by Susan Wiggs
“Everything is fair game for the funny pages.”
It wasn’t the answer he expected. “Does that mean there’s something funny about everything?”
“If I didn’t believe that, I doubt I could pull through my current situation. I may come to you for tips on single parenting.”
He chuckled. “You’d be barking up the wrong tree. I’m no expert.”
“You’ve done a wonderful job with Aurora.”
“She made it a snap—until lately,” he admitted.
“What’s happened lately?”
“Puberty, I think it’s called.”
“Ah.”
“I feel like...” He paused, gathered his thoughts. Sarah was incredibly easy to talk to. “We’re pulling apart. We used to be best buds, but now we fight. One minute, she wants me to tuck her in and read her a bedtime story, and the next, she’s slamming the door in my face.”
“Sounds pretty typical to me.”
“I have a hard time with the physical changes she’s going through.” There it was, out in the open at last. He was worried—freaking intimidated—by Aurora’s blossoming maturity, and deeply uncomfortable with the new dynamic. “Most girls turn to their mothers when things start...”
Sarah waited, then supplied, “Sprouting?”
“Exactly.”
“I have a feeling this age is hard for all fathers, and extra hard for a stepfather. But what was it my favorite public servant likes to say? ‘You’ll sort it out. Don’t worry.’”
He resisted the urge to hug her. “Touché.”
Franny made a sound, a whine that crescendoed into a howl. They hurried to check on her, and both were struck speechless. She had delivered the first puppy, a slick ball of dark tissue that was all but unrecognizable. With calm efficiency, the dog neatly severed the cord and licked the puppy through a small tear in the sack. The tiny, toothless mouth opened with an audible gasp, its first breath of air. Franny nudged it into the protective curve of her body, and it squirmed unerringly home. Then Franny whined again, ready for the next round.
“My Lord,” Sarah whispered. “I’ve never...this is...” Her voice trailed off as she stared at the just-born puppy.
Will looked down at their hands, and discovered they were tightly joined in anticipation. He didn’t remember grabbing her hand.
“Do you think she’s all right?” Sarah asked. Self-consciously, she extracted her hand from his.
“Seems like she knows exactly what to do.”
The dog didn’t appear to need anything from them except a little peace and quiet. At some point between the fourth and fifth puppies, Will and Sarah dozed off, side by side on the sofa. He awoke to find his arm dead asleep from the shoulder down. He had slipped it around her, and her head rested heavily against him.
For about thirty seconds, he didn’t move a muscle. He simply stayed where he was and felt everything. The weight of her and the warmth that kindled where their bodies met. The vanilla shampoo scent of her hair. The quiet rhythm of her breathing. There was no room for self-deception in this moment, so he didn’t even bother. He liked being close to her while she slept. It was as simple—and as complicated—as that.
The sun was coming up. A faint gray light slipped through the bay window facing the water. Will thought about Aurora. She wouldn’t be up yet, since today was Saturday.
“Hey,” he said, giving Sarah a gentle nudge as he withdrew his leaden arm.
She gave a soft moan and stretched slowly and luxuriously in a motion that reminded him how long it had been since he’d held a woman. Then she gave a little gasp. “Oh, God. I can’t believe I fell asleep.”
“We both dozed off.” He waited for his arm to fire back to life. She massaged the side of her neck. He wondered if the weight of his arm had hurt her. Best not to ask.
He went to check on the dog. The puppies lay all in a row, nursing contentedly or resting. Will counted them twice to be sure. “Six,” he told Sarah.
She smiled sleepily. “Are they all right?”
“I think so. Franny’s dozing.”
Sarah drank the rest of the tea in her mug, made a face and then dropped to her knees beside the dog. “Good girl,” she said, and put out her hand. The dog blinked drowsily and allowed Sarah to pat her head. “I’ve been lining up families to adopt the puppies,” she said. “So far, four are spoken for.” She turned to Will. “Thank you.”
“No problem.”
“Really? I didn’t keep you from work?”
“Nope. And as far as I know, nobody needed rescuing last night.” He held out his hand to help her to her feet.
She studied him briefly, then let go of his hand. “I did,” she said.
Twenty-Six
As she sometimes did when nobody was around, Aurora tuned the kitchen radio to a Spanish-language station and let the familiar voices and rhythms drift through her mind. When she did this her head filled up with dreams and memories, and she couldn’t tell the difference between the two.
She remembered the sensation of a woman’s hand brushing across her forehead. Was that Mama or someone else, a nun at the clinic where they used to go for penicillin? Aurora couldn’t recall.
The snare drum banter of the radio announcers sounded relentlessly joyous. Her native language had a naturally upbeat cadence, so that even the Lord’s Prayer sounded like a jump rope rhyme. Before coming to Glenmuir, had she really had a yard full of cousins to play with, or was that something else she had dreamed?
Her past was like a distant, undiscovered country, glimmering on the horizon just out of her grasp. She suspected that if she tried very hard, she could go there and find out what it was really like. With the right amount of concentration, she could separate dreams from memories and wishful thinking, and figure out the life she had lived before Will came along.
The big question was, did she really want to know?
