by Beth K. Vogt
Stephen glanced at the backseat of his Mustang. A bag of groceries. And two bags labeled with the bright, primary-color logo of Babies“R”Us.
What was the saying? Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.
There was no denying he was going to show up at Haley’s house with gifts—for his niece. And then he would offer to make dinner. But he hoped Haley didn’t think of him as a Greek—an enemy—anymore.
When he called and said oh-so-casually, “I’m in the Springs. Is it okay if I swing by later?” she said yes without pausing, adding, “My mom asked me earlier this week if she was going to meet you.”
If he’d known that, he would have driven down to the Springs sooner. It was only four thirty on Wednesday, so his hope was to ply his niece with gifts, meet Haley’s mom—Sam’s mother-in-law—and then offer to make dinner. He had all the ingredients for chicken carbonara, one of his specialties. All he could do was be casual and take it one step at a time.
As if he’d ever been casual around Haley.
She’d threatened to shoot him.
Shut the front door in his face.
Almost kissed him.
And then they’d experienced the birth of Kit together—even if he did stare at the hospital wall for most of the event.
So, presents and dinner—no big deal. Except that he hoped it was one more step forward for him and Haley—and Kit, of course.
Should he show up at the door with groceries or presents? Presents, definitely. The one uncomplicated cord binding him and Haley was Kit. How could she say no to a doting uncle?
“What did you do, buy out the store, Rogers?” Haley stared at the Babies“R”Us bags as if they were loaded with contraband. “Aren’t you unemployed?”
“Unemployed doesn’t mean I’m broke.” He set the bags on the couch, turning to face the slender woman walking down the hall toward him with Kit cradled in her arms. “Hello. You must be Haley’s mom.”
“Yes, I’m Paula Jordan—and you’re Stephen.” He didn’t have to work hard to earn a smile from Haley’s mother. “Haley wasn’t exaggerating when she said you looked exactly like Sam.”
It seemed being straightforward was a family trait. “It was a problem for our parents from the day we were born. My mom painted the nail of Sam’s big toe bright blue.”
Haley reached for Kit, but her mother shook her head in an I’ve got this kind of way. “And what color was yours?”
“No need to paint mine.” He motioned toward the bags. “I picked up a few things for Peanut—” Haley’s muffled laugh interrupted him. “—and, if you all like chicken carbonara, I also brought the ingredients with me and would like to offer my talents and make you both dinner.”
“I don’t think—”
Haley’s mom interrupted her daughter’s refusal. “That would be wonderful. I, for one, am tired of heating up casseroles or ordering pizza.”
“Mom—”
“Great. I’ll go get the ingredients.” He ducked out of the house. Let mother and daughter find their way back to verbal neutral corners while he lugged in supplies. He was just glad not to be in the ring with Haley for once.
Things were quiet when he returned. Mrs. Jordan sat in a rocking chair—when had that been added to the décor?—bottle-feeding Kit. He laid ingredients out on the counter: a roasted chicken, a box of spaghetti, whipping cream, fresh basil, fresh parsley, pancetta, and grated Parmesan—also fresh. He set a bouquet of white daisies on the counter with everything else. Casual. No big deal.
“Who are the flowers for?” Haley leaned against the arched entryway into the kitchen. She’d pulled her hair into a tight ponytail and added a black ball cap with an army logo. Instead of her usual sweatpants, she wore a loose gray cotton top over a pair of black leggings. Nice look.
“All of you.”
“Daisies—nice, no-frills flowers. Thank you.” She retrieved a tall glass vase from a cabinet over the fridge. “When you said you liked to cook, you weren’t kidding.”
“It’s something between a hobby and a passion of mine.” He found a pot and filled it with water, setting it on the stove to boil. “My stepmom liked to cook, and she let me hang in the kitchen with her. It was a good way to connect. And then, when I was a broke college kid, I discovered dates were cheaper when I cooked.”
“Ah, wooed the women with your culinary skills, did you?”
