Just Breathe

by Susan Wiggs

  He grinned and shook his head. “I get it. I’ll talk to her.”

  “Good plan.” Sarah touched his arm. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Since her grounding is going to be over soon, I think you should give her one of the puppies.”

  “Right. Reward her with a puppy after the way she’s acted.”

  “I’m not talking about a reward. A puppy is a long-term commitment. I think Aurora’s ready for that.” She watched Franny dart amid the dock pilings, grabbing a beard of seaweed, giving it a shake.

  “No way. My work schedule’s too crazy. There’s no room for a dog in our lives.”

  “My grandmother says the things that matter come along in their own time, not necessarily when you’re ready.”

  “We’re talking about a dog here.”

  “We’re talking about the things that matter.”

  “No dog, Sarah. And don’t even think about mentioning it to Aurora.”

  * * *

  “I’m still grounded,” Aurora informed Ethan Parker as they got on their bikes at the parking lot at the summit above Bear Valley. “I can’t go to the concert at Waterfront Park tonight.” While she was grounded, the community service work was the only thing her father allowed. She and a group of volunteers with the habitat restoration team met each Saturday to build erosion controls and weed out nonnative plants.

  “That sucks. You shouldn’t have been grounded in the first place,” Ethan said, pushing off down the hill.

  Aurora matched his speed, savoring the fresh wind in her face. The work was hard and not all that rewarding, especially on days when Zane decided to skip out, like today. Hacking away at the hillside had merely been tedious. “Why do you say that?” she asked Ethan. “What was I supposed to do? Tell my dad your brother took the beer?”

  “At least it would have been the truth.”

  “And my dad would have called your parents, and one way or another, all of us would have wound up in trouble. The way I see it, I’d be grounded either way. Might as well leave you and Zane out of it.”

  “Or here’s a concept,” Ethan said. “Zane could have owned up to everything and taken the heat himself.” He shifted into high gear and sped off down the hill.

  The worst part of being grounded, Aurora thought, was not the loss of freedom, of TV and Internet time. The worst part was the hard work of staying mad at her father. She wanted to, though. Keeping a wall up took more time and energy than she had imagined. She carried around a lump of hurt in her chest and it grew heavier, day by day. It took all her strength to keep from begging for liberation, just so she could quit being mad.

  Sometimes she thought about running away to find her mother. It wouldn’t be that hard. Aurora knew she could convince Aunt Lonnie to take her along on a delivery run of fresh flowers or oysters to Las Vegas. She could even stow away on the cargo plane, maybe. But once she found her mother—then what?

  All the way home, she envisioned different scenarios in her head—a tearful reunion, bitter recriminations, familial bliss. None of them seemed to fit, and she knew why. She simply didn’t know enough about her mother to understand the situation. Her memories were mostly hazy fragments, although she believed she had a sharp recollection of the day Mama had left. At seven years old, Aurora hadn’t realized right away that Mama was gone for good. Her father found her home alone after school one day, eating a bowl of cereal and watching Nickelodeon with the sound turned up high. She remembered that she was sitting on a moss-green floor pillow in the middle of the room, pretending to be a shipwreck survivor on the smallest of rafts.

  “Where’s your mother?” Daddy had asked, bending to kiss the top of her head.

  She shrugged, then beamed up at him, showing off the beginnings of a new front tooth. “I’m glad you’re home, Dad.” She knew he loved being called Dad, because it made him grin and hold his shoulders really straight.

  Aurora always paid close attention to the way she spoke, too. She had been determined from the start to talk just like the Anglo kids in her class.

  Her dad kept smiling that day as he put the milk back in the refrigerator, but she could tell he wasn’t happy about something. His shoulders went from straight to stiff, and his movements were sharp as he grabbed the cordless phone and stepped out back. Even though Aurora was pretty sure he wasn’t mad at her, she felt a little worried, so she listened in on the conversation.

  “...the hell was Marisol thinking, leaving a seven-year-old alone in the house?” Dad said to the phone.

  Aurora could tell from the tone of his voice that he was talking to Granny Shannon. There were lots more conversations that night, a lot more worry. That night, her dad took her in his lap and said Mama had moved to a place called Las Vegas and wouldn’t be living with them anymore.

  “Then let’s go with her,” Aurora had suggested.

  “We can’t do that, baby girl.” Her dad had looked as sorry as can be.

  “Why not? I’ll be good,” Aurora had insisted. “I promise I will.”

  “Sure you will, baby girl, but your mama...she’s got other plans. She can’t have us with her. It’s better for all of us if you and I stay right here.”

  To this day, Aurora didn’t know much more than that, and her dad never talked about it.

  When she arrived home, she saw that her father’s truck was in the driveway. Great. Now she’d have to muster up a crummy attitude again.

  She slammed into the kitchen. On the counter were some very large sacks from Bay Hay and Feed. “Hey,” she said noncommittally.

  “Hey, yourself.” At the counter, he started unloading the bags, and she was startled to see a pair of metal bowls and a fat sack of all-natural dog food.

  She frowned at him. “What’s going on?”

