The First Time at Firelight Falls

by Julie Anne Long

  “Sweetie, I know you’re really curious. How about we Google him together for about ten minutes or so a night whenever you get curious, so that when you have questions I can answer them for you.”

  Annelise was nobody’s fool. She tipped her head and studied her mom.

  Who was still rather incriminatingly breathing a little heavily from her mad dash.

  “Okay,” Annelise said. Brightly and a little too easily.

  Eden sighed and plopped down on the old love seat across from the computer desk. If Annelise wanted to know something, there were ways to do that when her mom wasn’t looking over her shoulder. Not all of her friends’ moms policed the internet at their houses. She was a good kid, but she was also really resourceful and more than a teensy tenacious when it came to acquiring knowledge.

  “Leesy, your dad Jasper has had a very colorful life. Quite different from the lives we live in Hellcat Canyon. Not necessarily better or worse, just different, you know? We have our ways of doing things, and he has his ways. It’s like that with a lot of people who are famous. If you hear something you think is weird or surprising about your dad Jasper . . . come right to me and we’ll talk about it. You know how we talked about how some people are sort of naturally dads and others have to learn it? It’s like that. He hasn’t, um, behaved like a dad very often. I’m your mom, so I know what’s best for you.”

  She’d decided it was best to start issuing disclaimers for Jasper now, to try to provide a buffer between Annelise and what she hoped was potential, but which she feared was inevitable, disappointment.

  Maybe Jasper would surprise her.

  More than he already had, that was.

  Though Eden wasn’t a cockeyed optimist, in general.

  Annelise pointed at the computer screen. “It says here he went out with that girl who has her picture on a magazine I saw when Casey was getting the gum out of my hair that time. Katri . . . Katri . . . something.”

  It was useful to have a hairstylist right across the street from their apartment, that was for sure.

  “He certainly did go out with her.”

  Annelise frowned. “But you’re prettier than she is,” she said stoutly.

  “Well, that’s very kind of you to say. But everyone has different tastes, and pretty is as pretty does, right?” Eden said. “I don’t want to go on a date with your dad Jasper, and he doesn’t want to go on a date with me.” Though Eden was uncertain this last part was true. She had a hunch that Jasper would go for the mile if given an inch. “I’m happy to be his friend, though! Everyone has different tastes, right? You like Braden in your class, but you don’t like Tim because you saw him pick his nose once. But he’s cute, and everyone picks their nose now and again. And tastes change as you get older.”

  “You mean he might not like the taste of boogers when he gets older?”

  “Uh, no, not . . . well, yes. By tastes I mean as in your preferences. The things you like will change and grow the way you do. Like when you were little you used to hate it when your food was hot, and I had to blow on it before you’d eat it but now you don’t mind if it’s hot.”

  Annelise mulled this. “I’ve never seen you pick your nose.”

  “Because I’m setting a good example for you.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Usually Eden could keep on-mothering-point, but this was wobbling off the tracks. Boy, was she tired.

  “Okay, computer time’s over!” She clapped her hands briskly. “Let’s tackle that math homework.”

  Annelise sighed prettily and slumped with great melodrama over the keyboard. “Can’t I play my guitar for a few minutes? Pretty, pretty pleeeease? I could maybe write a song for Dad Jasper with A minor and G and he’d like it.” She batted doe eyes at her mom from beneath her bent arm.

  Annelise’s guitar was leaning against the couch, as it so happened. Because there was a full-length mirror in this room, and she could watch herself in it as she played.

  She really was her father’s daughter.

  Eden wondered how many of these types of pleas she could expect in the future.

  “A half hour of guitar. Then math.”

  “Okay.”

  She was scrutinizing Eden’s face with the same bright-eyed, somewhat critical way she’d inspected Jasper. Trying to figure something out about her. Something she might just blurt in front of other people.

  “Don’t worry, Mom. I’m sure you’ll find someone for your tastes one day,” she said gently.

  Eden stifled a laugh.

  “Thank you, child,” she said somberly.

  Eden leaned back against the little old sofa and for a millisecond, imagined it was Gabe’s chest, and then pushed herself away from it because imagining that kind of comfort was really just another way of courting pain.

