Cross Your Heart

by Layce Gardner

  “Is Susan okay with Clara’s choice?”

  “No.”

  “She’s going to have to help us if we’re going to do what Clara’s asking.”

  “She’d lose her license.” Amy snuggled into Parker. Her warmth and the smell of the outside world on her skin comforted Amy. Parker was her rock and she needed her now more than ever.

  “She won’t be there. We just need to know quantities.”

  “Quantities?”

  “How many painkillers will put her to sleep…permanently. When you have cancer, you don’t want to survive your overdose.”

  “Susan says Clara can put in a DNR order,” Amy said. She sniffed. She’d done most of her crying while Parker was gone. Parker squeezed her hand.

  “What we have to remember is that helping Clara pass on is an act of love and kindness,” Parker said.

  “I know, but it doesn’t make it any less hard.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  Amy put her hand on her belly. How odd, she thought, that she was going to be guiding a life into this world while guiding another life out of it.

  Chapter Eight

  “Relationships aren’t easy,” Steph said to Ruth. They were cleaning and repacking gear for the fire engine. They’d had a call on a brush fire out near the organic farm on the edge of town. Usually, brush fires either started by natural forces such as lightning, or a careless camper, but this fire didn’t fall into any of these categories. The chief had put a call into the arson investigator in Kansas City to come out and have a look.

  “I know that,” Ruth said, wiping off equipment and replacing it in the appropriate compartments.

  “What your ex did was seriously messed up and I know you’re very protective of Cece, but it’s been four years since the break up. You deserve to have a love life before she’s eighteen,” Steph said, as she scrubbed gunk off the truck’s headlights.

  “I know that too.” Ruth didn’t meet Steph’s eyes. “To allay your fears about my having a sexual drought… I have had sex.” She hoped Steph didn’t ask details about what kind of liaisons those had been. It wasn’t as torrid as Steph might be imagining. She just hadn’t shared her and Cece’s life with those women, which ultimately led to the demise of those relationships. She didn’t want Cece to get attached to someone who might not stay around. Cece had already suffered loss in her young life and she didn’t need a succession of women running through it.

  Steph didn’t inquire about those previous liaisons. She just went forward with her match matching. “You and Tamika looked like you were getting along great at Amy’s baby shower. And you see her every day, right?”

  “Yeah, well, it’s our mutual love of good coffee,” Ruth said.

  “And that’s all you have in common?” Steph raised an eyebrow.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “As in a sexual attraction?” Steph said. “I’ve seen you two together enough times to know that Tamika has the hots for you.”

  Ruth rolled her eyes. She hoped that was enough to throw Steph off the trail. For crissakes, she and Tamika were grown women, not hormonal teenagers. Okay, yes, she had to admit to herself that she did have a few sexual thoughts about Tamika… Oh, who was she kidding? Her vibrator was her best friend. She liked sex and she missed not having it.

  She remembered the early days with her ex. They couldn’t get enough of each other. They’d been so passionate, spending long, lazy mornings in bed, reading the paper, drinking Turkish coffee, making love. Sometimes they spent most of the day in bed. Goodness, those lovely blue eyes, the color of bachelor buttons, staring at her, while Ruth slowly stroked her to climax. Those open eyes felt so intimate, like they were looking directly into each other’s souls. Oh, how she’d loved that woman. Lil had been her everything.

  And then one night at a dinner party with some friends of Lil’s from work, they talked about having a baby. Lil’s friend, Sarah Jane, had a five-year-old little girl with blond ringlets. The girl was smart, well-behaved, a doll of a child. She’d sat there at the dinner table, with her perfect manners. Her inquisitive nature and curiosity had charmed Lil. She wanted one just like her. Ruth hadn’t been initially sold on the idea. It was a big step. She and Lil hadn’t been together that long—two years. They were still in the infatuation stage of their relationship.

  But Lil was persistent. They started spending more time with Sarah Jane and her daughter Madison. Lil was enamored with Madison. She was one of those too-good-to-be-true children. Ruth kept waiting for the horrid tantrum that scared off a lot of would-be mothers. It never came.

