The Widow and the Orphan

by J. Thomas-Like

  Vivienne couldn’t hide the surprise on her face. “Did you and Gabe talk about it at all yesterday?”

  “Once we got him to bed, that’s all we talked about.” Pointing toward Gavin, Pepper snickered. “He’s got this little bear-head thing he keeps in his pocket. I guess it used to be part of a blanket, but all that’s left is the head. It’s pretty rag tag. He sucks his thumb, too.”

  “Oh that’s so sweet!” Vivienne gushed, then her brows furrowed. “Isn’t he a little old to be sucking his thumb?”

  “Hey, for everything he’s been through, he could suck on my thumb if he wanted to.”

  Vivienne nodded, a thoughtful look on her face. “I see your point.”

  Pepper sighed. “Funny, I never thought I’d spend my wedding night tucking a kid into bed, watching cartoons, and then talking most of the night instead of having sex, but that’s what happened.”

  Vivienne laughed and then stopped abruptly. “I’m sorry, I know it’s not funny…”

  “Oh, it’s okay. If we can’t laugh, we gotta cry, right? No, I didn’t mind. By the time we were in bed ourselves, I could tell Gabe was wiped. And he really needed to talk about all of it. We both agreed, we’ll do whatever it takes to keep Gavin.”

  Pepper looked back to the party going on in the pool. Gavin was laughing as Will tossed him into the air so he could land with a gigantic splash. Gabe cradled Jane in his arms and leaned against the side of the pool. He looked so happy and carefree to her. You can’t even tell he has cancer, she thought wistfully.

  “What about the grandmother?” Viv’s voice was soft and hesitant.

  “What about her?” Pepper snapped, keeping her eyes focused on her new husband. “That woman can go fuck herself. Even if she did try to come back and claim the kid, I’d probably end up in jail because I’d beat the living shit out of her.”

  Vivienne whistled. “Wow!”

  “I mean it.” Pepper swung her head back around to her best friend. “That bitch has no right to this kid after the way she treated him and the things she said right in front of him. I don’t give a hoot what her history is with her daughter. You don’t do that kind of shit to a kid. You just fucking don’t.”

  Pepper’s hands began to shake with the fury bubbling inside her. She was reminded about how callously her own family had treated her decades. Ever since she’d tucked the boy into bed the night before, a strange sense of protectiveness for him had stolen over her.

  Vivienne grinned at her. “You’re going to have to start toning down your language, you know.”

  Pepper turned a surprised face to her friend, but then it got through to her. “Shit, you’re right.” Then she rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I just did it again.”

  “Hey, you’re not alone. Jane can’t understand what we say now, but I have to start cleaning things up too. We’ll have to start a swear jar or something.” Vivienne winked. “I think you’re going to make a pretty good mom.” She reached over and put her hand on top of Pepper’s.

  “Heh,” Pepper laughed. “I don’t know about that, but I’ll sure as hell give it a go.”

  Chapter 37

  Pepper, Gabe, and Gavin drove to downtown Los Angeles the next morning and had breakfast in a nice little restaurant a few blocks from the law firm where they would meet to determine the kid’s fate. Pepper barely touched her eggs, but was glad to see both males tuck into their breakfasts with abandon. Gabe finished an entire omelet as well as two cups of coffee, which was unusual for him. Since the chemo started, it was hard to get him to eat an entire meal of anything. Gavin gobbled down two huge pancakes and six strips of bacon, along with two large glasses of chocolate milk.

  “Well, that ought to hold us till lunch, yeah?” Gabe said jovially as he wiped his mouth with a napkin.

  “Uh huh,” Gavin said through a mouthful of bacon.

  “I hope so. If you ate any more bacon, you’d start to oink.” She winked at Gavin and he grinned back at her. It made her feel warm inside to think that he was getting more comfortable with her. Even though he’d only been with them for less than two days, he was already quicker to smile. Baby steps, she told herself. Pepper grinned back and put her credit card on the table to pay the bill. A waiter swooped in to grab it and returned with her receipt just as quickly.