  He took out a red collar and leash. “Are you busy tonight?”

  “Depends.” Her heart was pounding now. Please, oh, please. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I thought you might want to help pick out our new puppy.”

  “Dad!” Forgetting her vow to stay mad, Aurora ran to him and leaped up, hugging him tight. “Really? We’re getting one of Sarah’s dogs?”

  “They’re eight weeks old now.” He gently set her away from him. “Ready for adoption.”

  “Are we going right this minute?”

  “As soon as you’re ready.”

  She was already speeding to the door.

  “Just a minute, young lady,” her dad said.

  A catch, thought Aurora. There was always a catch. With a sinking heart, she turned to face him. “Yeah?”

  “A puppy’s a lot of work.”

  “I know that, Dad. Geez.”

  “So if we bring one home, you’re going to need to walk it and take care of its every need. I just don’t see how you can do that if you’re on restriction.”

  She didn’t even bother to fight the smile on her face. Finally. “Me, neither, Dad.”

  Twenty-Nine

  When Sarah opened the door to her house and greeted them with a smile, Will knew he was in trouble. No matter how much he tried to deny it, he was nuts for her and had been ever since the day he’d rushed her to the hospital with an undiagnosed pregnancy.

  A pregnancy, Bonner, he told himself again and again. Fresh from a failed marriage. You might as well get a crush on Angelina Jolie. It would make about as much sense.

  But when Sarah smiled at him the way she was now, he forgot all that. Taking off his baseball cap, he stood aside and let Aurora go first.

  “We’re getting a puppy,” Aurora said. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

  Watching them together, Will felt a surge of affection. Sarah treated the kid like an equal, a friend. From the start, they had shared a connection tha
t made it all the more obvious to him that Aurora longed for a mother figure.

  “Let’s go out back. You get the pick of the litter,” Sarah said.

  Aurora rushed for the door. Will followed more slowly. The puppies were on the screened-in porch in a large cedar box Sarah’s father had built for her. Franny’s bed lay nearby.

  She thumped her tail in greeting, and Sarah bent to scratch her ears. “Hey, girl. You seem tired.” She stood and rubbed the small of her back. “Does she seem tired to you?”

  “She’s been nursing the pups for eight weeks. I figure that would make anyone tired.”

  Aurora got in the box with them and they swarmed her, clambering into her lap and straining to lick her face. The puppies’ father was an unknown quantity, but Will suspected strains of golden retriever, judging by the pups’ coloring and the wandering habits of George Dundee’s dog, Buster.

  Aurora threw back her head and laughed with joy as the puppies vied for her attention.

  “You should have brought a camera,” Sarah said.

  “You’re right. I wish I had.”

  “Maybe I’ll draw you a sketch.”

  “I’d like that.” He knew no photograph or sketch could capture Aurora’s laughter or the joy on her face. He’d have to remember that on his own.

  “Dad, how am I ever going to choose?” Aurora asked. “They’re all perfect.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Maybe one of them will choose you,” Sarah suggested.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure. Let them out into the yard, and take your time.”

  Will and Sarah went and sat on the porch swing facing the small fenced yard and the expansive sea beyond. The air was redolent of honeysuckle, and Aurora’s voice carried lightly across the yard. She set down the first puppy and it made a beeline for the roses.

  “I hope she figures out a way to make up her mind,” Will said. “I can’t take the whole litter.”

  Sarah was quiet as she regarded him with an expression he couldn’t read. When she smiled at him, he always felt as if he’d won something or passed some test. The trouble was that Sarah had different smiles for different things, and it was a challenge to read her.

  “Well,” he said, “I swear I can’t.”

  “Could you handle two of them if you had to?” she asked.

  “That’s not what I signed up for.”

  “Sometimes you get a bonus.”

  “A bonus puppy. I don’t think so.” The chains of the porch swing clicked as he shifted in agitation. “I thought you said all six were spoken for. Did someone change their mind?”

  “No, you can relax. You only get one. I was just trying to scare you.”

  “It’ll take more than that to scare me off.” A little chagrined, he turned to watch Aurora with puppy number three. The dog seemed to want nothing more than to dig a trench in the dirt and take a nap.

  “I like that answer.” She turned quiet again, reflective.

  Will sensed a different air about her today. The tension between them felt more intense, too. There was always tension, but neither had acknowledged it.

  “Are you doing okay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I am.”

  In the yard, Aurora made a kissing sound with her mouth to get the attention of puppy number four.

  “Speaking of bonuses...I have news,” Sarah said.

  “Yeah?”

  Her hand curved around the swell in her belly. “Twins,” she said simply.

  Will found himself staring at her breasts until her meaning sank in. “No kidding,” he said. “Wow.”

  “That’s what I keep telling myself.” She gave him a smile filled with desperation and fear and a pervasive joy she couldn’t suppress.

  “That’s great, Sarah,” he said. “Really.”

