One evening, a week later, I sat by the lake, watching ducks make ripples on the smooth water. In the distance, Cole and Rori walked hand in hand along the creek. After a moment, Kevan joined me, sitting close and taking my hand. “We haven’t talked about what happens at the end of your vacation time.”
My heart lurched, afraid of what he might say next.
“It’s too soon to talk about marriage but I want you to know it’s my intention to spend the rest of my life with you. I understand we have to get the blessing from your girls first. I plan to win them over with my charming personality.” He chuckled.
I put my head on his shoulder. “I love your personality.”
He kissed the top of my head. “No accounting for taste. I want your girls to come out for the rest of the summer. We could all get to know one another before Rori leaves for college in September.”
“I want that too. What if Michael says no?” My voice trembled. This is what it felt like to want someone the way I wanted him, I thought. This is what it felt like to be all in, heart and soul. The thought of being apart seemed impossible to fathom or accept.
“Then I’ll come to you, when I can. After I get Rori off to college in September.”
I smiled and squeezed his hand. “I’m so pleased for her.”
“Still can’t get my head around that she’s going to Oregon with Cole. I didn’t think it was possible to be this happy.” He spoke like it was a joke but when I glanced up his eyes were moist.
I kissed his cheek and then rested my head on his shoulder again. Two middle-aged lovers by a lake, basking in their second chance. Go figure, I thought. Miracles really could happen.
That evening, I called Michael, telling him I’d met someone and wanted the girls to come out to meet him and stay the rest of the summer. I held my breath, expecting the worst. Surprisingly, Michael gave his permission. He sounded relieved, actually. I guessed he and his young bride wanted the rest of the summer to themselves. That was fine with me.
CHAPTER 21
I DROVE TO the Ketchum airport to pick up the children alone. I wasn’t sure how to tell them we were spending the rest of the summer here. They had endured so much change in the last year. Now there would be another.
We walked out to the car, both of them insisting they take care of wheeling their own suitcases. “This airport’s small,” said Clemmie, with a wise, grown-up voice that she sometimes used. I hoped it wasn’t going to be around all the time now. “Like the one from Maui to Honolulu.”
Lola rolled her eyes. “Way to state the obvious, Clem.” When we arrived at the car, I tossed their suitcases into the trunk. “So, Mom, what are we doing here exactly?”
“Get in. I’m going to take you out to lunch and we’ll talk.”
“How’s Belinda Bear?” asked Clementine.
I smiled. “She’s been adopted by someone special.”
“Really? Who? Is it someone worthy?”
“I’ll tell you all about it,” I answered. “But yes, she’s very worthy. Don’t worry.”
We drove into the town of Ketchum, all the while the car filled with the sounds of my daughters and their stories of Hawaii. They saw whales and dolphins, snorkeled and swam in the ocean, ate raw tuna for the first time and made the bottom of their swimsuits thin from all the times they went down the water slides at the hotel. I surprised myself with how happy it made me feel to hear of their adventures, even though I didn’t get to be there with them. Perhaps I’d grown some, I thought. Maybe I’d even learned to let go a little during the weeks they’d been away.
After we were seated in the café and had ordered food and drinks, Lola narrowed her eyes, looking at me. “Mom, you seem different. All happy and pink.”
“Happy and pink?”
“Did you meet a man here?” asked Lola.
I flushed. “Yes.”
I glanced at Clementine. Her eyes were wide and frightened. “Are you getting married, Mommy?”
“No. He’s just my boyfriend.”
“Cool, Mommy. Is he handsome?” said Clementine.
“Very handsome.”
“Wow, Mom. We leave you alone for a minute,” said Lola.
I laughed, loud and deep, like I used to.
“Are you happy, Mom?” asked Lola, peering at me with her inquisitive eyes. “Does he make you happy?”
“He does. As a matter of fact, he’s invited us to stay the rest of the summer. He has horses and a beautiful guesthouse for us to stay in and a dog named Shakespeare.”
“Does he have kids?” asked Lola. “Please say yes, because these people with no kids have a lot of catching up to do after they meet us. Liza, for example.”
I told them about Rori and that her mother had died and how excited she was to meet them.
“Is there stuff to do here?” asked Clementine, as our food arrived. “Because I have my bathing suit in case there’s a river. Daddy told me there were rivers here that I might swim in. There’s a lot of sand in the pee pee area of my swimming suit though, so I might need a new one if I was to swim in a pool. Liza told me it might fall out into the water and make the pool people mad.”
“Oh, sweetie, I missed you.” I pulled her out of her chair and onto my lap, kissing her soft cheek.
“I missed you too, Mommy.” She hugged me tightly around the neck before sliding back to her seat.