  “Let’s offer to babysit,” Ruth suggested. Maybe spending several hours with Madison would give Lil a true taste of child-rearing. Madison was still the perfect angel. She and Lil had sat on the couch, coloring and talking, then the three of them watched the Lion King, had popcorn, and when bed time rolled around, Madison asked if Lil would read her a story. Lil was in complete rapture.

  “How about we get a puppy and try that out first?” Ruth had said.

  Lil would have nothing of that. She wanted a baby. Finally, Ruth had relented. Lil wanted to carry it. She wanted the whole experience. “I want to glow and have cravings and complain about my swollen ankles. And maternity clothes have come a long way. They’re quite stylish now,” she said. Ruth should’ve listened to her gut, except she wouldn’t have Cece now. Sometimes she felt so guilty that she hadn’t really wanted Cece. She did now. She couldn’t imagine her life without Cece in it.

  All the joy that Lil had dreamed of fell flat when they discovered that Lil couldn’t get pregnant. There were the tears and the tantrums and the depression. It’d been awful. Because Ruth loved her, she’d offered to be the one to carry. “It’ll be pregnancy by proxy,” Ruth had said. Lil’s eyes had lit up at the idea.

  “You’d do that for me? For us?” Lil had asked. Her whole body seemed to radiate joy. She’d raced across the living room and held Ruth so tight she almost couldn’t breathe. “It’s the best thing anyone has ever done for me.”

  “Let’s wait and see if I can get pregnant first,” Ruth had said.

  Two inseminations later, Ruth was pregnant.

  Lil waltzed around the living room with Ruth in her arms. It’d been one of Ruth’s happiest moments in their relationship. She was making her partner happy and they’d be a family. It seemed so right at the time. The baby shower, decorating the baby’s room, the purchase of a crib, kept Lil busy. She planned on quitting her job. She’d be the stay-at-home mother while Ruth returned to work. Ruth had been relieved. She didn’t want to put Cece in daycare and Ruth couldn’t quit her job as a firefighter. Not only did she love it, but Lil had never had a well-paying job. She was flighty in the job department, growing bored, or getting into scraps at work. It hadn’t mattered much since Ruth had a good salary and health insurance.

  Unfortunately, nothing had worked out as planned.

  Ruth’s ruminations were interrupted when Steph said, “Let’s take a break.” She wiped her brow with her sleeve.

  Summer had officially begun. When the temperature hit the ninety-degree mark outside, the inside of the garage seemed like it was a hundred despite the fans and mobile swamp cooler. Ruth was glad their fellow fighters, Sal and Eric, had done what men do when it came to comfort. They had set up a cooler full of cold drinks, lawn chairs, and taken up a collection to buy the swamp cooler.

  They took a seat and Steph pulled two bottles of Gatorade from the cooler.

  Ruth’s father, God rest his drunken soul, had been the same way. When he lost his job at the factory and his wife found work, he took up the job of taking care of the house. “Just until I get a job,” he told her. That was when the expensive vacuum arrived and the Miracle Mop and a sprinkler system—things they couldn’t afford on her mother’s salary.

  It was going to the bar in the afternoon that finally did him in. He died of cirrhosis of the liver. Ruth still talked to her mother regularly, but after
her dad died, her mom used the life insurance money to move to Arizona. Ruth had stayed in Tulsa until her move to Fenton. They were a long-distance family now.

  “What really went wrong between you and Lil? When you first got here you told everyone you moved because you wanted to raise Cece in a small town and I get that. Everyone except Parker is a transplant. But I think there’s more to the story. You know all my deep dark secrets. It’s time you shared a few of your own. That’s what friends do,” Steph said.

  Ruth sighed. “I suppose you’re right. I never told anyone the whole truth because I wanted Cece to have a fresh start. Cece was four when Lil left. Just old enough to remember stuff. Had Lil left sooner we might have stood a chance, but Cece remembered her other mommy and loved her even if the feeling wasn’t exactly mutual. Thank goodness, Cece didn’t know that. Lil doesn’t even send her a birthday card anymore. It was like she just went poof and disappeared, like Cece and I don’t exist.”

