Feels like Home (Lake Fisher Book 2)

by Tammy Falkner

  “You can see it better over the water.”

  I jerk my thumb toward the house. “Kids are asleep.”

  She holds out her hands. “I’m here. Go.” She makes a shooing motion with her hands. “Have fun. See all the sunrises you can while you can.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She scoffs good-naturedly. “Not like I’m doing anything else.” She makes that shooing motion again.

  I get up and start to walk away, but I turn back. “Thank you for the talk.”

  She smiles at me and shoos me again. “Take your time,” she says.

  I walk down to the lakeshore, and I watch as the sun wakes the lake up. A duck bobs on the surface of the lake, occasionally dunking its head. The water is still, not even moved by wind, aside from the ripples from the duck. It’s peaceful and serene and perfect. I pick up a rock and toss it, skipping it across the surface of the lake. I only get four skips, so I look for another. After I throw a second one, the duck squawks at me in protest and paddles off down the lake.

  I hear a motor and turn to see Pop on the old red golf cart, heading up the hill. He goes past a row of trees and into the woods down the lane, and I know where he’s going. And I instantly know that I need to go there too.

  I follow him slowly, sure that he will need time to himself when he gets to the old cemetery. His wife is buried there, along with a few ancestors. It has a neat little white picket fence around it. I find him pulling up weeds from around one of the older headstones. He looks up at me and grunts. He says nothing. I lean my elbows on the fence and look at the area. “Mr. Jacobson?”

  “What?” he snaps in true Pop fashion.

  “Can I come in?” I ask. I wait for permission to enter because it feels wrong to just barge in.

  A sigh. “I reckon that would be all right,” he says quietly.

  I open the sturdy little gate and walk inside.

  “You know why they put fences around graveyards, don’t you?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “Why?”

  “Because people are dying to get in.” He doesn’t even crack a smile.

  But it makes me laugh.

  “Your wife is buried here?” I ask. I walk over to her headstone, which is clean and tidy, and I find a small posy of flowers lying on top of her headstone. Surely he didn’t bring them.

  “She liked flowers,” he says by way of explanation. His voice is quiet and unhurried. “And I liked giving them to her.” He stares at her headstone a moment, and then at me. “Still do,” he says with a chuckle. “Jake says it’s a foolish waste of time, but I reckon I can do whatever makes me feel better.”

  “I have a question for you,” I say hesitantly.

  “I figured you might,” he replies in his fashion.

  I stand there and look around, not sure how to ask.

  “Out with it, young man. I ain’t got all day.”

  “Do you think you could make room in here for me?” I ask.

  He is startled. Then he blinks hard and I see him take a big gulp, like he’s trying to push down his emotions. He looks away into the woods for a moment, then he looks back at me. His eyes are shiny and wet. He lifts the neck of his shirt to wipe at his eyes. “I reckon I could make some room,” he says, his voice gruff with emotion. “You don’t want to be next to your wife?” He stares at me.

  “Lynda wanted to be cremated and it was important to her brothers that they get the ashes. They’re assholes,” I explain.

  “Every family has at least one. And they usually stink.”

  I bark out a laugh. “I want my kids to have somewhere to go, if they need me.”

  “Makes sense to me.” He sniffles and clears his throat.

  “And this is my favorite place. At Lake Fisher.”

  “You’re a man with good taste,” he says dryly.

  “So is that a yes?”

  He glares at me like he used to when I was ten and I asked him a stupid question. “I said I reckon it’ll be all right, didn’t I?”

  I grin. “I just wanted to be sure.”

  He nods. “You can be sure. You’ll be welcome here.” He goes back to pulling weeds.

  “Thanks, Mr. Jacobson.”

  A grunt is his only response.

  I let myself out of the little cemetery and walk slowly down the lane, back toward the complex. The cemetery rests on a hill in a private area. I don’t think many people even know it’s there. I didn’t get to choose Lynda’s resting place, but I do get to choose mine, and I’m happy with my choice.

