Sugar Springs

by Kim Law

  When Kendra jumped from her chair and held her hands out in front of her, Boss lifted his head from where he rested next to her, and Howard gave a sniff before darting out of the room. Cody waited, wondering what she would do next. He hadn’t spent a lot of time around kids, and these two had spoken more words in the last ten minutes than he’d heard since his first job out of school. He’d signed on with a small office where one of the assistants often experienced babysitting troubles. She’d brought her two toddlers to work more often than not. But toddlers’ energy had nothing on that of preteens.

  “Do you know anyone who is double jointed?” Kendra proceeded to twist her thumb back until it lay flush against her wrist. Candy joined her, folding fingertips of one hand down at a perfect ninety-degree angle. “Very few people around here can do this, but me and Candy can. Our mom and Grandma can’t, though. I don’t know where we get it.”

  Finally here was something he could relate to. “You know,” he said, twisting his own thumb backward, “the medical term is hypermobility. You don’t actually have extra joints.”

  “You have it, too!” Candy’s eyes widened as she brought up her second hand, flattening the tips the same as the first. “It freaks people out when we do this.”

  Cody laughed out loud, then stood and adjusted both knees so they bent backward.

  “Wow.” Both girls edged closer. “We can’t do that one, but we can do our arms.”

  All three proceeded to hold their arms out, bending their elbows in the wrong direction before collapsing into their chairs, laughing until winded. Cody swiped at his eyes. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d laughed enough to bring himself to tears. Maybe he should give these kids a chance. It wasn’t their fault their mother wasn’t who she’d led him to believe.

  Once the laughter calmed, Kendra nudged her sister as if reminding her to do something. Leery of what they were up to, he brought up the subject that had so recently turned his memories upside down. “I understand you two young ladies will soon become official teenagers.”

  Four brown eyes glowed at him. “We are having the best birthday party ever.”

  Candy cut in. “Better than Sadie Evans’s party even. Hers was two months ago. She had a massive sleepover, but it was only girls. Ours is in twenty-five days, and we’re having a real dance.”

  “You should come.” As soon as the words were out of Kendra’s mouth, Candy clamped down on her sister’s wrist and shot her a look he thought might mean “I’m the oldest, so let me do it.” Candy had already explained how she’d been pulled from her mother’s stomach over four minutes before Kendra.

  Shrugging off Candy’s hand, Kendra ignored whatever silent command had been issued. “We sometimes get a second ‘birthday party,’” she air quoted. “If you’re still here, maybe you can celebrate with us again. Of course, Mom may not do it this year. It was only started as a joke anyway.”

  It had been hard keeping up with all the subject changes, but they’d finally lost him. “A second”—he mimicked her air quotes—“‘birthday party?’” He rested his forearms on his spread knees. “Why?”

  Candy shot her sister a glare he read loud and clear. Shut up! “It was my idea, actually. You see, when we found out, uh—”

  “Three years ago—”

  “Yeah.” Candy elbowed her sister back into the chair. “When we found out three years ago that we’d been preemies—you know what preemies are, right?”

  Her innocence was priceless. She reminded him of Lee Ann when they’d first met. “Yeah, we learned about preemies in vet school.”

  “Stupid,” Kendra mumbled and made a face to the back of her sister’s head.

  “Yeah, well, of course. Anyway, when we learned we were preemies, we told Mom that we should get another celebration on the day we were supposed to be born.”

  Lee Ann hadn’t mentioned the girls were born early. How early could they have been if she’d been pregnant when he’d left? He nodded as if their words made perfect sense. “And your mother agreed, huh? So when’s the second big day?”

  Kendra was finished being quiet. She pushed her sister’s arm out of the way and instituted hers firmly in front. “January thirty-first.”

  The outside world closed in, and Cody suddenly could focus on only a very narrow piece of information. January thirty-first. Lee Ann had found him with Stephanie the last week of April. Maybe she hadn’t actually cheated on him until she’d caught him with Stephanie.

  But then, why didn’t she clear herself instead of letting him believe the worst?

  “And so, since you have nowhere else to go”—Cody realized Kendra had rattled onto a different subject but had no idea what he’d missed—“we think you should come to our house Thursday for Thanksgiving. We and Mom and Grandma like to invite anybody who doesn’t have family to share it with, and you didn’t come with family.”

  His head spun. Lee Ann possibly had not cheated on him, and now her daughters were giving him the perfect opportunity to get close enough to confront her.

  Candy huffed and mumbled under her breath, “I was going to ask him.”

  “We eat at six and hope you can make it. Everybody deserves a second chance.”

  “She means everybody deserves to spend Thanksgiving with someone.” Big sister shot another one of those looks, and this time Kendra quieted.

  Finished, both girls sat back, and he could once again hear the creaks of the house turned office. They waited for an answer, but his mind reeled as he soaked in everything they’d just said. Thanksgiving...a second chance?

  He took in their identical innocent expressions, their long brown hair pulled back to accentuate high cheekbones that would one day drive every boy in town crazy, and brown eyes twinkling as if fighting the urge to glow in mischief, and had a feeling they were doing more than thinking of someone who might be alone for the holidays. Were they looking to set their mom up? When he turned the idea over in his head, he knew there were worse people to be set up with. If he was in the market for that sort of thing.

