by Susan Wiggs
She couldn’t picture him all shaved and buff and in uniform, but he looked really proud and excited. “Luke, that’s so great.”
“Yeah, I’m pumped. Anyway, I just wanted to see you, see if you can forgive me.”
A light breeze lifted her hair off her shoulders. “Thanks.”
“Anyway, basic training starts after Labor Day, and after that, who knows where I’ll end up. I was thinking maybe we could keep in touch by e-mail.”
“All right. Yes, we could do that.”
“I want you to know I feel bad about what happened. It was all my fault. I was completely stupid about it, so I hope…” His voice trailed off and he looked supremely uncomfortable.
“No hard feelings.” As the words left her mouth, Callie knew it was true. They were just a couple of kids. They both had a lot to learn.
Thirty-Seven
Kate stopped at the post office to change her delivery back to Seattle. While waiting in line, she watched a couple together, teasing each other with an easy familiarity that brought an unexpected ache to her heart. Love could be so simple one moment and so complicated the next and, too often for Kate, impossible. The couple in line ahead of her magnified her loneliness, and she was horrified to feel the pressure of tears in her throat and eyes.
Get a grip, she warned herself. Hurry. Then the man turned and caught her staring at him. She glanced down at a nonexistent watch, pretending she hadn’t been watching him at all. For some reason, the threat of tears wouldn’t go away. She slid her change-of-address form across the counter, then headed for the door.
“Kate? Kate Livingston—it’s me, Sam Schroeder.” The couple now stood at the door as though waiting for her.
From somewhere deep inside, she summoned a smile. Despite the passage of years, he hadn’t changed that much. He’d always been a sunny, uncomplicated person and he still looked that way. “My Lord. Sam Schroeder. It’s been ages.”
He held the door for her and they went outside, standing in front of the post office’s garden of prizewinning roses. “I’d like you to meet my wife, Penny. We came out to the lake for Labor Day weekend. It’s the first chance I’ve had to bring her and the kids.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Kate said, though she had never felt less like meeting someone and making small talk. “You picked the perfect time of year to come.”
“Thanks. We love it here already. The boys are never going to get over having to go back and start school. And speaking of the kids,” she added, “I’d better go check on them. We’ll wait in the car.” She hurried across the parking lot, leaving Kate and Sam standing there.
It should have been awkward, knowing that Sam would surely remember their bumbling summer embraces back when they were kids, but it wasn’t. So much time had passed that it might have happened to different people, people she didn’t know anymore. Rather than feeling awkward, she felt…empty. “You have a family,” she said.
“I do. And a job and a mortgage, like a real grownup. Listen, you should come over to our place. Bring your boy—”
“Whoa. Bring my boy?”
“To meet mine. I have two kids.”
“How do you know I have a son?” she asked him, feeling suspicion prickle across her skin.
“JD told me,” he said easily. “I swear, sometimes it’s like pulling teeth to get him to talk, but not when it comes to you and…Adam, is it? Aaron?”
Kate’s cheeks felt as if they were on fire. “So you and JD…you talked about me.” It felt weird to be having such a personal conversation with him after such a long time. Or maybe not. Maybe after Us magazine published your bra size, nothing was off-limits.
“He’s my best friend,” Sam told her. “I’ll say what I have to say. You mean a lot to him, Kate, and the feeling’s mutual, right?”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Nope. The look on your face did.”
She remembered something about Sam. Growing up with three older sisters, he had a rare understanding of women and an almost magical ability to read their thoughts. Apparently, that hadn’t changed. She clutched her purse securely against her. “We’re not…we never—” She stopped, horrified to feel a fresh sting of tears.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can see this is upsetting you.”
“It’s so stupid to be upset,” she said.
“No, it isn’t. So did you fall in love with him?”
“I’m leaving now,” she said, heading for her car.
He walked along with her, refusing to be put off. “Then be in love with him. Quit mooning around.”
“I’m not mooning. Does this look like mooning? You don’t even know me anymore, Sam. Certainly not well enough to give me advice. It’s none of your business, anyway.”
“He’s my best friend. That makes it my business. Listen, every woman he’s ever known has either screwed him over or given up on him. He doesn’t really think anything else is possible.”
“Maybe it’s not.”
“You know it is.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “Like I’m some expert.”
“You are.” He smiled at her, and she glimpsed the boy she had known so long ago. “You always have been.”
She smiled, hoping he didn’t notice how close she was to shattering. Sam, with his adorable wife and kids, seemed to find it easy to give out advice. “Goodbye, Sam,” she said quietly.
That night, Kate brought home pizza and salad for dinner. They toasted one another with sparkling water and played one last game of gin rummy, which lasted until Aaron nearly nodded off at the table. She sent him to bed with a promise that she’d be up to tuck him in. Callie headed to her room and was soon engrossed in the pages of a novel.
“It was a great summer, wasn’t it?” Kate said to Aaron, sitting on the edge of his bed.
“Sure.”
“You learned to swim, buddy.”
“Yep.”
