“Thank you for calling, Sir.” Her jaw was clenched so tightly it was a wonder she could say that much. “I’ll let you know what I decide to do.”
She disconnected and saw a haze of red as she stormed over to the dunk tank. Looking for Kaleb in the crowd, she narrowed her eyes when she spotted him sitting on the perch over the tank, laughing at something a soaking wet Bobby Junior said to him.
“Hey, Molly.” Kevin, who was also drenched, handed her a baseball. “You want to give it a shot?”
“Whoa,” Kaleb yelled from over the tank. “I thought the rules were Chattersons only. No bringing in a ringer.”
Oh, she’d show him ringer. She squeezed the sewed seams on the ball until she thought it might burst as she yelled, “I just had a very interesting call with my commanding officer.”
Kaleb’s smirk fell. “Why don’t I climb out of here and we can talk about it in private?”
“In private? Apparently, that’s how you like to operate, isn’t it, Kaleb? Behind the scenes? Like the wizard hiding in back of the curtain?” Molly didn’t notice that the crowd had doubled in size or that the only sound now came from the Dixieland band in the gazebo on the other side of the park. “Well, then, let’s just get it all out in the open.”
“I’ve been waiting over a week for you to get things out in the open, Molly.” He sent her a warning look, but it didn’t faze her. She was beyond furious and she didn’t care who knew.
“So all week you’ve been planning on creating some fake duty assignment for me out of pity? Poor Molly has diabetes and can’t take care of herself. Have you been leading me on this whole time?”
“You have diabetes?” Maxine whispered, but Molly was too fired up to worry about her sister’s reaction to the unexpected announcement of her diagnosis. This was between her and Kaleb. She’d deal with the fallout later.
“I never lied to you, Molly,” Kaleb argued. “I told you that Hunter and I came up with that idea yesterday. You didn’t seem to object, so I put out some feelers after that.”
“Some feelers? You were able to call the Pentagon and send this down the chain of command on a Sunday morning!”
“I know some people who know some people. And I promised them a free prototype and a lowball bid.”
“And what about me? What do I get out of this?”
“You get the chance to fly again, Molly!” He fired back.
Feeling an arm slip around her waist, she looked at Maxine, who was standing beside her—tall and pregnant and released from the hospital less than twenty-four hours ago, ready to do battle on her sister’s behalf. Molly squared her shoulders, her sister silently giving her the strength to fight.
Chapter Sixteen
Seeing the fury blazing in her eyes, Kaleb wanted to go back in time and delete that text asking Angela to email the Pentagon. Maybe he hadn’t gone about it the right way, but he was still sure he’d done the right thing. He just needed to convince her—and her equally angry looking sister—that this was for the best.
“I’m sorry, Molly. I was only trying to—”
“This is my life, Kaleb. It’s not a game!” she yelled at him before winding up and hurling the ball for the metal-plated target on the side of the tank.
Ding!
The freezing water shocked him and everything went blurry as the realization of what he’d just done numbed him. If he was Aquaman, he could stay in here forever and never deal with the damage he’d just caused. But he wasn’t a superhero. He’d tried to act like one and save the day; however, all he’d done was screw things up. When he finally broke the surface and came up for air, he looked around for Molly, but she was gone.
Half the crowd was still there, though, including his three brothers and his dad, who was shoving fistfuls of popcorn into his mouth. Kevin reached his hand into the striped box but their father yanked it away.
“Go get your own,” Bobby Senior said, then looked at Kaleb. “You gonna sit in the dunk tank all day or are you going to drag your dumb keister out of there and find the long-lost sense you were supposedly born with?”
Kaleb took plenty of teasing from his family, but it was rare when anyone accused him of not being smart. Yet, even he had to admit that he’d just pulled one of the most stupid moves ever.
It took a couple of tries to heave himself from the water because each time he would reach for the perch to haul himself up, one of his brothers would push the target-shaped lever, causing him to fall back in. He shot them all a ha-ha smile when he finally climbed over the Plexiglas side and plopped onto the grass outside the tank.
The early-evening mountain breeze had picked up and sent a shiver coursing through him, wiping away his short-lived triumph. “It’s freezing out here.”
Kane, Kevin and Bobby Junior were still damp from their own forays into the tank—one of their dunkings courtesy of Kaleb—so they gave him no sympathy. At least his old man was able to muster up some pity. “Come on, son. Let’s get you warmed up. Then we can talk about this mess you got yourself into.”
Kaleb didn’t exactly want to talk about anything with anyone except Molly. “Do you know where she went?”
“I know where she didn’t go.” His dad firmly patted him on the back, propelling him across the midway. “To get you a towel.”
The breeze picked up, reminding Kaleb that it might be best to dry off before he went looking for her. Molly wasn’t the type of woman who would care about his appearance, but if he was going to go begging for forgiveness, he didn’t want to resemble a drowned rat. The three hundred-dollar bills he pulled from his waterlogged wallet were still dripping when he exchanged them for a homemade quilt at the Sugar Stitchers booth.
