A Forever Family

by Jamie Sobrato

  She’d said the man was writing a book, which made Max even more curious. He liked books, and he had never thought to wonder where they came from before, or that actual pirates might sit down and write all the words to make a book.

  He decided right then and there that he wanted to write a book, too. He’d write about being a pirate and finding a treasure here at Promise Lake. Maybe he would make it a guide for people who wanted to hunt for treasure. People didn’t know about freshwater pirates and their treasures, so it would be good to write a story about them.

  Max liked telling stories. He made them up in his head all the time when he wasn’t reading or exploring, because then he could think about happy things instead of sad stuff like about his dad being gone all the way to Tibet.

  He wondered if the pirate in his grandma’s cabin was sleeping now, or if he was sitting in the dark writing about being a pirate. Max remembered the scar he had on his face, and he decided the pirate must have been writing a story about how he’d gotten that scar.

  Maybe he’d fought off an alligator, or gotten in a sword fight with a sailor, or been forced to walk the plank. Maybe he’d had to come here and hide out because of the treasure he’d stolen from some other bad guy.

  Through the tall redwoods, he could see the big dark place where the lake was. The moonlight made the little waves on the lake look silver, and Max imagined a pirate ship sailing up to their shore, and the pirate climbing out and burying his treasure right there in the front yard.

  Max would start looking for it tomorrow, but he’d have to be careful not to let the pirate see him search.

  CHAPTER THREE

  When I woke up, I found myself lying on the floor of a small filthy room. I was alone, and my hands and feet were bound with rope. My entire body throbbed with pain, but especially my head. I felt as if an army of men had taken turns beating the life out of me, which, I later learned, was exactly what had happened.

  From Through a Soldier’s Eyes

  by Aidan Caldwell

  EMMY PEERED across the dusty shelves of People Food, the local food co-op, and smiled at the familiar face she spotted in the next aisle.

  “Ben?” she said to her playmate from summers long past, as happy memories flooded her head. This was part of the reason she’d come back to Promise, because it was full of people who’d been connected to some of the most carefree times of her life. And because it was one of those rare small towns filled with open-minded oddballs who believed in letting people live their lives however they chose without judgment.

  A head full of blond dreadlocks ducked to a gap in between boxes of organic pasta. “Emmy! My girl, where the hell have you been?”

  He straightened and came around to her aisle, then embraced her in a bear hug. She laughed and hugged him back. At her side, Max had his nose buried in a small field guide to animals of northern California and showed no notice of anything around him.

  “Whoa, is this your boy?” Ben said when he spotted her half-sized companion.

  “Yes, this is my son, Max. He’s six.”

  Ben squatted and regarded the child seriously. “I’m sorry to interrupt your reading, little man. I’m Ben.”

  Max looked up at him absently. “Hi,” he muttered, then went right back to reading.

  “You here for the summer?”

  “We’re here for good,” Emmy said, and Ben beamed.

  “Excellent. Hey, little man—one last interruption. Maybe I can take you out for a hike to check out some of those animals in person sometime. Sound good?”

  Max finally gave Ben his full attention. “Yeah. I saw a red-tailed hawk already, and a turkey vulture and an Axis deer. But I really want to see some snakes. Do you know how to find snakes?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll hook you up.”

  Ben stood and smiled at Emmy. “Wow. So you’re a mom now. Intense.”

  She smiled and sensed it made her look a little weary. She’d never intended to be a single mom. So far, the reality of it was not as bad as she’d feared at her most insecure moments before the divorce, but it still didn’t fit with the perfect-happy-family image she’d pictured back when she’d been pregnant with Max. She was beginning to understand that when her dreams crumbled, she had to pick up the pieces and build something new with them.

  “Yep,” she said. “How about you?”

  “No kids for me yet, but someday. I’m still trying to convince Anouk that I’m the guy for her,” he said, smiling wryly. He’d been after gorgeous Anouk Samms for as long as Emmy could remember. The universe would never be the same if he ever stopped chasing her or she ever stood still long enough to be caught.

  At the front of the store, a woman hovered near the register waiting for help.

  “Just a sec,” Ben said to Emmy. “Don’t go anywhere—I want to catch up,” he said as he went to the register.

  He knew the woman who was checking out as well, apparently, and the two chatted as Emmy continued to fill her shopping basket with enough food to last a few days. She had missed this place more than she realized. She’d missed the camaraderie of knowing all her neighbors and bumping into friends everywhere she went in town. It could get claustrophobic at times, but the benefits far outweighed the occasional annoyances.

  Promise was one of those rare small vacation towns where progressive values and civic-mindedness kept the community vibrant and close-knit both during tourist season and in the quieter winter months. It didn’t exist for the tourists, but rather, it made their vacations far more interesting than a town full of generic restaurants and tchotchke shops would have.

  Emmy selected some organic cherries, a couple of navel oranges and the makings for a big salad, then stood agonizing over boxes of snack food for Max, trying to decide which ones didn’t fall too far into the category of junk food.

