Come Home with Me

by Susan Fox

  “Let’s do this again, though.”

  She studied him. A responsible dad, a responsible vet, a responsible son and son-in-law. A tall, undeniably handsome man, solid and outdoorsy-looking, perfectly at home on this rugged beach. A man who listened to her, who treated her like an equal.

  A friend?

  A man with kaleidoscope eyes that changed with each emotion he felt. A woman could get lost in those eyes if she wasn’t careful.

  But Luke wasn’t her type, and she wasn’t looking for a boyfriend—even if her celibate body craved sex—so that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Just as friends,” she said, to make sure he wasn’t pushing for something more.

  “As friends,” he repeated.

  Maybe she could do this. Enjoy a man’s company, even appreciate his attractiveness, without getting carried away and doing something stupid. “I’d like that,” she told him.

  Chapter Six

  Miranda didn’t seem to have noticed that he’d said “as friends” rather than “just as friends,” Luke thought as he shaped ground beef into small patties. The truth was, he now knew he wanted more than friendship from her. The woman was complex, the opposite of Candace, who’d been utterly open, a “what you see is what I am” person. He’d loved that about her, yet Miranda intrigued and attracted him. She was a curled-up rosebud with lots of thorns, and he hoped that by the time the flower unfurled for him, he wouldn’t be bleeding too badly.

  Shrieks issued from the playroom next to the kitchen, where the kids and dogs, all washed and dried after playing on the beach, were having what sounded like a truck demolition derby. “Everything okay in there?” he called.

  Happy shouts of acknowledgment reassured him.

  His thoughts returned to Miranda. She was doing two steps forward and one back, but she was still heading in his direction. He’d seen a gleam of interest in her eyes now and then, whether she wanted to acknowledge it or not.

  Hamburger patties finished, he washed his hands and checked his watch. His parents and in-laws should be here soon. He took salad ingredients from the fridge and started tearing the dark, leafy lettuce. Used to be, Candace was the chef and he happily played the role of sous-chef. It sure wasn’t as much fun preparing meals on his own, and he’d already started training his sons to help out wherever they could. Not tonight, though, when they were running late thanks to the extended beach outing.

  Some people swore there was such a thing as love at first sight. He guessed Miranda might be one of them. But the concept didn’t make sense to him. Lust, sure. Or some kind of weird attraction/obsession thing like he’d felt for the Goth girl back in high school. But that wasn’t love. You couldn’t love someone unless you knew them, mind and heart and soul. At least not in his humble opinion.

  Friendship was a good, solid start. It could grow deeper, through time together and sharing things—both trivial like ice cream, and substantial like views on child-rearing—until one day, you suddenly realized you were passionately in love with your friend. At least that’s how it had been for him and Candace.

  As for Miranda . . . Well, his mind was open to the possibilities.

  The front doorbell chimed, and a moment later his mom called, “Hi, family. Where’s everyone?”

  “Grandma Sonia!” Brandon yelled, and Luke listened to his sons pelt down the hall and greet his mom and Forbes.

  After that, he was too busy to think about Miranda. His in-laws followed on his parents’ heels. Despite a sullen rain that had likely settled in for the night, Luke got busy grilling the mini burgers out on the deck, glad for the overhang of roof that sheltered the barbecue. In the kitchen, his mom and Randall, the cooks in their respective marriages, put the finishing touches to the rest of the food. Annie and Forbes were in the playroom with the boys and dogs, keeping them out from underfoot.

  That morning, Luke and the boys had put placemats, cutlery, and napkins on the big table in the dining room. Now the food was set out, smorgasbord style: the burgers and salad, his mom’s baked stuffed mushrooms, and Randall’s chicken casserole and cornmeal muffins. As usual it was a hodgepodge, but they’d long ago agreed they liked it that way, everyone free to contribute whatever they felt like.

  They sat down in their usual places, Luke at the head of the table with one boy on either side. Separating them reduced the noise and mess. On the side of the table to his right were his mom and Forbes, and to his left were Randall and Annie, with the men seated across from the women. The other end of the table, Candace’s spot, was as always vacant. Tonight, for some reason, maybe because he’d spent hours with Miranda, that chair opposite him seemed particularly empty.

