Summer Breeze

by Catherine Palmer

  Derek suddenly felt like he was clinging to the side of a capsized boat. Where had that wave come from? What could he say? How could he make it all go away?

  “I don’t know how long your mother plans to stay with us,” Kim was saying before he could think of a response. “At first it was a couple of weeks. Then she told me she would stay until school started this fall. But these days she never mentions anything about going back to St. Louis. In fact, I’m pretty sure she has moved in with us permanently.”

  Taking a breath, Derek groped for a lifeline. He hadn’t so much as discussed the time of day with his mother, let alone talked about when she might be leaving. To him, she was just part of the Finley household now, participating like one of the family.

  “Is that a problem?” he managed.

  “What do you think?” Kim returned immediately.

  “Uh … I think Mom isn’t really a problem, is she?” He searched his wife’s face. When he didn’t get an answer, he continued. “Kim, you grew up with people coming and going all the time. Folks moved in and out of your life on a regular basis. Even in adulthood, things haven’t been that different. You met Joe, and then the twins came along, and then Joe left. And after that, I entered the picture. Now my mom is here. So? Is it a big deal?”

  “I don’t want to model my life after what I saw as a child. I hated all the moving and transition. My mother and her alcohol and all those men … it was awful. I’m trying to create a stable home for myself and my children. I already messed up with Joe. And, Derek … oh, I don’t know.”

  He was drowning. He could feel it. Tentacles of confusion were dragging him under.

  “We have a stable home, babe,” he tried. “We’re good parents. We love the kids. We love each other.”

  “Do we? Do we even know each other, Derek? I mean, what is it that you really do all day? Why won’t you tell me about your work?”

  “Well, what do you want to know? There’s nothing that interesting about ticketing someone for carrying too many people on a pontoon boat. If there’s a big event, I usually tell you.”

  “You say you do, but there’s been this drowning, and you haven’t told me a thing. Did you know your mother is trying to help Cody locate his family? The other day they were in the library most of the afternoon. They missed the TLC meeting completely, even though Cody kept telling her he wanted to leave. She wouldn’t listen. She doesn’t listen. She just says what she thinks. And you know what she thinks? She thinks all religions lead to God. That’s what she told our children, Derek. Your mother said she had looked into every kind of faith, including paganism! And she actually had the gall to say that one religion was no more valid than any of the others. She said it right in front of Luke and Lydia! That’s not what I want them to hear. Is that what you believe, Derek? What do you really believe about God, and why don’t I know?”

  He was utterly sunk. No doubt about it. Somehow those lace curtains, his mother, Cody, makeup, religion, and type diabetes had all conspired to drag him to the bottom. He had no idea how to get out of this tangle.

  “Religion,” he began. He could feel himself beginning to panic, his heart beating just a little too fast. “Uh … I don’t think about it much. It was never a part of my life before I met you, and it still isn’t. That’s the truth, Kim. I do my job, and I love you and the twins, and that’s about it. I wish I could tell you I was deeper and more complex, but that’s all there is.”

  “You prayed the other day at the table.”

  “Yeah, but …” He wadded up the paper in which his fajita had been wrapped. “Well, I believe in some kind of a Creator. I have trouble thinking that a blue heron or a purple coneflower could have evolved out of a blob of amoebas. I’m sure someone created the world and set it in motion. Some higher being. I don’t know what else to tell you about religion, babe. You heard my mother. I wasn’t brought up that way.”

  “Neither was I, but it’s important to me.”

  “Does it have to be important to me, too?”

  At that, Kim caught her breath. “Brenda said it was all right for us to be different. You be you. I’ll be me.” She paused. “But not about God. I think we ought to be united. Would you come to church with the kids and me, Derek?”

  Not only was he drowning, but a noose had somehow gotten wrapped around his neck, and it was growing tighter by the second. “Church?” he forced out, his voice quavering like a teenager’s. “I’m usually working on Sundays.”

  “You could request a shift change.”

  “It would throw everyone else off schedule.”

