won’t work. I would never let it encroach on my time with you guys.”

  “How much are they going to pay you?” Katie asked, joining them at the table.

  “Good question.” Lina laughed. “I have no idea. I guess we’ll talk about that when I go in.”

  “No texting at the table,” Logan said, looking pointedly at Katie’s cell phone.

  Katie continued tapping on her phone. “You don’t seriously expect me to listen to you, do you?”

  “We’re not supposed to use our phones at the table,” Logan said.

  If Logan didn’t look so serious, Lina would have laughed. He was sitting at the head of the table, in the chair normally occupied by his father, clearly trying to be the man of the house as he continued to frown at Katie.

  “Considering you don’t even like him anymore, why are you trying to be him? It’s weird,” Katie said.

  “I’m not trying to be him. I’m just trying to keep you from being rude!” he said before stomping from the room.

  “Katie.” Lina sighed. “Can’t you try to be a little nicer? You know he’s having a hard time.”

  “If ‘nicer’ means letting my little brother tell me what to do, no.” She was again tapping away on her phone. “Don’t forget, I’m taking my driver’s test Thursday.”

  “I have it on my calendar,” Lina assured her before taking a sip of coffee.

  “I also need you to make me an appointment at the gynecologist so I can go on the pill.”

  “The pill?” Lina repeated, staring across the table at her. “Why? Why do you need to go on the pill?”

  Katie lifted her eyes from her phone. “So I don’t get pregnant.”

  Lina rubbed her forehead, not mentally prepared to have this conversation with Katie at 6:45 on a Tuesday morning, but at the same time knowing she couldn’t put it off. The last thing she needed was Katie pregnant. “I will make you an appointment at the gynecologist, but that doesn’t mean I’m telling you it’s okay to have sex. In fact, I think it’s the opposite of okay. You’re only sixteen years old. That’s not old enough to—”

  “You were fifteen.”

  Lina felt a rush of heat in her face. “Why would you think that?”

  “Grandma told me.”

  37

  “You told my sixteen-year-old daughter I had sex when I was fifteen? What were you thinking?” Lina rushed out as soon as her mother answered her cell phone.

  “Oh, relax, Lina. It’s not like I made it up. It’s true.”

  “She didn’t need to know! Now she probably thinks it’s okay to have sex.”

  “It is okay to have sex. It’s natural.”

  Lina covered her eyes with her hand and mentally counted to ten. Her mot
her was impossible. “Please don’t tell her anything else about my childhood without clearing it with me first.”

  “She asked me to get her birth control pills, so instead of taking her myself, which I knew you would frown upon, I encouraged her to talk to you. When she claimed you were too conservative, the subject of your own sexuality came up. It was a natural progression. And my advice to you is not to fight this. If a teenager decides they want to have sex, there is no stopping them.”

  “How could you possible know that? You never tried to stop us.”

  “That’s because I knew it would be a wasted effort. Just take her to the gynecologist and let nature takes its course.”

  Lina combed her free hand back through her hair. This was insane. “Who is she planning to have sex with? She doesn’t even have a boyfriend.”

  “Oh, I’m not so sure that’s true,” Alice said. “She asked me what to do with the components used in a spell once the spell had worked.”

  “Worked,” Lina repeated. She dropped down into a chair. It was the boy with the tattoos.

  “Don’t judge him without knowing him,” Nick told her later that night. “Tattoos and a lack of college ambitions aren’t enough to discourage a relationship. Katie is a smart girl.”

  “But sixteen seems too young to have sex.”

  “I agree, and I’m certainly not condoning a sexual relationship, but as long as she’s happy and you don’t see signs of increased anxiety or depression, you should let the relationship go forward. Show her you trust her judgment, and before long she’ll be confiding in you instead of your mother.”

  “How come you always know what to say? I was upset all day, and in the matter of a minute, you made everything so clear.”

  “I’d love to take credit, but I think given time, you would have come to the same conclusion.”

  “I don’t know if that’s true.”

  “Start trusting your own instincts. You may surprise yourself.”

  Lina was halfway through the drive home from Logan’s bus stop the following day when she realized he hadn’t spoken since his mumbled greeting after getting in the car. “How was school?”

  “Fine.” He was sunk low in his seat and staring out the window.

  “Sweetie, is something wrong?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t make the all-star team.”

  “The all-star team?” she began in confusion and then realized what he was talking about. He hadn’t made the team he had tried out for over the summer. “That’s okay. You’ll make it next year.”

  “That’s the best I’ve ever played. I’m just not good enough,” he said in a voice so downtrodden it broke Lina’s heart.

  “You did your best. That’s all you can do. Coaches aren’t perfect. They’re not always right.” She patted his thigh. “I know you’re disappointed and it seems like a huge deal right now, but I promise you, it isn’t.”

  “I’m never going to be as good as he was, am I?”

  Her heart sunk. “Oh, Logan, you’re not your father and you’re not supposed to be.”

  “That means no.”

  “It means you shouldn’t be comparing yourself to him. You’re your own unique person. You’re kind and honest and—”

  “I don’t care about that stuff. I wanted to make the team. He would have. At my age, he would have made the team.”

  “It was one tryout. You can’t let it define you. If you really want to be on that team, you can work hard and make it next year.”

