She strode away, Hildie following like a bewildered puppy. At her own car, Steffler stopped and turned to add, “And Mrs. Bergen, please send my regards to Mr. Kilbourn, and tell him I hope his father feels better soon.”
Well, Regina Steffler was still calling her Mrs. instead of Ms., but given the teacher’s turn of humor, she’d gladly let it go.
So the night started out wonderfully, was horribly shaky in the middle, but ended with a stunning triumph. At thirty-nine years old, Bunny Bergen had finally figured out how to stand up for herself. And boy, did it feel good.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
TATE LOOKED AT SAMUEL. EXHAUSTED by the uncomfortable nature of their conversation, he felt the need to lighten the mood. “So, are you a Seahawks fan?”
“Not big into football. The Mariners though—that’s another story.” Samuel stood, scanning the tabletop around the TV. “In fact, they’re playing tonight.” He zeroed in on the remote, picked it up and powered on the tube. “How about you? Football or baseball?”
“Baseball. I follow the Nationals.”
“The Nationals. Please.” Samuel positioned his chair so he could see the television. He clicked the remote until he found the baseball game. “This okay with you?”
Tate raised his beer bottle. “Pizza, Japanese beer, and baseball. An all-American night.”
With one eye on the game, they finished off the pizza while talking more sports, movies, and some politics. They kept it light, but learned more about each other.
At midnight, they agreed to call it quits. Samuel had an early flight out, and they both had a long day ahead of them. Tate had a final question that had been nagging at the back of his mind ever since Samuel showed up. He wasn’t sure why he cared about the answer, but he did. “So, listen,” he said uncomfortably at the door as Samuel was leaving, “what’s your plan?”
“In life?” Samuel quipped.
Tate leaned on the door, arms crossed. “You know what I mean. No bullshit.”
“Am I here to punish him the way he punished her?”
“Are you?”
“Twenty years ago, I might’ve said yes. But I’m past it. I’ve done things I’m not proud of, so why should I throw stones?” He shook his head, staring at the worn rug beneath his shoes. Then he raised his head. “No, man. My plan is to get to know my family again. That’s all.”
Tate didn’t have any experience to judge otherwise, but in his gut, he believed Samuel.
Upon signing the release papers the next day, Tate questioned the admin nurse about the insurance. He’d been burned in the past when one of Morton’s doctors claimed a procedure had been approved, but then later the insurance denied the charges.
The short woman scanned the papers through her half-eye reading glasses. She flipped some pages back and forth and made clicking noises once or twice. Finally, she looked up at Tate. “I’m not insurance—that’s on the third floor—but looks like everything is being billed to a private party, not Medicare or a major medical insurance of any kind.”
“Private party?”
“Mm-hmm.” She pointed to the bottom of the form in front of her. “Samuel Alice. Seattle, Washington. Credit card on file.”
Tate arrived at Morton’s house just thirty minutes before the medical transport ambulance. There was just enough time to get the keys back from Samuel and thank him for getting things ready. The two of them stood for a few awkward moments in the kitchen of the house where they both grew up.
“I’ll be at The Monument Hotel. Maybe tomorrow is a better time to make my official appearance, if you will.”
Tate nodded. “Let him get settled today. Tomorrow afternoon?”
“May said she’d be here with me.”
“Probably a good idea.” He opened the refrigerator and saw Samuel had stocked it with the essentials like Tate had asked. Milk, orange juice, eggs, butterscotch pudding, Granny Smith apples, and both vanilla and blueberry yogurt just to be safe.
Tate closed the refrigerator door. “Not that I’m trying to get rid of you or anything, but you’re the big boss. Aren’t you needed back at the home office or wherever?”
“Tuesday,” Samuel said. “I fly out Monday evening.”
Tate felt like he should bring up the medical expenses, but Samuel hadn’t said anything. He probably wanted it left unspoken. “See you tomorrow, then.”
Halfway to the door, Samuel stopped. “I checked—the Nats play at seven tonight. Any interest in catching it together?”
Tate didn’t really want to say no, but he had other ideas. “You know,” he said, “rain check on that. I haven’t even been to my own house, and I wanted to spend some time with Willow...” The man was leaving town on Monday. There was no rain check.
“Sure,” Samuel nodded and pulled the front door open. “I understand. See you tomorrow.”
The nurse arrived not long after Morton had been made comfortable in his room in his new fully adjustable bed. As she explained the services she would be providing for his father, it became apparent to Tate that this wasn’t ordinary hospice.
“Hospice?” she said. “No. This is full-time nursing from The Personal Touch Home Care.” She handed him a sheet of paper. “Here are contact numbers for the main office, the local Rustic Woods office, my cell phone number, my supervisor’s phone number, and Rustic Woods Hospital. A copy of this has been give to...” she looked down at her clipboard, “Samuel Alice and May Kilbourn.”
The nurse seemed to misread Tate’s silence for upset. She patted him on the shoulder. “It’s okay. We’re going to take very good care of your father.”
Samuel really had taken care of everything. Tate felt a little guilty saying no to watching the Nats game.