  “Please, Derek,” she said. “My faith is a huge part of my life. I need for you to understand that. And will you tell me about the drowning?”

  He ran a finger around his collar. “We don’t know much. I think they’re bringing in the Major Case Squad on this one.”

  “Then it’s been ruled a crime?”

  “I’m not supposed to talk about it, Kim.”

  “I’m your wife!”

  “I know that, but …” He rubbed his eyes. “Okay. We know it was a woman, but we don’t know what did her in. The fishing line may be throwing us off track. It was probably an accident, but it could have been a homicide.”

  “Who would do such a terrible thing?”

  “We have no idea. You know how peaceful it is around here most of the time. If we have a crime, it’s usually because someone’s been drinking. Intoxicated boaters, family feuds, trespassing. We’ve been seeing more drugs around the lake than usual, but alcohol is still the main issue. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, am I, Kim?”

  She shook her head. “Not really.”

  “I don’t keep things from you. Not if I can help it.” He fiddled with the edge of the blanket. “There’s just not a whole lot to tell. This morning, I ticketed a kid riding without a life jacket on a personal watercraft. Over the past weekend, we chased down a couple of drunk speeders, and we cited a few females for indecent exposure. Later this month, we’ll be setting up a barricade to check for licenses, boating while intoxicated, and things like that. My work is interesting to me, because one day is always a little different from the next. But, Kim, it’s not like you’re missing a big drama. If you went out on the water with me, you’d be flat bored a good part of the time.”

  “I wish you’d tell me things, though,” she said. “I’d like to know more about your daily life.”

  “I suppose I can log in with you at the end of the day, but it won’t take more than a couple of minutes.” He reached for her hand. He wouldn’t mind sharing more of his life with her, but there were some things she was just better off not knowing. “Kim, is this really what’s got you all worked up? Me not reporting on my day? Me not going to church with you and the kids? This stuff never bothered you before. What’s wrong?”

  “I didn’t say anything about it earlier, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t care.” She sighed, and Derek wondered if she was done. But then she looked up at him again and continued in a softer tone. “Remember I told you about the social worker at the shelter who helped me sort out my feelings after I left Joe? She told me that for a relationship to succeed, both people need to feel safe expressing their needs. Derek, can’t you see how scared I am to rock our boat? I want you to be happy, and I live in fear of upsetting you. But I do need for you to talk to me.”

  “What else do you want to know?”

  “Why is it so hard for you to talk openly? Why do you evade me? Why do you walk into another room when someone calls you on your cell phone? Who keeps calling you, anyway?”

  “Kim, you know phone calls are a part of my work. I’ve told you all I can. What more do you want?”

  “I desperately want you to go to church.”

  Here she sucked down a breath that sounded almost like a sob. Derek had thought he was about to reach dry ground, but the quaver in her voice sucked him under again. Didn’t Kim realize she had done a lot more than rock their boat? She was
drowning him.

  He crossed his arms over his chest and focused on the sign over Patsy Pringle’s beauty salon in the distance. Just As I Am. That was all he needed from his wife—that she accept him, flaws and all.

  Derek didn’t mind telling Kim about his day. He might even venture over to her church once in a while to see what was going on inside. One of the other officers, Larry, talked about God all the time. Some of the men kidded Larry about it and tried to get his goat, but Derek respected his friend. If Larry and Kim were good examples of the way Christians lived, then it couldn’t be too bad.

  Derek glanced surreptitiously at his watch. He needed to be getting back on the water, but he sure didn’t want Kim to wind up in tears at the end of their picnic. All the same, he had a bad feeling that she had uncovered the top of a sandbar, and no matter what, their little boat was destined to run aground on it.

  “It’s your mother,” she blurted out suddenly. Covering her eyes with her hands, she shook her head. “Oh, Derek, it’s been really hard on me these past few weeks. How long is she going to stay with us? I don’t know if I can take much more of her criticism and interference.”

  He stiffened. His mother might be called a spendthrift or a gossip or even a meddler, but she meant well. At her own suggestion, she had left her home and her busy social life in St. Louis, and she had driven down to the lake to help out with Luke. What right did Kim have to be so hard on her?

