Feels like Home (Lake Fisher Book 2)

by Tammy Falkner

  “Thanks, Mr. Jacobson,” I say. “I appreciate it. My cell number is on the fridge.” I had left it there for Gabby in case of an emergency. “Call me if he wakes up.”

  “Sure thing,” he says. He pulls a paperback book out of his back pocket and plops down on the rocking chair that’s in the bedroom.

  I go in the bathroom and change into a pair of pajamas that Lynda bought for me a few years ago for Christmas. They are a hideous print, with Christmas party lights on the pants and the t-shirt, but I love them, mainly because Lynda gave them to me. I slide my feet into my bedroom slippers and pop into the bedroom one last time.

  “Don’t ask me again if I’m sure or I’ll feel led to leave,” Mr. Jacobson grumbles in warning.

  “Good night, then,” I say.

  “’Night, Aaron,” he replies.

  I turn to walk out, but he calls my name.

  “Yes, sir?” I reply.

  “You need to tell that oldest girl. Soon.”

  “Yes, sir,” I reply. And I will. I just need to find the right time.

  “Take my golf cart,” he says. “If you need it.”

  No one drives Mr. Jacobson’s golf cart but Mr. Jacobson. “Thanks,” I mutter, even though I know I won’t use it.

  I leave the house, collecting all the now-empty jars to carry up to Jake and Katie’s. I walk slowly down the path toward “the big house,” which is what we all called the Jacobsons’ house when we were younger. The crickets and the bullfrogs are my only companions. The night air is chilly but not cold, and I can’t help but stop and think about how good it feels to be alive. To be here, right this minute–it’s the best.

  I knock softly at Jake and Katie’s kitchen door, and I can see Katie is startled as she turns toward me and sees me through the window. She has one hand full of empty hot cocoa packets when she opens the door. “Everything okay?” she asks, her brow furrowing.

  I set the jars on her kitchen counter. “Well, I heard there was a blanket fort. Didn’t want to miss it.”

  She looks beyond me. “Where’s Miles?”

  “Mr. Jacobson volunteered to babysit.”

  Her mouth falls open. “He did what?”

  “He pretty much kicked me out of my own house, pulled a paperback book out of his back pocket, and sat down next to Miles’s crib.”

  “Pop’s such an old softie,” she says fondly, as her lips tip up into a grin. “He has this hard shell, but deep inside he’s a pot of bubbling mush.”

  “I’ll tell him you said so,” I tease.

  “Don’t you dare!” She slaps my shoulder playfully. “The kids are in there.” She nods toward the living room. “My little ones are in their beds. And Gabby went to bed. But the others are all in there with Jake.”

  “Got room for me?”

  She smiles. “Go check.” She motions me forward with her hands.

  I walk into the room to find the biggest, ugliest blanket fort I have ever seen built right in the middle of the living room. The blankets are strung from wall to wall with clothespins hooked to two-by-fours. My two girls are sharing an air mattress, Alex and Jake are sharing another, and Trixie is on a third air mattress, with her big dog pressed against her side. Jake must have turned on a star projector because the ceiling of the tent is filled with constellations.

  “And that one is piggly-wiggly,” I hear Jake say, and giggles erupt.

  “There’s no such thing as piggly-wiggly,” I say quietly as I squat down at the foot of the mattress my girls are on.

  “It does kind of look like a pig, Daddy,” Kerry-Anne says.

  “You guys got room for me in there?” I ask. They make a hole between them and I slide into it, and we stare up at the fort’s ceiling shoulder to shoulder. Both girls have damp hair and they smell like lavender shampoo and hot cocoa.

  Jake makes up a few more constellation names as all the kids start to yawn, struggling to stay awake. Then, finally, the room is quiet.

  “I’m glad you came by,” Jake says. His voice isn’t more than a rumble in the stillness of the blanket fort.

  “Go sleep with your wife, Jake,” I tell him. “I heard from a reputable source that you snore like a train.”

  He snorts out a laugh. “Pop has never been called a reputable source.”

  “Go to bed, Jake,” I say again.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.” I grab part of Kerry-Anne’s blanket and cover up with it. I yawn, the trials of the day finally catching up with me.