  “Now that’s fricking harsh,” Steph said. She took a slug of her Gatorade.

  “Yeah, I’d just as soon forget her, but Cece still views it as a desertion. She started acting up in daycare and it didn’t get any better when she got to school and all the other kids had a mommy and a daddy and all she had was me. We needed a do-over. So we moved here.”

  “She seems better now,” Steph said.

  “She is. Getting away from our old house and starting a new life has really helped her, but you can see why she doesn’t want another mommy. She’s fiercely protective of me and our new life. She’s not going to like any disruption to that.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Steph asked. “She might like having a family again. Kids are pretty resilient.”

  Ruth took a sip of her drink. “I don’t know if we can take that chance. Cece thought Mommy left because of her.”

  “All kids think that.”

  “Except in this case, it’s true,” Ruth said, meeting Steph’s eyes.

  “What?”

  “Cece was a handful. Still is. She’s better than she was. Lil thought raising a child was supposed to be all good times—no temper tantrums, no bedtime revolts, no running around like a wild child and not obeying her. It was a mess. But you can’t control what kind of a kid you get—it’s not like you can special order them.”

  “I thought all kids were like that. High energy. It’s in the kid manual.”

  “We had a friend with the child Lil wanted and thought she’d get. When that didn’t happen, she left. She couldn’t handle it anymore.”

  “That’s totally messed up,” Steph said, putting her Gatorade bottle on the ice chest with more force than necessary.

  “So now do you understand why I’m hesitant about bringing Tamika into our lives?”

  “I don’t think Tamika is anything like Lil. I’ve seen her with her nieces and nephews. She adores them.”

  “Yeah, well, being an aunty who takes them to do fun things or have sleepovers is different from being a full-time parent.”

  “True. I just think you should give it a go. Tamika is sweet and don’t you and Cece deserve to have that kind of love in your lives?”

  “We do. I just don’t know that now is a good time or if Tamika is the right person.”

  “Never know until you try,” Steph said.

  “Ever the matchmaker,” Ruth said, shaking her head.

  “That’s me,” Steph said. “I’m like Dolly Levi in that musical, Hello, Dolly!”

  “Please don’t start singing,” Ruth said.

  ***

  “You managed it, I’ll give you that,” Rosa said, shaking her head.

  Steph was making a Caesar salad. They were having Ruth and Tamika over for an intimate dinner party—meaning only the four of them and not the whole tribe. Steph was nothing if not persistent. During her four-day rotation with Ruth, she’d managed to convince her to come for dinner with Rosa and Steph. Ruth knew Tamika was making the fourth dinner guest.

  “Of course, I firmly believe that there is a lid for every pot,” Steph said as she made the dressing for the salad.

  “Nice cooking analogy,” Rosa said.

  “I’m smarter than I look.”

  Rosa patted her on the tush. “You’re just smart enough to be a pain in the ass.”

  “So, you’re saying you like your women stupid,” Steph said. She handed Rosa the necessary cutlery for a simple spaghetti dinner. “Go set the table.”

  “I like my women sexy,” Rosa said, knocking her hip against Steph’s.

  “See, this is the kind of life that Ruth and Tamika could have.”

  “I think your expectations might be a little high. Let’s get them through dinner and dessert before we start planning the wedding.”

  “Speaking of weddings, when are Amy and Parker getting married? Amy is about halfway to giving birth.”

  “Knowing those two, it’ll be in the delivery room,” Rosa said.

  “I don’t understand why it’s so hard,” Steph said. “Hell, we got married Christmas Eve and I didn’t even know I was getting married. Not to mention I was wearing a stupid, ugly Christmas sweater instead of a handsomely tailored tuxedo.”

  “That was romantic. You can’t tell me it wasn’t.”

  Steph pulled Rosa into her arms. “It was the most romantic moment of my life.” Her eyes were shiny with heartfelt emotion.

  “That’s what Amy and Parker are aiming for—the most romantic moment of their lives.”

  “Well, at the rate things are going, they’re having a cowboy wedding. I don’t think letting Millie and her gaggle of golden girls plan the wedding is a good idea—in my humble opinion.”

