Luke's #1 Rule

by Cynthia Harrison

  There had been an old red wagon out by the shed. Eva said it was from when she’d been a girl, and she allowed the boys to play with it. Now Chloe couldn’t find the wagon. It wasn’t Wanda’s fault. She was working, not babysitting. But now Chloe felt real fear, dark and chilling. Josh would not take the wagon and the rabbit, in his cage, down to the beach. There were too many steps. He must have gone down the highway.

  She quickly checked Josh’s room. His backpack was gone and his toys and clothes were strewn around the room.

  “Come on, Tommy, we need to find Josh.”

  “Oh, dear,” Wanda said. “I’m sorry, honey.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Chloe said. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

  Chloe’s call to her mother’s cell went to voice mail. She and Tommy had been at the beach less than a half hour. Josh couldn’t have gone far. But what if someone had picked him up off the road?

  Her heart beat wildly. Her stomach sickened. Tommy picked up on Chloe’s distress and started crying.

  Chloe knew she’d go out of her mind in another minute if she didn’t take action.

  “Wanda, if Josh comes back, would you please call me?”

  She wrote her number down on a pad in the kitchen with shaky hands.

  She might throw up, but she had to go right now. She had to find Josh.

  “Come on, Tommy.” She grabbed keys from her bedroom.

  She couldn’t move fast enough, and yet time crawled by. Once she had Tommy safely belted into the car, she pulled out onto the road, hyper-conscious of the speeding traffic. Blue Heaven was on the main road into town, the main road for the entire thumb of Michigan. Lower speed limits were posted in Blue Lake, but people often blew by them going twice the legal limit. Only a thin shoulder off the road. Josh could have been hit, could be bleeding by the roadside, hit by a crazy summer driver.

  Her phone rang on the console and without taking her eyes off the road, clicked on speaker and said, “Yeah?”

  “Josh is pulling a red wagon with Tommy’s rabbit in it down Strobell Avenue,” Luke said. “The rabbit’s in a cage.”

  “You see him? You have your eyes on him right now?”

  “Yes.”

  Chloe let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.

  “Okay. Please don’t let him out of your sight. I’m downtown, near the beach steps. How do I get to Strobell?”

  “Go down two streets to Taylor. Take a left. I’ll stay on the line until you find us.”

  “Is that where your house is?”

  “No, I’m doing lawns.”

  “Okay. Turning left on Taylor.” Her knees were weak. Now was not the time to think of what might have happened. She sent a thousand thank-yous heavenward.

  “Keep on Taylor. Strobell is down three or four blocks. Turn right. It’s a long street. He hasn’t even seen me yet, but I recognized his shirt and ball cap.”

  “I’m on Strobell. Oh, I see him.” She clicked off the phone without saying good-bye. Josh, small and defenseless in his orange Tiger T-shirt. His little shoulder blades were hunched, and he trudged along like the weight of the world rested on his small back. Chloe drove slowly by him, but he didn’t notice. She pulled into the driveway, which was when she noticed Luke had put away his riding lawnmower and only pretended to sweep the cut grass off the sidewalk. He had both eyes on her boy. This broke her heart, but she pushed that particular misery aside. Luke didn’t know her at all.

  She put the car in park, effectively blocking Joshua, who stopped his progress, red wagon and all. Anguish stood clear on his face.

  He usually kept his expressions tucked away inside, and Chloe could see him fold up his disappointment and sadness. He looked at her, gauging her reaction.

  She ran over and hugged him, lifting him off the ground. Gratitude for his safety flooded her; she whispered a brief prayer of thanks to the sky.

  “Where were you going, honey?”

  “To Grandma’s.” He squirmed in her arms, as he did these days after hugs longer than a few seconds in duration.

  Chloe glanced around in a daze. Her mother did live somewhere around here. Next block? She wasn’t sure.

  “I used the GPS on your iPhone,” he said. “Up at that next street, you turn right, and that’s Grandma’s street.”

  She hadn’t known her iPhone had a GPS. Or that Josh knew how to download apps, which required her password, another thing she had not even imagined he knew.