  Once they all had full plates, Annie said, “The boys told Forbes and me that you had company this afternoon.” The youngest of the grandparents by a few years, her light gray eyes—Candace’s eyes, and the twins’—were sharp behind navy-framed glasses, though all those hours of intent concentration at the computer had traced lines across her forehead and around her eyes. Her plaid flannel shirt and baggy jeans gave no hint that she was a bazillionaire, nor did the shaggy, silver-threaded red hair that was overdue for a cut.

  “Oh?” His mom glanced at him, and then at his sons. “Who was your company, boys?” Sonia Russo was fifty-nine but didn’t look it. The peach-colored top she wore over a long, casual skirt set off her Mediterranean coloring. Her olive skin still looked tanned though summer was long past, and her black, shoulder-length hair was free of gray. Luke looked nothing like her, being, as she said, “the spitting image” of his deceased father.

  “Dad’s company,” Brandon said, talking through a mouthful of hamburger. “Not ours.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Luke said before forking up another big bite of the delicious herbed chicken casserole.

  Caleb gave an audible swallow, and said, “Her name is Miranda. Her daughter’s name is Ari . . . Ari . . .” He turned to Luke for help.

  “Ariana,” he supplied.

  “Ari-ana,” his son repeated.

  “She’s a little, little kid,” Brandon said dismissively. “And she’s a girl.”

  “Girls can be excellent playmates,” Forbes said with a twinkle in his blue eyes. “When you grow up a little, you’ll find that out.” He was the oldest of the grandparents, turning sixty-five this year. Like a few of the other “old hippies” on the island, he wore his thinning, graying hair in a ponytail, and favored tie-dye and denim.

  Caleb leveled a thoughtful glance at his grandfather. “I’m growing up.”

  “Me too!” put in Brandon, after hastily swallowing what he was eating and thankfully not choking on it.

  “It doesn’t sound like it,” Luke’s mom said, “when you say boys are better than girls.”

  “Well put, Mom,” Luke agreed.

  “Who is this Miranda?” Annie asked. She was a straightforward woman, rarely cloaking her words in a veil of social nicety.

  “Miranda Gabriel. She’s returned to the island.”

  “I’d heard that,” his mom said.

  “Returned?” Annie asked.

  Luke was considering how to answer that question when his father-in-law spoke up. “Aaron Gabriel’s younger sister.” Randall Yuen, the same age as Luke’s mom, was a native Destiny Islander like her, a perceptive guy and a brilliant photographer. Though he was a few years older than his wife, he looked younger than she, maybe thanks to his half-Chinese ancestry. His black hair hadn’t a thread of gray and his skin was unlined. His clothes, a forest green jersey over jeans, fit better than his wife’s.

  “The siblings moved to the island as teens,” Randall went on. “To live with their grandparents when—” He broke off and glanced at the twins. They were gobbling dinner, paying no heed to the conversation, but he lowered his voice. “When their mom passed away. Aaron ended up adjusting to island life, but Miranda didn’t last long. Didn’t she drop out of school and run away to Vancouver?” He glanced at Luke’s mom, who was a high scho
ol sciences teacher.

  “Yes. In eleventh grade, as I recall. She barely set foot on the island after that, but now she and her two-year-old daughter are back.”

  “A single mother?” Annie said.

  “Honestly,” his mom teased her, “you and Forbes miss all the gossip. Him absorbed in his music and you living in those fantasy worlds you create, rather than in the real one.”

  It was a small island with a small population, and most of the residents loved to gossip. Luke mostly ignored it. But the idea that people were talking behind Miranda’s back irked him. It also made him wonder what his mother knew about Miranda that he didn’t.

  Brandon said, “What’s for dessert?”

  “I brought strawberry-rhubarb pie,” Luke’s mom said. “And Granddad Randall brought raisin oatmeal cookies. But we’re not having dessert until the adults have finished their first course.”

  Luke had stowed Miranda’s apple crisp in the fridge, saving it for himself and the boys to eat this week and not mentioning it to his relatives.

  “May-I-please-be-excused?” Caleb ran the familiar words together.