  “So what brings you back to the promised land?” Ben asked, using their old sarcastic name for the place, as he approached her again. “I thought you were a famous architect now or something. If I had a TV, I’d have checked you out on that house network or whatever it is.”

  He was referring to a short stint Emmy had done hosting a show on famous houses, right after she’d quit her job at the architectural firm but before she’d decided to chuck that whole life altogether.

  “I gave up my job in San Francisco,” she explained. “Also recently went through a divorce.”

  “Oh yeah! I think I heard about that in the newspaper or something, right?”

  Emmy nodded.

  “Pretty crazy when your personal life ends up in the news.”

  She winced. “Crazy is one word for it.”

  Steven’s family was one of San Francisco’s wealthiest, and he was one of the city’s golden boys. Their divorce had, unfortunately, made the news, much to Emmy’s horror.

  He nodded solemnly. “I hear you. So what have you been up to?”

  “I started homeschooling Max, because he was having some trouble with starting kindergarten on the heels of his dad and me splitting up.” And his dad was running off on a spiritual quest, she left out.

  “Cool. And you’re here to stay? Moving into your family’s—” He stopped short.

  “That was my intention, at least for a while, but I didn’t realize my dad had loaned the place out until I got here. We’re staying in the guest cottage for now.”

  “You know that dude who’s staying there?”

  “Aidan? Yeah, we used to date, oddly enough.”

  Understanding dawned on Ben’s face. “Wait—did he come here with you one summer?”

  “Yep.”

  “I thought he looked kinda familiar. Anyway, he seems a little odd, never leaves that place. Has all his food delivered.”

  “You might have also seen him in the news. He was one of the peacekeepers involved in that famous kidnapping and escape in Darfur.”

  “Wow. That’s intense.”

  “I imagine it had an effect on him.”

  Emmy thought of the haun
ted look in Aidan’s eyes. She hadn’t seen whatever had wiped away the idealism in his eyes and replaced it with something darker. She didn’t know what kind of ghosts he lived with now that their lives had taken such different paths, though somehow those paths had brought them around to the same place.

  Ben rubbed his beard and nodded solemnly. “So what about you then? You can’t stay in that little guest cottage forever.”

  “I’m getting back in touch with my passion for green architecture. I’m going to build a place for me and Max on my parents’ property.”

  “Whoa! That’s excellent.”

  She nodded. “I’m excited.”

  “You need a carpenter, I’m your man.”

  “I might take you up on that. I was thinking of you, actually. I’m going to start working independently as a green architect, and it would help to have connections in the building industry.”

  “Like, designing eco-friendly houses?”

  Emmy nodded. “I think there’ll be enough of a market here for people who need to renovate their existing houses along with anyone who wants to build a new place. I’m hoping to make a niche for myself in small houses between maybe a hundred and a thousand square feet.”

  “I’m digging that. I saw this little place down in Sonoma County—a ninety-six square-foot house for two.”

  Emmy smiled. She knew and loved that designer’s work—tiny houses that made maximum use of space and understood the beauty of efficiency. “That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about, but on a family-sized scale.”

  She took a business card out of her wallet and handed it to Ben. “Do you have a phone?”

  “Yep, I finally joined the twenty-first century and got a cell phone a few months ago, actually.” He went to the counter and wrote his number on a piece of paper, then came back and handed it to her.

  “I’ll get in touch with you soon as I’m settled in, then.” And for the first time since she’d arrived, she felt the slightest little bit of hope that things weren’t going to be ridiculously difficult at every turn.

  She grabbed a box of organic ginger cookies, then followed Ben to the register, where a poster for the annual Promise Fest hung on the front of the counter. The date for it was two weekends away. “You going to be at the festival?” she asked.

  “Absolutely. I’m playing guitar in Tom Jackson’s reggae band on the first day of it. You should check us out.”

  Emmy smiled. “I will.”

  A festival to mark the start of their new lives was perfect. She’d always loved the funky event that began with a parade of the local eccentrics and civic organizations down Main Street, and went on all weekend with food, music and general merriment. It would be a chance for her to reconnect with the community.

  Her new-found lightheartedness at bumping into Ben lasted all of five minutes as she drove toward the cabin. She spotted the unwelcome motorcycle in the driveway, Aidan popped into her head, and her illusory good mood vanished into thin air.

  AIDAN’S HANDS were shaking again. Emmy seemed to have that effect on him now. He simultaneously wanted to strip her down and make love to her, and run away to hide from her and the maddening power she had over him.

  God, he’d turned into such a freak.

  He peered out the crack in the curtains at Emmy, across the redwood grove in the clearing near the lake, talking to a man he didn’t recognize. The man held a notepad on a clipboard and made occasional notes on it. They were staking out a rectangular space…a building site.

  She’d been here only a day and a half, and she was already planning to build something?

  Aidan’s stomach pitched. A building site would mean people, and hammering and machinery. His quiet little prison would be transformed into a new, intolerable one. He’d come here to escape the noise of people and civilization, not to be immersed in it.

