The Marine's Baby, Maybe

by Rogenna Brewer

  “Do you mind?” he asked, nodding toward her belly. The baby was very active of late. Sometimes her whole stomach seemed to churn.

  “Sure,” she said. At least he’d asked.

  He put a hand on her. “That’s a future Marine right there. I told you I breed English bulldogs, the unofficial breed of the Corps,” he said in an aside. “When you and your husband get settled, I have a little something for you. A housewarming gift. What’d you say your husband’s name was?”

  “His name is Luke Calhoun Jr. And he’s not my husband. He’s my brother-in-law.” And he’s leaving. And I’m going to miss him. And it would be very wrong to want him to stay.

  “Cait,” Lucky’s mother called to her from the doorway. “I need you to help pass out these trays.”

  After lunch Cait helped Evelyn administer meds by pushing a cart door to door. “I suppose you think you’re way overqualified for this job,” Evelyn said, studying her.

  “No.” She’d never expressed anything like that.

  “Well, I can’t let you give the patients their meds.”

  “I know.”

  “There is a job opening in the pharmacy if you’re interested. Unless, of course, you’re planning to spend time with the baby before going back to work.”

  Caitlin hadn’t really thought about it. Who was going to take care of the baby while she was at work?

  “John and I are always available to help with babysitting,” Lucky’s mother offered.

  It was a very generous offer, considering Caitlin couldn’t even figure out the woman’s relationship to Luke. She wouldn’t have been Luke’s stepmother, even though Nora Jean would have been stepmother to Calhoun and Bruce—and Evelyn was their mother and Big Luke’s first ex-wife.

  And because of her relationship to John, that made her Luke’s aunt. Aunt to your ex-husband’s son. Wow! That must have been awkward. She didn’t imagine the Calhoun clan had had too many family gatherings.

  “I just realized, Evelyn, that you’re my aunt by marriage. Is that right?”

  “Kind of complicated, isn’t it?”

  Making other relationships even more complicated. “I want to apologize for this morning,” Caitlin said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Calhoun’s mother said, pressing her lips together.

  “Falling asleep on the couch with your son was not my intention.” Did that mean Calhoun was her brother-in-law and her cousin-in-law? Was there such a thing as a cousin-in-law? “We were just watching an old John Wayne movie. There’s nothing going on between us.”

  “He already explained that,” Evelyn said. There was a sadness in her eyes as she forced a smile. “Let’s finish up here so we can pick up Dottie and go see your new house.” Aunt Dottie was also a nurse and worked on a different floor, in a different ward.

  Evelyn started to say something else then changed her mind. “I want you to be sure and keep in touch when Lucky leaves.”

  Chapter Twelve

  CAITLIN KNEW HE WAS LEAVING. She just hadn’t expected it to be so soon. When they pulled up to the curb in Evelyn’s Explorer he was backing his motorcycle out of her driveway. Cait passed the bucket of KFC they’d picked up on the way home to Dottie and climbed out the back seat of the SUV.

  Calhoun stopped at the end of the drive and took off his helmet while he sat astride his motorcycle with the engine running.

  “You wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye?”

  “No,” he said over the rumble of his bike. She felt a wave of relief.

  He held his helmet in front of him and wore a black leather jacket over a T-shirt and jeans. “I just have some unfinished business I need to take care of.” He met her gaze. “We’ll talk when I get back.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  He didn’t deny it. The serious set to his mouth confirmed it.

  “I’ll be back soon.” He put his helmet on and backed out. Caitlin stood watching as he roared up the street.

  Evelyn stopped beside her. Turning to the other woman, Caitlin forced herself to smile. “It looks like they got a lot done around here.”

  Her car was parked on the street in front of the Explorer. The trailer hitch was up against the shed and the U-Haul wide open; only her extra bedroom set and dining room set and a few odds and ends remained in it. And she suspected that was because there wasn’t enough room in the house.

  John and Keith came out to greet them.