The cookie shop was only a few blocks from the park, so he turned to head there first. Until his dad put a beefy hand on Kaleb’s shoulder.
“Hold up, kiddo. Let her cool off a little.” Bobby Chatterson hadn’t called him “kiddo” since his final spine fusion surgery. That meant his dad thought the situation was pretty serious. “Let’s grab a seat. It wouldn’t kill you to learn a little patience.”
As much as he wanted to race after Molly, perhaps now wasn’t the time to rush into things if he didn’t have a strategy in place. And Coach Chatterson prided himself on being a master strategist. Kaleb had his doubts, but settled in next to his father, anyway. “You know, the last time I sat next to you in a park with a blanket wrapped around me, I was twelve and had just been released from the hospital before Kane’s Little League tournament.”
“Huh.” His dad nodded. “I remember your mom insisted that you stay home with her but you called old Mrs. Kenmore across the street and asked her to babysit you so that your mother wouldn’t miss the playoff game. Then you snuck into the back of the car and covered up with that old fleece throw. You really pissed your momma off with that stunt.”
“But it worked. The babysitter never even knew I was gone because I’d built that humanoid robot, stuffed it under my covers and programmed it to switch positions every thirty minutes. And I got to stay and watch the game with everyone else.”
“Stay and watch the game?” His dad gave him an incredulous look. “Kaleb, you only lasted through the second inning because those metal bleachers were hell on your spine after that surgery. I had to drive you home while you laid there all stiff like a mummy in the back seat. It added a whole month onto your physical therapy regime. I sold that stupid robot to the scrap yard and poor Mrs. Kenmore refused to ever babysit any of you again after that.”
“I’m pretty sure she refused after Kevin turned the hose on her the same day her daughter gave her a home permanent.”
“My point, son—” Bobby Chatterson waited until he had Kaleb’s full attention “—is that even the best-laid plans can result in consequences. And I have a feeling that this stunt you pulled on Molly today wasn’t well laid at all.”
; “It wasn’t a stunt, Dad. I was actually trying to help her.”
“By getting her commanding officer to order her to come and work for you? Trust me, ladies don’t like it when you interfere with their careers.”
Oh, please. His dad was the biggest interferer of all the Chattersons.
“That’s not exactly the way it went down.” Kaleb looked at all the people still lingering in the town square and partaking of the festivities. Not that it mattered who overheard them at this point. Most of them had already heard Molly inadvertently announce her secret to the world. “A few weeks ago, she found out she had type 1 diabetes, which is an immediate disqualification for having a pilot’s license.”
“That diabetes is nasty stuff. My doctor told me I had the same thing. Put me on some pills and now I’m good as new.”
Kaleb stared at his father’s heavier frame. Like three of his sons, Bobby Chatterson had also been a professional baseball pitcher, but he’d stopped running the bases—or running anywhere—after he became a coach. “Actually, Dad, you have type 2, which is a lot different than type 1. Molly can’t regulate it with a pill or with diet alone. She has to carry around insulin and constantly check her blood sugar levels because she’s always at risk for an attack.”
His dad frowned. “Kane’s right. You really are a know-it-all.”
“Do you want to hear this or not?”
“Carry on.”
“The type 1 diagnosis also automatically makes her ineligible for service because she’s not fit for duty.”
“But she’s perfectly fit!” his dad argued, and Kaleb thought, You have no idea.
“Right. But it’s still a military regulation that she be ‘operational ready’ at all times, whatever that means. As a combat pilot, it’s common for them to go on training missions for twenty-four to forty-eight hours straight. And with her body requiring constant monitoring, along with needing food and insulin doses on a certain schedule, they can’t take that risk. So her flight surgeon wrote up a medical board, which is this big file documenting her condition and the lab findings. She can fight it on an appeal, but basically it’s a losing battle. Right now, she’s in a holding pattern until she goes before the Bureau of Personnel and they determine how much of her base pay she’ll be awarded for a medical discharge.”
“Damn shame,” his father muttered, and Kaleb had to agree.
“I know how much she loves being a pilot and how much the Air Force means to her. Plus, I’d been toying with the idea of designing some flight simulators—” okay, so really, he’d only been toying with the idea for twenty-four hours, but his dad didn’t need to know that “—and thought she’d make a perfect consultant. I called up someone I knew in the Pentagon who owed me a favor—”
“Hold up. You have contacts in the Pentagon who owe you favors?” his dad asked in a hushed voice, then waved his hand. “Never mind. We’ll talk about that later.”
“Anyway, I think you and the rest of the town know about her commanding officer calling her and the job assignment and all the rest. But really, Dad, it’s a foolproof solution to her problem.”
“Except you’re forgetting one little thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Molly Markham is no fool.”
Kaleb threw his head back. “Nobody knows that better than me, Dad.”
“Really? Because I’m having a hard time believing that. You’re an independent guy, right? You pride yourself on the fact that you never followed in my or your brothers’ footsteps and played ball.”
“Uh, because I couldn’t, Dad. Remember my back surgeries? Remember your and mom’s rule about no contact sports?”
