by Nora Roberts
happy red poppies on a blue background, wing chairs in red with blue stripes—all of which they’d found at flea markets and reupholstered. Like the tables they’d refinished, the lamps Savannah had saved from some junk pile, painted up and made new again.
All the pieces all around, he thought, bits and pieces, nothing perfect, nothing exact. And everything that made a home.
She plopped down in a chair, rubbed her belly.
“Ma’s getting dressed. You’re early. You want coffee? I’ve already had my one allowed cup for the day—I just can’t quit it—but I can make you some.”
“Just sit.”
“How about some sassafras tea, cowboy?”
He grinned. “Not in this life, you weird-ass hippie. Why aren’t you at the shop?”
“I needed a day off. I had some things to finish up in the workshop, and Justin starts getting overprotective about this stage of the bake-off.” She patted her belly again. “I could’ve taken Ma today, Cal. I know how you feel about it.”
“It’s no problem.”
“I can get a sitter easy, if you want me along.”
“Don’t worry about it, Vanna.”
“She’s really looking forward to it—mostly it’s spending time with you.” She looked up at the ceiling as she heard a thump, a series of yips, and boy-size gut laughter. “Time’s up.”
“I’ll go get him.”
Savannah waved Callen back down. “No need for that. Believe me, he knows the way. And I made the mistake of telling him you were coming by. So brace yourself.”
“I like him. He’s got your what-can-I-do-with-this way and Justin’s look-at-the-funny-side attitude. You made an entertaining kid.”
“Working on another. Want to know which kind?”
“Which kind of what? Oh, boy or girl? I thought you weren’t finding out.”
“We weren’t—we didn’t with Brody, and he was the best surprise ever. So we weren’t, and we didn’t, then we were talking one night about how the nursery, which was gender neutral, evolved into boy. Did we leave it, do it neutral again, or what now that we’ve got Brody in his big guy room, and are about to fill the crib again. So we decided, just find out. And we did.”
“Okay, what flavor’s in there?”
“Strawberry ice cream.”
“Pink? A girl.” He stretched out his foot to give hers a nudge. “You’ll have one of each. Nice work.” He watched her belly ripple. “Talk about weird.”
“She knows we’re talking about her. Aubra or Lilah. We’ve got it down to those two. Whoever wins gets first name, the other middle. Which one do you like?”
“I’m not going there, between Ma and Pa.”
“I’m not saying which one’s mine, which is Justin’s. Just asking which strikes you.”
“I guess ‘Aubra’ then.”
“Yes!” She shook a fist in the air. “Another vote for me. Now, if I talk him into Aubra Rose, and saving Lilah for if we have another girl—”
“You’re already thinking of another?”
The puppy, a wildly affectionate Lab, streaked down the steps and straight into Callen’s lap, forelegs braced on Callen’s chest as he lapped Callen’s face. Brody, hair in mad sleep tufts, face rosy, eyes as manic as the pup’s, navigated the steps with a plastic bucket.
“Cal, Cal, Cal!” Whatever else he babbled was too fast for Callen’s limited toddler-speak, but when the boy dumped the bucket, flung himself into Cal’s lap like the puppy, Callen understood unfiltered love.
He couldn’t say how he’d come to deserve it, but it sure as hell brightened a day.
Brody wiggled down again to retrieve the bucket, dig in for an action figure.
“’Ronman.”
“I can see that. I thought you were a Power Ranger man.”
“Red Ranger. Hulk. Cap’n ’Merca. Sliver Ranger.”
“Silver,” his mother corrected. “Sil-ver.”
“Sil-ver.”
He named his collection as he pushed them at Callen.
“I can’t stop Ma from buying them for him.”
“Why should she stop?” Katie Skinner came down the stairs. She wore a dark gray dress, short, sensible black boots.
More, Callen thought, she wore happy. To his mind, that hadn’t been a staple of her wardrobe for far too many years.
It suited her, that happy, like the hair she’d let go stone gray, and the laugh she let loose when Brody raced over to hug her legs.