  A couple of days later . . .

  “It wasn’t my fault, I swear it. I truly meant to trim that tree branch.”

  Harvey Millwood was in the kind of bind that roses could get him out of, which was why he was standing in Eden’s Garden, gazing at her imploringly.

  “Well, it could happen to anyone,” Eden soothed from behind the counter.

  “Just because I hated that ridiculous birdbath fountain doesn’t mean I would deliberately destroy it. My wife loved it.”

  “You don’t strike me as a vandal, Mr. Millwood.”

  “I knew you’d understand, Miss Harwood. You have such sympathetic eyes. Has anyone ever told you that?”

  “Well, that’s thoughtful of you to say. And you know, nothing says I’m truly sorry like a dozen long-stem Ecuadorian roses . . . this color is called Movie Star, and you can tell her, ‘you’re the only star of my life.’”

  “She would love that!” Harvey breathed, as if she was The Bard herself.

  “Given that it’s a rather urgent apology, I can let you have them for . . . thirty.”

  Which was their exact price. She was sympathetic. She wasn’t a patsy.

  Harvey was sorting through his wallet for cash when her cell phone rang.

  He peered over the counter at her phone and read the incoming caller.

  “Mrs. Maker, huh? I’m guessing your day is about to get even harder than mine.”

  Good Lord. Small towns. Everyone knew who Mrs. Maker was, and there were usually only two reasons she’d call, and both of them sent her adrenaline skyrocketing.

  Eden leaned across the counter, snagged a twenty from Harvey’s wallet, and mouthed, take ’em.

  It might not be Eden’s lucky day, but it was Harvey’s.

  He departed, beaming.

  She crossed her fingers and muttered, “Please be a butt dial please be a butt dial please be a butt dial . . .” and then answered the call.

  She composed her voice. “This is Eden Harwood.”

  “Mrs. Maker, here, Ms. Harwood.”

  “Oh, shit. Oh God. Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that out loud or mean it personally, Mrs. Maker. It’s just you’re so often a harbinger, as it were, of . . . of things . . .”

  She closed her eyes and said a prayer.

  “I know, dear. I can handle a little cursing. A harbinger and a humdinger, my husband always says. It seems Annelise has been in a fight.” She delivered this very matter-of-factly.

  Eden’s heart stopped. “A fight? Like . . . an argument?” Even as she said it she knew it was just a hopeful guess. As if she could actually persuade Mrs. Maker to change history.

  “Oh, yes, dear. But it was also a physical altercation.”

  Oh, God. Her heart thunked over like it had been thrown to the mat by a wrestler.

  Probably one of the only kinds of teams Gabe hadn’t been roped into substitute coaching.

  “Is she . . . are they . . . okay?”

  “Oh, absolutely. She has a bloody nose and grass stains, but is otherwise unharmed. The other girl has a bloody nose, too.”

  “The other girl is . . .” Dear God, cut me some slack, please don’t let her say . . .

  “Cai
tlynn Pennington.”

  God was clearly on a lunch break.

  “But . . . why?” Although theories about the reason why were even now beginning to formulate, and she liked none of them.

  “They’re in Mr. Caldera’s office right now. You or someone you designate will need to come to pick her up for a discussion, and I’m sure you’ll hear the whole story then.”

  If only life followed a romantic comedy plot. It seemed needlessly awkward to have to see Gabe Caldera only a week after the snarly death of their romance. Like Lloyd Sunnergren’s dog, who stuck his nose up people’s hind ends and then stood back and smiled about it, the universe had no sense of timing or propriety.

  “I’m on my way, Mrs. Maker. Thank you.”

  Mrs. Maker ushered Eden briskly through the office as if she was a paramedic en route to a crash. Mrs. Maker’s guest chairs had been brought into Gabe’s office so that the culprits, Annelise and Caitlynn, could be installed in them on either side of their mothers.

  Gabe was sitting behind his desk looking big and delicious and somber.

  Jan Pennington swung her head toward her and whipped off her sunglasses. Her eyes practically bulged with outrage.

