The Welcome Home Garden Club

by Lori Wilde

  My dad. The words were like a bucket of ice water thrown over his little father-son fantasy.

  “Well, you’re getting older now,” Gideon said, ignoring the possessive urge to tell him that he was his father, not Kevin. “You have to learn how to handle tools sometime, right?”

  Danny beamed. “Right!”

  Gideon showed him how to put sandpaper onto the hand sander and how to tighten the strap around his hand. “Okay, now be prepared, the sander is going to vibrate and jerk your hand around. You need to press down to control it, but don’t press too hard.”

  “Okay.” Danny nodded.

  “You need to put on a pair of goggles to keep from getting something in your eye.” Gideon plucked a pair of goggles from where they hung on a nail sticking out of the wall. He slipped them on over Danny’s head, tightened the band to secure the goggles in place. “How’s that?”

  “Good, but what are you going to wear?”

  “You’re the one working with tools. You get the goggles.”

  “That makes sense. What next?”

  “Run the sander lightly over the horse to knock off the old paint. Start with the big areas first like the saddle and work down to the small, hard-to-get places like his hooves.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “You ready for me to turn on the switch?”

  “Can I do it?”

  The kid was so eager for independence. Caitlyn had been too protective, but he understood why. She’d lost a lot in her life—her mother, him, her husband, her relationship with her father. She had a need to cling to what she had, but at some point, a boy had a need to break free from the apron strings, to explore his world and build up his self-confidence.

  “Sure,” Gideon said. “Go right ahead. Just be prepared for it to try to run away from you.”

  Danny turned on the sander and laughed with delight as it charged over the back of the horse. “This is fun!”

  Gideon reached for the sandpaper and went after the other carousel horse, rasping sandpaper over it by hand. He kept one eye on Danny, making sure the kid was okay. A hand sander was pretty harmless. Even if he lost control, at worst, he’d get skinned up.

  They sanded together, father and son, in the workshop. Country-and-western music played on the radio. The fluorescent light overhead buzzed softly in time to Danny’s sander. Paint flakes and dust filled the space, flew off in all directions. Danny concentrated like a brain surgeon. He poked his tongue through the gap between his teeth, eyes focused intently.

  It reminded Gideon of when he’d first discovered the magic of tools and how they could help him shape and create things. He’d made a cutting board for his mother when he was Danny’s age, then later, when he was older and had acquired more knowledge and tools, a rolling pin. Not that his mother had ever baked pies or even cooked for that matter. She’d been a McDonald’s and TV dinners kind of mom. But she’d really been proud of that rolling pin. She’d used it to smack up bags of ice for her drinks.

  Funny, the things that made an impression.

  Danny was making good progress on the horse, sanding off the saddle, heading down the flank in a matter of minutes. It struck Gideon that the child might have inherited his gift for woodworking, and the pride that swelled inside his chest was both surprising and overwhelming. Overwhelming because if Danny had inherited his good qualities, what bad qualities had he also taken from his dad?

  Dad.

  Such a friendly word. A word he’d never imagined would apply to him. He’d thought he was too damaged. Too messed up to be a good father.

  You are messed up, but you don’t have to stay that way. The thought tumbled through his head, fleeting, but insightful. He didn’t have to stay this way.

  Oh yeah? There’s nothing you can do about that missing arm. It isn’t growing back. But he was more than an arm, wasn’t he?

  “Hey,” Danny called out over the noise of the sander.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s not working so good anymore.”

  “You need to replace the sandpaper,” Gideon said. “Turn it off and load another piece on there like I showed you.”

  Danny flipped off the switch, pushed the goggles up on his forehead, shook out his arm. “It makes my skin feel like an itchy jumping bean.”

  Gideon laughed. “I warned you that it would vibrate.”

  Danny scratched his arm vigorously.

  “It’ll stop doing that once you get used to a sander.”

  “You know a lot of stuff,” Danny said.

  “It’s because I’m old.”

