“Who are you?” Mitchell asks, as he looks over at Abigail sitting on the other side of the picnic table, next to my mom. She’s startled when he speaks to her, and she looks to me like she needs guidance. I smile at her and shrug. This is all new to me too.
“She’s my best friend,” I say. Then I immediately want to bite the words back, but they’re already out there, hanging in the air between us. “I mean, we were best friends when we were young. Long time ago,” I clarify. I look at her, and find her staring at me, her eyebrows up, laughter in her gaze as she watches me try to crawl my way out of this one. She crosses her arms and glares at me. “When we were thirteen, we were best friends,” I say, and then I stop because I have no more words, but the lack is leaving me sitting there feeling like I just dropped my pants and I’m now naked in front of all of them.
My mom laughs. “These two used to do everything together,” she says. She rolls her eyes. “We couldn’t keep them apart.”
It’s true. On Friday nights, we would arrive before her family did, and we’d get our tent set up, and I’d hang out on the path that led to her cabin, waiting to see her family drive up. I’d wait until they parked, and then I’d run over and help them unload the car. Really, I just wanted Abigail to be done with her chores so she could come and do things with me.
“She was the best part of summers at Lake Fisher,” I say. Abigail’s face softens as she looks at me.
“Did you have sleepovers?” Mitchell asks. His feet swing as he sits and eats cake, bite after bite. I assume that my mother will make him stop if there’s even a remote chance it can make him sick. But she doesn’t. She just lets him eat.
“No sleepovers,” I admit. “But only because her grandmother wouldn’t let us.”
“Because she’s a girl,” he states. He shakes his head. “Girls are weird.”
“Girls are not weird,” Ma says, correcting him. “They’re just a little different from boys.”
“They smell funny and they wear bras,” he says. He looks at Abigail. “Do you wear a bra?”
She smothers her laugh by pretending to wipe her mouth. “I do,” she says.
“Nana takes hers off as soon as she comes home from work,” he says. “She doesn’t like them.”
Abigail pretends to reach up and adjust her shoulder strap. “They can be a little confining, but we make do.” She says it like she’s imparting a secret.
“When Grandma goes running, she has to wear one or her boobies flop all over the place.”
My mother lets out a snort and says, “That’s enough talk about bras and flopping boobies.”
I bark out a laugh before I can reconsider it.
“Well, that’s what you said,” Mitchell answers, looking like he’s confused.
She gives him a scolding look, one that would have had been a warning back in my day. “Some things are private,” she says as she glares at him.
“I kind of like this conversation,” I say. I lean back and cross my arms, lifting my feet to rest them on a nearby chair. I settle in for the shit-show that could potentially erupt. “What else does Grandma do that she doesn’t want you to talk about?”
He laughs and looks at my mother, who warns him with her eyes that this is not an appropriate conversation. “Nothing,” he mutters. He grabs his stomach. “I don’t feel so good.”
“Is he okay?” I ask immediately.
“He’s fine. His running off at the mouth is making him feel bad.” She’s still glaring at him, but now she’s doing it playfully.
“So, Dad, this is where you live?” He looks around the campsite with an appraising eye, nodding as he takes in the little stove, the fishing rod that’s standing next to the tree, and my tent.
I gesture to the campsite. “This is where I live. For now,” I rush to clarify. I don’t want him to go out and tell people I live in a tent. “I’m working on moving into one of the cabins. Soon. I plan to do it soon.”
“Why do you live in a tent?” he asks.
“I like to be outside,” I admit. I don’t want to give him more information than that. I don’t want to tell him what I told Katie earlier, that I don’t want to feel like I’ve been locked up again. That I don’t want to be tied to a place that’s not mine.
“Can I come and stay with you?” He looks from me to my mother and back.
She gestures to me like she’s helpless. “This one is on you, son,” she says, as she waves her hand in the air.
“Maybe,” I tell him.
“When?”
“When what?”
“When can I come and stay with you?” His feet start to swing again.
I look at my mother for help, but she gives me nothing. “Umm…” I scratch my head.
“What about this weekend?” he asks. “After you come to my game, I could come home with you.” He narrows his eyes at me. “You are coming to my game, aren’t you?”
“Well, I hadn’t decided yet.”
He looks at my mother. “You said he was coming.”
She gives me a stern glance. “Oh, he’ll be there. If not, I’m going to ground him.”
Mitchell rolls his eyes. “He’s too big to ground.” He leans toward me. “She grounds me if I forget to unload the dishwasher. She’s mean sometimes.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is firm,” I correct, but I’m struggling not to laugh out loud all the while.
“No,” he replies. “She’s mean when she’s mad. She walks around talking to herself and talking about what I did or didn’t do that made her mad.”
My mom had always done that. She would let me get into trouble, and then she would walk around and have a discussion with herself about why I would do something so stupid. It meant she was really mad.
“I think that’s how she works it all out in her head.”
He rolls his eyes again, and it makes me snort out a laugh. I cover it up with a cough.
“So, I can come and spend the night after the game on Saturday?” He’s tenacious, I have to give him that.