“You could say that. It was a great way to double-date. Jared and I would split the costs of groceries—and eat any leftovers. Of course, at first my specialties were spaghetti and pot roast.” Stephen kept opening drawers until he found Haley’s knives. “So, I noticed you got a rocking chair.”
“It’s from my brothers and their families. They gave my mom the money, and she shopped for it once she got here and had it delivered.”
“And she put it together?”
“No—she’s like me with tools. She paid extra to have it assembled.” Setting the flowers on the breakfast bar, Haley motioned to the dinner ingredients. “Can I help with anything?”
“You sure you don’t want to go take a nap or something?”
“If you tell me how tired I look, I’ll dump that pot of water on you.”
“You don’t look tired. You look . . . fine.” Okay, he needed to concentrate on putting dinner together, not on Haley. His sister-in-law. “How about shredding the chicken?”
“Sure.” She moved beside him where he stood chopping garlic, the aroma already tingeing the air. “So how come all this cooking skill never landed you a wife?”
“Who said it didn’t?”
“What?” She motioned toward his left hand. “You one of those married men who doesn’t wear a wedding band? Or are you divorced?”
“Guilty on neither charge.” He kept his eyes trained on the cutting board. “I proposed to my girlfriend Elissa a while back—got a no before I barely finished.”
“What? How long had you been dating?”
“Six months. Among other things, she said she felt as if there was something I was searching for.”
“She didn’t know about Sam?”
“No. No one did—except Jared. I told him one night early in our freshman year, thanks to a keg-induced bout of honesty.”
The scent of roasted chicken blended with the tang of garlic. “I still wonder why Sam didn’t tell me about you.”
“Don’t make it about you, Haley.” Stephen allowed his attention to stray from food prep and made eye contact with Haley. “Sam’s issue was with me and our parents. It wasn’t about him not loving you.”
“So you came looking for Sam because of your relationship with—”
“Elissa.” Stephen finished chopping the pancetta, piling it to the side of the cutting board to sauté it with the garlic in olive oil. “And I waited a month to try to find my brother—and by then, it was too late.”
“Oh—that reminds me.” Haley stopped talking, biting her bottom lip.
“Reminds you of . . . ?”
“No, go ahead. You were talking.”
“No-o. I was done talking. What did I remind you of ?”
“Your mom hasn’t called you recently, has she?”
What kind of question was that?
“Is it Christmas? Or Thanksgiving? Or my birthday? Then no, she hasn’t called. Why?”
“We talked about a week ago—and I just thought she might have called you, too.”
“Because?”
“They’re planning a memorial service for Sam in Oklahoma in June. They originally scheduled it around Kit’s due date in April—giving me a couple of months before I traveled with her.”
“And you think my mother would invite me to that?”
“She wouldn’t?”
“Obviously she hasn’t.” Stephen paused, reviewing the recipe to give himself time to prepare his reaction. “And it’s for the best. I don’t have any desire to play the ghost of Samuel Wilson Ames at the memorial—or any other time.”
Before she could answer, the sound of Kit�
�s cry interrupted their conversation. Haley lathered her hands at the sink. “For such a tiny thing, she’s got a strong set of lungs. Sorry to abandon you in the kitchen.”
“I can handle this.”
“Great. I’m not good for much more in the kitchen than chatting with the cook while tearing up a chicken.”
Stephen Ames left behind too many piles.
Haley didn’t mind the huge amount of leftover chicken carbonara. If she didn’t figure out a way to resist the lure of all that cream and cheese and pasta, she’d finish it off as a way-too-indulgent midnight snack.
The stack of not-all-age-appropriate toys—she needed to show Stephen how to check for that—meant she needed to find somewhere to keep them. Kit now owned a musical piano play mat and a set of bath toys she wouldn’t use for months. And her daughter might not ever wear the Cinderella princess costume.
And then there were the questions piling up, waiting for answers. Stephen was almost engaged? Was he still in love with Elissa?