“What happens at the end of the summer?” asked Lola, before taking a bite of a chicken strip.
“Kevan understands we have to go home in time for school and because Daddy lives in Seattle. He might come visit us, though. And we can come here during vacations and stuff. It’s beautiful here when it snows.”
“Well, that sounds promising,” said Lola, pursing her lips like an old lady.
“Daddy’s moving to Hawaii,” said Clementine.
“No, you were just there on vacation,” I said.
Lola shook her head, like an indulgent elder to their youngster. “Clemmie, we rented that condominium for just three weeks. Not forever.”
Clementine shook her head back and forth with so much vigor I’m surprised it didn’t scramble her brain. “No, I heard him talking with Liza. They’re going to move there before the baby comes because Liza found her inner peace on the ocean and she doesn’t want to go back to that God-forsaken city and all that rain in Seattle. She can’t stand it another day. She needs sunshine, for Christ’s sake. Anyway, that’s what she told Daddy. He’s going to work remote or something like that.”
I stared at her. “There’s a baby coming?”
“Yeah. In six months, which is why they want to move sooner than later,” she said, smacking her lips. “This is a good burger, Mommy.”
“How do you know about the baby and the possibility of them moving?” I asked.
“She’s making it up,” said Lola. “Because this is the first I’ve heard of it and I know everything that’s going on all the time.”
Clemmie’s voice was loud and an octave higher than the moment before. “Be quiet, Lola. I know. I heard them talking when I couldn’t sleep because I was missing Mommy.”
“Are you sure they said they were moving there?” I asked, keeping my voice steady. It’s not that easy, I thought, to change the custody agreement. But apparently he was about to do so.
Clementine continued on in her husky little voice. “He said we could come for summer vacations and holidays and stuff like that. He was arguing with her at first because he didn’t want to be so far away from us but then she reminded him how much fun we’d had on the beach and that this way we could come on our school breaks and stuff and how much fun that would be for us and then he changed his mind. But he’s afraid to ask you, Mommy, because he said you’re such a mama bear and have no life and that you’ll fight him tooth and nail. But he said his attorney’s a shark and he’ll get what he wants, which is for us to spend summers and holiday breaks with him.”
“Jeez, Clemmie, you talk too much.” Lola’s gaze darted to my
face with that searching way she had when she worried about me. “Mom, are you hurt that Dad called you a bear? Because I don’t think he meant it in a bad way.”
I forced myself to smile at her, trying to get over my shock. “I would never consider someone calling me a mama bear an insult. I’m just surprised by all this information. What do you think, Lola? Would you like it if Dad lived in Hawaii?”
“Well, I would miss him during the school year but we’d probably see him more in a way. You know, he’d be stuck with us for weeks at a time as opposed to just a weekend twice a month. And, seriously, Mom, Hawaii is like paradise. We’d have the best of both worlds.” I watched her in amazement. She sounded so logical and grown up.
“Daddy calls the time with us quality time,” said Clemmie. “He said that a bunch of times to Liza.”
Liza. And now she was pregnant. Bliss was right after all. Well, good for her, I thought. Welcome to the club. I should get her a gift card to Amazon.com for all the self-help books on motherhood she would inevitably buy.
“Mom, you don’t have the money to fight Daddy on this, do you?” asked Lola.
“I really don’t. And if you two are all right with it, I wouldn’t think of fighting him. I just want you two to be happy.”
“Aunt Bliss is going to freak out you actually got yourself a boyfriend,” said Lola.
“I already told her,” I said. “She thinks I made the whole thing up.” We all laughed loud and hard, in that way you do when you’re a family and know one another inside and out.
We finished our lunch. And then we drove down the highway to meet the Lanigan clan. Because that was our destiny. And destinies cannot be denied.
EPILOGUE
THE FIRST SNOW of the year came to Peregrine the day before Thanksgiving. We, including Kevan and Shakespeare, had spent the autumn in Seattle, where the girls had adjusted to their new school easily. Kevan, like he’d been in our life for years, fell into an easy relationship with my daughters. Shakespeare took to sleeping on Clementine’s bed. Many times that autumn they surprised me with their resilience. The months passed as we established new routines as a new kind of family, one of which was weekend road trips all over the northwest, including several visits to Rori at college in Oregon. The girls fell for Rori as quickly and as hard as I had.
Clementine aptly named our trips “Operation Barn,” as I fulfilled the long-ago promise I’d made to myself. And how I came through on that promise! I took photographs of every barn in the greater Puget Sound area, while the children and Kevan explored various locations. By the middle of November, I had enough good shots for a book and began to post them on a weekly blog called “Lou’s Lens.” I still didn’t know what or where it would take me but for now I was content in the moment, knowing that one must lean into the mystery, the unseen of this life.