With a restless sigh of discontent, she shut the radio off.
It was all so pointless, Aurora thought, such a waste of time to wonder and worry about someone who had walked away and never looked back.
As everyone was always pointing out to her, she had a devoted family to provide a great support system. The trouble with that was, try as she might to deny it, she still wanted her mother. A part of her longed to ditch the “support system”—which sounded like something you got at an electronics store—for five minutes of her mother’s imperfect love.
The sudden ring of the doorbell startled her. What she saw when she opened the door startled her even more—Zane Parker. For a few seconds, all she could do was stare. He was so good-looking it was almost freaky. He belonged on a TV series, playing the hot guy. Every girl Aurora knew liked him. If crushes could actually crush, he’d be flat as a pancake by now.
It was like something out of a fairy tale, Zane Parker coming to her house, as though she had wished him here. She was afraid to speak for fear of breaking the spell.
“We’re selling bulbs for the Mount Vision Renewal Project,” he said, blinding her with a perfect smile. It took her a moment to realize that in his shadow stood his younger brother, Ethan.
“You mean, like, lightbulbs?”
“Like flower bulbs, genius.” He laughed, as though she’d made a joke. But no, she thought. She really was that dense. Being around a cute boy sucked all the brain cells out of her head.
Bringing flower bulbs to a Bonner was like bringing ice to Eskimos, but Aurora didn’t care. “Um, sure. Come on in,” she said, practically tripping over her feet as she held open the door. She heard music in her ears and realized it was the beating of her own heart. She was so excited she nearly forgot about Ethan. “Sorry,” she said, stepping aside. “Hi, Ethan.”
“Hey.” Ethan was the exact opposite of Zane in every way. He wore low-
slung black jeans and a black T-shirt. His too-long hair fell over his brow. The thing about Ethan was, he didn’t really have the attitude to match his looks. There was too much kindness in his eyes, and his smile was too quick. Too sweet.
Lugging a heavy-looking box, he joined his brother. “Mind if I set this on the table?”
Observing them side by side, Aurora thought what a bummer it must be to have a brother like Zane. Yet Ethan didn’t seem bummed in the least as he grinned at her a little shyly.
“Sure, no problem.” She led the way to the kitchen. At the table, she hurriedly swept aside books and newspapers.
Zane tapped his pen on his clipboard. “So is your old man around?”
“He’s out doing some errands.” As usual, her dad had invited her to come along. When she was little, she used to love his off-duty days, when the two of them would tend to ordinary things, like going to the library or the grocery store. A part of her wished she could still tag along, but at her age, that was just babyish, so she was now in the habit of bailing every time her dad invited her to do something.
She saw the brothers exchange a glance and hurriedly added, “I’ll buy some bulbs from you. I mean, it’s for a good cause and all.” She had her own money from babysitting, which she kept in her own bank account. She’d been saving up for some Pantone markers like Sarah’s, but suddenly this seemed more important.
Zane dazzled her again with a smile. “Excellent.” He gestured to his brother. “Show her what we’ve got.”
She wished Zane would do the showing, but he seemed more interested in looking around the kitchen. Suddenly she had a brilliant idea. “Would you like something to drink?” She pulled open the fridge and showed them the selection.
“Thank you.” Ethan helped himself to a root beer.
“Ah, Budweiser,” Zane said, grabbing a can.
Aurora laughed. “Yeah, sure. You go right ahead.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” He eased back the can tab, releasing a distinct hissing sound.
“Hey! I wasn’t serious,” Aurora said. “You can’t have that.”
“Too late.” Zane took a big gulp.
Ethan rolled his eyes. “Idiot,” he said under his breath.
Zane let out a prolonged belch. He took a brochure from his clipboard. “So do you want to hear my spiel or are you ready to buy?”
Aurora felt an icy thrill of apprehension in the pit of her stomach. “You owe me for that stolen beer,” she said boldly. “Let’s hear it.”
“Fine,” he said. “Whatever.” He started reading from a prepared script, describing the disastrous fire that decimated two thousand acres of wilderness.
Ethan sipped his root beer while perusing the Bay Beacon. It lay open to the funny pages, which Aurora never missed since Sarah Moon’s comic strip, Just Breathe, was now featured in it. Shirl and Lulu were driving each other batty, and Shirl had just dropped a bomb—she was pregnant. It was peculiar and cool, knowing the comic strip reflected what was happening in Sarah’s life.
After a moment, Aurora realized she’d zoned out during Zane’s sales pitch.
“‘...founded in 1997 to aid in the renewal of the natural wilderness,’” Zane continued. “Hey, are you really interested in this?”
I’m interested in you, she thought, and the idea made her blush. “Sure.” She went and scrounged some money from her wallet while Zane finished the beer, drinking it like he meant business.
Aurora chose a custom selection of bulbs on purpose, so they’d have to open packages, which would require them to stay longer. She pretended not to realize this, even though she knew tons about flowers, thanks to her grandparents. A huge part of her childhood had been spent in the Technicolor world of their farm amid lilies and sea thrift and dahlias, and she could identify entire families of blossoms by scent and sight.