  “Well, if you’re sure.” Jake gets up gingerly from his air mattress and pads down the hallway on socked feet, his steps no louder than a whisper.

  I look up at the constellations and remember the times that Lynda and I used to lie in the grass and look up at the stars. “I miss you,” I say to her in my head.

  Then I roll over and prepare for sleep, sandwiched between my two girls. I’m pretty sure I’ll wake up with Kerry-Anne’s foot in my face and a toe up my nose, but it’ll be worth it.

  12

  Bess

  I’m startled awake when I hear knocking on the front door. “What’s wrong?” I ask from where I was sleeping on the couch as Eli walks by me and looks through the window.

  “It’s Mr. Jacobson,” he says quietly.

  He opens the door and Mr. Jacobson whispers vehemently, “It woke up!”

  “What woke up?”

  “The little one,” he says.

  Eli scratches his head. “Which little one?”

  “The little…baby Aaron one,” Mr. Jacobson says, obviously too flustered to remember.

  “Miles?” Eli supplies as he tries to rub the sleep from his eyes.

  “Yeah, that one,” Mr. Jacobson clarifies. “I volunteered to watch it while it slept, but it didn’t follow the rules. It woke up.”

  Eli chuckles. “Babies have a tendency to do that.”

  “Well, come and get it.” He motions for Eli to follow him.

  “Where’s Aaron?” Eli asks.

  “He’s up at the house sleeping in the fort.”

  “And he left you to babysit?”

  “Shut your trap and come on.” He motions again for Eli to follow him, and Eli slips his feet into the shoes he’d left by the door and he follows him into the yard.

  I get my shoes and follow too. “How did you end up babysitting?” I ask.

  “Stop asking stupid questions,” Mr. Jacobson says. So I shut my trap too and stay quiet. We all traipse across to Aaron’s cabin.

  I can hear babbling from the bedroom, so I follow Eli in that direction. Eli walks across the room and stares into the portable crib. Miles is lying there talking to himself. “He’s not even crying,” Eli says.

  “Yeah, well, how was I supposed to know what he’d do next, huh?” Mr. Jacobson asks caustically. “One minute I was asleep in that very comfortable rocker over there and the next it was talking to me from the crib.”

  “Did you call Aaron?” I ask.

  “Why would I do that?” Mr. Jacobson rubs the top of his head. “You two were right next door.”

  Eli chuckles as I stand there. I’m sure I look dumbfounded, because I really am. Neither Eli nor I know anything about babies. But Eli reaches into the crib and lifts Miles out. He makes a snorting sound when Miles grabs his nose. Eli carries him to the dresser that Aaron has set up like a changing table. He lays him gently on the fabric pad and starts to change him.

  “Where’d you learn to do that?” I ask in awe.

  “Gabby taught me this morning,” he says. “It’s not that hard.”

  “I like them when they’re big enough to wipe their own asses,” Mr. Jacobson says. He motions toward the baby. “When they’re this size, I don’t know what to do with them.” He grumbles low under his breath. “I like them more when they’re asleep.”

  “He’s just hungry. Aaron said he fell asleep before he had his bottle.” Eli carries him to the kitchen where he pulls a clean bottle from the drying rack on the counter, fills it wi
th water from a jug on the counter that has a picture of a baby on it, and he adds a couple of scoops of formula to the water.”

  “Who are you?” I whisper to him.

  He laughs. “Tonight, I’m a baby whisperer. Tomorrow, a shack cleaner-outer. I am a man of many talents.”

  “Well, if you two have this under control, I’m going to bed.” Mr. Jacobson spins toward the door.

  “What?” I turn around to ask what he means, but he’s already out the front door, closing it loudly behind him. I hear his golf cart start up.

  “What time is it?” Eli asks, as he sits down in a kitchen chair with Miles in his arms. His voice isn’t much more than a whisper. He tilts Miles back and sticks the nipple of the bottle in his tiny mouth, and Miles settles peacefully into his arms.

  I glance at my watch. “It’s almost two thirty. Should we go and get Aaron?”

