Adding Up to Marriage

by Karen Templeton

  She drew him closer, her heart squeezing at his puckered frown, then his sweet, baby-toothed smile as she showed him how to guide the slippery buttons through the holes. “Did it, yay!” he shouted, pumping his fist, then taking a swing at his brother, just because he could. A swing that was reciprocated, naturally, and then they were wrassling in the pile of clothes, the dog barking and trying to get in on the act, honestly, until Jewel waded into the fracas to redirect their energy into pulling their beds together and getting their shoes on.

  And she thought about how patient Silas was with these two fireballs, what a good father he was—what a good man, period—and that if she’d been in the market for a husband and potential father of her own hypothetical children, if he’d been in the market for a potential stepmom for the ones he already had, he’d definitely be in the running.

  Even so, as she broke up yet another tussle—seriously considering rubbing them down with dryer sheets to keep them from clinging to each other—she thought about what Silas had said about her needing to learn how to let somebody else take care of her. But the thing was, what he didn’t understand—what nobody did—was that it wasn’t that she didn’t know how to let somebody else take care of her.

  It was how much it hurt when they stopped.

  Silas watched the teen inhale his pancakes as if buzzards were circling overhead, waiting to swoop. His plate clean, he cast a longing glance at the stove. “Is there more?”

  “There’s batter and a griddle. Have at it.”

  His gaze swung to Silas’s. “Uh…cooking’s not exactly my thing? Ramen and pop-tarts is pretty much my limit.”

  “Then this is your lucky day.”

  “Why can’t I wait for Jewel? Be…cause,” he said at Silas’s you-get-one-guess look, “she’s in a really bad mood?”

  “That would be it. Go on, I’ll talk you through it. You call your Dad?” Silas asked as, with a huge why-me? breath, Aaron dragged himself over to the stove.

  “Yeah. His cell and the landline, got voice mail both times. What’s first?”

  “Give the griddle a squirt of the cooking spray, put the flame on medium high, wait until the griddle begins to smoke. Did you try each phone more than once?”

  Shaggy hair bounced when he nodded. “I told you he doesn’t care…okay, it’s smoking. Next?”

  “Pour the batter onto the griddle?”

  “Oh. Yeah.” The griddle sizzled. “How do I know when to flip ’em?”

  “When the bubbles have all popped and the pancakes look dry around the edges.”

  Eyes glued to the pancakes, Aaron slouched in front of the stove, one hand stuffed in the pocket of his droopy cargo pants, the other tapping the spatula against the edge of the counter. “Jewel’s mad because of me, huh?”

  Among other things, Silas imagined. Like, for instance, that hormone-riddled do-si-do at the end of their little talk last night. Then to give her that once-over a few minutes ago…

  Dumb.

  “You showing up like this isn’t exactly making her life easier, no,” Silas said, and the boy banged the spatula harder.

  “She’s…different than I expected. In some ways, anyway.”

  “Last time you saw her,” Silas pointed out, “she was barely older than you are now. Big difference between sixteen and twenty-five.”

  “Yeah, I know. In my head, anyway. But I thought…I dunno. I guess I figured she could still make things better somehow. Like she always used to. Stupid, huh?”

  “And trust me, if she could, she would. Even so…” Silas picked up the gaming magazine the boy had been leafing through as he ate, only to put it back down when he realized it may as well have been written in Sanskrit. “It sounds like she’s been taking care of other people her whole life. Don’t you think it’s time she took care of herself?”

  More banging. Then: “Yeah, maybe you’re right. Doesn’t solve my problem, though.”

  “True. But that doesn’t mean we can’t.”

  That got a funny look. “We?”

  “You’re in my house, eating my pancakes.” Silas shrugged. “So, yeah. We.”

  Aaron grinned, then turned back to the griddle. A few seconds later, Silas heard the scrape of spatula against Teflon, followed by, “Dude! Looks like a real pancake and everything! And…whoo-hoo! Did it again. Hey—you think it’d be okay if I make some for the kids since I’m on a roll, here?”

  “Go for it.”