  “I’m starving.” Keith walked past with Calhoun’s seabag on his shoulder and stopped to snatch a drumstick off the top of the bucket.

  “Where do you want this, Cait?” he asked, indicating the bag.

  “The laundry room is fine.”

  John couldn’t wait to show off all their hard work and ushered the three women inside.

  LUCKY REMOVED HIS HELMET AND put down his kickstand in front of Calhoun Cycles. He sat there a long minute before he climbed off his bike.

  His father had expanded. The showroom was bigger and better than ever. He should have realized Big Luke would have gotten an insurance settlement and landed on his feet.

  That didn’t assuage his guilt. In fact it made him all the more guilty. Maybe even criminal.

  The fire had started as an accident.

  A careless flick of a cigarette.

  A bucket of oily rags.

  He’d been angry.

  He’d spent the summer dreading his senior year. He liked high school well enough. But Luke would have been coming in as a freshman.

  And that would have ruined everything. Just as it had in elementary and middle school. Of course, those formative years had been made even more difficult by the hate he’d felt for Luke. Hate that had been misdirected. He’d badgered his mom to sign enlistment papers so he could join the Marine Corps before his eighteenth birthday. When she’d refused, he’d come here to convince Big Luke.

  But he’d taken one look at the new sign going up, Calhoun & Son, and he’d felt sick to his stomach. He’d waited around long enough to know there was no s going up on the end of that sign.

  Later that night he’d sat beneath that new Calhoun & Son sign on his motorcycle and smoked a cigarette. In those last few drags he’d kickstarted his bike and headed toward the exit out back.

  He’d flicked his cigarette butt just as he’d cleared the garages. It must have landed in the bucket of rags because he saw the flash, heard the boom and skidded around in time to see the barrel of recycled oil catch fire.

  He’d been a block away when the explosion had rocked the neighborhood. When he’d stopped to look back at those flames and that black cloud above the treetops, he should have felt something. But he’d felt nothing at all.

  No guilt. No remorse. And there was no looking back after that.

  His uncle had caught him coming in past curfew smelling like smoke from fire and cigarettes. But he’d been home only long enough to pack a bag. He’d convinced John to sign his enlistment papers. The truth was he’d been closer to his uncle than his father after his parents’ divorce.

  But once his uncle had married his mom and moved in, he hadn’t been easy on any of them. At ten, Lucky had been too young to understand the relationship. As were the kids who persisted in teasing him and Bruce with choruses of “I’m My Own Grandpa.”

  He was big for his age, so the kids who picked on him tended to be two or three years older. He usually got the worst of those fights. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, in defense of his brother, he was seen as a bully.

  Throw Little Luke into the mix and…well…he’d spent a lot of time in the principal’s office.

  By the time he was a teen he’d had other outlets.

  Basketball. Motorcycles, motocross racing. And sex.

  But he’d been out of control, rebelling against authority and discipline at every turn. Ironically, the very things he’d found in the Marine Corps that had made him the man he was today.

  If there was a single reason he hadn’t returned
to Colorado in fifteen years, he was looking at it.

  He got off his bike, ready to make peace with his past.

  Big Luke had been cited for improper storage. He’d been deep in debt at the time of the fire and there’d been talk of arson. But that talk soon died down like flames to ash. Money exchanged hands, and the fire was labeled an accident.

  Lucky had never told anyone where he’d been that night.

  Though he didn’t doubt Big Luke knew.

  He walked in now as if he owned the place. At one time that had been his only ambition. He bypassed the eager sales staff for the empty reception desk outside his father’s floor-to-ceiling glass office. The door was closed, but it wasn’t soundproof, and Nora Jean was inside screeching at Big Luke.

  “I want that commercial off the air….It’s tasteless.”

  All Big Luke’s commercials were tacky.

  Hitching up his pant leg, Lucky perched himself on the reception desk and prepared for a long wait.

  “Hello, stranger,” the receptionist said, coming around the corner from outside.

  “Maddie,” he acknowledged without getting up.