“And you got bigger and stronger and you weren’t even lonely for your cousins.” She felt a need to remind him of all the good things that had happened so he wouldn’t dwell on JD’s absence.
“Maybe a little.” He was struggling to keep his eyes open.
“And Callie is coming to stay with us.” She had managed to convince the caseworker that the media would go away now that JD was gone.
“Uh-huh.” He gave up the battle and snuggled under the covers.
Kate rubbed his back for a few minutes, then slipped out of the room and went back downstairs. She wasn’t the least bit tired. The encounter with Sam today had left her feeling unsettled, maybe a little jumpy.
Straightening the kitchen cupboards for the last time of the summer, she came across a half-full bottle of red wine. It was probably spoiled by now. She held it poised over the sink, ready to dump it out, then stopped herself.
What the heck, she thought, taking out a wineglass. She’d never tried drinking alone before. She’d never tried wallowing. In the past, she always made herself face the world with a positive attitude, come what may. Yet this was different, impossible to push aside or deny. A deep ache of melancholy tugged at her, and just for tonight, she decided to let it. Why not? This was supposed to be the summer of her independence, her reaffirmation that she was perfectly content being exactly who she was—a single mother, a writer, a daughter, a sister. Back in June, she had come here determined to recover from the blow of being fired and to emerge better and stronger for her efforts.
Instead, the impossible had happened. She had met a man and fallen from the dizzying height of a precipice, plunging heart and soul in love.
She smiled at the memory, even as she flinched from the hurt.
The bottle was left over from a night she recalled with painful clarity. It was the Merlot she and JD had shared one night. She remembered sitting on the porch swing with him and watching a family of ducks as the sun went down. She remembered thinking that everything had fit together so perfectly that night. Most especially her and JD. She let her mind d
rift through the summer, remembering the talk and laughter they’d shared, and every intimate touch, every romantic whisper.
Her hand trembled and the bottle neck clinked against the wineglass as she poured. Then she took both the glass and the bottle and headed outside. Two-fisted-drinking alone, she thought, walking down to the water’s edge. That had to be a first for her.
A mysterious summer moon was up. Riding the jagged shoulders of the mountains around the lake, it appeared huge, and close enough to touch.
“Here’s to you,” Kate said, sitting on the dock and raising her glass to the moon. “And to…whatever.” She couldn’t think of a single uplifting thing to say. She drank deeply, noting that one thing had gone right today—the wine wasn’t spoiled. The water lapped in gentle whispers at the shore. Across the way, she could see a few lights. There were a couple of boats out in the distance; she could see a bow lantern moving along the water.
She knocked back more wine and decided she was doing a terrible job of wallowing. She kept trying to be rational, to tell herself to snap out of it. What had happened to her was depressingly common, something that befell women every day. She had fallen in love and it hadn’t worked out. Simple enough. But there was nothing easy about the way she was hurting.
The boat with the lantern seemed to be drawing closer. She swirled the wine in her glass and stared at the lone figure silhouetted against the moon, powerful arms moving in long, smooth strokes as he rowed.
Kate’s heart shifted into overdrive. She sat glued to the spot, her legs dangling off the end of the dock. And finally, at the worst possible moment, the tears she had been fighting all day slipped down her cheeks. She tried wiping them away with the tail of her shirt, but the tears kept coming, an unending stream of relief and joy and fear and anticipation.
JD rowed the wherry alongside the dock and tied onto a mooring cleat. “I’ve heard it’s rude to drink alone.”
“I wasn’t alone.” She sniffed and brushed at her face again. “I was raising a toast to the moon.”
“You’re crazy, you know that?”
“I do,” she said, and quit trying to stop the tears. Her emotions were part of who she was. No more hiding or pretending. “What are you doing here?”
“I came by seaplane from Seattle. It’s the quickest way.”
“I meant, what are you doing?”
“Callie gave me a copy of your article to read,” he said. “It’s a fine piece and you deserve to be proud of it.”
“And that’s what you came here to tell me?”
“I’ve got a lot more to say. I’m just getting started.” He stood and straddled the boat and dock, gallantly holding out his hand, palm up. “Get in. I’ll take you for a ride.”
She set aside the wine and the goblet, climbed to her feet and took his hand.
“Hello, gorgeous,” he said, leaning down to kiss her. His kiss shattered her. Not that it was particularly sexy or passionate. It was just that the feel and taste of him were so dear to her that she nearly came apart from the sheer joy of kissing him, when only a moment ago she thought she’d never see him again.
She sat down in the boat, bracing her arms on either side. He pushed off and rowed easily out onto the dark, mysterious water. The wherry was a work of art. The light and dark planks, in their distinctive herringbone pattern, dazzled the eye. She knew the perfectly smooth finish had to be the result of hours—days—of patient sanding and restoring. Every joint and curve flowed seamlessly, inviting her hands to glide along the edges.
“I need to know why,” she told him.
“Why I left, or why I came back?”
“Both. Why would you hide away, pretending it never happened?” she asked.
“Because it nearly ruined someone I care about.”
She understood now. After the flurry of attention in Seattle, she got it. “I hate that you hid the truth from me.”