  When I get back, I find Bess bustling around in my kitchen. She’s making pancakes, and she has Kerry-Anne standing in a chair next to her, showing her how to flip them, while Sam sits at the kitchen table stirring ingredients. Miles is in a bouncy chair next to her feet, and Sam’s kitten is curled up in the chair with him.

  “Did Gabby go home?” I ask, as I take in the scene.

  “I told her we had this under control,” Bess says. Her face scrunches with worry. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No. Not at all.” I shake my head, and I stand back and look around. This is going to be the new normal. I might as well get used to it.

  Eli walks in the front door like he owns the place, walks over to Bess, and kisses her on the cheek. “Good morning,” he says, and he looks into her eyes, and in that moment I know that while I won’t get the happily-ever-after I would so desperately love to have, my kids will. And it’ll be okay.

  “I’m going to go see if I can get plane tickets sorted for me and Sam,” I say.

  Bess waves me away without even looking in my direction. “We have this under control,” she says.

  If I allow all this to hurt my heart, it will, I remind myself. If I don’t, it won’t. This is the new normal. And it’s going to be okay.

  36

  Eli

  The first night that Aaron and Sam are gone, we end up with Miles in our room in a portable crib, and we have Kerry-Anne and Trixie, on a blowup mattress that I borrowed from Jake, out in the living room. Jake assured me that it’s actually easier to take care of two little girls than it is to take care of one since they entertain one another, but no one remembered to tell me that Trixie comes with her great big dog, Sally. Sally goes everywhere with Trixie, and that includes to the sleepover at our house. Bess makes a pallet for Sally next to the blowup mattress the girls are on, and the dog settles down next to them. His big tail swishes from side to side as he settles down, and Sam’s cat dives and tries to catch it as it thumps against the floor.

  Bess laughs out loud as she gives good-night kisses, as she watches the cat attack the dog. The dog is infinitely patient, as I think is his nature. Eventually, the cat climbs on top of the dog and settles down, and the dog lets him.

  “That dog is adorable,” Bess whispers to me as we get ready for bed. She goes out to the living room one last time to make sure the front door is locked tight, and then she comes back and tiptoes on bare feet over to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

  I watch her as she unabashedly changes clothes in front of me, going so far as to undress down to her panties. Her naked back is about the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen, and I watch in abject fascination as she changes so casually in front of me. I haven’t seen more than Bess’s middle finger in a really long time, so this is all new, and it feels so good.

  I make a noise low in my throat that I didn’t even know I was making, and Bess looks over at me as she pulls one of my t-shirts down over her hair. “What?” she says, but she smiles at me. And when she turns, I can see the side of her breast before the shirt falls down to cover her.

  “Nothing,” I say with a grin, and I lie back, fling my arm back behind my head, and rest my head on my forearm so I can look at her. Just look at her.

  “You made a noise,” she says. “It wasn’t nothing.”

  I grin. “If you must know, I was admiring your back.” And your tits.

  “All the parts of me you could be admiring, and you pick my back
?” She’s still whispering, and so am I, as she tiptoes across the floor and slides between the covers. She doesn’t put on bottoms, and I imagine her bare legs as they slide across the cool sheets and how they probably feel. How they might feel wrapped around mine.

  “It’s the only part of you I’ve seen so far. Well, recently at least,” I say as she lies down on her stomach, stuffs her arms under her pillow, and rests her chin on the soft pillowcase so she can look at me. I roll onto my other side so I can look at her, too.

  Her cheeks turn rosy. “You want to see more of me, all you have to do is ask.” She leans over and kisses the tip of my nose.

  I waggle my eyebrows. “I want to see more,” I say softly.

  She glances over toward the portable crib and inches in my direction. “Like what?”

  I lift the bottom edge of her t-shirt and drag my eyes down to her lower back. “You used to have a row of freckles right here.” I bend so I can kiss her very softly right at the base of her spine. “Look,” I tease. “There they are.”

