A Forever Family

by Jamie Sobrato

  “He’s trying to figure out some things about his life. Sometimes grown-ups need to do that by going far away and not talking to people for a while.”

  “What’s he trying to figure out?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe when he gets back, you can ask him what he figured out.”

  “When is he coming back?”

  “I don’t know, sweetie.”

  “Do you think he’ll bring me a present?”

  “I bet he will. He loves you very much, even when he’s far away.”

  Max went silent, and Emmy blinked at the burning sensation in her eyes. Now was not the time to be getting teary-eyed.

  She didn’t want her son ever having to doubt his father’s feelings. But unfortunately, Steven lived his life in such a way that inevitably everyone doubted his feelings at some point or another. On the surface he was likeable and socially adept, but beneath the shiny veneer, he was a man who put himself first. He had a hard time thinking beyond his own immediate desires to see anything else—even the needs of his son.

  “I think I’m going to write another book,” Max finally said.

  Emmy smiled and hugged him close. He tried to squirm away. “Oh yeah? What about?” she asked.

  “About ghosts.”

  “Really? Why ghosts?”

  “Because you know how we found the treasure chest? I think a ghost put that stuff in it. And I saw a ghost in the cottage one day, too.”

  Emmy weighed Max’s reasoning about the contents of the chest. His idea was as good as any she’d come up with. But then his second comment sunk in.

  “What do you mean you saw a ghost in the cottage?”

  She listened to Max’s description of a woman’s shape behind a sunlit curtain, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

  “Can you tell me exactly what the woman looked like?”

  Max shrugged. “Not really. She was just a see-through shape.”

  “Was she young or old?”

  “She was a grown-up, like you.”

  “But was she my age, or more like Grandma’s age?”

  “She was like you,” he said vaguely.

  Emmy sighed. This sounded more like one of Max’s tall tales than an actual event. He had such an active imagination, there was no way he could hear a ghost story without it coming alive in his head.

  Still, when she thought of the contents of the chest, and of the odd feeling she’d sometimes gotten at night in the cottage…

  No.

  She couldn’t let the imagination of a little boy get her off on such a ridiculous track.

  “Max, it’s okay to write a story about ghosts, so long as thinking about them doesn’t scare you.”

  “I’m not scared of ghosts. The one I saw was nice. She just wanted to look at the teacup sitting in the sunlight.”

  Emmy resisted the urge to insist there were no such things as ghosts. She sensed that Max needed her to believe in him right now, and what he didn’t need was some grown-up crushing his ability to distract himself from the harsher realities of life.

  Like people he cared about leaving.

  Emmy blinked away the tears in her eyes and gave her son one more hug before he wiggled out of her arms and went about his little-boy business.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  After being flown out of Africa, we were taken to an air force base in Germany for medical care. It was in those slow-moving days at a hospital in Landstuhl that I began to process what had happened. The nightmares began, and sleep became a luxury I didn’t often enjoy.

  From Through a Soldier’s Eyes

  by Aidan Caldwell

  EMMY WAS in the middle of folding laundry when the phone rang. She picked it up half-distracted.

  “Hello?”

  “Emmy, hi. It’s Steven.”

  She was unprepared for the sound of her exhusband’s voice on the other end of the line. Finally. Like a slap in the face.

  “Oh, um, hi,” she forced herself to say. “Where are you?”

  “I’m still in Tibet. I was calling to talk to Max.”

  Of course. It was so like Steven to call out of the blue, as if he hadn’t disappeared at all, as if his promise to call frequently then not doing so meant nothing to his son’s well-being.

  She wanted to scream, curse or hang up the phone. But she couldn’t. None of that behavior would help Max, and it wouldn’t make Steven change. She simply had to accept that Steven was careless. He always had been, always would be.

  Emmy’s stomach lurched when she peered outside at Max happily playing on the deck, creating some sort of maze with twigs and rocks, for bugs to navigate. Hearing from his father, even when he wanted to, was going to be emotionally trying for him.

  She thought of lying and saying Max wasn’t home, that Steven would have to call back later, just so she could give Max a chance to prepare mentally for the phone call. But she knew the second call might not come, so she would have to take her chances.

  “Okay,” she said, ending the awkward silence. “He’s been looking forward to hearing from you. He’s looked Tibet up on maps and Google Earth.”

  “That’s cool.”

  How about asking how his son was doing, what his life was like, how he’d adjusted to being abandoned by his father?

  When no questions came, she bit her tongue, put Steven on hold and went out to the deck for Max.

  “Hey, sweetie, you just got a surprise phone call.”

  Max looked up from his maze-building distractedly. “I don’t want to talk on the phone.”

  That was his typical response. He hated phones and hated when his grandmother insisted he talk to her.

  “It’s your dad,” she said in the cheeriest voice she could muster. “Calling all the way from Tibet.”

  She could see the warring emotions in his expression—pain, loss, hope, love…He was reluctant to hear from his dad, no matter how much he wanted to, because it would mean feeling all the awful things that went along with not having his father here with him.

  He kept lining up twigs for his maze.