  “Eden,” she said frigidly.

  After she’d bulged at her for a telling moment.

  “Hi, Jan,” Eden said evenly. “Mr. Caldera,” she said politely.

  “Thank you for coming, Ms. Harwood.”

  A sizzling, frisson of tension arced between them for a silent second.

  He had not gotten one particle uglier since she’d last seen him. Wearier, maybe.

  And then she dropped to kneel next to Annelise and cupped her face in her hands. “First, honey, are you okay?”

  Annelise glumly nodded. There was only a little blood on the front of her shirt, some around the rim of a nostril. Not her first bloody nose by far. Nothing looked swollen, askew, or scraped.

  “Okay. Annelise, I need to tell you—I am so disappointed in you. How many times have I told you that violence is not the answer to anything?”

  “Eden, why don’t you have a seat.” Gabe’s voice, bass and smoke, reasonable, soothing, sexy as a pair of arms looped around her.

  Fucker.

  Eden took a seat in the chair they’d commuted to the sex couch in.

  “I’m afraid your daughter started it, Eden,” Jan said. Because naturally she had to take control.

  “Mom, I did not! Caitlynn said I was a liar and my mom was a liar, and no one calls my mom a liar! She’s not a liar! And what I said was true!” She thumped a furious little ankle against the chair leg. “It’s true, right, Mom? He came over to our house and he had dinner with our family and everything.”

  Oh, shit, indeed. Eden was starting to get the gist.

  “So Caitlynn said to you . . .”

  “That you were lying about who my father is!”

  “And that’s when you hit her?”

  “I told her she was a liar for calling my mom a liar. She got mad and pushed me a little.”

  “And that’s when you hit her?”

  “I didn’t hit her!”

  “But—why are we here?”

  “I swept her legs,” Annelise said with matter-of-fact resignation.

  Caitlynn nodded confirmation of this.

  A startled silence ensued.

  Gabe pressed his lips together. “Your first move was to sweep her legs?” He actually sounded a little curious.

  “Bam, down I went,” Caitlynn added, just as matter-of-factly. Sounding, in truth, impressed.

  Another silence ensued, involving the adults.

  “Her . . . her Uncle Jesse taught her that last Christmas,” Eden said. Somewhat apologetically.

  Gabe looked at her. And regardless of all that had happened between them, she could tell he was struggling not to laugh.

  “Useful to know in some circumstances,” he said mildly enough. “We were taught how to do that sort of thing when I was a SEAL. But it’s not a move typically used on school playgrounds by fifth grade girls. It seldom seems necessary.”

  That was so dry it almost made Eden laugh.

  “Well, after that, Caitlynn jumped up again and pulled my hair. And then I think we hit each other but not on the face.”

  “Caitlynn could have been badly hurt!” Jan was practically quivering.

  “Kids get hurt, Jan,” Eden defended, irritably, though truthfully she was mortified. “They play rougher than this all the time with each other.”

  “But this was combat.”

  “Jan.” Gabe’s voice was a little bit too quiet, and the little hairs rose on the back of Eden’s neck.

  It got Jan’s attention for sure. She went as still as if Gabe was a predator.

  “You know I was actually in combat, right? Please. I understand your outrage, but let’s try to keep to the facts. Hyperbole isn’t useful.”

  Jan pressed her lips together, took in a long breath. Then gave a short nod.

  Annelise’s head shot up alertly, and she stared at Gabe. Then she ducked it again.

  “H-y-p-e-r-b-o-l-e,” Gabe repeated patiently. Because he knew exactly what she wanted.

  Eden stared at him. An epiphany arrived with a throat lump, when she thought, That’s why I’m in love with you, you asshole. Right there.

  He knew her. He knew Annelise. And he gave Annelise the gift of a new word.

  And he had taken himself away from them.

  Eden’s eyes began to sting.

  She sucked in a sharp breath in an effort to get a grip.

  “I’d like to speak to Annelise for a moment, if it’s all right.”

  Eden turned to Annelise. “Okay, first, Leesy, I appreciate your loyalty and your defense of the truth, and it’s a fine quality. But there are other ways of handling this situation, and you know it. I want you to apologize to Mr. Caldera and to Caitlynn and Caitlynn’s mom for resorting to physically fighting right now.”

