The Marine (Semper Fi; Marine)

  “You went to a funeral?” Allison asked, picking up the sheet of paper Grace had left. “Who is Chuck Dodge?”

  “A friend of Sergeant Kinlaw’s.”

  “Oh. Was he a Marine, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “I like how they stick together—the Marines—even when they’re not Marines anymore.”

  “I met him a while back, when I went with Sergeant Kinlaw to deliver some meals-on-wheels. On his motorcycle.”

  “You rode on the Indian?” Allison said with all the incredulity Grace expected, and then some.

  “Yes.”

  “Cool,” her irrepressible younger daughter said. She fluffed her new hairdo for a moment. “Which one of us gets to tell Lisa?”

  Chapter Twelve

  KINLAW’S CRUSH, JOSH thought, watching Grace look around each time the doorbell rang. If he hadn’t been a sergeant and in the habit of picking up on the emotional subtleties of his squad members, he might have missed the fact that the stoic Sergeant Kinlaw was interested in her. But, as it was, he’d noticed it some time ago—maybe at the moving-in, spaghetti and sandwich thing. Kinlaw had taken a call on the kitchen phone while Grace stirred spaghetti sauce at the stove. Kinlaw had been listening to whoever had telephoned him, but he’d been watching Grace the whole time, something she hadn’t been aware of at all. But Josh had. No doubt he had stared at Angie just like that in their early days.

  What he’d missed until now was Grace’s interest in the sergeant. As sad as she seemed about her late husband most of the time, he thought it pretty obvious that she wanted Kinlaw here tonight.

  The Friday night group dinner had been moved to Saturday in spite of the fact that it was prom night. Or, actually, because it was prom night. Josh had wanted Joe-B going out of the James’ house with the full force of steely-eyed, potential Marine Corps retribution boring into his back, just in case he was tempted to forget his programming. Kinlaw had been invited to come and eat, but so far, he was a no-show, and Josh wasn’t at all sure why. But there was no accounting for the glaring inconsistencies in male-female attraction. He and Angie were proof enough of that. The bottom line was that whatever was going on between Grace and Kinlaw was none of his business—unless it caused some kind of glitch in his plan to finish his deployment.

  The doorbell rang again. This time it was the prom date himself.

  “Not bad,” Josh said as the resplendent Joe-B stepped into the foyer.

  Actually, the kid was so smooth-looking, he was barely recognizable, and Josh’s remark clearly pleased him. He tried to hide it, however. “Cool” didn’t translate into being susceptible to compliments, especially from another guy. Joe-B was uncharacteristically nervous, as well, and Josh had to fight down a smile at the look on the boy’s face when Lisa came down the stairs. Joe-B might be Teen GQ all the way, thanks to a tux that actually fit and Muley’s considerable barbering skills, but going to the prom with a dream date clearly wasn’t easy.

  Lisa was wearing a short and shimmering pinkish gray dress that somehow looked one color or the other, depending on where the light hit it. There were some bits of silver lace sticking out at the top of the dress and some at the bottom. She looked classy and elegant and way out of Joe-B’s league. She was definitely out of Jason the Jock’s league, the arrogant son of a bitch.

  The kitchen crowd heard Joe-B’s voice and pushed into the foyer to get a look.

  “Watch it,” Josh said as their exuberant whistles and exclamations of appreciation regarding Joe-B’s date threatened to exceed the James’ house decorum. The women wanted to see the dress up close, and Josh managed to waylay Joe-B in the maneuvering to get a better look.

  “I know the drill,” Joe-B said ahead of whatever he thought Josh was about to say.

  “Good,” Josh said. He doubted that Joe-B had any idea how close he’d come to having his bold prom invitation handed back to him on a silver platter. Josh thought it was a good thing that Lisa had decided to keep her word and that, at this point, she didn’t seem to consider Joe-B a major pity-slash-revenge date. The two of them had had some long conversations here at the house, and if anything, Josh thought that Lisa was impressed by all the places Joe-B had been and all the things he knew. The situation might not be all that Joe-B hoped for, but a “friendship” date was no small accomplishment, especially when you considered who was going out with whom.