  “Thanks.” She rocked the swing with her foot. “My last visit to the doctor confirmed it. I was getting big, fast, and I knew that sometimes expecting twins makes you twice as nauseous—no lie. On top of that, my family background has an incidence of fraternal twins, and the fertility drug I was taking raised the likelihood as well. The sonogram blew my mind, Will. I wish you could have seen—” She stopped herself, shut her eyes briefly.

  He pictured her alone at the doctor’s, marveling at her babies. I wish I could have seen it, too.

  “It was amazing,” she said. “I could see them both, like two little ghosts... Two against one,” she added. “That’s the part that scares me.”

  He didn’t argue with that. “It’s going to be good, you’ll see. I sometimes wish Aurora had a brother or sister,” he said.

  “Siblings are overrated.”

  “You didn’t get along with your brother?”

  “When we were growing up, I used to think he was put on this earth to show up my inadequacies.”

  Will didn’t know Kyle Moon very well. Unlike Sarah, he embraced the family enterprise. His method was simple but ingenious. He raised the same oysters the family had for generations. What changed was the perception of the oysters. He hired a media firm and, with some clever public relations, advanced the perception that Moon Bay oysters were the most rare and prized on the Pacific Coast. He made exclusive arrangements with the best restaurants in the Bay Area and turned the annual oyster festival each October into a major cultural event. Will had no idea how all this translated into being a good brother, though.

  “Everybody’s family is different,” he said. “I bet your kids will drive each other nuts sometimes and other times, they’ll be best friends.”

  The smile that lit her face was incredible. “I love how you just called us a family, and referred to them as my kids.”

  He glanced at her stomach, which was draped in a flowery dress that looked as if it belonged to her grandmother. “I don’t think there’s any question that they’re yours,” he said.

  She laughed, tipping back her head. Down in the yard, Aurora stopped what she was doing and looked at them. Her eyes narrowed a little and she frowned. Aurora had made friends with Sarah first and didn’t want to compete with Will. Seeing them laughing and talking together on the porch swing might give her the impression that he was interested in Sarah romantically.

  And she would be absolutely right, he thought. He intended to keep that little tidbit to himself, though.

  Sarah’s laughter subsided. “I have no idea why that struck me as funny. When I first found out, I flat-out denied it, even though I could clearly see two of them on the screen. I kept telling the doctor there was a mistake, I couldn’t possibly be having two babies.”

  “I’m happy for you, Sarah. Honest.” He felt himself working too hard to convince her of that. The truth was, he was struggling with the complexities of falling for a woman who was pregnant with another man’s child. The fact that there were two babies seemed to compound everything. If by some miracle, things worked out for him and Sarah, he’d find himself the father of three, none of whom were his. Sometimes he lay awake at night, wondering if he’d ever have kids of his own. He couldn’t say for sure he wanted that; it was the sort of thing to talk about with the woman you were falling for. Of course, he and Sarah couldn’t talk about it, since they had barely acknowledged their attraction. He wasn’t even sure she was interested. When she looked at him, what did she see?

  “I suppose people in town will have a field day with this. Being single and pregnant is pathetic enough. Being single and pregnant with twins—now that’s something to talk about.”

  “You don’t have a very high opinion of small-town life,” he said.

  “Maybe you’re right. I used to hate being the girl from the oyster farm. Since I’ve been back, I’ve discovered there’s a sweet side to life here. I made some friends—Vivian Pierce and Ju
dy deWitt.”

  “That’s good, Sarah.” He thought it was a promising sign. He liked the idea that she was settling in.

  She turned her attention to Aurora, who had gone back to the puppies. “Why’d you change your mind about letting her get a puppy?”

  He wanted to tell her in a rush of honesty that it was because Aurora had lost her best friend—him—and needed a new one. And that she’d lost him because he was too chickenshit to stay close, now that she’d grown older, difficult and secretive. He was still haunted by the memory of the day Aurora got her first period. He’d thought he was prepared. Birdie and his mother had long since given her the talk and plenty of reading material. They had provisioned her with all kinds of supplies and paraphernalia. And each night, he prayed—coward that he was—that it would not happen on his watch.

  It did, of course, and Aurora was great. She was happy, even. Worse than that, she was...chatty. She wanted to talk about it.

  Will had cut her off. Changed the subject and pretended he had something to do. Something that couldn’t wait. He gave her twenty bucks and told her to go to the movies.

  All of which flew in the face of the parenting books he had read. The last thing a father was supposed to do was reject, dismiss or deny his daughter’s sexuality and the milestone that signaled her leap into maturity. He was supposed to accept, even embrace, her coming of age.

  There was something missing from all those parenting books. He hadn’t found the instruction manual for how a man should raise his stepdaughter alone. There were moments where the narrow difference in their ages separated them like an unbreachable gulf. Will knew he was a member of a small group—single stepfathers raising a teenage girl—and that some of the other members of the club were guys like Lucas Cross from Peyton Place. Was there no such thing as a good-guy stepfather in fiction?

  “I figured she was ready for a dog,” he said to Sarah, setting the swing in motion again. “She’s been a lonely-only long enough.”

  “There’s another solution,” she said in a teasing voice. “Marry a woman with kids and you’ll have an instant family.”