  “They’re why you started calling me Freckles,” she says.

  I shake my head. “No, that was the other ones.”

  Her brow furrows. “What other ones?”

  I very gently roll her over and lift her shirt, then place tiny kisses at the skin just above her panties. She squirms and lays her hand on the top of my head, gently scratching my head. If there was one thing I missed when she pushed me away, it was her scratching my head. I arch into her hand the way Sam’s cat arches into mine all the time, unrepentant in my needy state.

  Without lifting her shirt, I slide my hand under it toward the soft skin just under her breast. “Right here,” I whisper. “You had a line of freckles right here.” I slide my thumb back and forth across the skin just below her breast, and I watch as her nipples grow tight and hard against the fabric of my t-shirt.

  “They’re still there,” she whispers, her words breathy and needy.

  “Are you sure?” I ask. “Maybe I should check.”

  She glances toward the door. “That might not be the best idea.”

  I hear giggles coming from the living room and pull my hand back down from under her shirt. I flip onto my side so I can lie with my head on her stomach and look up at her. She tenderly kneads my hair and scalp.

  “Does this feel good to you?” she asks, her voice quiet but strong.

  “Lying here with you?” I turn and nip the tender skin of her belly and she giggles, her stomach scrunching up involuntarily. “It feels fucking amazing.”

  “I meant the head massage,” she clarifies. Her hand is still in my hair, and she’s digging deeply but softly now with her fingertips, gently abrading my scalp.

  “That feels good too,” I reply.

  Her hand slows its kneading. “This thing we’re doing…is it real?”

  I freeze. “What do you mean?”

  “It just…” She stops and shakes her head. “I just…I’m not sure if this is real.”

  I tilt my head so I can look fully into her face. “Does it feel real to you?”

  She nods. “It does. But will it last? Or will we mess it up again?”

  “Honestly? I don’t know,” I admit.

  “Do you still want to try?” she asks, her voice hesitant.

  I nod against her stomach. “I do.”

  “This time, I’d like to work harder to talk to you about things,” she says.

  “Okay, Bess,” I say slowly. This feels like a trap, but I can’t be sure. “You feel like I’m hard to talk to?”

  “No, not that…I think I don’t talk to you enough.” She lays her free hand, the one that’s not rubbing my hair, on her chest. “It’s about me. Not about you.”

  I lie there and say nothing, because I’m still not sure if this is a trap.

  She gets quiet, but it’s not uncomfortable.

  “I need to work on including you in decisions,” I tell her, “instead of making them for us.”

  “You mean like the baby decision?” she says, and her hand stops moving on my head.

  I nod against her stomach again. “Among other things. It just became easier for me, and better for my morale, if I made the decisions on certain topics. I felt like I could get more done if I just…did it.”

  Her hand starts to move again. “Because you knew I would argue with you?”

  “Partly. And partly because you would have done anything to get pregnant, including putting your own emotional health at risk.”

  “We should have had this talk a long time ago,” she says with a soft sigh, but she keeps petting my head.

  “Can I be honest with you? I kind of felt like getting pregnant was your only goal in life. Like you didn’t care about the health of our marriage as long as you got another chance to be pregnant. But every time we lost a pregnancy, I watched the light go a little dimmer in your eyes. And after that last baby, the light went out entirely. That was when I stopped trying. That was when I made that decision for us, that there would be no more pregnancies.” I lift my head and look into her face. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “My light went out?” she repeats.

  “It got dimmer and dimmer and then it was gone. It was like you were right in front of me but disappearing little by little each day. Then you were gone, and I was all alone.”

  “I’m sorry. I never knew that.” She heaves in a breath. “I think you’re right, though.”

  I make an exaggerated shocked face at her and she chuckles at me.

  “Shut up,” she says. “You’re right. I was on a mission to become a mom and I wasn’t going to let anything stand in my way, including you.”