I look at my mother. She just stares at me. Glares is a more appropriate word.
“Sure, why not…” I say slowly. “For one night.”
“Okay,” he says, but he’s grinning.
He gets down on the ground so he can pet Wilbur, and Ma says to me, “Happy birthday.” She leans over and kisses my cheek, hanging on a little too long as she does it. When she sits back, her eyes are wet.
“I’m glad you brought him.” I give her hand a squeeze. “But I’m not sure going to the game is such a great idea.”
“Why not?”
“People are still talking, Ma.”
Abigail sits and quietly listens without saying a word.
Ma scoffs. “Then let them talk.” Her voice softens a little. “They’re just words. And Mitchell already knows everything. He knows how people talk, and he knows what they say. And he knows it’s all lies.”
“It’s not all lies, Ma,” I reply. It’s not. I’d love it if it were. But it’s not.
“You made a mistake, Ethan,” she says. “I refuse to let you torture yourself over it for the rest of your life. Come to the game. It’ll be fine.”
I heave out a breath. “Okay.”
She gestures toward Abigail. “Bring Abigail with you. It’ll be fun. Then you can bring him back with you after, for the night.”
“What are you going to do all by yourself?” I ask her.
She throws up her hands. “What difference does that make? I might take a nice long bubble bath. Or I might go out for dinner with friends. I haven’t done that in a really long time.”
My mom has given up a lot while raising my son. She has tirelessly handled preschool and then elementary school, play dates and illnesses, sports and vaccines, and she has done even more that I don’t know about, I’m sure. And she didn’t have to do any of it. She did it because she loves us, without limits. She could have walked away from me when the rest of the town did, but she didn’t.
She could have moved away from the small town of Macon Hills and saved herself from all the judgment, the name-calling, and the torment that some people have continued to give her, even years later. But she didn’t. She stayed. She said this town was important to her and that she wouldn’t be pushed out.
She made it work. And now I have to do the same.
“It’s getting late. We need to get home,” she says. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a card. “You can read it later,” she says as she pushes it into my hands.
“Open mine now,” Mitchell says. He pushes his handmade card into my hands.
I look down at the folded piece of computer paper, and on the outside it says Happy Birthday to the Best Dad Ever.
I open it up and see that he has drawn a picture of a campsite and two people sitting around an open fire.
I swallow past the lump in my throat. “Thank you,” I say, and he launches himself at me. I sweep him up into my arms the way I have wanted to do a million times over the past five years. He holds me almost as tightly as I hold him, and I take in his little-boy scent. His hair tickles the side of my face. Finally, he wiggles so that I let him go.
“We’ll see you Saturday,” Ma says as she comes over and presses a kiss to my cheek. “Right?”
I give her a nod. “I’ll be there.”
I still don’t think it’s a good idea, but I’m going. I said I would, and so I am.
They leave, and Abigail just sits and stares at me. “He looks like you,” she says softly. “And his disposition is like yours.”
“I don’t know how.” I shake my head. “That’s the first time I’ve been around him since he was two.”
Her gaze softens and sharpens all at the same time. “Why haven’t you seen him?”
I flick a bug from my ear and linger there to scratch. “I’ve been away.”
“I know you well enough to know that if you could have avoided being away, you would have. You’d do anything for that boy. I can see it on your face.”
“I’ve never loved anything the way that I love him.” Sometimes, I feel like I’m split open on the inside, just because I love him so hard.
“Explain to me why you haven’t seen him, then,” she prompts. She waits patiently.
“I can’t. I can’t explain it. I don’t know.” I don’t have a good reason for not seeing him since I got out of jail. Except for the fact that I didn’t want to stain him with my sins. I wanted him to stay an innocent little boy a little while longer. I didn’t want him tainted by my brand of bullshit. But now that I’ve seen him, now that I’ve held him in my arms, I could no more stay away than I could cut off one of my own limbs. “I just wasn’t able.”
“But you’re able now.”
I nod. “I’m able now.” I grin at her. “He loved your ugly cake.”
The cake is reduced to nothing more than some crumbs left on the plate now. I scrape what’s left onto the ground so that Wilbur can eat it.
“My cake was not ugly.” She pretends to look offended.
I hold up one finger. “I beg to differ.”
She sniffs. “We’ll just have to agree to disagree.”
“You’re going to the game with me on Saturday,” I announce.
She raises her eyebrows at me and grins. “Oh, I am, am I?”
“Yep. I might need a buffer.”
Her brow furrows. “A buffer from what?”
“A lot of people in town hate my guts.” I draw in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “With good reason.”
“You want to tell me more about that yet?”
I grin at her. “I like that you like me. I’d like for it to stay that way a little longer.”
“So you’ve said. Am I going to have to stop liking you to find out?”
I clutch my heart. “Please don’t.”
“Will you ever explain it to me?”
I nod. “I think I’ll have to. I’m just not ready to do it yet.”
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay?”
She shrugs. “I figure you’ll tell me when you want me to know.”
“And you trust me, without even knowing about my past?”
She stares into my eyes. “Without question.”