“He’s very different from Sam, isn’t he?” Her mother walked into Haley’s bedroom, wrapped in the familiar yellow robe she’d worn for years.
“Once you get past all the ways he’s exactly like Sam, then yes, he’s very different from him.” Haley stood in the master bath, looking in the mirror. She splashed warm water on her face. “I mean, he cooks and Sam was good at opening a bag of chips.”
“Oh, it’s more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sam was all go, go, go—on the move, focusing on the next thing, the next deployment. I don’t think I ever saw him sit still for more than five minutes. Of course, I didn’t see him that often.”
“No, you’re right. Sam’s nickname was ‘Gusto.’ I mean, he was a good medic. His buddies told me that. But when he was home, he was restless.”
“And Stephen has a way with Kit, doesn’t he? Did you see how she settled down for him when he held her?”
“Little traitor. Isn’t that always the way it is? I do all the work—pregnancy and labor and delivery—and then she settles down for her . . . uncle.”
“Is it hard having him around?”
“Sometimes. Not as much as it was at first.” Haley pulled her hair into a ponytail. Released it. No matter what she did with her hair, she looked tired. Frazzled. “He’s gone from being a ghost of Sam to being . . . Stephen. I imagine it will be easier with time to accept that Sam is gone and Stephen is here.”
“You’re doing wonderfully, sweetie.”
Haley leaned into her mother’s embrace, the scent of her face wash an echo of distant times when she was much younger. “Some days it’s minute by minute for me, Mom. And then other days I go to bed and realize I didn’t think of Sam at all. How could that be?”
“Do you feel like you’re being unfaithful to Sam because you don’t think about him every minute of the day?”
“Not unfaithful, exactly.”
“Did you think of Sam all the time when he was alive?”
“Of course not. That’s not realistic—” Haley stalled out at the look on her mother’s face. “Point taken. But my goal isn’t to think about Sam all the time.”
“What is your goal?”
“I don’t want to forget him. I want to make sure Kit knows who her father was.”
“Both admirable desires, Haley.” Her mother wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, the cotton of her robe soft against Haley’s cheek. “But your life didn’t stop the day Sam died—his did. If yours had stopped, then that precious daughter of yours wouldn’t be sleeping in that cradle.”
“But Kit needs to know who Sam was.”
“And you’ll tell her. But Sam will be a part of her past, too—not her present.” Her mother pressed a kiss on her forehead, just as if Haley was a little girl again and needed someone to make things all better for her. “I don’t mean to sound callous. I know you miss Sam. I know Kit will struggle because she never knew her father. It may be God’s will that you remarry someday—”
Haley shifted away from her mother’s half hug.
Her mother let her go. “I know, I know. It’s too soon for you to even entertain the thought. But you’re twenty-eight. You have years ahead of you.”
“Sam thought he had years ahead of him. And I thought we’d be spending those years together.” Haley paused. Held her breath for the space of twenty seconds before continuing. “Can I be honest, Mom?”
“Of course you can.”
“I was always . . . waiting for Sam.” Haley closed her eyes but couldn’t block out the images of Sam walking away from her so many times. Too many times. “I can’t believe I said that out loud. We married less than a month before a deployment. And then he was always gone—he even volunteered to go on a deployment. We said good-bye more times than we said ‘I love you.’ ”
“And?”
“And what?”
“What else aren’t you saying?”
“Sometimes I wondered . . . I wondered if I was . . . enough to make Sam want to come home.”
twenty-five
“Mind if I join you?”
Stephen looked up to where Haley’s mother stood on the top step into the garage. What could she possibly want out here?
“No, you’re more than welcome, Mrs. Jordan—but it’s a bit, um, cluttered in here.” He motioned to the boxes still waiting to be unpacked. Every time he tried to get to the boxes, there was another homeowners’ association–sanctioned house project needing attention. He’d edged the lawn. Affixed the approved house numbers beside the front door. Painted the front door and shutters—a job Haley insisted on helping with. During the afternoon, Haley talked about some of her shooting competitions, sharing an occasional glimpse of her too-rare smiles that lit up her blue eyes.