  But he was leaving soon. Starting something he couldn’t finish might not only hurt Lee Ann again but possibly her daughters as well. He found the idea of hurting these two girls as distasteful as doing the same to their mother. Somehow, in the few minutes they’d spent in his office, they’d burrowed under his heart a little.

  “I don’t know. I appreciate the offer, but—”

  “Wait.” Candy held out her hand, palm up, and he stopped talking. Funny how they already seemed to have him under control. Something they’d picked up from their mother, no doubt. No matter what reputation he’d had around town, he’d always found himself unable to say no to Lee Ann and thus did whatever she instructed.

  As Candy sat there, Kendra stooped over and dug through her backpack, pulling out books, loose papers, a pen that skittered across the floor. Finally she latched on to a small notebook and flipped the cover open. As she leafed through the pages, two pictures fluttered out to land on the floor in front of him. Bending over, he scooped up the squares, expecting to see some boy she was sweet on, but what he found were two pictures of Stephanie smiling back at him. His mouth dried.

  “Got it!” Kendra held up a list. “We were afraid you might say no, so we thought we’d let you know who else is coming.”

  “You see, we’ve heard that some people aren’t going to bring their pets in if they’re sick, because they think you’re a hoodlum or something.” Candy rolled her eyes in complete mystification. “Anyway, according to the rumors, one of the people who refuses to come—even though his dog has diabetes and Mom says needs his sugar checked again because he hasn’t been keeping up the shots—is coming to the house Thursday.”

  Kendra wore an overly innocent smile. “So don’t you want to meet him and show him you aren’t a hoodlum so he’ll get his dog the help he needs?”

  Oh, these girls were good. They figured out what they wanted and didn’t just come up with one plan but also a plan B. He liked r
esourcefulness in people.

  “So what do you say?” They both sat back again, angel expressions and blessedly silent.

  He raised his chin at the list clutched in Kendra’s hand. “Can I see that?”

  She passed it over, and she was right. On the list he saw not only the person he’d already heard about whose dog was struggling, but also someone else who was circulating rumors at a fast pace, supposedly in the hope he’d run Cody out of town early. How that would help anyone, when the town would be left without a licensed veterinarian, was a question that hadn’t been answered.

  Going to a big family dinner with a group of people who’d rather he didn’t exist was not his idea of a good time. He held the sheet of paper up for them to see and tapped his finger on the name of the troublemaker, Buddy Sawyer. “You missed some good bait here.”

  They exchanged glances before Candy spoke up. “We didn’t know if you’d heard about him, and we didn’t want to hurt your feelings if you hadn’t.”

  Kind, too. They had a lot of Lee Ann in them.

  As he struggled with a way to turn them down gently, the pictures in his hand caught his attention, and he held them up. “You carry pictures of Stephanie with you? Lee Ann mentioned she passed away years ago. You probably weren’t very old when that happened.”

  Kendra reached for the snapshots. “She died five days after we were born. I have those today because we’re doing a thing in science class about genes. The kind that make up who you are, not the kind you wear.”

  Lee Ann had just given birth to premature twins with no husband by her side and then had to deal with the death of her sister on top of it? The idea of either happening was bad enough. The two together launched a wave of disgust deep in his gut.

  “I have pictures, too.” Candy reached for her bag. “Want to see?”

  “That’s okay. I was just surprised you’d have pictures of your aunt when you’ve never really known her. I can totally understand needing them for science class, though.”

  Confusion flitted through the girls’ eyes before they cleared, and smiles covered both their faces. Like the first time he’d met them, he was taken aback by their smiles. Something about them seemed so familiar that it made him uncomfortable.

  “Of course,” Candy said. “You wouldn’t know. You weren’t here.”

  The slamming of the back door got his attention and he rose, along with Boss. He stayed where he was when he heard Lee Ann yell for the girls. She sounded frantic. And then, as if in slow motion, everything clicked into place.

  He looked back at Candy and had to force the words through dry lips. “Wouldn’t know what?”

  Lee Ann reached the open door to the office, out of breath, and motioned for the girls. “You two have scared me to death by not coming home after practice. Come on, let’s go.”

  Cody held out a hand toward the girls, and they stayed where they were. “Give them another minute, Lee Ann. They were just about to tell me something of which I seem to be the only person unaware.”

  Lee Ann’s eyes darkened, and she jutted her chin in the air. “They need to come home with me right this minute.”

  Fear. He saw it in her at the same time as it burned through his body. He wasn’t entirely certain he wanted to hear what they had to say. If he heard it, he couldn’t hide from it. If he heard it, he’d have to get involved whether he wanted to or not.

  He looked at the girls. But if he didn’t, what would he be missing out on?

  Candy pulled the pictures from her own bag and held them up for all to see, and a soft moan slipped from between Lee Ann’s lips.

  “What you don’t know,” Candy said, as she held one picture parallel to her cheek and Kendra leaned in so the picture was positioned between both their faces—and even without the photo, Cody could finally see it. They’d inherited his eyes and smile, and Stephanie’s long legs, cheekbones, and thin frame—“is that Stephanie was our biological mom, but Mom has been our mom since we were born.”