  “No need,” Eli says. “He’ll go back to sleep after he’s fed.”

  “But who’s going to sit with him?”

  Eli shrugs, jostling Miles a little in his arms. “I will.” He looks up at me. “You can go back to bed.”

  “Well, I’m awake now.” I pace from one side of the kitchen to the other. “Are you sure we don’t need to go get Aaron?”

  “Aaron needs his rest.” He rocks slowly back and forth as Miles finishes his bottle. “He had a tough day, from what I heard.”

  I sit down in a chair next to Eli. “He was pretty sick when we got home.”

  “He never did eat anything.”

  “I know, but he drank a few juice pouches. I kept giving them to him because he seemed to tolerate them well.”

  “How was he during the treatment?”

  Eli and I haven’t said this many words to one another in months. It feels strange. But not unpleasant. And that, in itself, is strange.

  I shrug. “He was Aaron.”

  “That good, huh?” Eli chuckles.

  “He wanted to reminisce,” I admit. Then I want to bite it back as soon as I say it.

  “About what?” I can see his face in the light from the window, and I know he’s wearing a soft smile. I used to love that smile. I never see it anymore.

  “Old times,” I say. I shrug again. “Nothing important.”

  “Like what?” he insists.

  I’m not going to get out of this, so I say, “The skee ball game. The leader board, and that day that you knocked my top score off the board.”

  “The day we met,” he says softly.

  “Yeah.”

  “Best day of my life,” he says. That smile doesn’t fade.

  My heart starts to ache. Those days are gone. They’ve been gone. I jump to my feet. “If you’re okay here, I’m going to go back to bed.” I don’t wait.

  I hear him say, “Okay, Bess,” very softly from behind me as I close the door.

  I stand outside the door of Aaron’s cabin and try to catch my breath. I don’t want to reminisce about good times with Eli. Because the bad times far outshine the good. I go back to our cabin and go to the bed, getting in on my side. I might as well use the bed since Eli’s not here.

  The bed smells like Eli does after a shower, and I stick my nose into the edge of his pillow and inhale deeply. Eli’s soap smells like a mix of citrus and mint, with something woodsy added to it. I used to love that smell. Now, it just hurts.

  It’s a long time before I fall back asleep.

  13

  Aaron

  I wake up the next morning to the sound of humming. Whoever it is has a scratchy voice and a poor sense of timing. I open my eyes and look up into Mr. Jacobson’s face as he stares down at me. “Good morning, sunshine,” he says.

  I look to my left and right and find that the other sides of the air mattress are empty, as are the other two mattresses. “Where is everybody?” I ask.

  “They went fishing.” He reaches over his head and unhooks a strand of lights that was attached to the blanket fort, and then starts rolling it up around his arm.

  I wipe the drool from my chin with the heel of my hand and stare down at it. “Jake didn’t draw a dick on my forehead again, did he?” He did that once when we were twelve. I wore that thing like a badge of honor for two days because my mom couldn’t wash it off.

  “No. This time, he gave you titties.” He points to his forehead and shakes his head, laughter shaking his shoulders.

  I roll to my feet and rush to the mirror on the wall, already scrubbing my saliva-slicked fingertips across my forehead.

  “Gotcha,” Mr. Jacobson sings out. His chuckles get louder.

  Motherfucker…

  I suddenly remember Miles. “Who has Miles?” Oh, God…I slept through my kid waking up. “You were with him the last time I saw him.” I look around like I’m going to find him stuffed into one of the couch cushions. He’s not there.

  “He’s with Eli,” the old man says.

  I look down at my watch. It’s almost nine in the morning. I never sleep this late. “Why didn’t anybody wake me up?”

  “You needed your rest.” He glares at me. “Last time I checked, you didn’t have a big red S on your chest and you didn’t change clothes in a phone booth so you can save the world. And last time I checked, kryptonite wasn’t the only thing that could take you out. You have cancer. Exhaustion is a poor bedfellow, my friend.”

  “But my kids—”

  “Your kids are happy and well taken care of. Isn’t that why you came here?”

  “Among other things,” I grumble.

  Katie breezes into the room carrying a load of laundry in a basket.

