Not Quite Crazy

by Catherine Bybee

  Owen answered the polite questions about school and adjusting to the move. When he didn’t offer more than brief answers, Uncle Theo, who was the obvious drinker in the group, changed the subject to TJ.

  “So are you sticking around now?” the older man asked.

  TJ glanced at Owen. “That’s the plan.”

  “I thought a photojournalist spent their time in foreign countries, chasing wars,” Owen said.

  “I’m ready for something new.”

  “Have you found a job here?” Rachel asked, really wanting to know all the details she could about TJ’s sudden change of heart about traveling all over the world.

  “I’m working on it.”

  Deyadria spoke up. “Did you know your father has had his work featured in just about every political magazine and national newspaper in print?”

  “No.”

  “Well he has. He’s quite famous in his field.”

  Rachel couldn’t help but wonder if that were true, why it was he didn’t have a job with the first place he interviewed.

  “I hope the sacrifices you made were worth it,” Owen said directly to TJ.

  TJ didn’t respond. Instead he took a long swig of his cocktail.

  Several conversations started around the table, taking the light off them. By the time dinner was done, Owen looked like he’d had enough. Much to Deyadria’s and Tereck’s distress, Owen said he wasn’t feeling well, and Rachel ran with his cue.

  While Owen said good-bye, TJ pulled her aside. “I want to start seeing him.”

  “That really isn’t up to me.”

  “I want a chance with him, Rachel.”

  She lowered her voice. “Then do yourself a favor and don’t pull this kind of crap on him. Ask him what he wants, and respect his response.”

  “He’s just a kid.”

  “No, that’s where you’re wrong. He is fifteen going on twenty-five. He has a mind of his own. Don’t treat him like a child.”

  It looked as if TJ wanted to argue.

  He didn’t.

  Owen was silent most of the way home.

  Then the floodgates opened. “Where the hell were all those people my entire life?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Some of them had sticks up their ass, just like the weather killers.”

  “Selma was nice. Theo was real.”

  “He was drunk.”

  “It doesn’t get more real than that,” she said.

  He rolled his head back. “What is TJ up to? Since when does he want to be a dad?”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “Like he’s too late. He should have thought about that when I was a kid. I know my mom gave him a choice, never forced him to step up. But that didn’t mean he shouldn’t have.”

  Rachel turned off the interstate. “I hear ya, Owen. But before you blow him off, think about what you might be missing the rest of your life if you do.”

  “Like what?”

  “That big family.”

  “With the hag?”

  Rachel grinned. “Every family has at least one hag.”

  “I bet there isn’t one hag at Jason’s tomorrow.”

  That was probably true. “Just think about it. Don’t cut people out of your life because of one hag and one deadbeat dad.”

  She pulled onto their street. “Oh, by the way . . .”

  “Oh no, what?”

  “About tomorrow.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s canceled. Jason promised me a match on Call of Duty.”

  The thought of Jason hashing out a video game with Owen had her smiling. “No, we’re going.”

  “Then what?”

  She pressed the button on the remote and pulled into the garage.

  There wasn’t an easy way to tell him, so she just did. “Jason is my boss.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She cut the engine, opened the door so the dome light lit their faces. “I didn’t find out he was my boss until after I picked him up on the side of the road.”

  “How could you not know he was your boss? Don’t you see your boss every day?”

  “Okay, he’s not my direct boss. He, ah . . . he owns the company.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  She let herself out of the car, expecting Owen to follow.

  “It was super awkward at first. Still feels strange. Anyway, tomorrow you’ll meet his brothers and their wives. I was told there were a handful of other people coming, but nothing like we saw tonight.”

  Owen shrugged, rather unaffected by the news. “As long as no one claims to be a long-lost uncle or cousin once removed, I’m good.”

  “No risk of that.”

  Inside the house, they dumped their coats in the mudroom and turned on the lights.

  “Thanks for having my back tonight,” Owen said.

  “I’m always going to have your back.”

  He offered a rare one-arm hug and then turned to go to his room.

  She watched him go, pride in the man he was becoming filling her chest.

  Later, once the light in his room went off, she dug into her closet and played Santa for the first time in her life.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Nothing could have prepared Rachel or Owen for Jason’s home.

  With Owen guiding her with the GPS on his phone, they turned into a drive that had a private gate.

  “Is this it?” Owen asked. He sat up in his seat, staring out the window.

  She glanced at the address, looked at what she’d written down. “Yep.”

  After ringing the bell, they waited as the gate opened to let them through.

  They drove for what felt like five minutes before the tree-lined drive opened up to the house. The sprawling ranch home had to be three stories tall at the highest point but spread the length of six of the houses on her block. The circular cobblestone drive had a massive fountain in the center and a two-story garage to the side.

  She gasped. “Holy shit.”

  Rachel was fairly sure Owen just dropped an f-bomb.

  “How big is this company?”

  “It’s pretty big.”

  Owen pointed out beyond the house. “Are those horses?”

  “I think so.” Jason had horses? How did she not know that?

