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Lucy touched the silky edge of the drape. Sheer and old, it felt like silk when it was probably just nineteen-seventies polyester. “Why are you hanging curtains at eleven o’clock at night, Mom?”
“I am hoping.”
“Walter?”
“I know that bothers you, Lucy, but I cannot stop how I feel.”
“It doesn’t bother me Mom, not like it did…but I just don’t understand how you go from a man like Dad to a man like Walter.”
Sandra took her end of the sheer and walked into the family room. Lucy, holding her end, followed like a fish on a line.
“Perhaps…they are not that different.”
Lucy snorted. “Dad was perfect—”
“Don’t, honey. No one is perfect. No relationship is without its problems.”
Moonlight fell across Mom’s face like the sheer, hiding and revealing at the same time. Lucy wasn’t going to pry; she liked her memories of her father, her memories of her childhood, and she had no interest in changing any of that.
Lucy stepped up onto the chair beside the sliding glass door. Carefully she threaded the hooks through the slits in the tops of the shears.
“So, we’re not waiting?” Lucy asked.
“Nope.”
“We’re getting on with our lives and…we’re hoping?”
“Yep.”
“Then I’m going to Los Angeles to get our stuff.”
“Sounds good.”
“And I’m going to call Meredith Van Loan and make an appointment to show her my wedding jewelry collection.”
“That’s my girl.”
Sandra started to pull the sheer back down. The holes ripped around the hooks. “Take those off will you?” she said. “I’m going shopping. This place needs an overhaul.”
Lucy grinned and unhooked the sheer.
“That’s my mom.”
19
Jeremiah got a meeting with Dr. Gilman on Monday afternoon. The boys went to school in the morning but he picked them up at lunch. He had apples and cheese for the ride over in the truck.
The boys were silent, probably nervous. Jeremiah could relate. He had cold sweat pooling in the small of his back.
“I don’t want her to shrink my head,” Casey whispered from the back.
Jeremiah grinned at him in the rearview mirror. “She won’t. Trust me. I’ve been going for months, does my head look any smaller?”
He took off his hat and Casey inspected it. “I guess not.”
“You’ve been going for months?” Aaron asked.
“Saturday nights,” he said. “When Grandma and Grandpa come over.”
“I thought you were playing poker!” Ben cried.
“I lied.”
“You shouldn’t lie, Uncle J,” Casey admonished.
“I know buddy, and I’m not going to anymore.”
A few minutes later they arrived at the red building, and the four of them trudged up the sidewalk that was bracketed by flower beds. They pushed through the door, the little bell ringing four times.
“Well, hello,” the receptionist said, swiveling away from the computer to greet them all.
The three boys all said “Hi, ma’am,” and Jeremiah wondered if he was going to pass out. It was so hard to breathe. His skin prickled and sweat dripped down his back. His nose was running like he had allergies.
“Go on back,” the receptionist said. “Dr. Gilman is waiting for you.”
Casey gripped his hand and Jeremiah led the boys down the small hallway to the back room, the sunlit office with the tissues and the couch. The place where he talked, the only place in the world where it felt all right for him to spill his guts and be afraid instead of pretending he knew what he was doing.
This was the place where he was weak.
It’s going to be okay, he told himself. This is the right thing to do.
Dr. Gilman stood up from her desk as they all walked in. The boys said howdy, polite as ever, and Jeremiah hung up his hat, grabbing Ben’s baseball cap and Aaron’s new cowboy hat and setting them up on the rack. Casey shrugged off his sweatshirt and handed it up to him. Jeremiah set it up on the rack, too.
He tilted his head…that…that looked right.
The four of us, he thought. A family.
It begins here.
Monday afternoon Walter heard the car door slam from inside the barn and he quickly walked out to see who it was.
Sandra was getting out of Mia’s old truck, her arms full of catalogs and fabric samples. She’d been gone the whole day, not even there at breakfast. Leaving him deflated over his toast since he’d spent the hours close to dawn figuring out what he needed to tell her.
She wasn’t there at lunch, either, and this little speech was drilling holes in his head.
“Can I help you with those?” he asked.
She didn’t spare him a glance and he wanted to kiss his way across that stubborn chin of hers. But, instead, he grabbed the top two big books in her arms. Wallpaper samples.
Interesting.
“Thank you,” she said stiffly and Walter nodded, following her into the house.
Once in the kitchen she dropped the stuff on the counter and he followed suit, and then suddenly, with their arms empty, the urge to touch her, to hold her was great. Too great, despite his speech and his intentions, and he grabbed her hand. Just that. Her fingers in his, tiny and fragile and perfect.
