by L. B. Dunbar
“I love it,” I whisper, still in awe that my family approves, and this sentimental gift rests on my finger. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, sweetheart.”
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That night, we show off my ring at an impromptu engagement party. Logan must have called the family together somehow because when we return to Anna and Ben’s, all are gathered, including my mother. Lorna immediately hugs me once her dad announces I said yes, and Mason makes a crack about diamonds being the way to win a woman. He might have said they were the way to get in a woman’s pants, but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt because young ears were listening.
I pull my mother aside to thank her for the ring.
“This really means everything to me, Mom,” I say, glancing down at the diamond and silver combination on my finger.
“Your father would be so proud of you. You finally have everything he would have wanted for you.”
Tears fill my eyes again. “Mom, I have something else to tell you.”
She waits me out until I blurt, “I’m pregnant, but we aren’t telling everyone until we tell Lorna.” Somehow, she doesn’t appear surprised.
“Well, I was wondering when you were going to tell me.” She chuckles.
“Logan told you, didn’t he?”
“Wild guess,” she says. “I know I recommended Mason at first, but I think you made the smartest choice from the list. You need a man who knows your worth, and he is pretty hunky in his own right.”
“Mom,” I drawl.
“I might be old, but I’m not blind.”
“How did Logan get the ring?”
“He came to see Ben before he sought you out at your place. He didn’t have a ring yet, so I immediately gave him mine.”
“He didn’t know I was pregnant then,” I state. He couldn’t have told my mother when he told Ben he planned to marry me. Actually, Logan demanded I marry him twice before I told him I was pregnant.
“No, but he said he planned for it to happen.”
I softly chuckle. Such confidence.
“It appears he’s a virile man as well.” She wiggles her brows. “He’s also attractive, but the best thing about him might be his sweetness and his humor. If a man can make you laugh, there’s more chemistry in that trait than anything else.” She softly smiles, and I remember the laughter of my parents. My dad was a funny guy.
“The best thing about Logan is he loves me,” I whisper.
“I would have settled for nothing less for you, honey. That’s why I gave him the ring.” Unable to stop myself, I wrap my arms around my mother.
“I love you, Mom.”
“Ah, honey. I love you, too.”
We both know it’s important to say these things.
Epilogue
The Following Summer
[Logan]
As we both wanted Ben present in a healthy condition, we held a micro-wedding on our new property in the spring. Standing on the front lawn of our new house, we stated our vows before family and friends with the sunset as a backdrop. The setting was as gorgeous as my blushing bride, who was rather pregnant at the time. Her long flowing dress disguised her baby bump, but she would pop soon enough.
Lorna stood up as a maid of honor along with Anna as matron, and Amelia, Anna’s younger sister, as another bridesmaid. On my side, I have my brothers from another in Mason, Ben, and Zack. It was a small affair, but it was everything I could have asked for—friends who are now family.
Ben had weathered a storm of ups and downs with experimental drugs. Shortly after our wedding, he took a turn for the worse and then recovered. The unknown wore on Anna, but the perfect couple remained the perfect couple. I was no longer jealous of them because I had my own perfect love with my new wife and the family we were creating with Lorna as a big sister and the future baby.
Near the beginning of July, on what felt like the hottest day of the year, baby Anders arrived. Unfortunately, Ben was in the hospital at the same time. I rolled Autumn to the oncology unit in a wheelchair with the baby on her lap. We had to have special clearance for such a thing, but as a small-town community, the local hospital staff knew the story of the Kulis siblings.
One was dying while another was giving birth.
“Hey.” I knocked on the door of Ben’s room, hoping today was a good day for him. Anna slowly rose from her seat beside her husband. She’d been up to visit us shortly after Autumn and the baby were cleaned up. She cried as she held our little one, and Autumn cried just as hard. I wanted them to be happy tears, but I assumed it was a mixture. I shed a few myself because I couldn’t believe I was where I was. A father again. A married man. Truly in love this time.
“Hey,” Ben’s hoarse voice reached us as he was propped up in the bed. He still looked like Ben in his eyes and his smile, but my friend was slowly leaving the body of the man before us.
“We have someone who wants to meet you,” Autumn stated, elevating her cheerful voice as she struggled to pretend she wasn’t shocked by her brother’s appearance.
“Who’s this?” Ben asked although he was already aware we had a baby.
“Benjamin Michael Anders meet Benjamin Traverse Kulis.”
Ben blinks as Autumn hands baby Ben to me, and I pass my son to him. Anna stepped up to cradle her hands under Ben’s arms as he held his namesake. A tear fell down Ben’s cheek, and Anna was quick to swipe it from his face.
“He’s so beautiful, Autumn.”
My own eyes burned as I watched my best friend gaze at my newest child.
“He definitely takes after his mother.”
I softly chuckled. “Hey.”
“But I know you’ll have the heart of your father,” Ben stated as if he already knew my son. I can only hope he’ll live up to every letter of his namesake.
Autumn swiped at her face and reached for my hand, and I squeezed her fingers with my own. Slowly, Ben lifted his head and looked at his wife.