  “I’ve never ridden a horse.”

  Unlike the night before when they meandered out of the car, today they scrambled a bit quicker, unable to wait to take it all in.

  The massive front door opened, and Jason stepped outside.

  “Dude!” Owen ran up the stairs. “This is your house?”

  Jason received the one-arm hug from a smiling Owen.

  “Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

  “It’s epic. Are those your horses?”

  “Yup.”

  “Wow, can I go explore?”

  “Go, knock yourself out.”

  Rachel stopped him. “Don’t you wanna say hello first?”

  Owen ran off.

  “Apparently not,” she muttered.

  She brought another obligatory bottle of expensive wine and a token host gift.

  Jason walked down the steps. “Let me help you.”

  She handed him the wine and closed the car door. “I should have guessed you lived in a place like this.”

  “It was my parents’ idea of nirvana.”

  “Not yours?”

  “It’s okay.”

  Rachel rolled her eyes. “Okay? Really?” She looked up. “I bet you didn’t hang those lights.”

  “Nope. We brought in a crew.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  She started walking toward the door.

  He stopped her. “Wait.”

  “What?”

  Jason stepped in front and lowered his lips to hers. It was warm, inviting, and way too brief. “Merry Christmas.”

  Was this what they were now? Greetings with a kiss, butterflies in her stom
ach, a never-ending smile on her face? “Jason—”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t do that in front of everyone.”

  She grinned.

  “Yet.”

  She moaned.

  “C’mon. Wait till you see the rest of the house. I think you’ll like it.”

  Like was not a word to describe the Fairchild estate: wood and stone, warm colors, and Christmas everywhere. The grand room housed a massive fireplace small children could walk into. Floor to ceiling windows looked out over a lake sprawling beyond a massive span of dormant grass. Jason’s Christmas tree, or one of them, from what she could see in just the one room, stood at least fourteen feet tall.

  “I’m speechless,” she told him.

  He helped her out of her coat; his hands lingered on her shoulders. He led her to the windows and pointed beyond the lake. “In the summer, everything is green. My father stocked the lake so we could pretend to fish, although my mother refused to let us kill the things. When she was out with friends, my brothers and I would cook them on an open fire just beyond the trees.”

  “Defiant kid.” She laughed.

  “Does Owen fish?”

  “He was raised by a woman, I doubt he was given the chance.”

  “We’ll have to change that.”

  We? They were a we?

  “He told me he was going to start the tae kwon do classes in January.”

  “Yeah. He’s excited.”

  Jason placed a hand on her hip and squeezed. “He’s going to be great at it.”

  The sound of footsteps had Jason dropping his hand.

  “I thought I heard voices.” Monica walked in and greeted Rachel with a hug. “We’re so glad you could come.”

  “Thank you . . . this is unreal.”

  “I know, right? You should see it from the air.”

  Rachel didn’t think Monica was kidding.

  “Where is Owen?”

  “Running around outside,” Jason said.

  “Can I get you something to drink?”

  Rachel sighed. “Sure.”

  She was here, in his house, in his kitchen, with his family. She’d shoot him a look every once in a while, one that asked both questions: What am I doing here? And is it okay that I am?

  The few women he’d spent time with had never been in his personal world. They never felt right. Bringing them to the estate would have been like asking a woman to meet his parents. Until Rachel, he hadn’t wanted to do that.

  Then she picked him up on the side of a snowy road, and his world changed.

  The sliding back door opened and Nathan stepped inside. “Look who I found wandering around the hangar.”

  Nathan had his arm around Owen’s shoulders. The boy beamed.

  “He has an airstrip, Rachel. A friggin’ airstrip!”

  “We do own a company that flies planes,” Glen said.

  Jason spoke up. “Owen, this is . . . everyone. Everyone, this is Owen.”

  A chorus of hellos commenced.

  Owen walked up to Trent. “You must be a brother.”

  Trent hesitated.

  “Jason’s brother?”

  He laughed. “Yes, I am. Trent.”

  “And I’m Glen.”

  Owen shook hands and looked around the room. “This is the complete opposite of last night.”

  “How so?” Jason asked.

  “Rachel was the only white woman in the room, and today I’m the token black kid.”

  “You’re black?” Mary asked with a wink.

  They laughed.

  “Soda’s in the fridge, Owen. Help yourself,” Monica told him.

  Owen didn’t need to be told twice. “So is the inside of this place as big as the out?” he asked.

  “It’s like Narnia,” Glen told him. “We’d play hide-and-seek for hours.”

  “That’s because Trent would fall asleep in a closet and we’d get bored trying to find him.”

  “I’d get lost,” Owen said. He twisted at the sound of the train as it passed through the room. “There’s a train?”

  For a moment, Trent and Glen glanced at Jason, and the three of them shared that first moment again. The one when their father watched their reactions as the train made its way into the room for the first time.

  “It just gets better,” Owen said, following the path of the train out of the room.

  “Makes all the hours putting that thing up worth it,” Glen said.

