Craig Fleming stepped through the front door just ahead of Ben Carpenter, his brother-in-law. He froze so suddenly, mid-sentence, that the shorter, stockier man had to swivel awkwardly to the side to keep from colliding with him.
"What's wrong?" Ben asked.
Craig lifted a finger to his lips, and both men listened. Silence persisted through a long moment before Craig moved. "I thought I heard something." The house was still, the doors were shut—everything seemed to be in its place. Craig took a peek into the den, but all looked normal there, as well. He headed down the hall toward the bedrooms and glanced into his own room, then the guestroom, then ducked into the laundry room just to check the back door. It was shut. That sound he'd heard must have been his imagination. Nothing was amiss.
Craig released a breath and relaxed. "You need loppers?" he asked Ben, motioning him into the guestroom.
"As many as you can spare," Ben replied, surveying the room and scratching his balding head in amazement at the disarray. "Our first big volunteer day at the Children's Home this year, and we didn't even think about tools. So naturally I called you."
"Not a problem," Craig replied. "I was headed this way anyway. I need to run by Grover's and pick up some trees."
Ben picked up a set of red-handled lopping shears that had been resting on the bed. He leveraged them open and closed.
"Go ahead and take those," Craig said. "The guy I bought this stuff from must have collected them. There are several in here…somewhere." The disorder was such that he couldn't see any more loppers right off. "Take some of the little ones, too—the hand pruners. The more you take, the happier Kara will be."
Ben, stooping over to scoop up more loppers, shot him a playful glance. "She's been nagging you, huh?"
"You have no idea," Craig said, but then shrugged. "Actually, you probably do, since you grew up together."
Ben gave a half-grin as he dug through the various instruments on the bed. "Anything I can do to help."
Craig sorted through the junk in search of hand pruners. He found three sets and placed them beside Ben's growing stack of loppers.
Ben stole a furtive glance at Craig. "I still feel a little sad when I come into this room."
Craig straightened from his scavenging and ran a hand through his chestnut-brown hair, wavy at the ends and only just recently beginning to show signs of thinning. "Still worried about us?"
"Well, not like I used to be. But I know my sister. She was pretty upset. Not at you. She just really wanted to have kids, you know." He grimaced as Craig shot him a frown. "Sorry. I didn't mean to open an old wound. I was just…remembering."
Craig shook his head over the handle of a rake. "Look, Ben, we're not going to be jealous because you and Lia have four great kids. I mean, you gave me and Kara four nieces; we love that. Besides, Kara actually got over it before I did. She could enjoy having dinner with you and Lia and the girls without asking 'what if' every time, after a while. I did too; it just took me longer."
Ben's aquamarine eyes connected with Craig's for a moment, then looked away to locate another pair of loppers. These had handles of green paint mostly flaked away, the metal blade bearing one small chip—probably too big to be sharpened smooth, but Craig thought he might have a go at it later just to see.
Craig gathered up the rake, a small shovel, and a few other tools he thought Ben's crew of volunteers might find useful. Ben didn't say any more, but Craig could hear his thoughts in the silence. "So you want to know if we're going to adopt before we get any older."
"I guess so, yeah."
Craig rolled his eyes. "You and my mother."
The other man shrugged. "It's just… You and Kara moved into this house hoping this room would be more than a guestroom. And it still could be. The children's home, they've got some great kids who just need a place. The two of you, you're wonderful with the girls. It'd be a shame not to at least give it some thought."
"I'm not really interested in going through all that again." Craig spotted two more hand pruners and a sharpening stone and set them in Ben's growing pile. "To be honest, we're pretty happy as we are right now. We love Seattle. Kara likes her job. The business is going well. We have a good home. And on a good day I can even tolerate my brother-in-law." He tossed a pair of gardening gloves to Ben, who snorted. "So…I don't know if I want to risk changing that."
"These will be enough, I think," Ben announced, and he gathered up an armful of the loppers and hand pruners along with the gloves. Craig took up the remainder. They hauled the collection to Ben's SUV parked in the driveway. Ben popped the rear hatch. "So you don't want kids?"
"I didn't say that. But we've already tried." Craig unloaded his share of the tools, stepped back, and scanned the broken clouds above. They were building toward a good rain, just like the weatherman had predicted. Sometimes weathermen's forecasts were actually right. Of course, rain in Seattle in the springtime was always a pretty safe bet.
Ben was waiting for more.
"I don't know," Craig finally admitted, brown eyes no longer seeing the sky. "That miscarriage was tough, Ben. Being pregnant really got her hopes up, even if it was brief. They told us we might have a chance, so we tried. And then they said there really wasn't much chance after all, but we had to try anyway. Then Tiffy… That pretty much wiped us out. Once that was over, we were just…done."
Ben set his tools in the vehicle and listened.
"And between the IVF treatments and getting ready to adopt Tiffy, we stacked up a lot of debt. Plus Derek and I were just getting the business up and running. The business expenses, the mortgage, the medical, not to mention all the stuff for Tiffy—trying again wasn't an option."
"And now?"
Craig sighed and shrugged. "I don't know. Things are better, but we're older, we've moved on… I just don't think we need it like we did."
Ben watched him. Craig almost expected to receive a short sermon on the need to care for orphans, and another preacher might have supplied it. But his brother-in-law turned away instead, shut the hatch, and graciously shifted the topic to something more pleasant. "Do you have another game this week?"
Craig nodded. "Tonight. A dozen eager nine- and ten-year-olds throwing the ball away and swinging for the fence at pitches six feet high. Great entertainment. Want to come?"
"I can't today," Ben shrugged, "but I might come out and see one later."
"We fairly often need a first-base coach," Craig invited.
Ben shook his head. "All I know about baseball is that there are three bases, a bat, and a ball."
"Four bases," Craig corrected. "Home plate is technically a base."
Ben waved a hand. "See what I mean? Thanks for the tools. I'll get them back to you Sunday."
Craig watched Ben climb back into the vehicle and depart. Then he closed up the house and hopped into his old, gray Mazda pickup with "D&C Landscaping" painted on the side. Would we adopt at this point? he wondered. He wasn't sure. Kara might want to. But on top of the expense, who had the energy to go through the months or years of hassle? And then, of course, one could only hope that the adoption went through, that all the effort involved was not wasted.
He let the thought drift away. The old hope they'd had was gone now, but life with Kara was good. They had moved on. They were content now…content with the way things were.
The Boy Who Appeared from the Rain Page 3