Luke's #1 Rule

by Cynthia Harrison

  “Can I come?” Tommy asked.

  “No, honey. I’m sorry. Mommy needs to talk to Josh alone.”

  “You’re in trouble!” Tommy pumped a fist in the air. Josh never got into trouble.

  “Come over here and help Grandma make the Jell-O,” Chloe’s mom said to Tommy.

  A few minutes later, Chloe and Josh parked in town and descended the steps behind city hall to the bike path. They sat on the sand at the water’s edge.

  Josh hopped in surprise when Chloe sat right down next to the water, her legs in the water, but he sat down next to her without a word.

  It was almost dinnertime, and the beach didn’t have many people on it. Behind them, Chloe and Josh could hear people on restaurant patios, having cocktails and eating meals and laughing. Chloe didn’t know if she’d ever laugh again. Probably, she would. In a year or two.

  After a few minutes of sitting, gazing out at the big water that went on for miles, so far that they couldn’t see the other side of the lake, Chloe took Josh’s small hand in hers.

  “I think I know how you feel,” she said.

  “No, you don’t!” He threw her hand from his own and crossed his arms.

  “Well, why don’t you tell me?”

  Josh remained silent.

  “Okay. I’ll go first. When I left your daddy, I was very sad. We didn’t love each other anymore, but we both loved you and Tommy. That won’t ever change. That was sad, but we had each other, and Grandma, too. Then my job was gone, but we still had each other. Then Grandma left, and that was really sad because she cooks better than me, but I still had you and Tommy. And Grandma still loved us, she just moved somewhere new. Then…” Chloe took a breath and let the water soothe her.

  “Then, someone else left me. Someone I loved very much. And it made me so sad I didn’t know how I could walk or talk.”

  “Luke,” Josh said, nodding as if he knew everything that had gone on between Chloe and the Blue Lake bachelor.

  He was still staring out over the water, his face serious. She loved that face more than life. She lifted his hair off his forehead and kissed it.

  “Not Luke. You, honey. Today, you left me.”

  She put her arm around her son and hugged him close to her. They cried together and this time she let the tears flow.

  “Don’t ever leave me again!” she said, after his sobs subsided and he had cried it all out.

  “Not even to go to college?”

  She laughed, pulling tissues from her purse and handing him one. They both blew their runny noses.

  “Okay. You can leave for college. As long as you come home for Christmas.”

  “And Thanksgiving.”

  Josh got up and searched the rocky beach for good stones. Good stones, she had learned this week, were the ones that made the biggest splash when you flung them into the water. He threw a few, and then she said dinner was probably ready.

  Chloe managed to eat dinner only because Tommy kept his eyes glued to her. He complimented every bite of his grandmother’s meal and grinning hard enough to break his face. The smile didn’t reach his eyes, which was how she knew he was close to his own meltdown. Unless she could eat the meal, pretend to be okay, be the grownup her boys needed her to be. Still, every bite was a hidden struggle.

  Even her normally unflappable mother was quiet during dinner.

  Finally, Tommy’s fake smile broke. “Why didn’t Daddy want Joshua? Doesn’t he like us anymore?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chloe sat at the dinner table with her family, trying to think of a good answer to Tommy’s question. She had assumed Josh told Tommy why he’d run away. They weren’t just brothers, they were also best friends. After the divorce, they were each other’s only constant. One day Daddy would be there in the morning or after school to pick them up from the bus stop. Another day Grandma would give them breakfast. Or their mom would tuck them into bed. Sometimes it was hard to remember which grown up would be there when needed, but it was always the two of them, no matter what.

  When Josh had left without Tommy today, he had taken a step away from that bond. It had shaken her younger son to the core, she could see now. Of course it had.

  She wanted to blurt out her true feelings about the answer to Tommy’s questions—that their father was a selfish pig who thought only of his own comfort and pleasure. But was that really the truth? Was she absolutely sure that Spence’s motives had been self-serving? Sure, he was an idiot when it came to child psychology, but maybe that was his only mistake.

