Fireside

by Susan Wiggs

  “Everything,” she said. She thought about not telling him, but could think of no reason to hold back, not anymore. “Bo, I love you.”

  He didn’t move a muscle, but she felt his heart trip into overdrive. “I’m glad you said it.”

  “It’s not...the first time,” she felt compelled to admit.

  “Not for me, either. I reckon we’ve both had plenty of practice.”

  She laughed. “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  “What I’m saying is, I don’t mind if it’s not your first time. What I hope, what I’m asking you, Miss Kimberly van Dorn, is that I want it to be your last time.”

  His words were so unexpected that her eyes filled with tears. “You mean that, don’t you?”

  “Hell, yeah, I mean it. You know, I first fell a little bit in love with you when I saw you at the airport, before I even knew your name. Just the sight of you hit me hard.”

  “What do you mean, you fell a little bit in love?”

  “Come on, Red. You know what that feels like.”

  “No, I don’t. Describe it to me.”

  “You just want to hear me talk about love.”

  “Guilty as charged. I want to hear you talk about it as though it means something.”

  “It means everything. So listen, because I’m not so good at all this emotional stuff.”

  “I think you’re better at it than you know.”

  “Okay. When I first saw you, it was like I went blind to everything else. You were all I saw. I started trying to find things that match the color of your eyes—like a leaf or a watermelon-flavored Jelly Belly. Don’t laugh—you said you wanted to know.”

  “I’m not laughing. And I do want to know. Bo—”

  His phone rang—Sophie’s ring tone. It must be love, Kim thought. I’ve memorized his ring tones.

  He put her aside and sat up, already groping for his clothes.

  She glanced at the time displayed on the glowing digital clock on the nightstand. This could not be good. She flicked on a lamp.

  “Yeah, Sophie,” he said. “What is it?”

  Kim saw his bare back stiffen as though he’d been stabbed. He turned to her as he rang off. His face had gone completely pale.

  “It’s Yolanda,” he said. “She’s been deported.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It was even worse than they’d feared. Rumors were rampant in the detention center, and Yolanda had heard that her detention in the U.S. could last for years. She’d panicked and opted for immediate voluntary deportation. She believed that would allow her to apply for reentry. By the time her lawyer in Texas discovered what she’d done, she was already gone.

  Lacking documentation for Mexican citizenship, Yolanda was placed in a detention center on the other side of the border. Now she had to wait until her case could be reviewed by the Instituto Nacional de Migración. There was no option for re-entry, not now.

  Bo broke the news to AJ as gently as he could. The two of them were in a field near the house, building a snowman. It was totally unlike Bo to voluntarily subject himself to the cold like this, but he did it for AJ’s sake. After the snowboarding, AJ had developed an insatiable appetite for new adventures, particularly those that took place outdoors, in the snow, in subzero temperatures.

  Bo explained about the new development as they rolled a boulder-sized snowball around the field. “I’m so sorry, buddy,” he said.

  “How can she be deported and still be in detention?” he asked, ramming his shoulder into the ever-growing snowball, like a football player with a practice dummy.

  “It’s only until they find her birth records, and those of her parents,” Bo said. It was more complicated than that, but he didn’t want to throw too much at AJ all at once.

  “Can I call her? I really need to talk to her.”

  “The center only has a few public pay phones. You have to have a calling card. The problem is, the cards have to be purchased at a store.”

  AJ’s face turned hard. “And they won’t let her go to the store because she’s a detainee.”

  “It sucks, I know. The advocate in Texas is doing everything he can to reverse the deportation.” According to a report from Sophie’s associate, women had to wait days for an open phone. There was no privacy while they made their calls and they had to scream to be heard. Bo didn’t tell AJ any of this, knowing it would only upset him more.

  The snowball was nearly too big to roll. They positioned themselves side by side, shoving their hands under it to give it one final turn. “On the other hand,” Bo said, “there’s an upside. The center in Aguacaliente in Mexico has placed a limit to the length of her stay, so the records search can be expedited. You know what expedited means?”