As soon as she handed the money to Zane, he zipped it into his bankers’ pouch, recorded the sale and headed for the door. “Sorry I can’t stay,” he said hurriedly. “I have to turn this in by six o’clock. Ethan will help you with the bulbs.”
Aurora suppressed the impulse to insist that she wanted Zane to help her, not Ethan. She took a deep breath as she turned to Ethan. Unlike his brother, he seemed to be in no hurry at all. Maybe, Aurora thought, this kid might be useful. Maybe if she won him over, she could score points with Zane.
“It’s great that you and your brother are doing this,” she commented. “It’s a really good cause.”
“Zane is doing this to fulfill the high school community service requirement.”
“Why are you helping?”
“Because...never mind.” He sipped his drink.
She thought it was kind of cute, in a dorky way, that he pretended not to care about the environment. She could tell he really did.
“Listen, there’s a group of us going out on Saturday to clear fireweed,” he said. “You want to come?”
“Is Zane going?” She hoped the question didn’t sound overeager.
He stuck his thumb in his back pocket. “Does it matter?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I just wondered, is all.”
Ethan turned to study the books on the shelves as though they held the key to the meaning of life.
“You sure have a bunch of books,” he observed, checking out a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. “Is your dad going to night school or something?”
“Nope. He just studies a lot on his own.”
Ethan flipped through a dog-eared volume about navigating the teen years. “These are all about raising kids. Maybe he finds you a big mystery.”
“Maybe I am a big mystery.”
“Ha. You wish. You aren’t mysterious at all.”
She sniffed. “I suppose you think you’ve got me all figured out.”
“It’s not that hard.”
“Prove it. Tell me something you’ve figured out.”
“You have the hots for my brother,” he said. “That’s something.”
Aurora’s cheeks caught fire. “That’s bull. I don’t know where you got that idea.”
“It’s right here in this book,” he said, flipping to a random page. “‘It is a known fact that the adolescent girl always gets a crush on an older boy who dresses fly and acts cool.’”
She tried to hold back laughter as she grabbed for the book. “Liar. Show me where it says that.”
He held her off. “There’s a footnote, too,” he said. “What do you know? It says here that the girl’s feelings for the older boy are totally bogus, and that deep down, she likes his younger brother.”
“You dork,” she said.
“‘Insults are a sign of affection,’” he pretended to quote. “Good to know.” He smacked the book shut.
She couldn’t help laughing, even though she was annoyed. Ethan was easy to be around, and he made her smile. She liked him—as a friend, of course. “Put it back, smart aleck.”
He reshelved the book. “Have you read any of these?”
She hesitated, then decided to share something with him. “You know what I do sometimes? I find stuff in these books, like bulimia or OCD, and see if I can fake the symptoms, you know, just to see if my dad will notice.”
“Doesn’t it bother you to worry him?”
“Well, that’s the thing. So far, I’ve never managed to convince him that something is wrong.”
“Why would you want to?”
“I swear, sometimes it’s the only way to get him— Never mind.” She shouldn’t have said anything. Spoken aloud, it sounded totally lame. She decided to change the subject. “So what does a habitat restoration crew do?”
“We clear the nonnative plants so the native ones can grow back.” He started sorting through the bulbs, picking out the variety she had checked off on her order
form. “You ought to come along sometime. Sure beats reading parenting books and thinking up problems that don’t exist.”
He grinned as he said it, so she didn’t take offense. And she carefully considered his offer. Three hours of pulling weeds held no appeal to her, but the idea of working side by side with Zane Parker more than made up for that. “Where do we meet?”
The back door swished open and her father came in, carrying four grocery sacks across both arms.
Aurora and Ethan looked at one another; then, simultaneously, their gazes flew to the empty beer can on the table. Oh, crap, she thought.
“Hey, Dad.” She hurried over to her father and blocked his path. “Let me help you with this stuff.”
“I’ve got it,” he said.
“But—”
He went around her and set the packages on the table. Aurora nearly freaked, but then she noticed the beer can was gone. Trying not to look too relieved, she said, “Dad, this is Ethan Parker. He’s in my class at school.”
“Ethan.” Her dad held out his hand. He never tried to look intimidating in situations like this, but he couldn’t help that he was ten times bigger than everyone else. To people who didn’t know him, he seemed really scary and protective even when he was trying to be friendly.
“Ethan and his brother are raising money for the Mount Vision Renewal Project,” Aurora said. “Selling flower bulbs.” What was not to like about that?
“I see,” her dad said. “So where’s your brother?”
“He had to go turn in the money,” Ethan said. “And I’d better be going, too. Thanks, Aurora.”
“Sure.”
He picked up the box of bulbs. “So you’re coming on Saturday?”
She looked at her father. “If it’s okay with my dad.” She explained about the weed-pulling party.
“We’ll talk about it,” her dad said.
Great, she thought, rolling her eyes as she walked out the front door. He could never give her a simple yes until he grilled her about her request. “I’ll let you know at school,” she said.
“All right.” He looked at her for a moment, and she felt a funny little skip of nervousness. Then he looked past her and said, “Bye, Mr. Bonner.”