  Pepper was no fool. She knew that having a kid pop into her life so suddenly wasn’t going to be all moonlight and magnolias. There was going to be a lot of shit to deal with as everything got sorted out. She was prepared for a lot of acting up on the kid’s part because that’s what kids do when they can’t handle all the feelings roiling around inside. She knew that much from experience. Why else would she have up and run off to California right after graduating high school? She didn’t know if she could do any better to help Gavin out than anyone else, but at least she had working knowledge of what it was like to be ignored and misunderstood.

  “Come on, you two.” She stood up and smoothed the front of her dress. Grabbing her card, she dropped it in her purse and led her men out of the restaurant.

  * * * * *

  A couple of hours later, they were back in the car and feeling a lot more comfortable about the future. The firm Gabe used for the company’s business had an entire division of family lawyers who were chomping at the bit to take up the case concerning Gavin’s paternity and the future custody issues. They were prepared and had a person there who swabbed both the kid and Gabe for DNA and sent it out to be tested immediately.

  Gabe had been insistent, right in front of Gavin, that he didn’t care what the results were. If he wasn’t Gavin’s father, he still wanted to work on making sure the child stayed in his custody. Pepper couldn’t have been more proud of her husband. She felt pretty damn confident he would have made the same decision and statements, even if he wasn’t fighting cancer. He didn’t like how Gavin had been treated any more than she did, so in this fight, they were completely united, just like in the battle of the cancer.

  Of course, if the paternity test came back positive, that made things a hell of a lot simpler. File some papers with the court, show up to a hearing, and, boom, the matter would be done. Regardless, Pepper intended on the three of them getting on with the business of life. She knew it would take time for them to get to know one another in a real way, but there was no time like the present.

  “Gavin?”

  They were in the car, headed back toward home. The boy had his nose in a gaming device of some sort and only gave her a “hmm” in response, which did not please Pepper at all. She would have preferred a “Yeah” or “What” over such a noncommittal, uninterested grunt.

  “Yo, kid. Pay attention!” she said, her tone a little stern but not too much. She hoped.

  “Yes?” Gavin’s head bobbed up and she caught his eyes in the rearview mirror as she drove.

  “What grade are you in?”

  Gavin gave her blank look. “I don’t know. I was home-schooled.”

  Pepper’s head leaned to the side. “You’ve never been in school?”

  “Nope. We moved around too much.”

  She glanced at Gabe, who looked furious with the disclosure. “Okay, that’s fine. We can think about that later.” It was not a discussion to have if her husband was going to be pissed off.

  When they got home, Gavin amused himself with the kittens while Gabe and Pepper went to change their clothes.

  “Home schooled?” Gabe was barely behind the closed door before he exploded. “That child is brilliant! How could his mother not have put him school?”

  Pepper took a deep breath and pulled him into a tight hug. “Calm down, there, babe. We have no idea what his circumstances were like. Until we get more information out of him, there isn’t much we can do about it. One step at a time, okay?”

  Gabe’s perturbed face didn’t change, but he agreed and pulled out of the hug, albeit gently. “I suppose you’re right. It’s something that needs to be dealt with as quickly as possible. I don’t want him falling
behind, any more than he likely already has.”

  “Come on, you don’t know that he’s behind in anything. You’re right, he seems like a really smart kid. Maybe his mother did a good job educating him.” Pepper couldn’t believe she was saying anything in Tanya’s defense, but it was true. They didn’t know anything about how Gavin had grown up, so it wouldn’t make things any easier by making judgments.

  As they changed into shorts and tee-shirts, Pepper let her thoughts tumble out of her mouth. “Maybe we should hire a tutor to come in and keep going with the home schooling?” Throwing Gavin into a school situation while he was already dealing with a new place to live and new “parents” might be too much. What she didn’t say out loud was that it might be a good idea for Gavin to spend as much time with his father as possible, since they had no way of knowing what the cancer was going to do. Sure, Gabe seemed to be doing better, but there just weren’t any guarantees.