  “Well, I’ll take you the rest of the way there,” she said. She opened the back door for Josh to climb in, noticing that Luke rested an arm on the open window on Tommy’s side of the car, talking to him. While Josh got in the car, she put Dumpster, cage and all, in the front seat next to her. Luke hoisted the red wagon into the trunk. Josh’s backpack, stuffed with every item of clothing he’d brought with him on vacation, sat on the sidewalk where Chloe and Luke both reached for it. Chloe tried hard to hold in the tears.

  “Just give it to Josh,” she said, and got into the driver’s seat, blinking her eyes. “And, Luke, thank you.”

  “No problem,” Luke said, as she backed out of the driveway and headed for her mother’s house.

  He waved as they passed, but only Tommy waved back.

  “He told you where I was, didn’t he?”

  Chloe’s upset body didn’t trust her voice to speak. Upset began turning into anger. She needed a calm place where she could talk to Josh like the adult he needed her to be right now. So she just nodded and kept driving.

  “Mommy was so worried about you,” Tommy said. “But I wasn’t.”

  Josh made some reply. Chloe’s ears roared, waves of anger and helplessness threatened to overtake her. She wondered if she should go back to the bungalow and handle this alone. But there would be more people there, all the folks who’d rented cottages, their kids, Wanda, feeling responsible, even though she wasn’t. Worst of all, Spence and Bettina. Oh, they’d love to get in the middle of this.

  So she drove to her mother’s. There were several cars in the driveway. Oh great. Mah-jongg at Mom’s. Chloe called her mom from the car.

  “We have a situation here.”

  “Did you find him? Wanda called me. She’s beside herself.”

  “Yes, we’re in your driveway.”

  “That’s fine, honey, the girls were just leaving.” Chloe figured she’d probably broken up the game, but relief tempered anxiety when women began to appear on the porch and walk down the steps of her mother’s cute little cottage. They waved to her and the boys and got into their cars and drove off.

  Tommy was already out and like a shot up the porch and into his grandmother’s house. Josh hung back to take care of Dumpster. It tore Chloe’s heart out to see such a little boy handle the awkward wire cage. But Josh took the cage by both arms and walked with Dumpster into his grandmother’s house. Chloe brought up the rear.

  She knew, as soon as she got inside, that the game had not been over. A full plate of sandwiches graced the kitchen table, and an uncut cake sat on the counter. Dishes of peanuts and Chex mix dotted the card tables, one still set up with a mah-jongg game, all the tiles spread on the table in front of the chairs.

  “Can we play, Grandma?” Tommy said, sitting right down and picking up the intricately designed tiles.

  “Sure, honey,” Ursula said.

  “Josh, I hear you were coming over to visit me.”

  “Yeah. Mom”—he looked at her—“I’m sorry, but I can’t go to Seattle with you. It’s too far. You can take Tommy, but I have to stay here with Grandma. And Dad. They need us, too.”

  Chloe’s anger at Josh drained away in an instant, replaced by a heavy sense of profound sadness. She had done this. She had made her child choose between his parents. Her self-hatred raged, out of control.

  “I looked up Seattle on the Internet, and Mom, it’s 3,272 miles away. It takes more than a whole day to get there if you drive without stopping even to pee. Almost two days. But it would be more, bec
ause you’d have to stop to eat and go to the bathroom.”

  “I know, honey, but there are airplanes. You can fly in to see your dad, and Grandma already said she’d come see us this winter.”

  Josh shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I really am. But I thought about it and I can’t do it. Dad needs us, too.”

  A wave of nausea rolled through Chloe.

  “Did you talk to Dad?”

  Josh nodded.

  “He doesn’t want us to leave. He said I couldn’t live with him and Bettina and the baby, so I thought Grandma might have room for me.”

  “Of course I have room for you!” Ursula said, bending down to fold Josh into her arms. Traitor, Chloe thought.

  “Mom!” Chloe’s voice was sharper than she’d intended. “Josh is my child. I have sole custody of him. He doesn’t get to decide where he lives. He lives with me. That’s it.”