  “You are one lucky bastard.”

  “Tell me about it,” Joe-B said, punching Josh on the fist.

  Josh took a few pictures with the official James’ family digital camera, then stood on the porch with Grace to watch the dazzling couple depart.

  “He’s not going to mess this up,” Josh said to reassure her.

  Grace looked at him, started to say something, then didn’t. They walked back into the noisy house. The kitchen crowd was about to sit down at the table. Grace went into the den, he thought, to keep from looking like she was overly hopeful regarding a possible late arrival. She didn’t stay long though, returning almost immediately.

  “I want to ask you something,” she said.

  “Grace, I don’t think you have to worry about Joe-B.”

  “No. I wanted to ask you about Sergeant Kinlaw.”

  “What about him?”

  “What is his . . . story, exactly?”

  Josh didn’t say anything, mostly because he hated these kinds of questions. “I can’t tell you much,” he said after a moment.

  “Can’t or won’t.”

  “Can’t, because I don’t know anything. It would be ‘won’t’ if I did.”

  “You Marine types are no help whatsoever,” she said, and he smiled.

  “Well, I don’t know what I can say. He’s retired Marine Corps. He hasn’t been retired long, and I don’t know why he decided to give it up. I got to know him when I sold him my Indian motorcycle, mostly because I knew what he’d use it for.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Keeping up with his unofficial hard luck cases like yours truly. It’s cheaper than driving the truck and it doesn’t bring back so many memories.”

  “What kind of memories?”

  “Memories of . . .” Josh stopped, uncertain about how candid he wanted to be.

  “Of what?”

  “Of IEDs,” he said, making up his mind. “Buried on the side of the roads. It’s hard to stop yourself from driving a vehicle right on the center line when you’ve been through that every day for months. Even when you get back home. You know you can get to the Cracker Barrel and probably not get blown up—but you want to ride the middle line anyway.”

  “I see,” she said. “Does he have family?”

  “He’s never mentioned any to me. You need to ask him this stuff, okay?”

  “Josh—”

  “Just ask him, Grace. Then you won’t have to worry about it.”

  “No, I want to tell you something. The girls and I had a family meeting today. About Elizabeth. I don’t want to wait for the DNA results. I’ll be the designated caregiver in your Family Care Plan. All three of us will do it.”

  He looked at her, then turned away to hide the rush of emotion he was feeling. She had taken him completely by surprise.

  “That is, if you still want—”

  “Yeah,” he interrupted. “Yeah, that’s good. I—” He stopped because his voice sounded so strange to him.

  “Okay, then,” Grace said. “Whatever you need to do—paperwork, social workers—you can get the ball rolling.”

  She turned and walked toward the den again.

  “Grace?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I didn’t think this would work out. I don’t know what to say.”

  “I didn’t think it would work out either, but . . .” She smiled slightly. “Fa
milies are where you find them.”

  “Grace,” he said when she turned to go again. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome, Joshua.”

  GRACE STAYED IN the den until the last of the guests left, then she went into the kitchen and sat down at the table, determined not to think about Kinlaw. Unfortunately, that was about as hard as not waiting up for Lisa. She couldn’t make herself go to bed, even though she knew Lisa would be staying for the school-sponsored after-the-prom bowling party and an early morning group breakfast.

  As for Kinlaw, she hadn’t heard from him since Chuck Dodge’s funeral, regardless of what had transpired in the kitchen afterward. She supposed the problem was that she still expected to see him. Not hoped. Expected. She was apparently failing to see the incident for what it was—a transient moment of neediness for them both. They’d given into it—briefly—and that was that. Her fantasy of somehow completely rearranging her complicated single-parent-slash-soon-to-be-designated-caregiver life and taking a retired Marine sergeant as a lover was as much a waste of time as it was pathetic.