“I hid it from everybody.”
“I’m not ‘everybody.’”
“That’s true,” he said quietly. “You became so much more, Kate.”
It seemed a painful admission. “You did a wonderful thing, not just by saving the President, but by giving people hope. Watching you, knowing you did that, makes people feel safe again and know there’s good in the world.”
“I don’t want to be anybody’s great white hope,” he said. “I just want to live my life.”
“And is that what you were doing? Or were you just letting the days go by?”
He rowed for a few minutes without speaking. Then he said, “I stayed because you made me feel like I was living for the first time. And then I left because I don’t want to put you in the spotlight. But…this is who I am.” He spread his hands, palms up. “Someone who loves you even though you deserve better. Someone who’ll be your best friend, your lover, for as long as you’ll have me.” He set the oars in the oarlocks and let the boat drift. “That’s the answer to the second part of your question. It’s why I came back, to do whatever it takes to be with you. I love you, Kate. I love everything about you.”
She smiled through her tears. He claimed he’d never give her hearts and flowers and fairy tales. He didn’t know that was exactly what he was doing now. “See?” she whispered. “That wasn’t so hard.”
“You’re right. It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”
“So…now what?” she asked.
He hesitated, and she feared he might have come back for the wrong reasons—a long-distance relationship, or one that was part-time. “JD—”
“I realized something when I was away. I don’t want to be in L.A. if you’re here. I want to do this, make a life with you, live with you and Aaron and Callie… I could forget L.A. and apply to UW. That is, if there’s a reason for me to do that.”
“Yes,” she said, gripping the sides of the boat. “There is every reason to do that.”
“You have to understand. All this—eventually, it’ll die down, but not right away. There’s a film in the works, and I can’t stop it. My only hope is that it gets hung up in development limbo. Who knows how long the nosy reporters and photographers will be hanging around.”
“Your mother couldn’t handle it. I can,” Kate said. “Callie and Aaron can, too. We’ll do it together.”
He smiled, and the moonlight was kind to his face, making him look young and idealistic and filled with hope. “Listen, if I go down on bended knee right now, this thing will capsize. So you’ll have to use your imagination.”
She was too full of everything to speak, so she nodded.
“You don’t have to imagine this.” He took out a small box and placed it in her hand. She felt the warm fur of velvet. In the moonlight, it looked royal blue. She opened it and saw the moon on a satin pillow, its beautiful white clarity reflected in every facet of the diamond solitaire.
“This is exactly… How did you know?”
“Come on, Kate. What a question.”
Oh, he knew her. He knew every dream that lived in her heart. He knew she wanted the fairy tale, and he was determined to give it to her. To have someone love her like this…she was overwhelmed.
“So will you?” he asked her. “Forever?”
She caught her breath and thought, this is it. The idea was startling and exhilarating and life-changing, not just for her, but for Aaron and maybe even Callie. And she wanted it so badly that she scared herself, but being scared was nothing new to her.
“Yes,” she said, “yes, yes, yes.” She pressed forward into his arms and the boat rocked but stayed upright, stirring the moonlight on the water into a pool of brightness.
Recipes for Summer Living
ROCKIN’ CRAB DIP
Courtesy of www.AmericanFireFighter.com.
Serve this with crackers—preferably on a Saturday, since that’s apparatus cleaning day and the cook can help clean.
½ lb Maryland crabmeat, picked clean
1 8-oz package cream cheese
½ cup sour cream
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp dry mustard
1 tbsp milk
¼ cup grated cheddar cheese
pinch garlic salt
a sprinkle of paprika, for garnish
Mix cream cheese, sour cream, mayo, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, mustard and garlic salt. Add enough milk to make a creamy consistency, then stir in half the grated cheese and all the crabmeat. Pour into greased 1-quart casserole. Top with remaining cheese. Bake for about 30 minutes at 325° F until mixture is bubbly and browned on top.
PORCH SWING FRENCH TOAST
Courtesy of Carole Eppler of Porch Swing Bed & Breakfast, Cheyenne, Wyoming.
This recipe won first place in the State of Wyoming Bed & Breakfast Recipe Contest. The award was presented by Wyoming’s First Lady, Sheri Geringer.
2 tbsp butter
4 eggs
½ cup orange juice
½ cup cream
1 8-oz can crushed pineapple
¼ cup sugar
1 tbsp grated orange zest
½ tsp vanilla
¼ tsp nutmeg
1 loaf French bread, cut into 1-inch slices
½ cup chopped pecans
Topping:
¼ cup butter, softened
½ cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 tbsp light corn syrup
½ cup chopped pecans
The night before, melt butter in a 9 x 13–inch pan and place bread in pan. Combine all ingredients and pour over bread. Combine topping ingredients, except for nuts. Spread topping over bread and sprinkle with nuts. Cover and refrigerate. The next morning, preheat oven to 350° F and bake 40 minutes or until golden. Serves 6.
CAMPFIRE TROUT
This seems like a lot of work, especially if you have to catch and clean the fish. Turn it into pure fun by getting a child to help.
small lake or rainbow trout