“Abigail, I was head-over-heels for you when I was thirteen, and I’m going to go ahead and warn you that I’m probably going to do it all over again, if you spend very much time with me,” I say. I don’t beat around the bush. I just come right with it. Ever since that night in the rain, I’ve thought about her at random times, wondering what she’s doing. I can’t get her off my mind.
“Is it a thirteen-year-old kind of love?” she asks.
“Is there any other kind?”
“You don’t even know me,” she says. Her cheeks are rosy and pink all of a sudden.
“I know you. Without question.” I use the same words she used on me a moment ago.
“I think you’ve had too much cake. The sugar has gone to your head.”
“Something has gone to my head, and I’m pretty sure it’s not the cake.” I stare at her. Hard. But I need for her to know where my attention lies.
“Is this how you hit on women?”
“I haven’t hit on any women in a really long time. Not since my wife. So I don’t really know how you’re supposed to do it.” I scratch my head.
“A haircut and a cake are not worthy of falling in love over,” she says succinctly. “They’re only worthy of a simple thank you.” She reaches into her back pocket and pulls out a folded handful of fabric. It’s lumpy and wrinkled. “Sorry I didn’t wrap it,” she says.
I unfold it and laugh when I see the slogan on the front. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”
I reach back and grab the back of the shirt I’m wearing, and I pull it off over my head. Her eyes fall to my naked chest and she licks her lips.
“So all I have to do to get you to take your shirt off is give you a new one?” She gives me a thumbs-up. “You can expect a new one every damn day.” She grins at me.
I pull the new shirt over my head and let it fall down around my waist. I look down. “I look hot, right?”
“Sorry,” she says. She shakes her head like she’s coming out of a trance. “I was still looking at you without a shirt in my mind.” She laughs, which makes me laugh too. She jerks her thumb toward her cabin. “I had better get back.”
“Thank you for the cake,” I say. I hand her the empty cake plate and she accepts it with a nod.
“It was worth it just to see Mitchell enjoy it as much as he did.”
“He’s really something, isn’t he?” I ask quietly, still in awe of the fact that I made something as perfect as him.
She leans close to me and presses her lips to my cheek, lingering long enough that I can smell the lemon scent that always follows her around. “You’re really something too,” she says, and then she turns on her heel and leaves me sitting there, watching her as she walks away.
I look down at Wilbur. “Well, that was a shit-show.”
He quacks back at me and settles down to nap on my foot.
“That was my kid, Wilbur,” I explain softly. “He’s mine.”
Wilbur says nothing. And that’s okay, because there are no words that can ease any of the worries I have going on in the back of my mind. I’m going to have to step up and just take the leap, and then deal with the fallout—and there will be fallout—later.
I crawl into the tent, and as I lie there beside a battery-powered lantern, I open the card my mother gave me. Inside is a coupon book for babysitting, with twelve coupons for free babysitting inside. There’s a sticky note on the front that reads: For when he comes to live with you permanently. The last coupon in the book says Renewable for twelve more, at your request.
Tears brimming in my eyes, I look at Wilbur, who of course has followed me into the tent. “My mom plays hardball, Wilbur,” I say. But I’m so glad she came by tonight. I want my son. I want him with every breath in my body. I just need to
make it happen.
11
Abigail
The rain doesn’t start until around two in the morning. I get a weather alert on my phone and wake up to check it. The weather app says the rain will last about a half hour and it will be light. Immediately after I get the alert, my phone rings.
“Gran?” I say as I sit up on the edge of the bed.
“It feels like rain,” she says.
“Yeah, I just got an alert. It’s just supposed to be a sprinkle.”
“Well, I just wanted to let you know.”
I smile to myself. “Thanks, Gran. You doing okay?”
“Just fine,” she says, her words short. “I ran into Charles’s mother at the grocery store today.”
“Oh? How did that go?” I can already see the scene in my head. My gran probably gave my soon-to-be-ex mother-in-law the what-for.
“It went fine,” she replies. And I immediately know that something happened that she doesn’t want to tell me about.
“Gran… What did you do?”
She makes a noise in her throat. “Well…I might have…just a tiny little bit…told her what was going on.”
“Wait.” I hold up my hand even though I know Gran can’t see me. “She didn’t know?”
“No, she had no idea. So I congratulated her on the upcoming grandbaby. She went white as a sheet, I tell you. She sputtered like a leaky balloon. Then she went from white to red, and she told me I should keep the family business within the family.”
Gran snorts, and I know she’s not done yet, so I just wait.
“So I told her that since he shacked up with that other woman and knocked her up, I didn’t have to claim any of them as family anymore, which suits me just fine because I never did like his bony ass anyway.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said his ass isn’t bony, he just exercises a lot. I swear to God, Abigail, when God was giving out asses, he skipped right over that boy. He’s got nothing back there to hold his pants up. It’s almost like he has negative ass. So yes, I can call it bony if I want to.”
Gran is filled with righteous indignation. I love it.
“Then she had the nerve to tell me that wasn’t very charitable of me.”
Feels like Rain (Lake Fisher Book 3) Page 8