  “Goodnight, Allison,” she called when she heard her other daughter coming down the stairs. But it was merely an invitation to wander in.

  “Mom, I can’t sleep. Man, I hope Joe-B doesn’t punch somebody out.”

  “Oh, great. He gets into fights? Allison, why didn’t you say something about that when I asked you about him?”

  “He doesn’t get into fights, Mom. I was just thinking a baseball guy like Jason is liable to say anything. Who knows if Joe-B will be able to walk away from it? Especially if it hurts Lisa’s feelings. I don’t think he’d let anybody get away with that. Do you?”

  No, Grace thought. She didn’t. She got up from the table.

  “Are you going to bed?” Allison asked.

  “No, I’m going into the den to worry while I watch a late night movie.”

  “Me, too,” Allison said. “Please, Mom,” she added when Grace was about to protest. “If we’re both going to worry, we might as well worry together. But don’t tell Lisa, okay? I’ve got my reputation to think of.”

  Grace smiled. “Okay. We’ll worry together. But I want you to remember this suffering when you go to your prom.”

  She turned on the television to a movie channel and made herself comfortable in Trent’s chair, aware suddenly to what degree she was moving on without him. For all intents and purposes, she was going to become Elizabeth Caven’s legal guardian. She was going to take on the responsibility of a third girl child—alone. And, she suddenly realized, she was going to do something about Joseph Kinlaw. Not wait and see. Do. It was clear to her that she had two choices. She could be sensible and forget about him altogether or she could open the door to some kind of possibility—for rejection or for the other . . . thing. Unfortunately, the situation reminded her of trying to pick the fastest moving line at the bank drive-through window. It never failed that whichever one she chose would be the slowest.

  “What’s this movie about?” Allison asked as she curled up on the couch.

  “An ugly duckling and a married man,” Grace said.

  “I like ugly ducklings—if they don’t stay ugly.”

  Grace smiled. She was more than ready to let Hollywood and her other daughter make her forget her troubles.

  But neither she nor Allison made it through “Now Voyager.” Grace remembered Allison’s comment about Bette Davis’s “caterpillar” eyebrows, then awoke suddenly when the sun was up and she heard Lisa’s key in the front door.

  “Hi,” Grace said, trying to sound as if she hadn’t been caught keeping an all-night vigil for potential bad news. Allison snored softly on the couch. “Did you have a good time?”

  “Yes,” Lisa said, glancing at her sister, apparently checking for her degree of consciousness. “It was . . . a lot better than I thought it would be. Joe-B is . . .”

  Lisa didn’t elaborate, and as much as Grace wanted to know what kind of impression Joe-B had made as a prom date, she didn’t push for details.

  “Did you tell Josh about the family meeting?” Lisa asked.

  “Yes. Now we wait for the paperwork.”

  “I told everybody we were probably going to help our cousin with his baby while he’s deployed. A bunch of them saw him with Allison when she was on that all Marine shopping trip. They think it’s pretty cool. Mom, Josh could get killed, couldn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand why he wants to do this. He’s got Elizabeth to worry about. Mom, Joe-B says he might be enlisting.” She took a deep breath and didn’t say anything else for a long moment.

  “I’m . . . going to go take a shower and sleep for a while. Joe-B might come by later.” She looked again at her sleeping sister. “Ewww. Allison needs to do something about that drooling.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  SO THIS IS HOW it’s going to be, Grace thought.

  She was trying to stay occupied, but the whole household was on edge waiting for whatever Josh was going to tell them about his impending deployment. She heard the front door open and close, and she looked around as he came into the kitchen. He had his Marine face on.

  “What?” she said, making no attempt to hide her anxiety. Allison and Lisa came in immediately behind him, and all three of them stood waiting for him to say something.

  “Looks like I’m going,” he said.