  Danny cocked his head to study Gideon. “You’re not that old.”

  “Thanks.” He smiled.

  “You were in a war, right.”

  Gideon nodded. “I was.”

  Danny got really quiet. His gaze flicked cautiously to Gideon’s face, and in that moment he looked exactly like his mother, filled with worry and hesitation. “Did you ever kill anybody?”

  Gideon sucked in a deep breath. How did you tell a child the truth about something like that? “Sometimes a soldier is forced to kill in order to protect innocent people.”

  “From bad guys?”

  “From bad guys,” he confirmed while at the same time wishing life was really that simple. Bad guys against good guys. Right against wrong. Good against evil. But he’d seen bad people do good things and good people do bad things, and he knew in the end it was difficult to tell who was who.

  Danny’s gaze shifted to his hand and Gideon could see what question was coming next. “Did someone try to kill you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened to your arm?”

  “I picked up a bomb.”

  Danny looked at him like he was nuts. “Why did you pick up a bomb?”

  “I didn’t know it was a bomb. It was inside of a doll that a little girl dropped. I picked it up to give it back to her and it blew off my arm.”

  That was heavy duty. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so honest. How could he explain that someone had wanted him dead so much that he would put a bomb in a child’s doll and risk killing his own kid in some misguided zealous plot?

  Danny hooted. “You got bombed by a girl?”

  His laugh surprised Gideon, but Gideon immediately saw the humor in it. “I did.”

  “A tiny little girl.”

  “A tiny little girl.”

  “That must have been embarrassing.”

  “Yeah.” He was so relieved that Danny saw the funny side of it and not the darkness. He certainly hadn’t gotten that trait from either Caitlyn or Gideon. Perhaps he’d picked it up from Kevin, whom Gideon remembered as an easygoing guy with a sharp appreciation for the Three Stooges brand of humor.

  “Did the other soldiers tease you?”

  “Not so much. I did lose a hand.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Danny’s face sobered. “Can I touch it?”

  “The artificial hand or my stump?”

  “Both.”

  Gideon rolled up his sleeve, revealing how the prosthesis attached to his arm. Danny lightly ran his fingers over it. “Cool, it’s like a robot hand.”

  “It is.” He showed Danny how the hand worked, and then he took it off, opening himself up to the kid, showing his vulnerability.

  Danny eyed the stump. “It looks kind of bad.”

  “You should have seen it before it healed.”

  Carefully, Danny touched the seams of where the old wound had been stitched together. The scar was white now. Danny’s gentle touch stirred dormant nerve endings and Gideon felt . . . what did he feel? It was a rush of sensation he didn’t know how to describe.

  “Does it hurt?” Danny whispered.

  “Not anymore. But sometimes I get phantom pains.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My fingers and hand still hurt sometimes.”

  “But they’re gone.”

  “That’s why it’s called phantom pain. It’s like my brain hasn’t told my nerve endings I don’t h
ave a hand anymore.”

  “Weird.”

  “Yeah it is, kind of.”

  “I hope I never have phantom pains.”

  “I hope you don’t either,” Gideon said vehemently.

  “So what did you do before you were a soldier?” Danny asked, dropping his hand.

  Relieved that the examination was over, Gideon slipped the artificial arm back on, rolled down his sleeve. “I’ve always been a soldier. Well, except when I was a kid. I made things out of wood.”

  “Like the carousel?”

  “Well, I never completed a project this big, but yeah, like a carousel.”

  “Mom says this carousel is part of my heritage.”

  “It is. Your great-great-great-grandfather built this carousel himself way back in the cowboy and Indian days.”

  “But I never knew him, right?”

  “Right.” Gideon smiled at a kid’s concept of time. “He died a long time before your mother was ever born.”

  “My dad died.” Danny suddenly looked sad.

  “I heard. I’m sorry about that.”

  “I miss him.”

  “I bet you do.”