  “If she’s not criticizing my curtains or my cooking,” Kim was telling him, “she’s dragging the twins off to who knows where. The outlet mall, the library. And then she doesn’t even watch them!”

  “Let’s be grateful we have her help,” Derek told his wife firmly, hoping to put an end to the discussion. “Mom’s not the world’s expert parent, but she’s doing her best, Kim. She only had one child to practice on, and that’s me. She took on the twins when they were nearly eight years old. You know she would never hurt Luke and Lydia. If anything, the incident at the library was their fault. They skipped out on my mother and ran over to Tiffany’s house.”

  “That never would have happened if your mother hadn’t taken them to the library and then left them so she could look for Cody’s missing family! Your mom has no idea how to be a real grandmother!”

  “Well, she might if you’d ever consider having another baby, like I’ve asked you a thousand times.”

  Derek took his sunglasses from his pocket and put them on. He couldn’t imagine where that comment had come from, but it was the truth. Ever since they got married, he had been asking Kim to give him more kids. He loved the twins, but he wanted a bigger family. He longed for babies with his genes, his features, his blood. When he asked, Kim always told him she would think about it, but then she never said another word. How many times had he brought up the subject of more children, only to be dismissed with a laugh or a wave of the hand? If she wanted his mother to be a better grandma, Kim ought to be willing to produce a baby or two for her to learn on.

  “I’ve got to get back to work,” he told Kim. “I’m late already.”

  Kim sniffled as Derek got to his feet. More than anything, he wished he could wipe out everything he had said. He wanted to please his wife. He loved her with his whole heart. But what was all this stuff she had suddenly decided to throw at him? How much could a man take before he hurled something back?

  As he stood over Kim, he tried to think of something to say to make it all better. Finally he let out a breath, shrugged, and walked to his truck.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Pete Roberts had broken just about every one of the Ten Commandments several times, plus any number of other offenses. Since drying out, taking some college classes, opening Rods-N-Ends, and starting to attend church, he had managed to rid himself of almost all these vices. But there was one he couldn’t avoid.

  Every time he saw Patsy Pringle, Pete could feel himself heading straight for the devil’s workshop. He wanted to hold that woman in his arms. He wanted to kiss those sweet, sweet lips. And he wanted to—

  “Pete? Are you coming, or are you just going to stand there looking like a big, hairy goon?” Patsy swung around, her hips aswaying as she sashayed toward the dessert table at the Fourth of July picnic.

  Pete stood at the edge of the green, grassy expanse near the lake and stared. Never in his whole life had he seen anything like this Fourth of July celebration. It was better than the Christmas parades his mother had taken him to when he was a kid. It was better than the day his father got out of prison and the whole family went to McDonald’s for lunch. And it was a whole lot better than Pete’s two weddings, both of which had happened more or less by accident—being as it was hard to make a clear decision when you were drunk as a skunk.

  On this beautiful summer day, everyone in Deepwater Cove had turned out for the festivities. Pete counted eleven grills loaded with pork steaks, sending up an aroma that would make a horsefly dizzy with joy. All fifteen of the neighborhood’s golf carts were decked out in red, white, and blue bunting. A giant flag had been strung up on one of the mud poles beside the dock. All that, not to mention the row of tables groaning with salads, chips, dips, sodas, and desserts of every flavor and color. It was enough to make a grown man break right down and cry.

  “What’re you hanging back for, Pete?” Patsy waited for him to catch up and bumped him with her hip. “Help me carry this watermelon before I fall off my shoes.”

  The moment Pete laid eyes on Patsy that afternoon, his already high blood pressure had shot up like a bottle rocket. She had bleached her hair until it was almost white, added some long blonde ringlets that must’ve come out of a package, and pinned sparkling red, white, and blue stars in among the curls. Her red shirt and blue shorts might have been ordinary enough, but her little feet were perched up on a pair of wedgy high-heel sandals pretty enough to make a man’s heart stop.