  “But—”

  “Right now. Regardless of the provocation, violence is not the answer. You know a lot of words and you know how to use them, so there is absolutely no reason to fight, unless you’re actually defending yourself physically.”

  “She start—”

  Eden fixed her with a glare that ought to have reduced her to sparkly pink ashes.

  Annelise immediately said, “I’m sorry, Caitlynn, Mrs. Pennington. Mr. Caldera.”

  But her lip was quivering. From frustration as much as woe.

  “Caitlynn? Is there anything you want to say?” This was Jan Pennington in mom mode. Bless her.

  Caitlynn was now looking down at her lap. “Sorry,” she muttered.

  She showed no signs of wanting to look up ever again.

  Another little silence fell. Eden looked around her again. At the couch, and the baseball, and the clock in the corner that had once been basically an orgasm countdown.

  “You girls have so much in common,” Gabe said in that soothing voice that made everyone in the room unclench just a little. “You’re excellent students and charming, hardworking girls, and a little competition makes both of you better. Having a worthy opponent is something to be grateful for, because a worthy opponent in academics or sports make you try your best. There’s a lot to like about each other. So let’s talk about why you don’t like—”

  “We do like each other!” Caitlynn and Annelise burst out at the same time.

  Astonished.

  Which clearly astonished the adults.

  “Like, a lot,” Annelise reiterated, while Caitlynn nodded vigorously. And swiped her eyes with her hand.

  Two bright little pair of eyes stared in puzzlement at Gabe.

  A nonplussed silence fell upon the room.

  Gabe said suddenly, almost sharply, as if he’d had an epiphany. “Caitlynn, what exactly did you say to Annelise?”

  She ducked her head, embarrassed. “Her dad,” she mumbled.

  “Can you speak up please.”

  “I teased her ab
out her dad.”

  Eden curled her fingers into the arm of her chair.

  “Why did you do that?” Gabe kept his voice even. But she could see in the set of his shoulders how pissed he was.

  “Because it’s the only thing that gets her worked up! I didn’t expect her to go nuts!” She looked at Annelise. Half in indignation, half in admiration.

  “Caitlynn,” Jan Pennington said with great, strained patience, “why on earth do you want to get Annelise worked up?”

  A long silence ensued.

  “Caitlynn . . .” Jan prompted. More sternly.

  “Because . . . because she’s so good at everything!” Caitlynn’s lip was trembling now.

  “But so are you!” Everyone in the room said that to Caitlynn. In genuine surprise.

  “But I have to try really hard. She just . . . she just is good!”

  And then to everyone’s astonishment, Caitlynn burst into noisy gulping tears.

  “Oh, honey,” Eden and Jan said at the same time, to both girls, collectively.

  Eden whipped out a wad of Kleenex, already primed at the top of her purse—she’d done that like a soldier loading a gun before she got here—and handed it to Jan, who handed it to Caitlynn, who snorkeled noisily into it while her mom circled her hand on her back.

  “But I do have to try! And I have to try hard in math,” Annelise said, and reached across her mom to gently pet Caitlynn’s arm. “Sometimes my mom even has to make me.”

  Which was both funny and all too true.

  “Is it all right if I say something? To both girls?” Gabe interjected.

  Gabe’s voice was balm. Sunshine after rain. Precisely the right tone.

  “Please do.”

  “You two girls make your parents so proud. But that competitive streak—well, you know, it’s a good thing in many ways. It’ll help you excel, and I know you both want to excel. But you have to be in charge of it, and not let it be in charge of you. It’s better to excel for your own sake. And remember, it takes real courage and maturity to be kind. You can still be a fierce competitor and a nice person. You can make each other better and stronger,” Gabe reiterated.

  “It’s not always easy to be nice when you really want to win,” Annelise said sadly.

  “Tell me about it, kiddo,” Eden said. “Trust me, it gets easier with practice, and we’re going to make sure you practice. You know how I know? I’m the same way. You’re your mother’s daughter, kid.”