  “I wanted to be on your team, but I couldn’t, not with how hard it was for you.”

  “When we became foster parents to that one baby, it was all I could do to look at him.”

  We had gone through the classes together, and she fulfilled the requirements to become a foster parent just like I did, but she wasn’t ever really in it to win it.

  “I know. You barely looked in his direction, unless you had to.”

  “I couldn’t take losing another baby.”

  “I would have kept him forever if they’d let us.”

  “Do you think Aaron is going to let us take the kids?” she asks.

  “If we can keep the cat alive for thirty days, then yes, I’d say there’s a good chance.”

  She freezes. “What? What does the cat have to do with anything?”

  I laugh. “Call it a test run.”

  “He’s testing us with a cat?” she says, her voice a little loud, so I shush her. “He’s testing us with a cat?” she whispers vehemently.

  “Thirty days with the cat proves we can take care of something.”

  “It’s a fucking cat!” she says with a little growl to her voice.

  “It’s still a commitment,” I remind her. “If we end up with the kids, we’re committing to a lifetime. Cats don’t live nearly as long as kids.”

  “I can’t believe that dickwad felt the need to test me.”

  “Why didn’t you and Aaron ever date?” I suddenly ask. I’ve always wanted to know the answer to this but never found the right time to ask.

  “Eww,” she says, and she pretends to gag. “That would be gross.”

  “So you never had any feelings for one another.”

  She shakes her head. “Never ever, and if you keep talking about it, I’m going to throw up.”

  I get quiet.

  Suddenly she admits, “I was jealous as hell of Lynda for a while, though. Not going to lie.”

  “Why were you jealous?”

  “She took away his time. Before her, I had all of it. After her, I had to share. I didn’t particularly like that, in the beginning.” She makes a fist in my hair which forces my gaze up. “Then you came along and I had someone to love, too, and it became easier. Lynda became my second-best friend, after Aaron. We talked about everything.”

  “When your light got dim, y
ou pushed her away as well. And Aaron, too.”

  She nods. “She was pissed at me for a while. She eventually gave up on trying to reach out to me, and I still feel bad about that.”

  “Aaron never gave up,” I remind her.

  “No, he never did. Even when I was at my lowest, he didn’t stop calling or reaching out to me. He refused to accept my silence. It was damned annoying, to be honest.”

  I know how annoying it was because when he couldn’t get hold of Bess, he’d call me to find out what was going on. I’d talk him out of flying to us, because I didn’t know what Bess would do if he showed up, and he’d eventually give in as long as I kept him updated on situations. He used me like a lifeline to Bess, and I was okay with that.

  “He doesn’t want Lynda’s brothers to have the kids,” I tell her. “I know that much. He says they’re assholes.”

  She snorts. “Lynda’s brothers are assholes. The one with the mustache hit on me at the funeral.”

  “Shut up,” I say. I stare at her. “For real? What did you do?”

  “I ignored him, and he finally went away.”

  “You should have told me. I would have punched him in the face.”

  She looks down at me and rolls her eyes. “We weren’t exactly talking right then.”

  Bess had flown down to Aaron’s hometown the minute that she learned about Lynda and she’d stayed with Aaron until I got there the day of the funeral. Then she’d left. It was like we orbited around one another like backward magnets all day. I was honestly glad she was gone.

  “Aaron asked me to bring you to the lake,” I admit.

  “He did?” She stares up at the ceiling.

  “Yes. I think he thought he could fix everything.”

  “Are we fixed?”

  “Well, you’re no longer acting like you hate my guts,” I say flippantly.

  “I told you I’m tired of hating you.”

  “I kind of like where we’re at right now.” I close my eyes, and she keeps rubbing my hair. It feels so good to be touched that I think I could stay like this forever and be happy.

  “Thirty days, huh?” she muses. Her voice gets even quieter. “Do…do you think he’ll live for thirty days?”