  Before Pete could drop dead on the spot, Patsy shoved a watermelon into his midsection and set off ahead of him. Stumbling after her, Pete balanced the watermelon on the cusp of his somewhat substantial paunch. He wished he didn’t have that beer belly, and he denied it as much as he could. But truth to tell, once a man had got himself one, it was awful hard to get rid of.

  “Where do you want the watermelon to go, Patsy?” Pete asked as he stepped up beside the fount of perfume and hair spray that drew him like a bee to honey.

  “Where do you think?” She shot those big blue eyes at him and pointed with a long red fingernail. “Over there under the tree with the other watermelons. I swear, Pete Roberts, are you blind?”

  No, he sure wasn’t, Pete thought as he made his way to the watermelon cart. He saw those pretty calves and tiny ankles swaying on top of Patsy’s high-heel shoes. He saw those red lips that matched her long fingernails. In fact, usually when Pete saw Patsy, he couldn’t see much else.

  He liked to give her a hard time about her hair, but the truth was plain enough. It didn’t matter if she dyed it orange, black, pink, or polka dot, Patsy’s hair simply fascinated him. Around Patsy, Pete felt like he had been shot straight through the heart by Cupid’s arrow—a sensation he’d never had before in his life. And he wasn’t at all sure what to do about it.

  “Hey, Pete, how’s business at Rods-N-Ends these days?” Steve Hansen was beckoning him over to where a group of men were seated in lawn chairs minding their grills. They wore ball caps and bib aprons with sayings such as Grill Sergeant or Le Chef de BBQ on the front. Each man held court with a pair of tongs, a bowl of whatever special secret sauce he had concocted, and a flyswatter.

  “Didn’t I tell you things would pick up during the summer?” Steve asked. “That you’d be so busy you wouldn’t know whether you were coming or going?”

  “You were right,” Pete replied, settling into a chair with frayed webbing. He wasn’t real confident it would hold his weight, but he decided if he dropped through, he’d deal with it somehow or other.

  “I bet the high gas prices don’t hurt,” Steve
added. “Keeping gas in our cars is about to kill the real estate business.”

  Pete nodded. “You were smart to buy that hybrid when you did. But I won’t accept any blame for my gas prices. They get passed on down the line from the oil wells in Alaska, Oklahoma, or wherever in the world we’re buying it from these days. Nope, boys, if you want the honest truth, I make a bigger profit selling minnows.”

  The other men chuckled.

  “At least the minnows are homegrown.” Charlie Moore was an avid fisherman. He dropped by Pete’s minnow tank nearly every day. He was waving a flyswatter around his head as he spoke. “If I had my way, Esther and I would buy everything we need right here in the Ozarks. Or grow it ourselves. There’s nothing like a fresh tomato right off the vine or a taste of my wife’s strawberry jam.”

  “Who has time to take care of a garden except retired people?” Brad Hanes, a good-looking young fellow who had worked construction so long that his skin was the color of oak, had joined the older men. Pete didn’t know Brad too well, though the kid always bought gas for his big new truck at Rods-N-Ends. Brad’s favorite thing was to ask when Pete was going to start stocking beer and lottery tickets, and the joke was getting a little old.

  “Ashley buys everything at the discount store in Camdenton,” Brad was telling the others. “She tries to make our meals unless she can talk me into eating out. But at the rate she’s learning how to cook, we’ll owe our souls to Bitty Sondheim’s place one of these days. I think Ashley has run up a mile-long tab there.”

  “Kim and I ate at the Pop-In the other day.” Now it was Derek Finley’s turn to speak. Pete liked the Water Patrol officer as much as any man he’d ever met. Derek was fair, firm, and friendly. He was tending a grill lined with hot dogs for the children.

  “Bitty brought sushi appetizers,” Derek informed the men as he gestured toward the colorfully clad Californian in the distance. “I’m not sure about eating raw fish on a hot summer day, but I like those omelets Bitty cooks at her restaurant. And her fajita wraps fill a guy up pretty well too.”