  “I need to think on it. I can’t decide what I want to do right now.”

  “I?” Pepper asked, her eyebrows creeping up. “I thought this was a ‘we’ situation.”

  Gabe nodded. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry. This is quite an adjustment for all of us.”

  “No worries, babe.” Pepper winked and put on her it’s-all-good face. “You hungry? It’s been a long day and we missed lunch.”

  Gabe smirked at her and folded his arms across his chest. “If I say no, you’ll worry and force me to eat. If I say yes, you’ll be glad and force me to eat. I don’t see how I can win in this situation.”

  Pepper laughed and pointed her hand at him like a gun. “You’re correct. I win.”

  * * * * *

  Gabe lounged in the hot tub as Gavin paddled around the pool, splashing and jumping in from the side.

  “I really like swimming!” he shouted just before doing a cannonball at the opposite end.

  When he surfaced, Gabe gave him two thumbs up. “I’m very glad.”

  As he watched the boy laugh and play, Gabe was certain that Gavin was his son. He had already begun to notice certain mannerisms that mirrored his own. The way he turned his head a certain way. How he held his pencil when writing or drawing. How he stared off into space with one eye half closed when he was thinking about something. Gabe didn’t need the DNA results to feel sure. They would only help speed the decision of paternity along.

  He wanted to start asking the boy about his mother, but wasn’t certain if the timing was right. How long should he wait for Gavin to feel comfortable? Maybe until the boy made the first move. Unfortunately, there wasn’t time for that. Having cancer was not a secret he wanted to keep, but felt he must for the time being. If not for that, Gabe would have waited a lifetime for Gavin to open up.

  “How’s it going out here?”

  Pepper appeared at the edge of the hot tub, blocking the sun. She’s so beautiful, outlined by the sun like that. Gabe closed his eyes and committed the image to his memory to hold on to in times of stress. Her blonde hair looked as though it was on fire while it lifted and fell in the late afternoon breeze.

  “Awesome!” Gavin yelled. He pushed his arms hard to splash some water in her direction.

  “Oh no you didn’t!” She hopped backward to avoid the drops, but then surprised him by diving in and popping through the surface right in front of his face.

  Gabe laughed as he watched them have a splash war, but it was also agonizing to endure. He wanted desperately to get into the fray, but he was too tired to join in. There was no way he was going to tell Pepper that his strength had been waning all afternoon. He was doing everything he could to hide it from her or else she would fall back into her worrisome frame of mind. Gavin was turning out to be the perfect distraction. Gabe much preferred to watch her play and bond with the child instead of hovering over him.

  Eventually, his wife and son grew tired and swam over to join him in the hot tub.

  “Be careful, son,” Gabe warned as Gavin dipped a toe into the much hotter water. He caught Pepper’s sappy grin when she heard him use the term of endearment.

  “That feels good.” Gavin climbed over the stone ledge and sunk in up to his neck. “It’s not that hot.”

  “That’s because I turned it down.” Pepper joined them and smirked. “He’d turn up the temp to two hundred degrees if we’d let him. I think a balmy ninety-three is just fine.” Her shoulders vibrated with pleasure as she, too, let the bubbling water cover her body to her chin.

  “I wondered why I felt chilled.” Gabe pretended to shiver, which made Gavin giggle.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Again?” Pepper rolled her eyes. “You’re a bottomless pit.”

  “I’m a growing boy,” Gavin insisted, and Gabe had to laugh. The tone of the boy’s voice was so much like his own whenever he attempted to disagree with Pepper.

  “Well, there’s nothing left in the house. I wasn’t expecting to have to feed a little animal, so I didn’t grocery shop.” Pepper reached out to ruffle Gavin’s wet hair, which stood out in all directions. Gavin should have laughed or smiled, but his good humor popped as quickly as the bubbles in the tub.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “You guys were supposed to go away, weren’t you?”

  Pepper’s face paled instantly, leaving two bright patches of pink on her cheeks. “Oh, kiddo!”