To my delight, the girls were with me for Thanksgiving, since Michael and his nubile bride were busy with baby showers and their upcoming move to Hawaii. We would celebrate the holiday in Peregrine, with both Rori and Cole. Kevan and Shakespeare had driven over several days before us. Kevan wanted to be there when Rori and Cole arrived from Oregon and to shop for the necessary dinner ingredients.
The girls and I flew into Ketchum late in the afternoon on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. The first flake of the season fell as we crossed the parking lot to Kevan’s Range Rover. By the time we arrived in Peregrine, three inches covered the ground in the foothills, and Blue Mountain was almost completely white.
Rori greeted us as we got out of the car. The girls flew to her and almost knocked her to the ground with their hugs and kisses.
“Did you bring Belinda Bear from college?” asked Clementine of Rori.
“I did. She’s inside.”
“Oh, good. Lambie wants to say hello to her.”
Rori tugged on Clementine’s pigtails. “She’s missed Lambie terribly.”
Clementine nodded solemnly. “Well, sometimes you have to be away from people you love. But we always come back together. Right, Mommy?”
“That’s right.” I smiled at Rori. “Come here, my love.” I took her hands and inspected her, like mothers do. She’d let her hair go back to its natural ash blond. Her eyes were clear and bright. “You’re absolutely stunning.”
“You too,” she whispered as we hugged.
Later that evening, from Kevan’s kitchen window as I prepared some of the dishes for the next day’s feast, I watched my little girls, Rori, and Cole playing in the snow. Amongst their shouts and laughter, darkness fell and the moon rose above Blue Mountain. I was about to call them all in for dinner when a black town car pulled into our driveway. I glanced over at Kevan, who nonchalantly read a book at the table. “Who could that be?” I asked.
He shrugged but his eyes twinkled as he switched on lights in the driveway. What was he up to? Shakespeare, curled up under the table, lifted his head, grinned at me, and thumped his tail before lowering his face into his paws.
I didn’t need to wonder for long. A driver, dressed in black, opened the back door of the town car. My sister, decked out in a white faux fur coat and matching hat, her long legs encased in high-heel black boots, stepped out and into the snow. She tilted her head to the sky and laughed with her head thrown back, then held her arms out to the children. Their shrieks of delight penetrated the house.
Without bothering to put on a coat, I ran outside. We fell into one another’s arms, hugging tightly. “Surprise,” she whispered in my ear.
“How did this happen?”
“Blame your boyfriend. He’s very persuasive.” She withdrew, looking at me. “Suffice it to say, I didn’t want to miss this weekend. Enough so that I quit my job.”
“What?”
“The IPO was very lucrative.” She grinned. “So I’m taking some time off. Maybe I’ll move to Idaho.”
Too stunned to reply, I simply linked arms with my sister and headed toward the house.
A short time later we all sat around the table and ate enchiladas and laughed at Clementine’s bad knock-knock jokes. I looked at each face, glowing in the candlelight and flooded with love. All my favorite people in the world at one table? How could this be? Sometimes life is sweeter than we can ever imagine.
While the children and Bliss washed the dishes, Kevan and I bundled up and went outside to walk down to the lake.
The snow had stopped and it was clear and cold. The moon was full. Stars in their glorious millions stretched across the sky. The lights from the porch made the snow sparkle. When we arrived at the bench by the lake, Kevan brushed the snow away with his glove so we could sit. We held hands, clumsy in our gloves, and breathed in the November night in silence.
By then we’d been together long enough that we were comfortable with silences between us. We’d talked for months nonstop, it seemed, and although we knew there were more stories yet untold, our love had grown from the initial blind passion to a deeper intimacy, of which I never knew existed between two people.
It surprised me when he let go of my hand and took off his gloves, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a small box. He tugged the glove off my left hand. “I asked for your sister’s permission and she granted it to me. Blythe, will you marry me?” He slipped a diamond ring the size of the moon onto my finger.
I sighed, letting the joy creep into me like the creek emptied into the lake, and held it up to the moonlight before looking into his eyes. “Yes.” I heard Shakespeare bark from the patio. When I glanced over, my entire family stood under the awning, the light from the house shining on their hair. Clementine and Lola stood close, their shoulders touching; Cole and Rori were arm in arm; my sister held a bottle of champagne. When Kevan gave the thumbs-up sign, they all began to clap and cheer. And then the sound of the cork popping filled the air before they all rushed toward us.
I can’t be certain but I felt the stars twinkled slightly brighter for that one moment, perhaps experiencing their own joy that destiny was fulfilled, at least fo
r two of the weary souls who wandered the moonlit night.
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