  Soon after, said kids vroomed into the kitchen, spilling half their already-poured juice as they chugged it down. “Jewel said there’s pancakes?” Tad asked around Silas’s taking a napkin to the child’s mouth and chin.

  “Yeah,” she said as she reappeared, still a mess. Still cute. Still, he was guessing, grouchy. “Just give me a minute—”

  “Already done,” Aaron said, plunking piled plates in front of each child. Of course, then the boys scrapped over who got the syrup and whipped cream first, until Jewel grabbed both out of their hands with an amazingly strong “Hey!” for such a wee thing, giving them the same look he’d seen a million times on his mother’s face, after which they planted their bottoms back on their chairs.

  “Dudes,” Aaron said, shaking his head as he forked in another bite. “Trust me, that’s a ‘pull that again and you won’t see pancakes again until you’re eighty’ look.”

  Coughing to cover his laugh, Silas pushed away from the table and carried his plate to the sink. “Impressive,” he whispered to Jewel, standing two feet away as she refilled her coffee cup.

  “Kids need limits,” she said quietly, not looking at him, both hands clamped around her mug as she sipped. “Chaos sucks.”

  “Or rules, depending on your point of view.”

  Blowing a short laugh through her nose, she almost smiled. But he could tell she was an inch away from buckling underneath this new pressure. He also knew she’d cut off a limb before admitting it.

  “C’n we have more whipped cream, Jewel?” Ollie asked, twisted around in his chair and peeking through the rungs like a caged monkey. “We’ll be good, promise.”

  “Yeah. Promise,” Tad added, nodding like a bobble-head.

  Jewel cast Silas a bemused glance, then turned, clearly as much of a softie as Silas. “Okay…but only a little. No, let Aaron do it,” she said, adding more milk to the batter to stretch it for her own breakfast.

  “You do realize,” Silas said as whoops of approval masked the sound of Aaron’s smothering the pancakes with whipped cream, “your brother’s take on ‘a little’ probably doesn’t match yours?”

  “Don’t be so sure about that,” she said, only her joke fell flatter than the puny pancakes on the griddle.

  “Jewel—?”

  “What am I gonna do with him?” she said softly, achingly, flooding her pancakes with syrup. Then she turned, leaning against the counter to eat them, watching Aaron goof around with Silas’s two like they’d all known each other forever. “If Keith really is as uncaring as Aaron says…” She shook her head, her eyes lowered, before lifting them again to Silas. “He’s my heart, Silas. Has been from the first moment I laid eyes on him. And I look at him now,” she said, returning her gaze to the giggling boys, “and I think…that’s what he should have had all along. Or something close to it, at least. A real family. Not a succession of so-called parents who dragged their kids behind them like…”

  She didn’t, or couldn’t, finish her sentence. Not that she had to.

  “He’s a good kid,” she said after a moment. “He deserves better. And it kills me that I can’t give that to him.”

  Ah, hell. At that moment, the only thing keeping Silas from taking her into his arms was their audience. But when she set her empty plate on the counter, he did reach for her hand, earning him a very startled glance that dovetailed nicely with his own reaction—that her openness, her honesty, her uncompromising integrity were breaching defenses he’d assumed were virtually impenetrable even a few weeks before. That her being here felt so good,
so right, as though…

  “You have one of the biggest hearts of anyone I’ve ever met,” he said, holding her gaze captive in his. Then he let go. You know, before the moment turned awkward. Before he said something really stupid, like about how she deserved better, too. About how, maybe, he could do something about that, if she let him.

  Because it hadn’t taken but a second for surprise to turn to wariness to turn to something close to terror in her eyes, that his simple gesture of concern and support might mean something…more. Something she couldn’t possibly deal with right now. Maybe not ever.

  Oh, yeah, he understood that look, all right. All too well. Since not that long ago he’d been right there with her in No Damn Way Land. But how could he watch her with his kids, with her brother—heck, with anyone she came in contact with—and not think it might be nice to have her compassion and grace and courage and, yes, craziness in his life, in his kids’ lives, on a regular basis?

  “Thank you,” she said with one of those tiny smiles, then looked away, once more cradling her coffee mug in her hands. “Except that big heart is exactly what keeps getting me in trouble.”