  Josh turned out of his grandmother’s arms and flew into her spare bedroom, the one she’d already fixed up for the two boys. He slammed the door.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ursula eyed Chloe, who held her mother’s gaze. Tommy came into the kitchen and nabbed a sandwich from the plate on the table.

  “Mom. Listen. You are not helping,” Chloe said.

  “Then why are you here? Why didn’t you just go home and handle this yourself? Oh, that’s right. You don’t have a home. I’m sorry, Tommy.” Ursula looked at the little boy. “Take a sandwich in to Josh, would you?”

  “We can eat in the bedroom?”

  “Just this once.”

  Tommy went to the pantry and pulled out two juice boxes. Then he put them down and went over to Dumpster’s cage, where he removed the empty water dish and filled it. He gave Dumpster his water and a carrot from the fridge, and then he picked up the juice boxes and sandwiches and went into the bedroom with his brother.

  Chloe tried to speak, but her voice choked with tears. Her mother, the one person she could always count on to be on her side, had betrayed her.

  “I’m sorry, dear, but this is, well, it’s not how I planned on things working out.”

  “Please don’t tell me you planned for me and Luke to get married and live happily ever after.”

  Ursula actually laughed.

  “Well, Wanda and I did entertain some hopes in that direction, but now I see it’s not in the cards.”

  That stung. Chloe was the one in love. She was the one being rejected. By Luke, and now by her own son. Suddenly her knees couldn’t hold her up any more. She fell hard into a kitchen chair, pushed the plate of sandwiches away, and put her head down on the cool Formica tabletop.

  “You’re right. Josh is your boy. Of course I shouldn’t have said that. But he broke my heart.”

  Chloe lifted her head like her neck had a heavy bag of sand on it.

  “I knew he felt sad about this. And I could kill Spence.” Chloe lowered her voice. “You heard that part about how Josh couldn’t live with him. What kind of parent doesn’t say an open-hearted yes to his own child when that child asks to be taken in?”

  “Spence has always been about Spence. You know that. And his wife is pregnant. She’d not going to want to be dealing with an eight-year-old.” Ursula whispered too. The last thing they wanted was for Josh to hear them.

  Chloe’s stomach churned as if she were in a boat atop choppy water. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore except that her new job waited, and it would change all of their lives for the better. Eventually.

  She dug in her purse for a Rolaid. She kept them in there since the days of her high-stress ex-job, when she’d popped them with regularity. She hadn’t needed one since the day she’d quit. Soon, she’d be in an even higher stakes situation. She’d be playing with the big boys. Seattle. Shit. She could handle it, of course she could. Completely up to the challenge. But would her family survive?

  The boys came out of the bedroom and turned on the television. Tommy brought the empty juice boxes into the kitchen.

  “Mom, is it true Josh gets to stay here with Grandma and I have to go all the way to the other end of the country?” His eyes glossed with unshed tears. The minute he finished his sentence, the tears fell and he started to wail. Chloe took him up in her lap and let him cry into her shoulder, soaking her t-shirt.

  “No, baby, that’s not true. Josh is leaving with us. We’re all going together. The three of us are a team.”

  Tommy hiccupped in his last cries.

  “You promise?”

  “I do.”

  If Josh heard what she said from the living room, he didn’t indicate it. He kept his eyes on the television, which played an infomercial for a blender that could grind potatoes into liquid in thirty seconds.

  “Grandma, can we watch Shrek?”

  “Sure, kiddo. You know how to work that machine better than I do.”

  Tears forgotten, Tommy ran back into the living room. The house was so small that Chloe could almost reach out and touch her boys if she needed to. She needed them that close. Even closer. She glanced with longing at the sofa. The boys sat on the floor in front of the television, sprawled on the huge pillows her mother kept just for them. They had positioned themselves under the card tables as if they were in bunkers.

  “Go ahead.”

  Her mom knew what Chloe needed. She always knew.

  Chloe went and sat on the sofa to watch Shrek for the tenth or twentieth time. Nobody spoke. A truce, for the time being, had been called.