With Morton handled, Tate dragged himself back to his place. His plan was to shower, lay his head down for a few minutes to rest, and then call Bunny under the pretense of checking up on the set building. He did want to know how the set was coming along. Maybe he’d offer to take her out to dinner as a thank you, like they’d talked about. Maybe. He wasn’t sure.
The shower felt great. So did the pillow.
In fact, the pillow felt so great that he fell fast asleep and didn’t wake until the next morning when Willow set a cup of coffee on his bed stand.
She sat on the edge of his bed. “I’m glad you’re back. How’s Morty?”
He squinted at her through bleary eyes. “What time is it?”
“Seven.” She bounced lightly to rouse him. “In the morning.”
“Day?”
“Friday. Really? You don’t know what day it is?”
He struggled to raise himself on one elbow and reached for the cup of coffee. “Thanks. I need this.” Two sips helped his focus. Willow was still in her pajamas and bathrobe. Her hair was suspiciously unkempt. “Why aren’t you dressed for school?”
“Can I stay home today?”
“Are you sick?”
“Sick of school.”
“Give me a better reason.”
“I want to spend time with my favorite dad.”
“You favorite dad will be at work. What’s the real reason?”
“My days are so long. I’m exhausted. School, homework, rehearsal. Nothing is due in any of my classes today. My civics teacher will be out, and the sub is showing a movie—Mr. Jones Does Washington.”
“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It’s a classic, not a porno. And how about this one: Miss Kilbourn Goes to School.” He took another sip of coffee, feeling more and more human by the second.
“Pleeease?”
Tate was playing the hard line, but he already knew from mid-term grade reports that Willow was pulling in straight A’s. She deserved the break. He just didn’t want her to think he was a pushover. He narrowed his eyes at her. “What will you do if you stay home?”
“Rest some. Then I thought I’d go see Morty. Give him some company. You didn’t say how he was doing.”
“As good as could be expected, I guess. I sho
uld give the nurse a call just to see how he did overnight.”
Willow bounced some more on the bed. “Guess what?”
“Guessing games at seven in the morning?”
She bounced some more, and Tate realized she was unusually giddy. “Come on,” she said, “play along. Don’t be so grumpy.”
He laughed. “Don’t want to be grumpy. Okay. I’ll play. What?”
“Charlie asked me to the prom!” She bounced some more, then stood up and danced in a circle before sitting back down on the bed and giving Tate a playful shake. “He asked me!”
Tate was thrown off-guard. He wasn’t sure he was ready yet for his daughter to be dating. “When is the prom?”
“April thirtieth. Aunt May said she’d take me dress shopping. Is that okay?”
“Uh, yeah.” He rubbed his head. “Sure.”
She stood again and planted her hands on her hips. “You don’t seem excited.”
“Well, probably because he didn’t ask me to the prom.” He clutched at his heart and made a sad face. “My feelings are hurt.”
She smiled and shoved him. He laughed while trying to keep his coffee from spilling.
“Thank you for letting me stay home. You’re a good dad.” She skipped out of the room.
Fully expecting a hundred or more voicemails and emails to handle, Tate grabbed an apple and headed to work early.
He was almost right. Twenty-three voicemails and eighty-one emails. Spring had sprung. It would take him two or three days to get through them all, especially since he planned on leaving early to be at Morton’s when Samuel “returned.”
The clock on his computer monitor read four minutes after eight. Bunny would be at her desk in less than an hour. He set himself a goal of handling at least twelve emails in that time.
He’d take a break to say hi and catch up a bit, then have a short meeting with his junior naturalists, and finally come back to his hole of an office and get to some of the voice mails. This was the part of his job he didn’t enjoy—paperwork and politics. He’d rather be out in the field, getting dirty, breathing fresh air.
He focused on the email in front of him and worked, enjoying the silence around him, knowing it wouldn’t last long, but looking forward to seeing the smile he had missed for days now.
The sound of footsteps on the wood floors outside his office broke him from the trance of staring at his monitor. Men’s shoes, not women’s. He sneaked a peek at the time—ten after nine—before looking up to see George’s thin face in his doorway.
“I’m back, George. You can stop worrying now.” Right away, Tate realized something was different about his boss. Was it his hair?
“Not worried at all,” the man responded. “How are you? Everything okay?”
Yeah, now that was definitely different. George had never asked how anyone was doing. “Yeah. Fine. Thanks for asking.”
“Your father?”
“At home. Resting.” It was the man’s pants, Tate thought. He was wearing khakis instead of the gray, threadbare, polyester trousers that bagged in the butt. New khakis that fit. And...loafers?
George smiled. Holy crap. George smiled. “Good. Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you. Anything at all.”
Tate decided he’d stepped into the Twilight Zone. “Sure,” he said, trying not to sound suspicious. “Thanks.” When the pointy-nosed man disappeared, Tate laughed to himself. George had to be getting laid. His date with Abigail must have gone really well.
He hit send on email number twelve and stood to stretch. Bunny would be at her desk by now, although he was kind of surprised that she didn’t at least check to see if he was in.
He tried to appear casual walking down the hall to the reception desk. Calm. Cool. Reserved. But his spirits dropped when he turned the corner and saw the back of Olga’s head instead of Bunny’s.