  “I know what everything means.” AJ dropped to his knees and started rolling another snowball.

  “I hear you, buddy. I do.” Bo helped him with the rest of the snowman. The whole time he was working with AJ, Bo forgot to be cold. He forgot he hated winter. He forgot everything, just watching his boy. Well, almost everything. He couldn’t forget the fact that Kim was sitting by the fire, watching them through the window.

  She was the one bright spot in all of this. Against all odds, they were falling in love. He was done holding back his feelings for her. He was officially crazy about her. He wanted nothing more than to spend every minute with her, but they both understood that AJ had to come first.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  It took the two of them to hoist the midsection into place. “You’re pretty strong,” Bo remarked.

  “For my size,” AJ said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you meant it.”

  “I meant exactly what I said. You’re strong. And that’s good.” He added the bowling-ball-sized head to the snowman.

  AJ didn’t say anything else, but it seemed to Bo he stood a little taller. That was good, because after the news about Yolanda, it was more important than ever to make AJ feel confident. And safe.

  “He needs arms,” AJ said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Arms,” AJ repeated. “He needs them.”

  “He looks fine without arms.”

  “You’re just saying that because you want to go inside and get warm.”

  “Yeah, I’m kind of funny that way. I like being warm.”

  AJ shook his head. “Arms.”

  Bo heaved a frosty sigh as they trekked across the yard in search of low hanging branches. He found a couple, which they stuck in the sides of the snowman to create serviceable arms.

  “Done,” he declared, stepping back to regard their handiwork.

  “Not quite.” AJ put a Hornets baseball cap on the snowman’s head, and a snowball in the twig fingers of his left hand. “There. Now he looks like something.”

  And so did AJ. He looked brave and sad all at once, and his doggedness at trying to keep his chin up broke Bo’s heart. Where did he get that strength?

  “High five,” said Bo.

  “Good times,” AJ replied.

  “Now can we go inside?”

  “Whiner.”

  * * *

  Kim called the campaign to help Bo’s son “Operation AJ,” and for that, Bo loved her all the more. She and everyone else at Fairfield House wanted to help the boy with his fears and insecurities. He was like an accident victim, missing a limb, but that didn’t stop Kim from believing she could make things better. And sometimes it worked. Sometimes she and Bo were able to surprise and delight him, to bring a smile to his face. Unlike Bo, AJ had no aversion whatsoever to the snow, and he raced home from school each day to take part in snowshoe expeditions, making snow angels in the yard and snowmobiling in the Catskills Wilderness.

  “So I was thinking this might be a good day for ice-sk
ating on Willow Lake. When the weather’s clear and cold like this, conditions are ideal,” she said one afternoon. “What do you say?”

  “I’ll pass,” Bo said.

  AJ was perched on a kitchen stool, devouring his favorite afternoon snack—Cheetos. “I’d like to try.”

  “It’s the bomb, AJ. You’ll love it.” She sent Bo a look of triumph, and within a short time, had everything organized. She even called Noah and Sophie Shepherd to invite them along. By now, Bo knew resistance was futile.

  The lake was swarming with skaters, the sledding hill alive as kids dragged their sleds and saucers up and then sped down, hurrying before twilight fell. A few tourists braved the cold to photograph the town’s winter centerpiece, a house-sized ice sculpture in the shape of a colonial fort.

  Kim fitted AJ with rental skates and led him out onto the ice. Her patient, protective way with the boy drew him out and gave him confidence, and before long, he was wobbling across the ice, laughing with Kim. Bo stood at the edge of the skating area, watching the two of them. If he squinted his eyes and opened his heart, he could imagine them as his family.

  “Never thought I’d see you out here,” Noah remarked, joining him. “You used to be allergic to winter.”