  Grace nodded and released the breath she’d been holding. “How much time have you got with us?” she asked.

  “Not sure,” he said. “Is Elizabeth asleep?”

  “Yes,” Grace said. “I just put her down.”

  “Can we have a party?” Allison suddenly asked. “For Josh?”

  “No,” he said immediately, and he meant it.

  “And for Elizabeth,” Allison went on, undeterred. “An Almost-First-Birthday party. She’s almost eleven months old. That’s close enough. If we have it now, Josh, you can be there. We can make a lot of pictures for you to take with you. Please, Josh. The Almost-Never-On-Friday dinner group could come—and Sergeant Kinlaw and Joe-B. It’d be great. Don’t you think?” she added, looking at Lisa for support.

  “Could we?” Lisa said, for once taking her sister’s side. “We could get a cake and ice cream and everything. Everybody loves Elizabeth. We could start the party here, then move it to the hospital so the guys that had surgery can get in on it. You said you wanted to take up the slack with the family stuff, so . . .”

  “All right!” Josh said, holding up both hands. “If it’s okay with Grace, we’ll do it.” They all looked in her direction.

  “I think it’s what we need,” Grace said.

  “Yay!” Allison said. “Now if we can just get the Marine Corps schedule to fit ours . . .”

  “Good luck with that,” Josh said, heading upstairs, Grace thought, to watch his baby girl sleep.

  As it turned out, the Marine Corps was in high gear when it came to reclaiming Sergeant Joshua Caven. When the dust cleared, they had two days to make a big—and portable—birthday party. The invitations were strictly word of mouth, and as a result, a lot more guests showed up at the house than Grace anticipated. She had to make two runs to the supermarket for more refreshments.

  The doorbell rang before she could put the second load of party plates and cupcakes in the kitchen, and she turned around to answer it, trying not to hope that Kinlaw was going to make the party—if he’d been invited. She didn’t know whether he had for certain or not. All she knew was that the ball was on his side of the net—unless it was on hers. In either case, it was just . . . lying there.

  But it wasn’t Kinlaw, and she was so startled, it took her a moment to recover.

  “Sandra Kay,” she said finally, juggling the refreshments and trying to call on her own version of the Marine face.

>   “Hello, Grace. What kind of party are you having, anyway? I thought I’d never find a place to park. Your neighbors aren’t very understanding about that kind of thing, are they? I mean, who gets mail this time of day? Well, are you going to let me in or not?”

  Not, Grace thought, but she stood back out of the way. “Come in,” she said, and Sandra Kay laughed her same old good time girl laugh. She even looked the same in some respects—hair too big, lips too red, perfume and jewelry too jangling. She looked ready for anything . . . except something that required high standards.

  “Really, Grace. Anybody would think you weren’t glad to see me.”

  Allison, curious as ever, came into the foyer to see who had arrived.

  “Take these to the kitchen, please,” Grace said in a tone of voice that didn’t invite questions, handing the party platters and the cupcakes over. She didn’t know if Allison would recognize Sandra Kay or not, but she didn’t bother with introductions.

  “Let’s just get to it,” Grace said as soon as Allison had gone. “Why are you here?”

  “Which kid is that?” Sandra Kay asked instead of answering.

  “The youngest, Allison.”

  “Cute girl.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Nice house,” Sandra Kay said next, looking around the foyer.

  “You’ve seen it before, Sandra Kay.”

  “Have I? Oh, yes. When mom died and you had Trent browbeat me out of my inheritance. I forgot. Sorry about Trent, by the way. Have you latched on to a replacement for him yet? A woman like you needs a man, right?” She seemed to find that observation very amusing.

  The doorbell rang again, and Grace was only too happy for the interruption—except that Kinlaw stood on the porch, now, of all times. And from the looks of him, his day wasn’t going particularly well, either.

  “I need your help,” he said without prelude.

  “With?” Grace asked, stepping out onto the porch to keep Sandra Kay from hearing.