“It’s time to go home, my love,” he stated to her, and Anna’s eyes widened.
“But—”
“No buts. I want to go home.” There was no bark to his words but still strength in his demand. Ben didn’t want to end his days in a hospital, and we all knew what he was requesting.
Ben wanted to return to Lakeside Cottage.
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It’s a blustery day in mid-July, roughly two weeks after the birth of my baby boy. Zack and his boys are present, staying in the garage apartment with Mason. Anna and Autumn plan to entertain the girls as Autumn is desperate to get out of the house. A trip to the beach didn’t seem wise to me at first, but with baby Ben strapped to my chest, we begin the laborious trek down to the water from Lakeside Cottage.
Mason and Zack take turns carrying Ben down the one-hundred-fifty wooden steps, resting at the landing to change carriers. Bryce and Calvin have gone ahead with Zack’s little terrors, who seem to be even more hellacious in their mother’s absence.
When we finally arrive on the sand, a pop-up canopy covers two sand chairs, and Ben is settled into one of them. I take the other, keeping the baby in the shade while Mason and Zack hover on the edges. Silently at first, we watch Bryce and Calvin toss a football as Trevor and Oliver run between the older boys as if they can catch the ball floating over their heads.
“Those kids are crazy,” Mason states, watching the younger set run back and forth, back and forth.
“I know,” Zack moans, rubbing a hand down his face. “But they’re also kids.”
“Nothing you can really do but love them,” Ben states in his permanently graveled voice. A large beach towel wraps around him despite the warmth of the day. The brisk breeze cools things off, but the sand bites at my ankles.
“That’s the future of Four Points,” Mason says, still watching the boys, and I realize he’s correct.
Our business venture began around the new year, and we’ve worked hard to get every project started. Ben hasn’t been as involved as we hoped, but he’s
been present when he could. Mostly what he’s done is update files and plans, leaving things in place for someone to take his place in the landscape division. We offered the position to Anna, but she wants to continue subbing at the local high school in hopes of a permanent position this fall.
“It’s the cycle of life,” Ben suddenly states, staring off at his sons. “You live and love, lose and learn, and then you start all over again.”
Ben isn’t wrong. In many ways, we lived different lives when we were younger. We fell in love, and some of us fell out of it. We lost parents and wives. We learned hard lessons, and in my case, started over again. Autumn has been the life change I needed, along with the new business, the move, and the baby. And, of course, having Lorna full-time has made a big difference.
“To the cycle,” Mason states, holding up a beer he grabbed from the cooler one of the boys lugged to the beach.
“To the future,” Ben states, his eyes still focused on his children.
“But also to the past,” Zack adds, staring at our sick friend. He’s the one who brought us all together. He’ll always be the True North that points us home.
“To friends forever,” I say as I did on our first reunion last summer.
“Must you sound like a thirteen-year-old girl?” Mason teases, still holding up his beer.
“I like that,” Ben says, and I turn my head to find him looking at me. In our wedding vows, I promised to love Autumn with everything I had. It’s something Ben asked of me. Love her with everything, and she’ll do the same for you. In some ways, I think it’s how he viewed his relationship with his sister. He’d loved her with all he had like he loved each of us, and in return, we loved him for what he’d given us.
The best of friends in the best of men.
“To thirteen-year-old girls,” I state, and Mason groans.
“Do you know how wrong that sounded?”
“Just drink,” I tease, and Mason does, but I glance back at Ben, whose gaze has fallen on my son, tucked into my chest.
“This is the best,” Ben whispers, eyes still on my child, and I’m not certain if he means a sleeping baby or a child nuzzled to a chest. Or just sitting on the beach with friends. I’ll take all those moments and roll them into one.
“I’ve had the best of lives,” Ben says. “Because I lived every moment of it.”
“Ben,” I choke, sensing he’s trying to impart some wisdom on us. He slowly smiles and turns back to watch his own boys torturing the younger ones.
In a maudlin moment a while back, Ben asked me: “If you live another forty years, my friend, what will make you happiest?”
The answers were simple and came quickly. His sister. My daughter. Our new child. The home we were building together. The life we planned to share as a family.
“That’s all I’d ask of any of you,” he had said because Ben knew what was important. In his cycle of life theory, he recognized that we followed a pattern.
And while we might be forty-year-old men, we’re still those four college boys inside, striving for what we wanted most in life.
And when we were forty, we still had so much life left to live.
As Ben intended we should.
Second Epilogue
[Zack]
July
Ben was dead.
There was no easy way to sugarcoat the truth. Our best friend had died after a short life and a brief struggle with pancreatic cancer. I’m still dressed in my funeral attire minus my sportscoat. My tie is loosened, and I gawk out the second-floor, bedroom window into the yard next door. Anna’s family calls this place Lakeside Cottage, but for the past year it was the permanent residence of one of my oldest friends and their family. My family used to live next door—once upon a time.