  Silas stared at her profile for a long moment, knowing he should respond but having no earthly idea what to say that wouldn’t sound trite. Or like he was brushing off her fears as silly. So instead he called Ollie to get his jacket and go out to the car.

  “I’ll check in at lunch,” he said, digging his keys out of his pocket, “but you need anything before then? You call me. Promise?”

  “You bet,” she said.

  But without anything even remotely resembling eye contact.

  Chapter Nine

  “Hey,” Aaron said an hour later as they traipsed through the woods, Tad bopping along well ahead of them while Doughboy lumbered along beside, periodically giving Jewel sad sack Can we stop now? Now? How about now? looks. “Does Silas, like, have a thing for you?”

  And, yep, that would be her heart trying to escape her chest. “No! What makes you think that?”

  “Uh, the way he looks at you?”

  Despite her sour mood, Jewel barked out a laugh. “You mean, the ‘What planet are you from?’ look?”

  “No, the ‘I really like this chick but have no clue how to tell her’ look.”

  “You’re fifteen, what do you know?”

  Now Aaron laughed, his deep voice all squeaky-new. “Yeah. Fifteen. Not five. Trust me, I know that look.”

  “And I’m so not having this conversation with you,” Jewel said, linking her hands around his elbow, willing herself to believe that concentrating on the crisp, woodsmoke scented air, the serene blue sky and glittering sunlight playing peek-a-boo with the yellowing live oaks and aspens would wipe that…that…okay, that look in Silas’s eyes out of her head.

  Because that look could get her into one big, steaming heap o’ trouble, if she let it. He thought she had a big heart? Ohmigosh—if she lived to be a hundred she’d never live down how badly she’d misjudged him at first. The difference was, he was smart enough to hang on to his. She wasn’t. Or at least it was a lot harder for her, given her history and nature and all…her firm resolve notwithstanding. So for sure she was counting on Silas to be the good guy and keep a lid on his self control, because too many more of those smoldering looks, those not-so-random acts of kindness, and there was no telling what she might do—

  And, hello? She was supposed to be focusing on solving her brother’s dilemma, not mooning over a hot, sweet geek whose touch that morning had sent her core temperature soaring farther and faster than—

  Stop that!

  A contented sigh floated over her head. “This place is awesome. Where’s the high school?”

  “You’ve been here like five minutes, you’d be bored out of your skull in five more, and you can’t stay. Your father—”

  “Still not picking up.”

  Jewel’s pocket suddenly R2-D2’d at her. She dug out her phone, surprised to see Gene Garrett’s name on the display.

  “Silas gave me your cell number,” Donna said. “I hope you don’t mind—”

  “No, of course not—”

  “—but I cannot fit one more casserole in my freezer. I love my church sisters to death, I really do, but they simply do not know when to quit with the food! So I asked Silas if y’all might like to take some of this stuff off my hands, and he said you could pop on over sometime and get it?”

  “Um, sure. I’ll be there in a bit.”

  “What was that all about?” Aaron asked when she slipped her phone back into her pocket and called Tad to come back.

  “Silas’s mom and overzealous church ladies,” Jewel said, adding, when Aaron frowned at her, “all will be made clear in a few minutes.”

  “See?” Donna said, opening both her refrigerator and freezer doors, revealing Tupperware and covered foil pans as far as the eye could see. “I wasn’t kidding. And that’s not counting what I’ve got stashed in the big freezer out in the garage.”

  “Holy…cow.”

  “Not exactly what I said, but close. Honestly, you’d think I’d died.”

  Jewel sputtered a laugh, as, behind them at the kitchen table, Aaron and Tad chowed down big slabs of somebody’s homemade coffee cake, shoved in front of them the minute they set foot in the door. More agile now that she was used to the walking boot, Donna began unloading the fridge, setting tray after tray on the other end of the table with appropriate commentary for each one.