  Gabe moved through the water to sit beside Gavin. He put his arm around the boy’s shoulder and squeezed him close, hoping Gavin wouldn’t pull away. He didn’t and Gabe was relieved.

  “Son, don’t worry about that. There’ll be plenty of time for vacations and honeymoons and all manner of trips. Now that you’re here, we’ll be able to plan some really spectacular ones. Please don’t be upset.”

  Gavin’s face was uncertain and his big green eyes were shining, whether from unshed tears or the water in the tub, Gabe couldn’t be sure.

  “I guess I was starting to forget how I got here.”

  Pepper hid her gasp behind a balled up fist and she turned away. Gabe slipped farther down into the tub so he could be eye to eye with the little boy. “I happen to think that’s a good thing. If I had my way, you’d forget all about that time you had to spend in Kentucky. It sounds like it wasn’t all that much fun.”

  Gavin said nothing, but shook his head to confirm it.

  “Before that, though, you were with your mother. Was that a fun time? What I mean is, did you and your mother have a good life?”

  Gavin’s bottom lip quivered and he still didn’t speak. This time he nodded.

  “Well, then hold on to those memories. Skip over the parts you don’t want to remember. And this life you have now? It’s your do over. Your reboot, as it were.” Gabe hoped he could convey to his son a sense that everything was going to be all right. It most certainly wasn’t, if the cancer had its way, but he had to say what he thought was best in the moment.

  Gabe grabbed the boy and enveloped him in a tight hug. Gavin’s thin body began to shake and the sound of his sobs stabbed Gabe in the heart. “It’s okay, Gavin.”

  Pepper pushed through the water to join them. Gabe pulled her into the embrace, marveling at the tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m here, Gavin. We’re both here for you.”

  Chapter 38

  “What the devil are you doing?”

  “Shit!”

  Pepper nearly fell off the step stool. She had been on her tiptoes measuring Gavin’s windows when Gabe surprised her.

  “Be careful!” He rushed forward to place his hands firmly on her hips. When he squeezed, Pepper squealed.

  “You keep doing that and I really will fall!” She slapped at him playfully and laughed, turning back to the task at hand. “I thought some new curtains or window treatments in here would be nice. Something more kid friendly.”

  “That makes sense. Where is the boy?” Gabe looked around the room.

  “He’s out in the back with Crank. Said he was going to teach him how to walk on a leash.”

  “Are you
serious?” Gabe stepped around Pepper to peer through the window down into the backyard.

  “I told him it was probably a lost cause. I know cats can be taught anything, but Crank’s a little bastard.” Pepper snorted and closed the tape measure to climb down off the stool. She made some notes on a piece of paper and then stuffed it in her pocket.

  “Well I’ll be damned.” Gabe pulled on her arm, pointing out the window. Gavin actually had Crank in a harness and walking around the backyard.

  “That kid is something else.”

  Every day there was something new or special they were discovering about Gavin and his charms. The cats all adored him and followed him around the house, even ignoring Pepper and Gabe. Even though they still didn’t know what level of schooling he’d had, Gavin proved to have thoughts and opinions far more mature than the average ten year old. Watching the news, he would often ask questions and converse with them about the things he saw. After the moment in the hot tub when he had finally released some of his sadness and frustration, Pepper and Gabe could see the marked difference in his attitude. He moved through the house with a newfound confidence. When he wanted something, he asked for it, always using his manners, but no longer coming across as timid or scared. It had only been a few days, but still, progress was progress to her way of thinking. She and Gabe had both decided that they would let him get a little more comfortable before they brought up the subject of his mother again.

  “He’s going to need a lot of stuff, babe.”

  “Like what?” Gabe scratched his head.

  Pepper stared at him in irritated disbelief. “Really? Did you not notice that he only came with one suitcase? The backpacks had his toys in them.”

  Gabe took a step toward the bed and sat down. “How stupid of me. I’ve been in a bit of a fog since his arrival. Well, it’s no matter. He shall have everything he needs. Make a list.”