“Please, call me Paula. All my friends do. And from what Haley tells me, you’re the reason she can park her car in here.”
“Barely.”
“Barely is better than not at all. Especially with that snowstorm coming in this weekend.”
She came around the front of the car and leaned against the driver’s-side door. “May I help with anything?”
“I’m just finishing up for the night, then I’ll be heading back to my hotel.”
“It was nice of you to come back this weekend and help Haley with those projects—including fixing that leaky toilet. And now this. I hope you’ll stay for dinner. I made chicken tortilla soup. It’s one of Haley’s favorites.”
“I didn’t want to presume.”
“You’re family, Stephen—truly.”
In the most awkward definition of the word, yes, he was.
“I hope Haley’s thanked you for all your help.” She motioned to what would have been Sam’s tool bench, where all the tools hung in orderly rows.
“Glad to do it.” Helping Haley made him feel closer to Sam somehow. He could almost imagine the two of them hanging out in the garage, talking while they put things in order. Catching up on the lost twelve years. “And I’m sure she’s told you that my motives weren’t completely unselfish.”
“She mentioned you’re trying to fill in the gaps of the years you and Sam were separated. Having success?”
“Sometimes I feel as if the longer I’m here, the further he slips away from me. Haley’s not very talkative.” He held up his hands, which still had some paint spots on them. “Today was fun.”
“She never was a typical girl, you know.”
“I’m catching on.”
“I blame myself.”
“Blame yourself ? What do you mean?”
“When Haley was born, I was one very busy, very exhausted mother of three boys. It was all boys, all day, all night. Cars and Trucks and Things That Go by Richard Scarry. You ever read that book?”
“Sure did.” Tired of him and Sam fighting over the book, his mom had bought a second copy.
“Haley became her big brothers’ shadow. The dresses I bought her? She refused
to wear them. So I just stopped buying them. The boys called her ‘Hal’—and pretty soon so did everybody else. When we enrolled her in school, she insisted that the teachers call her ‘Hal,’ too.”
“So what do you blame yourself for?”
“Haley is my daughter—but I let her be one of the boys for so long I think she lost herself along the way. She embraced the tomboy persona to the exclusion of everything else.”
“Well, it’s pretty evident my brother saw past that, isn’t it?” He finished breaking down the last empty box and piled it next to the recycling bin. “If he proposed to Haley and married her, he obviously loved her in more than a ‘she’s a great guy for a girl’ kind of way.”
“You see past it, too, don’t you?”
Stephen froze, striving to keep his face neutral. Why did he feel the same way he had when he’d been caught cheating on a math test in fifth grade? “Ma’am?”
“Haley—she’s more than a ‘great guy for a girl’ to you, isn’t she?”
“I don’t think now’s the time to discuss my feelings for Haley—”
“When is the time? When Kit is one? Three? Six?”
“Haley is still grieving Sam.”
“Is she, Stephen?” When Haley’s mother came to stand beside him, he recognized how similar in height she and Haley were. “You strike me as a man who’s more observant than that. She’s sad, yes. She’s exhausted—every woman is right after having a baby. And she’s lonely. But I get the feeling she was lonely before Sam died.”
“Are you saying my brother didn’t love Haley?”
“I’m saying love—real love—takes time.” Paula Jordan rested a hand on his arm. “And that’s not something Haley and Sam had a lot of. Sam already had made a commitment to the military before he asked Haley to marry him—and from the little I know of their marriage, that commitment didn’t change after the ‘I do’s.”
“You think my brother should have gotten out of the military just because he got married?”
“Of course not. But he needed to make room in his life for a wife—and I’m not sure he’d learned how to do that before he died.” The pat on his arm was swift, light. “Haley needs a very special man, someone who sees her for who she is—who she could be. Sam could have become that man, but he’s not here . . . and I’m sorry he lost that chance. But now you’re here—”