  “Maybe his new son will be as good as him.”

  She took her eyes off the road momentarily and looked at his profile. “Don’t say things like that.”

  “Why not? It’s true. I know I’m a disappointment to him.”

  “That’s not true! Your father is very proud of you.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He turned his body towards the window, effectively putting his back to her. “I don’t want to be his son anyway.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Yes I do.”

  Lina waited until she was getting into bed to call Phil. “I’ve never seen him so down. I don’t know what to say to him.”

  “I’m taking them out to dinner tomorrow night. I’ll try to get him to talk then.”

  “Don’t make him feel bad about not making the team. He’s upset enough.”

  “Do you really think you need to tell me that? Are you redefining me completely? Am I an insensitive father now too?”

  “I didn’t say that, but you’ve always been too hard on him about lacrosse.”

  “I push him to meet his potential—that’s what I’m supposed to do. It’s what my father did to me, and that’s what he’ll do to his son one day.”

  “He feels like you’re disappointed in him.”

  “That’s not true. He’s feeling sorry for himself. You baby him too much.”

  “I’m his mother. That’s what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Have you ever heard the expression ‘mama’s boy’? Is that what you want him to be?”

  “No, but I don’t want him to be sad.”

  “He’s had a tough couple of weeks,” Nick said when Lina took advantage of the fact that Logan and Katie were dining with Phil and joined him for dinner in Baltimore. “I didn’t realize he didn’t make the team. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Brian made it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, at least one of them is happy. It’s hard seeing him so down. I rarely see his smile anymore.”

  “I know I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but continue to encourage him to talk about his feelings. Katie too. That’s critical right now.”

  “You’re going to have to let me pay for dinner. You seem to have to be in psychiatrist mode all the time with me lately.”

  “Not true. I’m myself with you.” He leaned back in his chair as a waiter delivered their drinks. “So, this Knight of yours seems to be working out.”

  Lina smiled. “He’s a Godsend. Last night I didn’t wake up once. I had a dream-free night without medication for the first time since Phil left.”

  “These dreams—they’re flashbacks to whatever happened to you at sixteen, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, or variations of it anyway.” She reached for her water glass. “And no, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You’re going to eventually trust me enough to tell me what happened to you, aren’t you?”

  “It’s not a matter of trust. I trust you. I just don’t see the point in talking about it. It was twenty-some years ago. Why rehash it?”

  “It’s still affecting your sleep.”

  “No, that’s not what was affecting it. It was awful and traumatic, but I’m over it. I’ve been over it for a very long time. But somehow in the process of getting over it, I decided I needed Phil. That’s what I need help with—getting over him—not something that happened over two decades ago.”

  It was 9:30 p.m. when Lina turned into her driveway, an hour later than she’d planned to be out. She was surprised to see the SUV Phil was driving parked in the garage. Katie, lounging on the family room couch watching television, was the lone occupant of the lower level of the house.

  “Where’s your father?”

  “Upstairs with Logan.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  She shrugged, not looking away from the television. “Logan was crying.”

  38

  Lina heard the low timbre of Phil’s voice as she reached the rec room outside Logan’s bedroom, and she hesitated at his door, debating whether to interrupt. “No,” Phil was saying, “you don’t have a right to judge me. You are fourteen years old. When you are forty-two and have lived a life mistake free, you can say whatever you’d like to me.”

  “I’ll never do what you did,” Logan said.

  “I hope that’s true.”

  “It is,” he said firmly. “Are you going to move in with her, the woman who is pregnant?”

  “No. I’
m never going to live with her. I don’t love her. I love your mom.”

  “Then why did you have sex with her?”

  “I was weak and not thinking. I was wrong, Logan, but I can’t undo it. There’s no redo. Every action we take has consequences. I’m paying for what I did, and I may have lost your mother, but I’m not going to lose you. I’m your father and there is no undoing that. God decided that a long time ago.”

  “You’re going to be that baby’s father.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to see him? Like he’s your son?”

  “He is going to be my son. Do you think God would want me to turn my back on him?”

  “I don’t know,” Logan said so softly Lina had to step closer to the door to hear him. “I don’t want him to be your son.”

  “Look at me,” Phil said. “Logan, look at me. Now, I want you to listen to me very carefully, okay? Are you listening?”

  “Yes,” Logan croaked, and Lina covered her mouth when she realized he was crying.

  “The first time I looked into your eyes was one of the most powerful moments of my life. I was in the delivery room, and you were less than a few minutes old when one of the nurses handed you to me. They say babies can’t really see, but I swear you could see me. You looked into my eyes and just stared up at me. You recognized me. You already knew I was your father. No one will ever replace you or take up a bigger part of my heart. You will always be my firstborn son. Do you understand me?”

  Lina felt a lump forming in her throat as she went back downstairs, her thoughts instantly transported back in time.

  “It’s a boy,” the doctor announced.

  Lina closed her eyes, the words barely penetrating her consciousness after a grueling eighteen-hour labor. When she opened her eyes again, she saw Phil cradling their son in his arms, tears filling his eyes, and then he was beside her, leaning down and meeting her lips for a soft kiss.

  “Thank you, baby,” he whispered before kissing her again. “He’s perfect. You’re perfect. Our family is perfect.” He leaned his forehead against hers. “You make me so happy.”