  “You have a train moving around your house.” Rachel shook her head.

  Jason leaned against the counter. “Christmas and trains. What’s not to love?”

  Hours later, after their neighbor Betty arrived with her yippy Jack Russell and Mary’s family joined them, they sat around the living room, watching the rain fall outside the window.

  “Five degrees . . . we need five lowly degrees and I could have had my first white Christmas,” Owen complained.

  “It will happen if you live here long enough,” Monica told him. “No more holidays in flip-flops.”

  “By February, you’ll wonder if the sun will ever come out,” Mary told him.

  Glen pulled his wife close. “And on February second, we’ll fly to sunshine to forget the cold.”

  “Do you all know how to fly?” Owen asked.

  Jason nodded, as did his brothers.

  Owen sat dumbfounded.

  “Have you been in a plane, lad?” Nathan asked.

  “My mom told me I was, but I don’t remember it.”

  Jason glanced at Rachel.

  “We did the road trip thing when we moved,” she said.

  Trent leaned forward, filled his glass from the bottle of wine on the table. “Oh, we need to fix that.”

  Owen grinned.

  “I’d taken my first solo flight by the time I was fourteen,” Glen told them.

  “Bragging rights by two months because I was the firstborn and Mom wouldn’t let me go up alone until I was fifteen,” Jason added.

  Once the laughter faded, Owen sighed. “My mom would have liked you guys.”

  Rachel was close enough to Owen to reach out and touch his shoulder.

  There wasn’t a person in the room that didn’t become acutely aware that this was the first Christmas Owen had spent without his mother.

  “What was she like?” Mary Frances, Mary’s adoptive mother, asked.

  Owen shrugged, brushed off the tears in his eyes. “I don’t know, a mom.” He glanced around. “She complained when I left a light on, nagged when my grades weren’t great. You know, a mom.”

  Trent was the first to comment. “I hated school. Mom pissed and moaned about my grades.”

  “You just didn’t like authority,” Jason told him.

  “Still don’t,” Glen added.

  Owen laughed along with them. “My mom was, ahh . . . she was amazing. We didn’t fight over stupid crap. We laughed all the time. She wasn’t like a lot of moms that find fault with everything.”

  “It helped that you’re a great kid,” Rachel told him.

  “Yeah, but Mom didn’t stress over the dumb stuff. If we had food, and she had money to pay the bills, we were good.”

  Silenced filled the space.

  Owen looked at the floor, and a single tear fell from his eye.

  Jason squeezed his eyes shut.

  “You miss her,” Mary Frances said.

  Owen nodded, shifted into the small space beside Rachel on the sofa.

  Rachel hung her arm around him and pulled him close.

  “It gets better,” Jason told him. “It’s been eight years now. I miss them. At first it was every day . . . then life made me forget every once in a while. I felt guilty about that.”

  Glen moaned. “I hated those moments.”

  “Then it got better. It’s like they’re here, but not here,” Jason said.

  “That will happen for you, Owen. It’s just going to take some time,” Mary said.

  There were tears falling from Owen’s eyes, but crying from everyon
e’s heart.

  Rachel sat in quiet comfort for the boy, her arm over his shoulders, her head close to his. She choked back her own emotion; Jason saw that on her face.

  “To Emily.” Jason lifted the glass in his hand and everyone followed.

  Owen smiled his thanks.

  “I say we open presents,” Mary Frances suggested.

  The unwrapping began, and laughter soon took over the place of tears.

  Mary Frances presented Monica and Mary with gift packs that included prenatal vitamins, pink and blue booties, and copies of a popular pregnancy book. “Yes, this is a hint. I’m not getting any younger.”

  For Glen and Trent, she bought them boxer shorts. “Because those tight things kill sperm.”

  Owen ripped into his gift. “Virtual reality headset! This is dope. Ford has this. Oh, man, this is so cool. Thanks, Jason.”

  “Virtual what?” Nathan asked.

  Owen opened the box and moved to Nathan’s side to show him what it was all about.

  Jason dominated the empty space next to Rachel and handed her a small box.

  “What is this?”

  “Open it.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She looked relieved when she pulled out the piece of paper and started to read.

  “You’ve hired a crew to finish my basement?” She looked shocked.

  He leaned close, whispered in her ear, “It’s a little early for jewelry.”

  “This is too much.”

  “Just say thank you,” he said.

  She placed a hand on his leg, looked in his eyes. “Thank you.”

  He wanted to kiss her but held back.

  “I didn’t know what to get you.”

  “You’re here, that’s all I wanted.”

  She stood and handed him two gifts. “This is from Owen, and this is from me.”

  He opened Owen’s first and burst out laughing. “Basic Survival Guide for Driving in the Snow.”

  Owen pointed a finger in Jason’s direction. “You did end up in a ditch. I thought you could use a few pointers.”

  Trent laughed. “You’ll fit in just fine, Owen.”

  Nathan had the virtual reality glasses on, his head moving around, looking at things only he could see, but he added his snark, too. “You’re never gonna live that down, lad.”