  The boys were quick eaters and fidgeted when forced to sit at the table more than ten or fifteen minutes. “Not until you eat your salad,” Luke said. “You too, Brandon.”

  They both heaved dramatic sighs and poked at the salad Luke had served them.

  “I mean it,” he said.

  With pouty expressions, they gave in and polished off the veggies.

  “Now you may be excused,” he told them. “Take your plates with you and put them on the kitchen counter. We’ll call you when it’s time for dessert.”

  When they’d gone, his mother said, “Luke, you went to school with Aaron and Miranda, didn’t you?”

  “Aaron was a year ahead and Miranda a year behind. In Julian’s class. I didn’t really know her.”

  “I doubt anyone really knew her,” she said. “She was, to put it charitably, a troubled teen. She didn’t fit in with the Destiny kids, and I don’t think she wanted to. She was forced to live here and she seemed angry. Or hurt, perhaps. Those kids had just lost their mother. Corinne.”

  “You knew Miranda’s mother?” Luke asked.

  “I taught her.”

  “Really? She was that much younger than you?”

  “Ten years, give or take. I was twenty-six when I got a job at Blue Moon High. Randall, did you know Corinne?”

  “I knew of her,” he said. “I was taking the class photos. She showed up drunk, which made her fairly memorable. I also saw her hanging out with Dirk Jacobs and Harry Wong.”

  “Those two,” his mom said with contempt. “The island’s source of street drugs for a few years back in the eighties. Until Dirk got arrested and Harry moved his game to the mainland.”

  “Miranda’s mom did drugs?” Luke asked. He didn’t recall having heard that, back when the siblings moved to the island.

  “Corinne drank and did drugs as a teen,” his mom said. “She dropped out of school and ran away.” Pointedly, she added, “The same as Miranda did. Corinne went to Vancouver, and years later died of an overdose.”

  Now he knew what Miranda had meant when she said her mother’d been on a bad path.

  “Aaron and Miranda are half siblings, aren’t they?” Randall asked.

  “That’s what she said,” Luke replied. “But they’re really close.”

  “With an addict mother, I bet they would be,” Forbes commented. “They’d be relying on each other a lot.”

  “Not that it’s ever a good thing to have a parent die,” Annie said solemnly, “but it sounds like those kids were better off with their grandparents.”

  Yet Miranda had hated it here, and she and Aaron were estranged from their grandparents.

  “Well, yes,” his mom said, “but . . .” She exchanged glances with Randall. “The Gabriels were, hmm, how shall I put this? Strict and judgmental. Not kid-friendly. Corinne couldn’t do the things other kids did, like go to parties or have friends over. Her parents tried to keep a tight leash on her. She rebelled.” She gave a sad smile. “I felt sorry for Corinne. She seemed kind of... lost.”

  “And those are the grandparents Miranda and Aaron went to,” Luke said, “just after losing their mom. Harsh. I can see why Miranda would act out.” Just as her mom had.

  “Aaron didn’t start out so wonderfully either,” his mother said. “But he somehow met Lionel Williams, who became a mentor and got him interested in flying. I don’t think poor Miranda had anyone like that. I tried to get her to talk to me—I did that with her mom, too—but had no luck.” She glanced at Luke. “I haven’t seen her since she came back to the island. How did she turn out? Better than her mother, I hope.”

  “For sure.” She didn’t use drugs. Did she? Surely not; he’d seen no hint of it. “She seems like a responsible mom. She works at Blowing Bubbles and she’s studying for a certificate in early childhood education.”

  “Good for her,” his mom said.

  “Yeah,” Randall agreed. “It’s always nice to see young people turn their lives around. The teen years are difficult for a lot of people, for a variety of reasons.” He smiled at Forbes. “By the way, I heard Julian on CBC Radio, playing and doing an interview. His star keeps on rising, but he sounds balanced about how he’s handling it.”

  “Yeah, I’m proud of him,” Forbes said. He reached over to squeeze Luke’s mom’s hand. “Should say, Sonia and I are proud of him. I don’t know what all was going on with him when we moved here. Well, I guess a whole bunch of things, really, and I admit I wasn’t a very good dad. Too caught up in being a newlywed. But whatever it was, he grew up and got over it.”