  “Don’t you mean Mom?” she teased, rounding the desk to have a seat. Opening the middle drawer, she put her smokes away and took out a pack of gum.

  “I’m never going to call you that.”

  Maddie had been two years ahead of him in high school. They’d even dated, if you could call the back seat of her car a date.

  She’d worn her leather too tight then, and she wore her leather too tight now. But he supposed the biker-babe image worked for her. After all, it had gotten her access to Big Luke’s millions. And wasn’t that why she’d broken up with him—because he hadn’t had access to his father’s money?

  Like old times, she offered him a stick of gum. He shook his head. She took one stick for herself. He’d told himself his last cigarette was his last. But he could smell the secondhand smoke on her, and it made him edgy.

  “I can let him know you’re here if you want.”

  “He knows I’m here,” he said, moving away from the desk. He’d caught Big Luke’s eye the moment he’d walked up. And whatever Nora Jean’s business, he didn’t want to interrupt.

  Nora Jean stormed out of Big Luke’s office. She paused a few feet from him and did a double take. “What are you doing home?”

  “Just passing through, Mom,” he said, because he knew how much it irritated her to be reminded that she was his stepmother. Big Luke stood in his office door. The cut of his expensive suit couldn’t hide the fact that he’d lost weight. But he still darkened the gray in his thick hair. Only now, instead of making him look younger, it made him look like a shadow of his former self. When the old man turned toward his desk, Lucky figured an open door was the closest he was going to get to an invitation. “Excuse me,” he said to Nora Jean, who was still standing there with her mouth hanging open.

  “What do you want?” the old man asked as he stepped into the office. Big Luke was older, his voice rougher with age and years of tobacco abuse. “A job?”

  Lucky laughed without humor. “I didn’t come here looking for work.”

  What Lucky wanted was what he’d always wanted—to be a Calhoun & Son. Hell, he didn’t even need the sign, just the acknowledgment. He figured Big Luke owed him that much at least.

  Lucky looked his father in the eye. “I was seventeen. It was an accident.”

  “Accident now, is it?” Big Luke’s hacking cough took all the punch out of his sarcasm.

  “I’m not here looking for your forgiveness. I’m here to try to find a way to forgive you. When I was four you treated me like I was disposable. When I was eight you stopped coming around. And as I remember it, alimony and child support payments were never on time.” He glanced at Luke’s military picture above his father’s desk. “You had a new family. A newer business. I wasn’t worth your time. But I forgive you.”

  “You forgive me?” Big Luke said, dumbfounded. “The only reason you’re not in jail is because I refused to press charges against my own son.”

  “Thank you for that.” And he didn’t mean about the not pressing charges. It was the first time in a very long time that he remembered his father calling him son.

  He nodded toward Luke’s picture. “I brought Luke’s widow-bride home. I’m only here to see her settled, then I’m gone.” His voice softened when he spoke about Cait, so he cleared his throat. “You didn’t have to overprice the house so it wouldn’t sell. She would have come if you’d asked. She misses him. Hell, even I miss him.”

  He had to leave. Before he said something sentimental.

  “Treat your grandbaby right and you and I won’t have any further business.”

  “Show up here tomorrow at eight o’clock and I’ll try you out on the sales floor.”

  Lucky stopped with one foot out the door. “What makes you think I wouldn’t take your business from you brick by brick until it’s mine?”

  “You’re welcome to it.” His father convulsed with another coughing fit. “Be here at eight.”

  CAITLIN STOOD IN THE DOORWAY of the smaller bedroom, her arms resting on top of her stomach when Calhoun walked in well after dark carrying his helmet. The top half of the room had been painted the smoky-blue he’d picked out. The bottom half was papered in narrow-beige-and-wide-blue stripes with the teddy bear border bringing the two halves together.

  It was the only unfurnished room in the house.

  “You did good, Calhoun.”

  “Thank you.” He put his helmet, his keys and his cell phone on her kitchen counter. “Everybody gone?”