  “Your opinion is never humble,” Rosa said. “Now I definitely need to set the table,” she said, glancing up at the kitchen clock. It was a Felix the Cat clock, his tail was the pendulum and his eyes moved back and forth. Rosa had given it to Steph for their first anniversary, clocks being one of the appropriate gifts. Steph loved it. Rosa finished setting the table. She stood back and looked at the table setting with a critical eye. Something was missing. The spirit of romance suddenly grabbed her and she went looking for the silver candlestick holders and tapers.

  Steph heard her rummaging around in the dining room china cabinet. “What are you looking for?”

  Rosa said, “Where are the candles? I found the holders, but no candles.”

  “I put them in the utility closet with all the other potentially dangerous fire starters.”

  “Ugh, ever the firefighter,” Rosa said over her shoulder. She moved her hunt to the utility closet.

  “Candles are the third leading cause of house fires,” Steph replied.

  “What’s first and second?”

  “Cooking and smoking in the bedroom,” Steph answered. “In that order.”

  As Rosa pulled the white tapers from the closet shelf, she remembered the time when she’d been in her wheelchair after the shooting and how difficult it had been to reach up and get the candles for the romantic evening she had planned. They hadn’t had sex since the accident and Rosa wanted it to be special. It had worked. They’d gotten their relationship back on the right track after that. Rosa smiled to herself. Yes, romance did have its place.

  Rosa lit the candles and stood back to admire the table.

  The doorbell rang and Rosa said, “I’ll get it.” She limped to the door and opened it.

  Ruth stood ramrod straight, holding a bouquet of flowers and two bottles of wine. “The flowers are for the table. I’m not going to hand them to Tamika because that would look weird and maybe a little too forward,” Ruth said.

  “Nervous much?” Rosa asked, stepping back to allow Ruth in.

  “What gives you that idea?” Ruth asked.

  Rosa raised her eyebrows.

  “All right, I may be a little nervous. I know this isn’t a date-date, but it sure feels like one.”

  “It’s not a date. It’s a dinner party,” Steph said, coming out of the kitchen wiping her ha
nds on a tea towel.

  “Says the matchmaker,” Ruth said.

  Steph took the wine bottles from Ruth. “Just relax. Go have a glass of wine on the back deck.”

  “I don’t want Tamika to think I’m a drinker,” Ruth said.

  “She’s on the back deck having a glass of wine as we speak,” Rosa said.

  Ruth’s eyes widened, and she dropped the flowers.

  “Not really,” Rosa said. She picked up the flowers. “I’ll put these in a vase before they suffer any more damage.”

  “Tamika will appreciate arriving and finding everyone all relaxed on the deck,” Steph said. “I guarantee it.”

  “Hopefully,” Ruth said. She followed Steph into the kitchen.

  Rosa pulled a Waterford crystal vase from the china cabinet. She went to the kitchen to add water.

  Ruth accepted the corkscrew from Steph and opened the wine expertly.

  “Always looks good when a gal doesn’t mess up the cork,” Steph said.

  “Nice vase,” Ruth said, stepping aside so Rosa could get to the sink.

  They had a small kitchen but it suited Steph’s needs. She referred to it as cozy. Rosa called it cramped.

  “A wedding present from Clara and Mabel,” Rosa said.

  “See, get married and you, too, can have a Waterford vase,” Steph teased.

  “We’re not going there,” Ruth said.

  “Not yet,” Steph said.

  Rosa poured the wine into Waterford crystal wine glasses.

  “Another wedding present?” Ruth asked.

  “You got it,” Rosa said. She handed Ruth a glass.

  “You two go out back and look casual. I’ve still got some finishing touches to put on dinner. I’ll greet Tamika when she gets here.”

  “Do you have this dinner date,” Ruth put air quotes around ‘dinner date,’ “all choreographed?”

  “Of course, I do. Now, go look casual,” Steph said.

  ***

  Ruth and Rosa sat on the deck. Ruth nodded toward the back yard. “Steph’s quite the gardener.”

  “Please don’t talk about the garden around Steph,” Rosa said.