  “Any idea when he’ll be back on Destiny again?” Randall asked. “We enjoyed hearing him play with B-B-Zee last Christmas.”

  Forbes, a woodworker, had also been an amateur musician all his life. He and a couple of other guys his age had a band. B-B-Zee was Forbes Blake, Jonathan Barnes, who with his wife owned a B and B, and Christian Zabec, a drifter from California who’d ended up settling on Destiny. The band mostly only played on the island, at events like weddings and anniversaries, and sometimes on Friday nights at Quail Ridge Community Hall. Julian, who’d learned guitar from his dad when he was tiny, played with them on the rare occasions he came to visit.

  Forbes’s blue eyes lit. “My birthday’s in May and Sonia’s is in June. He usually tries to find a day or two break in his schedule to visit around then. Wish he could come more often, but his life’s busy.”

  Luke’s mom leaned over to give him a consoling hug.

  Luke frowned, annoyed at his stepbrother. Forbes loved his son a lot, and missed him. Julian might not think much of the island, but he did seem to be really fond of his dad. Sure, he was busy touring and building a career, but family was important.

  “Let’s get back to Miranda,” Annie said briskly. “Are you dating her, Luke?”

  “Uh, not exactly. I met her when I was buying birthday presents for the twins, and found her easy to talk to. I think we’re becoming friends. Neither of us is in a big rush to turn it into anything more serious.” At least that was what his rational side told him, and it had to overrule his newly reawakened hormones.

  His mom spoke up. “You know I’m not the judgmental type, but I am concerned about the boys. If you bring a woman into their lives, she should be, well, someone we all can trust.”

  “Mom—” he started.

  She cut him off. “I’m not saying Miranda isn’t trustworthy. But, to put it bluntly, her mother wasn’t. Her mother’s parents were, well, not people one would warm to, shall we say. I know nothing about her father, or her grandparents on that side . . .” She paused.

  “I don’t think they’re in the picture,” he admitted. But he quickly added, “Aaron definitely is, though. She was living with him until Eden moved here, and now she’s at SkySong with Eden’s family.”

  “Meaning she doesn’t want to live on her own, just her and her
daughter?” Annie asked. “Or that she can’t afford to pay rent? She’s what, a year younger than you? And she doesn’t have a place of her own?”

  “I think she’s had a tough time.” He narrowed his eyes slightly. “Not everyone’s genius enough to invent a game and make a million before they’re twenty-five.”

  “No need to be defensive, son,” Randall said. “Or to attack your mother-in-law.”

  He sighed. “Sorry. But someone needs to defend Miranda, since she’s not here to do it herself.”

  “Next time, invite her,” his mother said, making it sound more of a command than a suggestion.

  Forbes gave a throaty chuckle. “Tell Miranda that four grandparents want to grill her and see if she’s fit company for their grandsons. But we’ll feed her while we’re doing it. Who could resist that invitation?”

  Luke’s mother huffed. “If she has nothing to hide, she shouldn’t be afraid to meet us.”

  “Mom, I’m not auditioning her for the role of wife, okay?” Exasperated, he spoke more loudly than he’d intended.

  And now four startled faces were staring at him.

  Candace had been his wife. He knew they were all thinking that, and mourning her loss. Quietly now, he said, “Candace was the love of my life. Right now, it’s hard to imagine sharing my life and my boys with another woman. But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy female company.”

  “For the past couple of years we’ve all been urging you to date,” his mother said. “We’re happy you’re considering it. But why not one of the island women? We know them. We know who’s trustworthy.”

  He shook his head, exasperated again. “Our population barely tops fifteen hundred. Single women in the right age range . . . there aren’t that many.” Two or three of those had already hinted that they’d like to pursue a relationship, but he had no interest in dating them.

  “What about Iris Yakimura?” Annie said. “I like her.”

  “I do, too,” he said. Iris’s family owned Dreamspinner, and she worked in the bookstore. Where Candace had been extroverted, Iris was reserved, maybe shy. She had not even hinted that she might be interested in going out with him. “I don’t think we have anything in common. All she talks about is books. Nothing against books, but that topic wears thin.”