  “Max, sweetie, I want you to come in and talk on the phone to your dad. You can tell him all about what you’ve been doing this summer—your pirate book, the treasure chest, how good you’ve gotten at swimming—”

  “No!” he said, then sprang off the deck and ran toward the woods.

  “Max! Come back here!”

  Emmy watched, bewildered, as he disappeared.

  She went back to the phone. “Max isn’t up for talking right now,” she said.

  “I’m headed to a meditation retreat in the mountains for the next week. I won’t be able to call while I’m there.”

  “I think he’s missing you a lot, but he doesn’t know what to do with the feelings. He just ran off into the woods when I told him you were on the phone.”

  She wasn’t consciously trying to give Steven a guilt trip, but after the words had left her mouth, she realized that might be how she’d sounded. Oh well, she’d only presented the facts.

  But Steven was apparently far too Zen to react with any kind of hostility. “Okay,” he said mildly. “Should I try calling again next time I’m near a phone?”

  “Of course you should.” Emmy had trouble containing the annoyance in her voice. “Regardless of how he reacts, he needs to know you care enough to call him.”

  They said their goodbyes, and when Emmy had placed the phone back on its receiver, she went outside to look for Max. The woods were dark and cool at this time of day, and silent, too. She couldn’t hear the sound of footsteps, and she had no idea where to look for Max.

  Sometimes she had trouble remembering why she’d ever loved Steven. They’d met while she was still dating Aidan, of course, and she’d always thought of him as Aidan’s tall, dark and quiet best friend. He’d had an air of aristocracy about him that came from having grown up ridiculously privileged—his background made her own relatively wealthy family look like a bunch of hicks—and he was the polar o
pposite of Aidan.

  Where Aidan was passionate and aggressive, Steven was cool and passive. Where Aidan was wild and untamable, Steven was as tamed and manicured as a French garden. Where Aidan spoke plainly and bluntly, Steven knew how to talk around an issue until she couldn’t remember what the issue had been in the first place.

  It was a miracle Aidan and Steven had ever been best friends, but they’d gotten to know each other as roommates in the college dorms freshman year and had been fascinated by their stark differences. Emmy could sort of see how they balanced each other out as friends, but back then, she’d been immature enough to think that the man she didn’t have might be exactly the one she wanted.

  Emmy had been a fool in those days. She’d been scared of all Aidan’s passion. She’d been unsure what she wanted in life, and Aidan’s insistence that she was what he wanted only pushed her away.

  She’d never expected, upon their breakup, that she’d really end up marrying Steven. She’d harbored a bit of a crush on him, sure, but she’d considered him off limits because he was Aidan’s friend. And then…

  Well, then life happened.

  A party they’d both attended after Aidan had left to join the army, had resulted in a little too much drinking, which led to some flirting, which led where such things often did.

  Looking back, she could see the mistakes she’d made so very clearly. Steven hadn’t really been all that appealing to her for his own merits as a potential mate. Rather the appeal had been in his newness; he was a flavor of man she hadn’t tried yet.

  And after the passionate intensity of her years with Aidan, the ups and downs of their young relationship, she couldn’t help finding someone so different appealing. Steven had seemed mature, stable and similar to her. But she mistook lack of passion for maturity, and she mistook aloofness for a sign of depth.

  Steven was nothing more than a spoiled rich boy who’d never had to face any challenge in life. He always got what he wanted, whether it was a new car or a new lover. So it seemed natural to him that if he wanted to sleep with the nanny, he should do that, and if he wanted to take off on a spiritual quest without regard for his son’s needs, he should do that, too.

  Not that Emmy was bitter or anything.

  Still not spotting any sign of Max in the nearby woods, she felt panic growing in her belly. Surely he wouldn’t go off so far that he got lost—he’d never been a risk-taker—but he might have gotten disoriented if he was very upset. She backtracked, heading toward the cabin, trying to imagine where a kid would go if he wanted to hide.

  Five minutes later, she was knocking on Aidan’s door to ask if he’d seen any sign of Max.

  He answered looking like he’d just woken up.

  “Sorry to bother you,” she said. “But I’ve lost Max. He ran off a little while ago. Any chance you’ve seen him?”

  “No, sorry. I had a headache and went to lie down for a little while.”

  “Well, if you wouldn’t mind keeping an eye out, I’d appreciate it.”

  He frowned and ran his fingers through his hair, the way he always used to when he was waking up. Emmy felt a little stirring of nostalgic affection in her chest.

  “I’ll help you look for him,” he said. “Let me grab my shoes.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

  A minute later, he had his shoes on and they were headed toward the lake, Aidan taking the eastern direction and Emmy the western.

  She called out for Max repeatedly, but got no sign of him. And after another twenty minutes of searching, plus a return to the house to see if he was there, she was in full-on panic mode. Horrific images of what might have happened to him crowded her head, and she was on the verge of tears as she went looking for Aidan near the shore of the lake again.

  When she spotted him sitting next to Max, the two of them with their heads bent over something, she breathed a huge sigh of relief, and tears of joy stung her eyes.

  “Hey!” she called out. “Where have you been?”

  Aidan looked up at her, and as she neared he said, “I’m sorry. I just found him here. I was about to bring him to you.”