Swiping a hand through my hair, I sigh. The past eleven months have been hell. Just shy of a year ago, Ben told us about his diagnosis. He’d already been through treatment without success. Ben Kulis. Clueless Kulis, we teased him in college. The nickname came about because he only had eyes for one woman. That woman would become his wife, Anna. They were sickly sweet, madly in love, and now she was a widow too young. Ben was the best of men. Loyal to a fault, he saw the good in most people even when they didn’t recognize it in themselves. Having been Anna’s friend first, my friendship with Ben happened second but was no less important than hers.
Staring out the dark window, I’m distracted when a light from the house next door illuminates a portion of the yard. A yard that was mine once upon a time. My childhood dreams were built there until everything shattered when I was a teenager.
I hate this room. I hate that it faces what I once had. I hate that facing what I once had reminds of all that I’ve lost.
A house. A home. A wife. A friend.
Ben would have told me to let it go regarding that house next door. I’m certain he said something similar to that before the phrase—let it go—became so popular. It was only a house, he probably said, but it had been my house. My home. Home is where you plant your garden and sow your seeds, he might have added being a landscape designer who loved planting metaphors. Instead of that house being a special place, I was uprooted as a teen and forced to bloom elsewhere.
Regarding my ex-wife, he told me to let her go as well, and I did.
Suddenly, a woman enters the yard, distracting me from my thoughts of shattered dreams and broken homes. Her hair appears golden in the dim light, flowing behind her like she’s a mystical creature from a child’s bedtime story. She wears a dress that’s light in color and fabric, covering her from shoulder to ankle and yet leaving nothing to the imagination. In profile, I see the outline of her form. Pert breasts. Long legs. And that hair like a veil drifting behind her in the light wind.
She looks like an angel.
And I must be losing my mind.
This must be the neighbor who arrived around the time we visited last summer. Anna and Ben claim they never formally met her, only passed friendly hellos through the tall shrubbery between the homes. Anna’s best guess is she’s roughly our age. We all turned forty the year of the great reunion where Ben dropped the bomb about his situation. Now, we are forty-one.
Roughly loosening the remainder of my tie, I continue to stare into the mostly dark yard. The patio is illuminated by the soft glow of light coming from the house. The kitchen. I recall my mother cooking there, my brother doing homework at the oval table, and my father’s laughter. Tonight seems to be a night of memories. My childhood home. My best friend’s passing. And this woman is invading them both.
With my room two stories up and steeped in darkness, I remain submerged in my dismal mood but mesmerized by her presence.
Why tonight? Of all the times I’ve visited this home in the last year, why am I seeing her tonight of all nights? And why does she look so beautiful, so peaceful, just standing in my yard—her yard—facing the lake off in the distance? Her head tips back and I imagine her closing her eyes, allowing the soft breeze to coast over her face, caress her skin, kiss her lips.
I’m not a romantic at heart but I’m definitely turned on. The idea of being the one to touch her cheeks, stroke down her nose and stare into eyes I cannot see from this distance overwhelms me. And that hair. I want to comb my fingers through that spun gold and curl a fist in the silky-looking threads. My mouth waters at the possibility of kissing the column of her throat, visibly on display with her head tilted backward, face aimed upward. Heaven is calling her.
Ben.
My eyes prickle. My throat tightens. If I were a man who believed in something mystical, I’d think Ben placed this angel in my old yard just for me.
‘Mine’ whispers through my thoughts. Why?
I can’t seem to turn away from the window when I know I should. Staring down upon her makes me feel like a voyeur, like a man witnessing something private, almost intimate. I want to stand in that yard with her. I want to rub my hands over her shoulder where the edge of her dress slips downward, exposing the curl of mu
scle at the top of her arm. I want to kiss her there.
None of it feels appropriate—watching her, wanting her—on this day, when I buried a friend. Still, I stare out the window at a stranger next door. My fingers curl into a fist on the window’s trim, balancing me upright, holding me in place. I can’t seem to look away.
Then, she looks at me.
Her head swivels so quickly, I remain caught in eyes I can’t see as her face angles toward the second floor, toward this window, toward me.
What does she see? The miserable man that I am. The shitty husband I once was. The poor father I’ve been.
I don’t want to be any of those things, but I don’t know how to change. I don’t know what to do, what I want. I only know I want to be better. I want to feel better inside.
Staring down at her, I’m certain she sees me until I remember I’m covered in darkness. The lights remain off in my room and I’m at the edge of the window. She can’t possibly see me. I’ve been so good at pretending I’m something other than who I am, I don’t think anyone knows the real me.
Not even me.
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Thank you for reading this work. I hope you enjoyed Autumn and Logan’s story. Please consider writing a review to tell others about them.
Read next: Learning at 40.
Zack Weller can’t keep his eyes off the woman next door, and she’s hard to miss as she’s naked over there.
Want more small town romance? A single father, a silent daughter and the new woman in town: Speak From The Heart
Enjoy love over 40? Meet the Silver Foxes of Blue Ridge. Four brothers, one brewing company and a mountain town they call home. Start here: Silver Brewer
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More by L.B. Dunbar
Lakeside Cottage