“Olga,” he said, “where’s Bunny?”
She spun around and blinked through her round glasses. “You are back! How is your papa?”
He ran his hands through his hair and tried to smile. “Good. Thanks. Resting.” Yada, yada, yada. “Where’s Bunny? I uh... needed to ask her about a message she took while I was gone.”
“She is out.”
He could see that. “Will she be in?”
Olga shrugged. “Maybe yes. Maybe no. You want I should look at this message for you?”
Tate thought he detected a hint of sarcasm in her voice on the word “message.” He said he’d wait for Bunny.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
BUNNY HUGGED DADDY. WITH HELP from his lawyer friend, Douglas Hobbs had triumphed in obtaining a permanent protection order from Deena Hobbs-Strickland. She had had her own snooty lawyer there attempting to paint Daddy as mentally incompetent, but it was easy to see from the beginning that the judge wasn’t impressed with her or her argument.
Only, once Bunny and Daddy were back outside the courthouse, enjoying the warm sun, he threw her for a loop. “Bunny Cakes,” he said, “get your sister on the phone and tell her to meet us at that coffee place you like. What’s it called?”
“Daddy! Are you serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be serious?”
“The judge ordered her to stay at least one hundred feet from you. Your own daughter wanted to have you committed.”
He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “She wanted control. It’s her personality. She needs control because she thinks it gives her attention. But she’s still my daughter. I’m not going to stop loving her.” He pointed to the phone in her hand. “Go ahead. Make the call. That coffee shop. The Bean Joint?”
“The Java Hut.” She narrowed her eyes at him, and then handed the phone over. “You want to do this, you make the call. And keep in mind, I need to get back to work, thank you very much.”
More than getting back to work, she was hoping to see Tate. She hadn’t talked to him since Wednesday, but he had said then that if all went well, he would be back in the office on Friday. Of course, he had also told her that he’d try to call Thursday when his father was settled. When that hadn’t happened, she worried that the transport hadn’t gone well.
At The Java Hut, waiting for Demon to arrive, Bunny sipped on chamomile tea to calm herself while Daddy practically chugged a Macchiato double-shot. “How’s Morton Kilbourn doing?” he asked. “I know him, you know.”
“Yes, Daddy, you told me before.” In fact, he’d mentioned it several times during the last few days.
“Been years. I don’t think I’ve seen that man since...”
“Since before Deena was a baby. You were golfing chums. You told me that too.”
“He wasn’t the kind of man equipped to cope, you know, with his wife’s death. And definitely not equipped to raise a baby on his own.” He shook his head. “It was like watching a train wreck unfold in slow motion.” He leaned over the table. “You like this son of his?” He snapped his fingers trying to remember the name.
“Tate?”
Daddy nodded. “Tate. You like him?”
She put her tea cup to her lips and blew on the steaming brew. “Maybe. I don’t really know him that well. But, yeah.” She smiled and then sipped. Yeah.
“I’d like to stop by and see Mort. You think that’d be okay?”
Bunny thought that was a really nice idea. “I don’t know, but I’ll ask.” She sucked in a deep breath and rolled her eyes as she caught sight of Demon waddling through the door. “She’s here, Daddy. Remember. You asked for this.”
Deena stopped just inside the door and stared at them across the coffee shop where they sat at a table next to the window. Daddy flagged her over. “Get over here, Deena.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the din of the coffee klatchers.
She shuffled her feet. “You’re not going have me arrested, are you?” Her voice was even louder than Daddy’s, but she added a heavy dose of martyr to her tone.
Bunny cringed as every face in the shop turned to look at her and her father.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re right.”
The process of him shuffling to her side, the two of them arguing in very loud whispers and then shuffling and waddling across the room seemed to take centuries.
To avoid the judgmental stares of the other coffee drinkers, Bunny looked out the window, watching people stroll past.
Finally, Daddy and Deena were seated across from her at the table. Deena clutched her fancy leather purse tightly as if some caffeine-crazed criminal might try to snatch it away.
Daddy slapped the table. “Now. On the count of three, all three of us are going to say ‘I’m sorry.’”
Bunny was too shocked to utter a word, but Deena unpursed her lips and protested immediately. “I’m sorry for what? For loving my father?”
“Snap it, Deena,” Daddy told her. Then he pointed a finger at Bunny. “Don’t you fight me either. No arguments, just apologies. We all have something we’re sorry for, so let’s say it, mean it, and get on with our lives. Family is too important. Your mother’d be ashamed of us right now.”
Deena wasn’t very good at ‘snapping it.’ “Well you’re the one—”
Daddy shut her down fast. “We will all being apologizing. All, Deena.” He shook a finger at her. “You really love me? Then do this.”
Bunny felt like she’d been apologizing to Demon her entire life. She didn’t feel any need to do it now. She watched her sister pout, and then felt a twinge of remorse for calling her Demon her whole life. She supposed she could be sorry for that. Still...
Apparently not ready to give up, Daddy kept talking. “Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else. You are the one who gets burned.” He smiled. “Buddha said that.”
Kiss Me, Tate (Love in Rustic Woods) Page 16