  She nodded. “There’s chicken left if you’re hungry.”

  “I’ll fix myself a plate,” he said, moving to the fridge.

  “They moved the extra furniture and a few boxes to the shed. John offered to take the U-Haul in, but I didn’t know what you wanted to do.”

  “I’ll return it tomorrow.” He took off his leather jacket and hung it on the back of a stool, then pulled it up to her kitchen counter and sat. The counter had a panoramic view of the kitchen and room for two more stools. The kitchen had a panoramic view of the rest of the house.

  He took a bite of Original Recipe chicken and she added the empty bucket and boxes to the trash bag sitting on the floor next to an unopened box marked Kitchen. There was still plenty to do. Evelyn had offered to come back and help with the unpacking.

  “I was thinking I’d install some ceiling fans,” he said, putting down the breastbone.

  “That’d be nice.”

  He went over a list of things that needed to be done that she hadn’t even thought about. “I know I’m a poor substitute for Luke, Cait.” He pushed the paper plate aside. “But I’d like to stick around and see you through this pregnancy. If that’s all right with you?”

  “I’d like that,” she said, wishing he was a hugger. Because she was so happy right now she wanted to hug him.

  Calhoun stood and cleared his plate, coming around to her side to throw it out. “I’ll be out of your hair once the baby’s born.”

  He went into her bedroom and came back out with his rifle case. It must have been under her bed because she hadn’t seen it earlier.

  Her apprehension at having a gun in the house must have shown. “I’m taking it to the gun club tomorrow and keeping it under lock and key.” He set the case down on her kitchen table, a dining area carved out between the kitchen and living room, and opened it. “Come here,” he said, taking it out of the case.

  She took a few hesitant steps toward him, surprised to discover that the rifle came in pieces. He snapped those pieces together with quick, efficient movements. “This rifle is for competition only. It’s never been used to kill. I don’t want you to be afraid of it,” he added, handing it to her.

  “It’s heavy,” she said, feeling the weight of it in both hands.

  “That’s the new M-40A3, a shoulder-fired weapon. It uses special 7.62 mm rounds. You can change ou
t the 10-power scope for an ANPVS-10 night scope. Here,” he said, coming up behind her and fitting it to her right shoulder. “It’s not loaded,” he said when she tensed.

  Caitlin had a hard time concentrating on what he was trying to show her because of the way he felt snug against her—all those hard muscles against her soft curves—his trigger finger over her trigger finger and his left hand over hers under the barrel.

  “Sight down the barrel,” he whispered in her right ear, sending chills up and down her spine. “The spotter calls the range and the windage. You dial it in,” he said, doing that for their imaginary target. “And then he says, ‘Send it.’ You pull.”

  Her body stiffened in response to his words. Her stomach tightened, then relaxed again as a long-forgotten warmth spread upward.

  He pulled back.

  “Shooting’s a perishable skill,” he said, packing the case. “I wouldn’t want to lose it.”

  She’d almost lost it! Evidently his “trigger finger” got a lot of practice.

  Caitlin wondered where he was going with his gun since he’d said he was taking it to the gun club tomorrow.

  Fingering the chain around her neck, she watched through the window above the sink as he crossed the gravel driveway to the shed. He opened the door and pulled the overhead chain to turn the light on. There was a cot, the kind found in an Army/Navy surplus store, made up like a bed. The inside of the shed door had a hand-painted sign hanging from it that read FOB. She knew the military used a lot of acronyms, but what did FOB stand for? She’d never heard it before.

  Was he planning on sleeping out there?

  He sat on the cot and opened his rifle case again. He took out his weapon with care, then proceeded to clean it with a soft rag. Had that whole thing about him not wanting her to be afraid of it been about him not wanting her to be afraid of him?

  When he saw her standing there, watching him, he got up and closed the swinging door. Because of the crawl space raising the house, the kitchen window was somewhat higher than the high, lattice-covered windows across the front of the shed doors. But not high enough for her to see anything except his head as he sat at the workbench.