  “Still am,” Bo said, abashed by his own sentimental thoughts. “Good thing I don’t want any more kids, because I’m freezing my nuts off. I’ll be sterile after today.”

  “Your boy sure loves the winter.”

  “Yeah, who knew? But he’s not doing so hot. Since we heard his mom was deported, he’s... I can hear him tossing and turning at night. He looks pale to me, with dark circles under his eyes. I won’t lie to you, Noah. I’m worried.”

  Noah didn’t make light of Bo’s concern. A gifted vet, he had a natural compassion for wounded creatures. However, when he spoke, it was as a father. “After Buddy and Aissa first came to us,” he said, referring to his children from Africa, “they had issues. Especially Buddy—he was five, which is old enough to remember too much.”

  Bo was surprised. From his perspective, the Shepherds seemed like the all-American blended family. “What do you mean, issues?”

  “All the violence,” Noah said. “The loss. They’re haunted by it. I’m not saying AJ’s experience was anything like my kids’, but that kind of separation, of loss, it cuts deep.”

  Good God, thought Bo. Noah was right. AJ was showing symptoms of trauma. “What do you think I should do?”

  “You’re doing it. Being here for him, helping him.”

  As they watched, AJ tentatively joined a group of kids his age and Kim skated off on her own with the grace of an ice dancer.

  “How’s everything else going?” Noah inquired. “The media training and stuff.”

  “I had no idea how much of baseball was not about baseball. Oh, and I have the hots for my teacher.”

  “I figured as much.” Noah didn’t seem at all surprised. “Don’t worry about it. It always happens that way in Pygmalion stories.”

  Bo scowled. “Pig—what?”

  “From mythology. A guy called Pygmalion sculpted the ideal woman out of stone. Nowadays, it’s shorthand for getting a makeover. You had your makeover. Now you’re her ideal man. And no offense, bud, but it’s about time.”

  He thought about the shopping trips, the visit to the barber—correction, stylist—the lessons in manners, elocution, dealing with sponsors and media. “You talk like something was wrong with me before.”

  “Oh, sorry, bro. You were perfect before.”

  “I’m not claiming I was, but geez. She’s turning me into something...” Someone she can stand to be around, he thought.

  “You like her, then,” Noah said. “Now you have to decide what to do about it.”

  “I know what I want to do about it, but I’m not her type,” Bo said. “We’re Lady and the Tramp.”

  “Thanks to my kids, I know how that one ends,” Noah said. “They have a litter of pups and live happily ever after.”

  “Right. Like that’s going to happen.”

  “Keep up the attitude and it won’t.”

  “It’s just that I’ve never seen it.”

  Noah spread his arms. “You’re looking at it.”

  He had a point. A year ago, Noah Shepherd had been as unattached as Bo, rattling around in a big house all by himself. Now he was married with a family, and happier than Bo had ever known him to be. This was something Bo could never picture for himself, though. Noah was one of those guys who was good through and through. In contrast, Bo was a total screwup.

  “We slept together,” he admitted.

  “How was it?”

  “The first time, very...restful. We slept, nothing else.”

  “Get out of town.”

  “It’s true. After that...not restful at all.” Bo couldn’t suppress a grin.

  “Hey, Bo, get your skates on,” AJ shouted from the lake. “I’ll race you.”

  “I need a beer,” Bo said, switching gears.

  Noah laughed. “Sure, that’d be good.”

  Resigned to his fate, Bo picked up his rental skates. Sophie and Kim joined them on a bench beside the lake. Kim’s cheeks were bright with color, her eyes dancing with laughter. She looked classy and athletic. And sexy as hell.

  “I’m done,” Sophie told Noah. “Your turn. Two against one is too much for an old lady.”

  “Hey, no fair playing the old-lady card,” Noah said.

  “Daddy, come on, let’s go, Daddy,” his kids shouted.