  “Have you seen my kids?” I ask her.

  She freezes. “I saw them when I fed them breakfast, and then Gabby took them to your house to get dressed.”

  “How did I sleep through all this?” I ask more to myself than to them. I never neglect my kids. Ever since Lynda died, I’ve been the one who takes care of them. The only one.

  “You were tired, Aaron,” Katie says slowly and succinctly. “It’s not going to do them any harm if someone else feeds them breakfast.”

  “They looked pretty happy to me,” Mr. Jacobson says. “They played the quiet game, you know, to see who could be the quietest while they had breakfast.”

  “Next time, just wake me up, will you?” I know I sound sour, but I don’t like feeling like I’m failing at parenting.

  “Sure thing,” Mr. Jacobson says, his voice clipped.

  I scrub at my forehead again, even though I know it’s clean. “Did Miles sleep all night?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “You were asleep.”

  I gasp. “You still should have called me.”

  Katie’s eyes harden. It’s almost imperceptible, but I see it, and I feel like an idiot. “Okay, Aaron. Next time we’ll call you. We’ll wake you. You can take care of your own kids. Even though you just had a grueling chemo treatment, and even though you were exhausted, and even though you needed your rest. Sure thing, we’ll wake you up.” She lets the laundry basket she was holding drop heavily onto the end table and then she walks out of the room.

  “You just fucked that up.” Mr. Jacobson starts to hum the same tune he was humming when I woke up.

  I sink down onto the couch and drop my face into my hands. “I didn’t mean to sleep late.”

  “It’s really not that late. The kids didn’t get up until a half hour ago.”

  “Really?” Kerry-Anne is usually up at the crack of dawn.

  “Yep.” He goes back to humming.

  “Okay.” I face Mr. Jacobson. “So, they’re fishing?”

  “Last time I saw them,” he says tersely.

  “Miles woke up during the night? Did you give him a bottle?”

  “Eli came over and took care of him.”

  He did? I feel like I’ve woken up in some alternate universe.

  “I walked over and woke him up. The little fella didn’t even cry. He just woke up and started babbling.
” He stares at me. “He’s a cute kid. Happier than any baby I ever met.”

  “He is a happy baby.” And it’s no fault of mine. Lynda insisted on letting him soothe himself, rather than holding him while he slept. I would hold him all the time if I could. But Lynda was adamant. “That’s Lynda’s doing.”

  “Smart woman.” He reaches up to unhook another strand of lights. “You going to help me or sit there and watch me work?”

  I jump up and take the strand of lights from him. And then we work together to put the room back to rights. When we’re done, I say to him, “Thanks for watching Miles last night.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’d better go talk to Katie.”

  He shakes his head. “You might want to give it a few minutes. That one, when she’s fired up, is a force to be reckoned with.” He chuckles. “Wouldn’t want you to be emasculated so early in the day.”

  From the other room, I hear the kitchen door open and the whisper of small voices. I walk into the kitchen to find Kerry-Anne and Trixie standing in the kitchen, both dripping water all over the floor. The dog bounds in the door behind them, shakes, and water goes flying everywhere. “We fell in the lake,” Kerry-Anne says, and then they both erupt into giggles.

  Of course they did. Katie walks into the room and freezes. She spins both girls by their shoulders with her hands, and she walks them toward the hallway. At the last minute, she grabs a towel, throws it at me, and says, “Make yourself useful.”

  I clean up all the water, dry the wet footprints, and even dry the dog, who just sits there and lets me rub him all over. His big tongue slurps up the side of my face when I’m done.

  “Well, thank you,” I mutter. “I like you too.” I scratch the top of his head and he leans into my hip.

  The back door opens and Sam walks into the room, followed by Eli who has Miles in a carrier on his chest. Miles is facing me, his arms and legs flailing around as he grins at me. “Good morning, sunshine,” Eli says. “Did you sleep well?” He grins at me, too.

  I narrow my eyes and stare back at him. I rub at my forehead again, even though, deep down, I know it’s bare. And that’s when I see it: the two circles drawn on the back of my hand with black nipples scribbled in the middle. Fuck me. They did get me. I can’t help but grin.