  Lee Ann sagged against the door as she closed it behind her customers. She’d just finished a last-minute, one-hour-turned-three-hour photo shoot for four siblings all between the ages of one and five. Their mother had decided yesterday that new pictures were needed for their Thanksgiving visit with Grandma. Thanksgiving was tomorrow.

  Exhausted, she pushed off and headed to her back room. She scrolled through the collection on her docked iPod and chose a playlist that would do its best to wipe her mind of her stress. She cranked up the volume as she went about cleaning up the miscellaneous toys and equipment she’d used during the session.

  As she cleaned, she kept shifting to the side of the room where she could see the outside door. Cody should be showing up soon. He’d insisted on talking yesterday afternoon, but she’d refused to in front of the girls. She’d shook her head as he’d glowered at her, trying her best to let him know that she hadn’t known, then had barely gotten them out of there without the girls asking too many questions.

  Not only had she needed to get the girls away and go to the grocery store, but Cody had needed time to cool down as well. She would guess he hadn’t changed completely over the years, and from what she remembered, though he typically took things pretty much in stride, when too much built up, he snapped. At that point he did things such as go on a tear through the town, busting out shop windows and pulling down statues. Not that she thought he was still that immature, but she had to guess that finding out he had two kids he never knew anything about had to be a bit worse than whatever “bad news” he’d discovered the day the kids had been made.

  She’d actually expected him earlier in the day, since she knew the clinic closed early today, but thankfully he hadn’t shown up while her clients had been there. He hadn’t shown up at the diner for breakfast again, either. She couldn’t help but wonder if his absence meant he wouldn’t show up to talk at all. Maybe he’d already packed up and hit the road. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d bolted.

  The thought of him leaving instead of owning up to his responsibility irritated her, and she reached out to turn up the volume. Several minutes later, she’d stored the last of the equipment, and she turned to check the door again. Cody had entered without her hearing the chime that would have sounded. He now stood five feet away, wearing the same expression from yesterday afternoon.

  The saliva in her throat disappeared.

  As they stood there staring at each other, the words to the song playing through the speakers, Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record),” registered in her head.

  She reached over and pushed a button, and silence fell around them. He definitely spun her round, in more ways than one. Even his furious, ticked-off look set her pulse on a slow gallop. The man—damn him—expelled testosterone like her radiator had blown antifreeze when it busted last winter. It spewed from every possible angle.

  Finding out that he hadn’t known he’d fathered kids had messed with her mind and had caused a behavior she wasn’t proud of. Her brain had been infiltrated by silly thoughts, not unlike those her mother might have. Thoughts along the lines of maybe he’d stay. Maybe he’d be just what the girls needed. Maybe he’d thought about her once or twice over the years.

  She fought the urge to roll her eyes at the last one. Didn’t matter if he’d thought about her every day of his life. He’d proved years ago he wasn’t the man for her. She did not need men who left.

  While she continued to stand there staring at him, unable to find words to start the conversation, the studio phone rang.

  “Excuse me,” she said, coming out of her trancelike state. “I need to take this.”

  “Let it ring.” Cody’s deep voice did not come across as a request.

  Her heart thumped. “It’s business. I can’t afford to miss any opportunities that might come up.”

  She reached toward the phone on the corner of her desk.

  “Is there any doubt they’re mine?”

  His words stopped her hand in midair
. She couldn’t have ignored the question if her house had literally been going up in flames around her.

  She slowly pulled back from the phone and wet her lips. “All you have to do is look at them. They’re replicas of you across the eyes, and then when they smile...”

  Pausing, she picked up the framed photo she kept on her desk and caught her lip between her teeth. It was a shot she’d made during a Dollywood trip three years before. Both girls had been laughing as they’d come off a roller coaster, and she’d captured them perfectly. The photo was a head-and-shoulders shot, and with the shadow of the trees above them making their hair a shade darker, they’d looked so much like Cody that later that evening she’d caught herself bringing up the Internet to search for him. She’d wanted to scream at him, to make him understand what he was missing out on.

  Instead, she’d shut down the computer and cursed him for the decisions he’d made. Not for leaving her to raise the girls alone, but for not being there for them. They deserved a father. But only one who chose to be there.

  The phone quit ringing, and she passed the picture over to him. “They look just like you. Also, the timing couldn’t be more perfect.” She shrugged. “I’d bet my life on it.”

  He studied the photo in his hands, but she could read nothing in his expression. It remained as tense and angry as it had been when he’d entered the room. Finally, he looked up and caught her gaze. “And you chose to never tell me?”

  The phone began to ring again. “I swear, I thought you knew.”

  His entire body seemed to turn to concrete in front of her. “And what? You thought I’d just walked away? Felt no responsibility at all?”

  “I didn’t know.” His pain hurt her, but she had no idea how to lessen the wound. The phone continued to ring, its shrillness in the thick tension adding to her stress. “I didn’t know what to think,” she whispered.

  “So you thought the worst,” he accused. His nostrils flared a bit as his chest rose on a deep breath.