  “I don’t have to play it,” she said. “I am it.” She shooed him away to skate with his kids, then headed off to get some hot chocolate. She was a good bit older than Noah, and Bo suspected she was more sensitive about it than she let on. She shouldn’t be. The two of them made a great couple.

  Kim turned to Bo. “Your turn. Skates.”

  He shot her a look, but bent to take off his boots.

  She patted his arm. “This means a lot to AJ.”

  “That’s the idea.” He finished tying his laces and watched AJ for a few seconds. “It sucks, what’s happening to him, but I kind of like having him around. I mean, I’m not saying I’m father of the year or anything like that, but we get along, you know? Even through the hard stuff with his mother.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I didn’t expect... I mean, I don’t know the first thing about being a father.”

  “Somebody, somewhere, taught you how to love a child.”

  “That’s AJ. He takes me out of myself, you know? Out of my own head. I got to tell you, I’m learning a lot from the kid.”

  She laughed. “Good to know. Now, go learn how to skate.”

  “I know how to skate.” He stood and headed for the ice, wobbling a little. He hoped like hell he wouldn’t fall on his ass.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Since learning his mom had been deported and was in some women’s detention center in Mexico, AJ saw the world differently. Everything was gray to him—gray winter skies, dirty gray snow on the streets, a gray he never saw in the hot Texas sun. Sure, there were moments when Bo tried to distract him and succeeded sometimes, but every moment was weighted with the knowledge that his mother was in trouble and he had no way of getting her out.

  Each day, he approached the bus stop like a condemned man to the gallows. Even though running away had been a stupid thing to do, and even though he was forcing himself to get used to Avalon, he still felt the same way—he wanted to be anywhere but here. Yet, realizing anything he did could affect his mother’s status, he was scared into being on his best behavior. He was going to have to figure out some other way to be with his mom again, but he hadn’t quite worked out what that was yet. In the meantime, he moved from day to day, crossing out each square on a small pocket calendar he kept in his backpack.

  Th
e middle school was an old-fashioned brick-and-concrete monolith rising out of a snow-covered expanse marked by bare trees and bike racks buried so deep, only the top rail was visible. To AJ, it resembled another planet, like the ice planet Hoth in Star Wars. Inside, the building was a maze of hallways jammed with loudly slamming lockers, and kids who seemed so different from AJ, they might as well have been space aliens. Hissing radiators filled the classrooms with steam, exuding a damp, uncomfortable heat.

  AJ sat, subdued, through interminable classes and lectures by teachers who droned on and on in their Yankee accents. Every chance he got, he escaped to the computer lab to log on to the internet. He kept hoping he would find a way, someone out there in cyberspace, to help him and his mom.

  Back home, he used to wish for his own computer, but of course, there was no money for one. And even if there was, there would be no money for internet service. He’d made do with school and library computers, but he’d never really needed one the way he did now. That was the difference—he needed to figure out how to save his mom. He thought about trying to stay in touch with some of his friends by email and IM, but they weren’t much for writing or talking on the phone, even. Back in Texas, he and his cholos tended to hang out. That didn’t usually involve much talking or typing on the computer.

  Bo let AJ use his MacBook anytime he wanted, but AJ had tried that, and ended up being stalked by the Avalon police. Here at school, he was probably just as easily tracked, but he felt somehow less exposed.

  This afternoon he ducked into the computer lab, only to find every terminal busy with kids wearing headsets and acting all studious, even though most of them were probably playing games or trying to get past the school’s firewalls into chat rooms. Some girl was hogging his favorite computer, the one in the carrel on the end, surrounded like a three-sided fortress. The girl was pudgy and had frizzy hair. She was in the eighth grade, and her name was Chelsea Nash. He recognized her because she helped out around Dr. Shepherd’s veterinary hospital. AJ had seen her hosing down the dog runs, working around the barn, wheeling barrows of horse manure to a big steaming pile that rose out of the snow like Mount Vesuvius built of turds.