  “He used to take me fishing. Sometimes my mom would even come along.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Do you know how to fish?” Danny asked.

  “I used to go fishing in Lake Twilight when I was your age.”

  The boy met his eyes. “Do you think you could take me fishing sometime?”

  “Danny,” Gideon said. “Nothing would please me more.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Traditional meaning of red camellia—you’re a flame in my heart.

  Caitlyn was tired of napping, reading, and watching television. She’d stopped taking the pain pills because they were making her groggy. Her hand throbbed like the dickens, but the pain brought with it the realization of just how much suffering Gideon had gone through with the loss of his arm. And she liked the reminder. It helped her understand him better.

  It was nine o’clock on Tuesday morning. Patsy Cross would be opening up the shop now. Caitlyn knew the store was in good hands, but she couldn’t help worrying. Gideon had fed Danny and gotten him off to school and then he’d brought her breakfast in bed. Toast and scrambled eggs with orange juice. A woman could get used to this kind of pampering.

  The flowering red yarrow Dotty Mae had sent brought a smile to her lips as she got out of bed, pulled a housecoat on over her pajamas, and, balancing the breakfast tray as well as she could with her right hand, carried it into the kitchen. Once again, she was struck by the difficulty Gideon faced performing simple everyday tasks.

  The empty kitchen was cleaned perfectly spick-and-span, white tile counters and appliances gleaming. The air smelled of pine-scented cleaner. She felt oddly touched that Gideon bothered to clean so thoroughly. Most guys wouldn’t have bothered. Not even Kevin, who’d been pretty good about keeping house. He might wash dishes, yet he’d overlook the crumbs strewn across the counter.

  But Gideon had cared for his ailing mother for several years before her death. Her heart gave a soft twist. He might not be quick with the tender words—or even any words at all—but he showed her how he felt with his kind deeds, and when she thought about it, that was more romantic than an emotional treatise.

  “Gideon?” she called. Her cottage was only twelve hundred square feet, if he was inside, he would have heard her.

  She stepped out onto the back porch. The cool breeze ruffled the collar of her housecoat. The sun warmed her cheeks. She pushed her hair back from her face, saw that the door to Kevin’s detached workshop stood open.

  She moved toward that open door and peeked her head into the workshop. She hadn’t been in it since Kevin’s death because she hadn’t had the mental energy to deal with going through his things on top of everything else.

  Gideon sat on a wooden stool, his back to her, deeply engrossed in his work. Caitlyn leaned her right shoulder against the doorjamb; her bandaged left hand cradled against her chest, and watched him. He was painting something, his head tipped down to the work in front of him, but that wasn’t what surprised her.

  He was using his artificial hand, holding the paintbrush between the robotic digits and awkwardly rotating his elbow to get it to move, painting the red camellia behind the carousel horse’s ear. He wasn’t letting his disability get the best of him. He was trying to make his prosthesis function like a real hand with something as precise as painting.

  Caitlyn gulped, her own damaged hand aching in empathy. Stupid really. As if her mishap with the bear trap could compare to what he’d suffered. She tried to imagine what it was like for him. This big, powerful man maimed and disfigured, learning how to do the simplest things all over again—tying his own shoes, putting toothpaste on his toothbrush, doing up buttons.

  “You’re doing so good!”

  Gideon jerked back and dropped the paintbrush, a trail of red smearing over the horse as the paintbrush went down.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” She rushed toward him. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “I’ve messed up the paint job,” he said tersely. “I’ll have to start again.”

  “It’s my fault.”

  “Don’t apologize,” he growled. “It’s a sign of weakness. Besides, you didn’t cause it. I had a spasm in my elbow.”

  For a moment, she felt hurt, and then she realized he was just lashing out because he’d been embarrassed. She pressed her lips together.

  “What are you doing out of bed?” he asked gruffly, reaching down to pick up the dropped paintbrush, but he used his right hand.