“Meh. Since when did we ever enforce any rules at our house? Sure, we would’ve been scared to death to let you play, but you could’ve gotten us to back down. Just like you did when you hid in the car and talked us into letting you watch Kane’s game. You never pushed because you weren’t passionate about sports. You preferred computers and gaming and that was what you were good at. So you built your career the way you wanted it.”
“What do you mean you would’ve backed down? Are you saying that all this time I could’ve played baseball if I’d wanted to?”
“Son, if you could leave your company today and become the starting pitcher for a major league team, would you do it?”
“Depends on which team,” Kaleb murmured, knowing there was no way he’d play for the one his old man coached.
His dad cupped his ear. “What’s that?”
“I guess not,” Kaleb admitted.
“See, you chose your own path and it was the right one for you. Now, here’s what you’re going to do. Give Molly some time to cool down. Then you go talk to her. Tell her what a dumbass you were and how you’ll never meddle in her life again.”
“How do you know that’ll work?”
“Because that’s what I did when I made the same mistake with your mom. And we’re going on thirty-five years next month.”
“I think I’m afraid to ask for details on how you interfered in Mom’s life.”
“Oh, she had it in her head that she wanted to be an interior decorator. She was even in this special school for it and everything. But then I got her knocked up with Bobby Junior.”
“Yeah, but that could’ve happened to any... Oh, geez, Dad, you did it on purpose?”
“No, not on purpose,” his father snapped. “But I did spill the beans to your grandad and he told us in no uncertain terms that there wouldn’t be a long engagement. Besides, she went back and got her degree and I’ve given her plenty of houses to decorate over the years. My point is that I apologized, even though I wasn’t really all that sorry.”
“So you think Molly will forgive me?”
“Does she love you?”
He thought about her speech the morning after they’d first slept together. She was clear that she wasn’t looking for anything serious because she needed to figure her life out. Kaleb had merely been trying to hurry the process along. It didn’t occur to him that she might not share his feelings because until this morning, he didn’t even know what his own feelings were. “We’ve only known each other for a little over a week.”
“Do you love her?”
“I don’t know,” Kaleb said, then sneezed. His head pounded.
“Well, this isn’t something you can ask your assistant or the Pentagon about. Only you can solve that one. I know you’re used to getting instant answers, but relationships take time.”
Kaleb’s only response was to sneeze again.
“C’mon. Let’s get you home. Your mother’s going to kill me if I let you catch pneumonia.”
As they walked to his dad’s truck, Kaleb asked, “How long do you think it’ll take?”
“To know whether or not you love her?” His father draped an arm over his shoulder. “Kiddo, if you don’t already know, you will by tomorrow morning. You’ve never been able to wait for nothin’.”
* * *
Molly’s heart leaped when a knock sounded on the apartment door late that evening. She grabbed a paper towel from the kitchen and used it to scrub the tears off her face before she unlocked the dead bolt.
But it wasn’t Kaleb on the other side.
“Do you mind if I come in?” Maxine asked.
“It’s your apartment,” Molly said, standing aside.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
Her sister waddled over to the sofa and collapsed on the cushions. “Then I’ll just wait here until you do.”
And because stubbornness ran in the Markham blood, Molly sighed and took the armchair across from her. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what was going on sooner. But I was dealing with a lot of new feelings and uncertainties.”
“When you took off from the festival, I wanted to run after y
ou. I would’ve been here sooner if I had. But we’ve never been the kind of sisters who tell each other everything and I decided that I should try to get as much information as I could before I offer to give you any advice.”
“So you stayed and talked to Kaleb?” Molly asked.
“No. I went over to the police station and Cooper let me use his laptop. I researched type 1 diabetes.”
“Why does everyone do that?”
“Didn’t you?”
“No. I was too busy looking up every other possible disease it could have been. I was hoping for a misdiagnosis.”
“One of the online articles I read was that it can feel like a very lonely condition.”
“Well, I’m used to being alone.”
“You don’t have to be,” Maxine said, pushing a strand of hair behind Molly’s ear. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was going to. But I wanted to do it in my own way.”
“In front of the whole town at the Sun Potato Festival?”
Molly dipped her head in shame. “No. But I was so mad at Kaleb, it just came flying out of my mouth before I could stop it. I’m sorry you had to find out that way.”
“Well, at least I finally found out,” Maxine leaned her head back and let out a sigh. “I had a feeling something was up, but I didn’t know what to do or how to help.”
“That’s why I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want you worrying about me.”
“I’m your big sister. Even when we’re not together, I still worry about you.”
“I’m sorry for keeping it a secret.” Molly’s heart expanded and she squeezed her sister’s hand. “I’ve always taken care of myself, done things on my own. Then when I came to Sugar Falls, I was forced to confront the fact that I was no longer in control of everything. But now that you know—along with everyone else in this small town—I already feel like a huge weight’s been lifted off of me.”
“I’m glad you’re here, Moll Doll. I want you to know that I’m here for you, too. Whatever you need emotionally, medically, heck, even nutritionally. I already make gluten free cookies at the shop. I’m sure I can come up with some sugar free ones, too.”
A Proposal for the Officer Page 16