  And leaving here was not an option, regardless of what Emmy thought. It had been a month since he’d even stepped beyond the front porch.

  His heart thudded in his ears as he watched the man walk back to his truck, climb into it and drive away. Emmy still stood in the clearing with her arms crossed, looking at the staked-out space. It was probably two hundred steps from where he sat now to where she stood, and part of him wanted to run from here to there, screaming, “No! Stop! You can’t build a house there!”

  But he sat frozen.

  A movement from the corner of his eye caught his attention. It was the kid, scrounging around in the dirt, a pine cone in one hand and a stick in the other. He was peering at something on the side of a tree now, hunched down watching as if it was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen.

  Aidan felt something tugging inside of him as he watched the boy. Some dormant longing that he hadn’t felt in years and didn’t want to contemplate now.

  Max had Emmy’s dark hair and green eyes, and her porcelain skin, too. He was a carbon copy of her in boy form, with a coating of dust and a perpetual cowlick on the back of his head.

  Aidan clenched his eyes shut at a sudden burning sensation in his gut. He muttered a curse and stood, paced across the room and back again. He felt like a caged animal, like the way he imagined a tiger raised in a zoo would feel, both longing for freedom and terrified when presented with the reality of it.

  All he had to do was unlock the door, open it, walk across the yard and through the redwoods to where Emmy stood. Tell her why she could not upset this little place of quiet that was his last hope for sanity. But he knew, too, that unless she had changed in the years since they’d been together, she wouldn’t simply back down.

  It would never be that easy.

  He peered through the curtain at her again. And then, as if she’d been reading his thoughts, she turned and headed straight for the cabin. She couldn’t see him, but she was looking right at the window where he stood.

  A few moments later, there was a determined knock at his door.

  “Aidan?” she called. “I need to talk to you.”

  He took a few deep breaths and forced himself to cross the room again. This was his chance to set her straight. Right here, right now, no backing down. He jerked open the door, and before he could block her way, she stepped inside and looked around.

  But he could only watch her, lithe and beautiful in her movements, her presence filling up the house with everything it lacked. His body responded in a primal way to her, and it took all his concentration not to imagine taking her in his arms and kissing her, inappropriate as it would have been. He marveled that she could have such a strong effect on him, even at a time like this.

  “This place hasn’t changed,” she said. “Not in twenty years.”

  “What were you doing out there?” he said by way of greeting.

  She crossed her arms over her chest and set her mouth in an expression he knew meant she was preparing for an argument. “That’s what I came to talk to you about. I’m prepping that site to build on, and excavation will begin tomorrow.”

  “Excavation?” he repeated dully.

  She nodded. “I applied for the permits months ago, and I found someone to build the foundation, but some prep work needs to happen first. That’ll start tomorrow.”

  “Prep work.” He could feel himself breaking into a cold sweat.

  “I’d planned to go at a more leisurely pace, but since you don’t want to move out of this place and Max and I can’t live in the guest cottage for long, I figure I might as well get things rolling since I found a contractor available to help me out.”

  “You can’t have people coming around here so soon.”

  Emmy was looking at him oddly now. “Is something wrong? You look like you’re about to pass out.”

  He wiped at his forehead, feeling as though he needed to sit down. “You should go,” he said. “I—I…”

  Can’t talk now, he’d intended to say, but instead, black-and-white fuzz, like a TV screen with no reception, covered his vision, a sudden wave of nausea crashed into his gut, and he had the s
ensation of falling.

  The next thing he knew was opening his eyes to Emmy peering down at him, looking worried.

  “Aidan? Can you hear me?” she said. “Should I call 911 or something?”

  He blinked up at the ceiling. “No, I’m okay. I’m just…a little…” A little what? A little crazy? A little unable to deal with normal things like going outside and talking to other humans anymore?

  What?

  “I’m going to get you some water,” she said, taking a pillow from the couch and wedging it under his head without asking.

  He closed his eyes again and tried to will his head to stop spinning. So, he’d just passed out? That hadn’t happened before. Well, not since the little cementfloored room that he tried to forget. Not since the days of men’s voices crying out, and pain so intense his mind had chosen to shut off rather than stay conscious for it.

  Those had been his first experiences with passing out. And now he was hitting the floor like a two-hundred-pound Scarlett O’Hara without the corset? Over the thought of some noise and people?

  Damn it. His weakness was repulsive even to him—he could only imagine how disgusting it looked to Emmy.

  She reappeared and knelt beside him. He didn’t open his eyes, but he could feel her there next him, waiting.

  “Have you seen a doctor about this…this condition?” she said.

  “I don’t have a condition.” He opened his eyes and sat up. He felt better now. Somehow the passing out had been like hitting the reset button on his body’s ability to handle stress.

  “Oh, really?” She was staring at him curiously. “You’re sweating. It’s sixty-eight degrees in here. I just checked on the wall thermometer.”

  He took the water but didn’t drink it. “I’m fine.”

  “I could drive you into town to the doctor there, if you don’t feel well enough to drive.”