  “I’m bored and I hurt my hand, not my legs or my brain.”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “What?” Caitlyn looked down to see the blood had seeped through her bandage.

  “You were supposed to keep it elevated,” he said.

  “I’m so—” She broke off before saying “sorry.”

  “That’s my girl.” He grinned.

  It felt so good to hear him say that, to see him smile. He made her feel special, just like he used to. But that was a dangerous thing, because she wasn’t who she used to be and neither was he. They couldn’t fall back into old patterns or rely on old ways of communicating. For all intents and purposes this was a new relationship, and she had no idea where it was going or even if it was going anywhere. There was so much negotiating to be done, so many things they had not talked through. Yes, they were Danny’s parents, but beyond that . . .

  “C’mon.” Gideon tossed the paintbrush in a jar of turpentine sitting on the window ledge. “Let’s get that seen to.”

  He took her right hand in his and led her back to the house. It felt so good, this handholding, so simple and yet so fraught with tenderness. But she did notice how he’d managed to take the attention off him and put it on her.

  That’s not fair. You were bleeding.

  Yes, but he hadn’t hesitated in deflecting her observations about his painting with his artificial hand. Clearly, he did not want to talk about it, or even let her know that he was experimenting with improving his fine motor control. Why not?

  He was never one to open up and talk about what was on his mind. You know that. He’d always had a difficult time with sharing his emotions.

  “Where do you keep your first aid kit?”

  “Medical supplies are in my bathroom closet.”

  He took her through her bedroom, past her rumpled bed that she hadn’t even tried to make one-handed, and into the adjoining bathroom, which suddenly seemed very small with Gideon’s big frame in it.

  “Can you hop up here?” He patted the countertop.

  “It’s kind of hard one-handed.”

  “Tell me about it. Here, I’ll help you up.”

  He gave her a boost and she settled her tush onto the cool tile. She was suddenly very aware that she was in her pajamas. Yes, they were cotton “mom” pajamas, nothing sexy, but they were still pajamas.

/>   Gideon rummaged in the cabinet, extracted gauze, medical tape, hydrogen peroxide, and a Telfa nonstick dressing. He took his time carefully unwrapping the bandage and maneuvering his body so that he blocked her from seeing the cut.

  “How’s it look?”

  “You’re gonna have some scarring.”

  “Let me see.”

  “You sure?”

  “I have to see it sometime.”

  Reluctantly, he moved aside.

  She braced herself, but still, the jagged scars encircling her wrist looked vicious. Blood had caked around the sutures, with fresh blood still oozing at the seams. The surgeon had neatly sewn it all back together, but Gideon was right, she was going to have some ugly scars.

  He startled her by leaning over and kissing her inner arm near her elbow. “I’m sorry you hurt.”

  “Hey,” she said. “No saying you’re sorry. It makes you look weak.”

  He straightened, smiled down at her. “You’re throwing my words back at me?”

  “I guess I am.”

  “Ha, I get the last laugh. I’m the one who’s going to wash out your wound.” He tucked a towel underneath her arm and unscrewed the cap from the hydrogen peroxide. “This is going to sting.”

  Gideon gently trickled the cool liquid over her wrist.

  She hissed in her breath as the solution fizzed and bubbled and did its job, but it wasn’t pain that had her drawing in air through clenched teeth, rather it was her intense awareness of him, his scent, his muscular body, his dark hair in contrast to her pale skin. He bent his head and it oh so barely brushed against her breasts. Instantly, both her nipples hardened to tight little pebbles.

  Stop it. Stop it. But she couldn’t.

  After the hydrogen peroxide had washed away the blood, he carefully laid the nonstick dressing over the sutures, and then wrapped it all up with a thick layer of gauze. “There you go.”

  Her hair had fallen across her face and she didn’t dare look up. Afraid he could see the stark desire in her eyes. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest.

  “Caitlyn.”

  She raised her head. He was staring at her and she was staring at him.

  They were breathing in tandem. Rough, jagged gulps of air.