  “Max,” she said. “Sweetie, you can’t run away like that any more, okay?”

  “Sorry,” he said, distracted by a delicate bird’s nest that he was holding. “I found this,” he said, as if that were a perfectly good explanation for disappearing.

  To him, it was.

  Emmy knelt next to them to look at the nest, which she could see now contained a red ribbon woven among the twigs and leaves. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  And it was. It reminded her of the tiny red woodpecker’s feather she’d found in the woods as a child, and how absolutely in love with that feather she’d been. It had been her treasure, and this was Max’s treasure.

  She couldn’t ruin the moment with a lecture about forest safety.

  Someday Max might look back on this time as some of the most magical days of his life. Surely he would. The pristine lake, the majestic redwood trees, the peacefulness of the forest, there was no way not to find magic and wonder here.

  And he would remember her and Aidan being a part of it all, she realized as she looked at the three of them here together, examining a bird’s nest. This intimate little scene, it made them look like a family, when they were anything but.

  They were barely friends, the three of them. She hadn’t intended Aidan to be a part of her son’s memories, a part of his childhood, but he was fast becoming a significant part of it all, and some wistful part of her wanted him to settle into that spot he’d come to occupy and call it home.

  Call it family.

  “You see how the bird used little bits of mud to make all the pieces stick together?” Aidan was saying to Max.

  He nodded. “Yeah. Right there, and there.”

  “Wonder where that ribbon came from.”

  “Maybe the bird found it on the beach. It could have fallen out of someone’s hair,” Max said.

  As an architect, Emmy couldn’t help but admire the delicate balance the bird had struck to create its home. Her job was not so different, really, when she designed a house.

  And a home, no matter whether it was for a bird or a person, involved striking a complicated balance. Not just in the physical structure, but in the emotional structure, too.

  What if it were only her and Max living in their nest for the rest of his childhood? Would that be the balance he needed? Would he always recoil in fear when it came to interacting with his father?

  Emmy didn’t have the answers, but she knew she wanted to give Max the best possible home to grow up in, one that nurtured and protected him, provided him a safe haven in which to thrive and grow both physically and emotionally.

  “You could make a little house like that, you know, if you studied the bird’s construction methods,” Emmy said to Max.

  His eyes lit up with excitement. “Yeah!” he said. “I want to do that. I’m gonna start collecting twigs now. Can you hold this for me?” he said to Aidan as he clambered to his feet.

  “Sure.” Aidan took the nest and smiled up at Emmy.

  “Don’t go any farther than the house, okay?” Emmy called after him.

  “Okay, Mom!”

  She watched as he stopped at the nearest tree and started gathering twigs from the ground around it.

  When he was out of earshot, she said to Aidan, “Thank you for finding him. His dad called a little while ago. He got upset and ran off instead of talking to him.”

  “Must be rough on the kid, having his father so far away.”

  Emmy nodded. “It’s hard with kids so young. They don’t know why they feel what they do, and they don’t know what to do with any of the feelings.”

  “It looks like you’re doing a fine job with him. He’ll be okay, especially since he’s got a mom as great as you taking care of him.”

  Emmy hadn’t expected the compliment, and she found herself stunned silent for a moment. Aidan actually thou
ght she was a good mother?

  Unexpected tears welled up in her eyes. She didn’t go around wondering if the rest of the world thought she was a good mother. She wasn’t one of those women whose greatest aspiration in life was to win the title Best Mom Ever. But, in her efforts to redefine herself since the divorce, to hold onto herself, to hold onto her personal and career dreams, she had to fight the insecurity that she wasn’t doing as well as she could for Max.

  Weren’t mothers supposed to sacrifice everything for their kids? Or was sacrificing everything for anyone, to the point of unhappiness, any way to live in the world?

  Emmy didn’t think so, and she felt as if she’d been gambling Max’s well-being on the assumption.

  Maybe, in all the sadness and upheaval of the past few years, she really had managed to be both her own woman and a good mother.

  The idea felt like a precious gift Aidan was handing to her.

  Before she could thank him, he stood, examining the bird’s nest. “Pretty neat treasure he found here, eh?”

  That reminded her of the treasure chest they’d all opened together. She’d never talked to Aidan about it.

  “Remember those letters we found in the chest?” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “I read through them all. It was fascinating. They’re love letters to my dead great-aunt.”

  “Yeah? Ever figure out how the journal ended up in the same chest as all that other stuff?”

  “I haven’t a clue. It’s kind of eerie, don’t you think?”

  “Hey, you know, if you don’t mind, I’d like to have our old journal.”

  Emmy blanched at the suggestion. As much as it pained her to have possession of it again, she also couldn’t imagine letting go of it.

  “I, um, I want to keep it,” she said slowly.

  “Oh. Well, could I at least take a look at it sometime?”

  “Sure.” She breathed a sigh of relief that they wouldn’t have to fight over it. “It’s pretty funny, you know. Those old pictures, the bad poetry,” she said, trying to force a little lightness into the conversation. “What were we thinking?”

  “We were kids. We weren’t thinking.” He smiled, and she relaxed by a degree.