  “It’s not that Daddy doesn’t want you to live with him. He would give anything in the world to have the two of you every single day of your lives. He said no to Josh because if he said yes, he’d be breaking the law.”

  The fib, if that’s what it was, came to her in a flash. Earlier the boys had been playing a video game called “Breaking the Law,” the object of which was to find as many bad guys as possible and pile them all behind bars.

  “Why?” Josh wanted to know.

  “What law? The one about stealing or the one about violence?” Tommy quoted from the video game mythology.

  “Legally, I have physical custody of you boys. That means if your dad said yes to Josh, he would be breaking the law, and he could go to jail.”

  That much was true. And who knew? Maybe it had been Spence’s true motive, his clumsy response to Josh’s cry for help.

  While the boys seemed satisfied with her answer, Chloe saddened. Josh had been insecure and anxious under her watch, due to her decisions. She had hurt her child, and she must continue to take actions that would hurt him, and there was not a damn thing she could do to make things different.

  “Mommy, if we have to move someplace, let’s move here. I like this town.” She’d expected Tommy to bring up something like this before. “There’s lots of houses for sale here, right, Grandma?”

  Her mother got up to pull the bowls of Jell-O from the fridge and busied herself with scooping globs of Cool Whip onto them.

  “None for me, Mom. And go easy on the Cool Whip, please.”

  Her mother made no comment, just set two bowls down before the boys. Apparently, she wasn’t that hungry, either.

  “Grandma says Daddy’s gonna move here and sell houses. And he can show us some. There’s one right on this street! Can we, Mom?”

  “Can we?” Josh added.

  Betrayed and ganged up on, Chloe steeled herself. Every person she knew was blocking her, or trying to, from the sure-thing career Seattle offered. She’d seen the house down the block. It was a darling old red brick house with a big front porch painted white. There was a dormer upstairs and a one-car garage in the back. A part of her yearned to do just as the boys wanted. A large part of her. But she had to be the practical one.

  “You know Daddy needs his job, because he has to provide a home and clothes and food for Bettina and your new sister or brother. Those things are very expensive. That’s why Mommy needs a good job, too. Because we need a house, and clothes, and food.” There was no need to spell out IRA and 401K and college savings accounts to them. “Mommy needs a really good job, a job that’s worth two normal jobs. Those jobs are hard to find. But I was lucky. I found one. In Seattle.”

  “Hard to find like Public Enemy Number One,” Tommy said, still thinking along the lines of his video game.

  “Well, sort of, except the job is good, and Public Enemy is bad.”

  “The job is bad! It’s making us move away from Grandma and Daddy and our new little sister who might be a brother who is not even born yet!” Josh shoved his Jell-O across the table. The half-eaten bowl landed with a crash on her mother’s kitchen floor.

  For a minute Josh seemed surprised and even a little apprehensive about what he’d done, but then he crossed his arms and glared at her, daring her to deny the truth of his words.

  “Tell Grandma you’re sorry for breaking her bowl,” Chloe said, grabbing paper towels and bending to clean up the mess. Her mother stood next t
o the sink, holding onto the countertop. As Chloe deposited the mess in the trash and rinsed off her hands, another wave of guilt engulfed her. She had done this to all of them. Her mother was getting older. Yes, she’d decided to retire to a more laid-back way of life, but Chloe was doing more than cutting apron strings. She was cutting her mother’s heart out.

  “Sorry, Grandma,” Josh said.

  Her mother released the countertop and went over to hug Josh. Tommy finished his Jell-O, his eyes wide.

  “We should go,” Chloe said. They were leaving Blue Lake in the morning, packing up the car for their cross-country adventure.

  “Bonfire!” Tommy said.

  Cloe sighed. The boys were now addicted to s’mores. And they surely didn’t need any more sugar tonight. But she felt that to deny them small pleasures would just make the big move that much worse.

  “Bonfire,” she agreed.

  While the boys put away their video game, she helped her mother with the dishes. She washed, Mom dried and put away. Chloe hadn’t learned where things were placed in her mother’s new kitchen yet, and probably never would. A sad sigh escaped before she could swallow it.