  “Okay, you probably don’t want Mildred’s macaroni and cheese—I don’t know what she does to it, it’s like eating solid lard, but I simply don’t have the heart to toss it. Yet. Oh…this one’s not bad, it’s something Sally Perkins calls Greek Chicken, it’s got that feta cheese on it. Which I like but Gene wouldn’t eat if it was the only thing in the house. And this one’s…oh, yes—Emma Manning’s green chili stew—”

  “Oh! I’ve had that, when Patrice and I went up there before she had her baby? It’s really good.”

  “Then you take it, green chili and Gene don’t see eye-to-eye anymore….”

  After another ten minutes or so spent divvying the largesse between them—and after the boys finished their snack and Tad took Aaron off to show him Gene’s two-thousand-and-counting Hot Wheels collection—Donna lowered her ample form into one of the chairs and cut Jewel a big old slab of coffee cake, the cream cheese icing gleaming in the morning sun slanting across the table. No sooner had she slid it in front of Jewel, though, than she glanced over her shoulder to make sure the boys were still out of ear-shot and whispered, “Silas told me about your stepbrother’s surprise appearance. Land, boys will get the craziest ideas in their heads, won’t they? You want coffee with that?”

  “Please. And yes, they do. This went above and beyond, though.”

  “Honey,” Donna said as she poured coffee into two mugs, “if I had a nickel for every lamebrained thing my guys did growing up, I’d be wealthier than Bill Gates. Half-and-half okay?” When Jewel nodded, she set the carton on the table, along with the sugar bowl, then lowered herself again into the chair, stirring two spoonfuls of sugar into her own coffee. “Have you decided what to do?”

  “Working on it,” Jewel said, even though the answer was a flat-out “no.” Her throat closed, refusing admission to the cake. On a soft, commiserating moan, Donna reached over to curl her fingers around Jewel’s.

  “I’m sure there’s a solution,” she said, giving Jewel’s hand a firm squeeze before releasing it. “There always is, if you get quiet long enough to listen for the answer.”

  Why couldn’t you have been my mother? Jewel thought, which she realized was both pointless and mean, provoking a spurt of guilt that further obstructed the coffee cake’s journey.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m trying to do that, but…” The mug shook slightly when she lifted it to her lips.

  Donna reached inside her sweater pocket for a folded tissue. “Go ahead, it’s clean, I only put it there this morning.” Nodding, Jewel blew her
nose, wiped her eyes under her glasses, then took off the glasses to clean the smudges. Silas’s mother smiled. “Nobody ever said trusting was easy.”

  Then she inclined her head toward the laughter coming down the hall. “God knows there were times our boys nearly sent us over the edge, but I find myself missing that period of our lives more often than not. Teenage boys are a hoot and a half.” Her eyes swung back to Jewel’s. “And Aaron seems like a good boy.”

  “Except for the running away thing, you mean?” Jewel said with a smile as, determined, she renewed her assault on the hapless pastry. “Yeah. I couldn’t love him more if we were blood relations.”

  “I can see that.” Sympathetic eyes met hers. “But right now you no more need a teenager to look after than I need a dozen more casseroles.”

  Despite the still threatening tears, Jewel laughed, the laughter dwindling to nothing when Donna added, “And you do not need to feel guilty about that. Love him or not, taking on a responsibility that’s not yours is only asking for trouble.”

  Donna’s insight was making Jewel even wobblier, which would never do. “Oh, I absolutely agree. Besides, Aaron belongs with his daddy. And I’m sure this is nothing more than a big misunderstanding. Keith’s…okay.”

  And wasn’t that a rousing endorsement of the man? True, her memories of those years maybe weren’t as sharp as they should be, but she was pretty sure she’d recall if there’d been problems. Aside from those between Keith and Mama, that is. Those, she’d remember to her dying day. “Not that Keith was around all that much. He traveled a lot for his job, installing computer systems for big companies. I think.”

  “Good money in that line of work, I hear.”

  “I suppose, I wouldn’t really know.” Frowning, Jewel lightly tapped her fork on the rim of her plate. “I gather Aaron’s spent a lot of time with housekeepers and such. Which makes it even more important he be with his dad as much as possible while he’s still in school, right? But why hasn’t Keith returned any of our messages? I can’t imagine he’s not worried sick about Aaron. It simply doesn’t add up—”