  She fell asleep in the middle of the movie. She woke with a start as the credits rolled on the screen and the boys got up from their prone positions to stretch.

  “What are we gonna do now?”

  “Now,” her mom said, coming into the living room, which had been cleared of the card tables and mah-jongg tiles. “We’re going to get that sprinkler going out back. Anybody want to put on his bathing suit?”

  “Yay!” Tommy said. Josh followed him into the bedroom to change.

  “I know Josh brought some clothes, but Tommy doesn’t have a suit here,” Chloe said.

  “Of course he does, dear. I bought him one. Plus pajamas and blue jeans and T-shirts and underwear. What else would I keep in their dresser drawers?”

  Chloe looked at her mother like she’d never met the woman before. When her mother had left Sterling Pines and moved up north, some small corner of her heart had been abandoned. It was the right thing to do for all of them, and it wasn’t a fair comparison, but she understood at last Spence’s sadness at being orphaned. Now she saw that her mother had never intended to cut them loose at all. She knew Chloe could stand on her own, start a life, soar.

  And that’s what Chloe had tried to do, what she could do successfully and securely, with the job in Seattle.

  “Mom. This is so hard.”

  “I know, dear, but you’ll work it out. You always do. Now here’s a list. I want to make the boys meatloaf for dinner.”

  Her mother handed Chloe a list and opened the wallet she held in her other hand.

  “No, Mom, I’ll buy the food if you cook,” Chloe said. The boys came out in their bathing suits.

  “I’ll be right back. Going to the store for Grandma.” She could tell by the smug grin on Josh’s face that he thought he’d won. He thought he’d turned back the clock and that they’d all stay here with her mother in Blue Lake in this little cottage. Was not going to happen. But she couldn’t deal with telling him that right now.

  Right now, all she could do was drive to the grocery store.

  Inside the over air-conditioned town grocery store, numb with cold, her mind worked. Her son, her beloved boy, had chosen to live with his father. And this broke her heart more than the other part, Spence had refused.

  She trudged through the store, list in hand, her heart ripped from her body. The produce section, one skinny aisle of withered fruit and vegetables left over from the weekend Farmer’s Market, beckoned. Most people bought from their neighbor’s farm stands, but luckily she on
ly needed onions and potatoes.

  She wanted to call Spence and yell at him. The idiot could have said yes to their boy, to spare him hurt, and then she could have been the mean mom and refused. Spence knew she’d refuse. How could he have been so thoughtless?

  She aimed her cart at the meat counter, asking the butcher for two pounds of ground beef. How was she going to fix this?

  She was used to the grocery store back home. She’d have to get used to a new grocery store in Seattle. Well, maybe the nanny would be doing the shopping. She’d have to work that out. Right at this minute, she hated shopping for food. It seemed pointless because she’d never be able to eat again. But the boys needed to be fed. So she walked up and down the unfamiliar aisles, all eight of them, sightless. It took her three slow trips to find ketchup and bread crumbs and Jell-O.

  She paid for the food on auto-pilot. Drove back to her mother’s. She didn’t see Luke on Strobell or any other street.

  The boys were playing a video game.

  “You forgot the eggs, Chloe!”

  Her mother sounded exasperated but sympathetic.

  “Oh.”

  “Never mind. Run up again while I peel these potatoes.”

  Her body dragged, heavy like the ten pound sack of potatoes sitting on the kitchen counter. But she put one foot in front of the other and did what her mother told her to do. When she got back to the cottage again, the boys were still playing video games, the potatoes were bubbling in a pot of water on the stove, and the meatloaf mixture minus eggs sat in a blue bowl. Her mom had used that same mixing bowl since Chloe was a little girl.

  Her mother broke three eggs into the bowl and dug her hands into the ground meat again.

  “Mommy.” Tommy skipped into the kitchen and patted her cheek. “Don’t be sad.”

  Until he said it, she had not realized that tears had been running down her cheeks. She wiped them away with the back of her hand.

  Josh stood in the doorway between the kitchen and living areas and stared hard eyes at her, unblinking and defiant.

  “Mom,” Chloe said, “Josh and I will be back in a little while.”