  “Tommy’s right, you know,” her mom said while the water ran into the dishpan. “You could find a local job, buy a house here in town. Life is more affordable than you think when you move away from the city. We need less here.”

  “Oh, Mom.” Chloe was close to tears again. And she was not a crier. “I can’t live here. Not ever.”

  “But why not? This is a perfect little town. It has everything we need.”

  “Luke hates me.” It popped out before she knew she’d said it. “Also I know I’ll never find a job like the one in Seattle here in farm country. Failing farm country.”

  “Listen, dear. You can’t worry about what he thinks. I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you two. I really am. But you’ll get over it. And you shouldn’t drag your kids across the country because some big lummox broke your heart.”

  Chloe put an arm around her mother. She knew Ursula understood very well why Chloe wanted to take the job in Seattle. Chloe had told her the income, the bonuses, the matching 401K. She’d described the extent of the health care package. She mentioned the price of a year of college these days. One year for one student. Her mother had been shocked at how college costs had sky-rocketed just since Chloe had finished off her degree.

  They both wanted the best for the boys. They both knew the boys would survive and thrive in Seattle. It really wasn’t about Luke. His beliefs just strengthened her resolve to leave.

  “I’ll fly you out every winter. I’ll buy a house with a wing just for you. I’ll bring the boys back to see their dad as often as I can arrange it. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  “I know, dear. I know.”

  Her mother kissed her on the side of her face, right where she always did, between her cheek and her ear. Chloe had missed her mother so much in the few weeks they’d been apart. But she’d be too busy working, proving she was worth her huge salary, to dwell on that once she got to Seattle.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Luke had seen Chloe and Josh earlier that evening as he was having a beer after work on the back patio of Captain’s, which had a lake view. They were at the beach. Things seemed like they had smoothed over since the kid had run away earlier in the day.

  He had been trying to forget about Chloe, but she turned up everywhere, if not in person, then in his mother’s conversations. As in right now, when she called to ask if he knew Chloe was leaving tomorrow.

  Luke sighed. He had not lived with his parents since he graduated from high school. He’d lived first in a rental with two other guys, then the condo with Abby and Bella. After they busted up, he finally bought a house with a huge barn out back where he could store all his equipment. It was an old farmhouse, big and drafty and falling into disrepair. He fixed something when he absolutely had to, so it wasn’t a complete shambles anymore, but he still had the odd motor in the kitchen cupboard, hammer and screwdrivers in the cutlery drawer.

  Right now, he wanted a clean plate for his steak and baked potato currently burning on the grill. He should have eaten at Captain’s. Except the place had been full of tourists, and he’d seen her on the beach and felt like he needed to go home and lick his wounds. Then his mother called. Meanwhile, his dinner blackened on the grill while he searched in vain for a clean plate.

  He found something to use as a plate. “You leave a pie tin thing over here?” He took it out of the cupboard and walked out to the backyard. He didn’t have a deck even though he built them for other people. Just a lawn chair and a grill. Good enough.

  “What? Never mind. Just remember. This is your last chance. She’s leaving here tomorrow, leaving the state for good. Don’t let her get away, son. I know that if you do, you’ll be sorry for a long time. Maybe forever.”

  “Gotta go. Dinner’s gonna burn.” He clicked off after telling her he loved her.

  He forked the steak and foiled potato into the pie tin and took it back inside. He knew exactly where he kept the steak knives and the A1 sauce. He even had butter for a change.

  He sat down to eat his meal. It was so easy to tell his mother he loved her, but he’d only said it once to Chloe. He didn’t like admitting how much he loved her, even to himself, because what good would it do? She was not the woman he thought she was when he fell in love with her. He stopped in midchew. Well, damn it, he had fallen in love. He’d been hoping it was just infatuation. Lust. Something simple. But no.

  And she was so out of his league. She did city girl things with people and computers that made him feel like a hick country boy. The salary she’d been offered was triple what he made in a year. Of course she was going to take it. She’d be an idiot not to. And then there were the boys. He loved them, too. Sigh. As much as he’d tried to keep them out of his heart, it hadn’t happened. He’d broken his number one rule, and now he had to pay the price.

  He cut another big piece of meat and shoved it into his mouth. She’d said something about him moving to Seattle. In all the middle of that stuff about her ex. Yeah, he could mow her lawn and clean her pool, maybe some of her neighbors would hire him, too.

  He finished his meal and threw the pie tin in the garbage. He didn’t feel like doing dishes. He was garbage. Not good enough. He was not an optimistic type to begin with, and he needed positive support to feel halfway decent. His parents and friends provided that support most of the time. Now his mom had gone rogue and probably taken his dad along for the ride.

  He turned on the game and popped another beer. But the same thing that had happened in the kitchen occurred in the living room. It didn’t matter what room he was in, his mind would not release Chloe and her boys.

  What if he’d been wrong about her marriage? What if his experience with Abby had prejudiced him? Maybe Chloe’s reason to split was reasonable. Maybe he’d been the unreasonable one. He knew Spence was an ass. Had known it from the day he’d dropped those boys off in the street and taken off without even caring whose pickup was parked in the driveway or if anybody else had been home.

  If he really loved her, and around his third beer he came to the reluctant conclusion that probably he did, he should let her go. The boys would have a wonderful life, and Chloe would meet someone else and fall in love and get married, and he’d hear about it all secondhand from his mother.

  He went to the fridge for another beer, but he was fresh out. Out of beer, out of luck, out of his mind. Because he was starting to think about how the house would feel with Chloe and the boys in it. And that wasn’t going to happen.

  Chapter Twenty

  Chloe brushed her teeth, put on a nightgown, lay down on the lavender-scented sheets Wanda had insisted on washing and ironing every day, but she didn’t sleep. Not for hours. Instead she had one of those hell nights where every mistake she’d ever made came back to haunt her and taunt her. Regrets. Fears. Hurt. Pain. She wished she had one of those sleeping pills wit
h the slyly reassuring names that were endlessly advertised on television. Instead, she settled for a cup of chamomile tea and a dispirited survey of the moon.

  At dawn, she woke the boys. Maybe they could sneak out with no good-byes. Josh handed her a map of a route he had plotted across the northern states with a stop at Mt. Rushmore. Both boys were so sleepy, she packed healthy snacks and didn’t make them eat any breakfast.

  As if guided by internal mom radar, Ursula pulled up just as Chloe settled the boys in the car. They had both rested their heads right down on pillows, and Chloe had been hoping for a few quiet hours of driving. No such luck. Ursula stuck her head in the back seat with hugs and kisses for her grandsons. Who were now awake and alert.

  Chloe could swear she saw Luke’s truck, camouflaged by the dim breaking of day and the line of trees in the state park lot next door. She didn’t stare too long. Everything hurt so much. Her splitting headache, tired eyes, sore heart.

  When Spence and Bettina came out of Kiwi cottage, both boys scrambled out of the car and ran to their dad. Spence knelt on one knee to hug and kiss his kids, eyes locked on hers, full of tears he would not let fall. When they hugged her belly, Bettina bawled once, then stuffed it back inside. When Tommy patted her tummy softly and said, “Bye-bye, baby. I love you,” Chloe knew what it took for Bettina not to open her mouth and let her sorrow pour out.

  They had to get out of this place. Now.

  ****

  From the cab of his truck, Luke watched Chloe and the boys back out of Blue Heaven. None of them noticed him. They were going, they were gone, vanished down the highway. In a burst of clarity, he knew why people sometimes got addicted: the pain was too much and they wanted it to go away.

  A knock on his window startled him. Ursula. “Come on in and have a cup of coffee with your mama and me.”

  He didn’t want coffee. He looked toward where Chloe’s car had been parked just minutes ago, now there were just Spence and Bettina, holding each other up. With slow steps, he carried his heavy heart to Blue Heaven.