“Cal!” he told her.
“I can see that.”
“Cal play.”
“Go ahead,” Katie told Callen. “Give him some time, we’ve got plenty. I’m going to make Savannah some tea.”
“Ma, I would really love some, thanks.”
“She wants sassafras,” Callen said as he slid down to sit on the floor, thrilling both boy and puppy.
“I actually do.”
“Two shakes.”
Callen chose some men for battle. “You put a light back in her, Vanna. You and Justin and this boy.”
“I think we got it going again. You lit another when you came back home. It’s amped up a little bit more still at the idea of you and Bodine Longbow.”
When his head shot up, his eyes narrowed, Savannah hugged her belly and laughed. “You might’ve been away, Cal, but you shouldn’t have forgotten how much overlap there is in people we all know. We heard all about you and Bodine dancing sexy at the Roundup this past Saturday night.”
“‘Dancing sexy.’” Callen held his hands over Brody’s ears. “Is that any way to talk around a child?”
“His daddy and I have been known to do some sexy dancing right in front of him.”
“I might have to cover my own ears.”
Smirking, Savannah ran a hand down one of her braids. “So, about you and Bodine.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
“I’ve always liked her—all of them, but Bodine especially. You don’t know how she’d ride over two or three times a year with a bag of clothes for me. She’d say how I was so handy with a needle, maybe I could fix them up and use them. There wasn’t a thing wrong with them—maybe a button missing or a little tear in a seam. She said that to spare my feelings. And when Justin and I opened the shop, she was one of the first in the door. She has a kind heart, and class. I’m not sure you deserve her.”
She smiled when she said it.
“Women, Brody? They are contrary creatures. It’s best you learn that now.”
“W’men.” Brody held up Pink Ranger and hooted.
An hour with his sister and entertaining nephew, another hour or so taking his mother to dinner—Callen considered them nice bookends. What stacked between them was duty.
He stopped as she asked so she could buy flowers, waited patiently as she selected what she wanted—and kept his thoughts about the yellow tulips not lasting the night to himself.
He’d have paid for them, but she wouldn’t have it.
He drove to the cemetery, let her lead the way after he’d parked. He hadn’t been since the funeral, hadn’t intended to come again. Now he realized he’d make this sojourn with her whenever she asked.
He could be grateful they maintained the place, he supposed, cleared most of the snow. What was left made hard-packed paths easy enough for her to walk.
He kept a hand on her arm in any case as she navigated through the stones to the small, simple one marked with his father’s name.
Jack William Skinner
Husband and Father
True enough, Callen thought. He’d been both. The stone didn’t need to take into account the degrees of success on either.
“I know it’s hard for you to come here,” Katie began. “I know it’s not altogether fair for me to ask you to come.”
“It’s not a matter of fair.”
“He had weaknesses,” she continued as the wind blew through her hair. “He broke promises to you.”
To all of us, Callen thought, but kept sil
ent.
“He made life harder for you because of those weaknesses and broken promises. He knew that. Oh, Callen, he knew it, and he did try. I could’ve left, taken you and Savannah and left him.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I loved him, and love’s a powerful thing.” While the wind blew through her hair, she stroked a hand along the top of the gravestone. “It can take hard knocks, again and again. He loved us. That’s why when he gave in to those weaknesses it hurt him more than it ever hurt me. He’d work hard to make up for it, but then…”
Then, Callen thought. He remembered a whole lot of thens. “There were times you could barely put food on the table, when the bills piled up like cordwood.”
“I know it. I know.” Still, she continued to run a gloved hand over the top of the gravestone, as if soothing a mournful ghost. “Just as I know gambling was a sickness for him, one he struggled with. He never blamed anybody but himself, Callen, and that’s an important thing to remember. Some do, they cast the blame around for their addictions. Liquor or drugs or gambling. Casting blame is cruel, violent. Your father was never cruel, never laid a hand on me or either of our children. He didn’t have a mean bone in him.”
With a sigh, she stopped stroking the stone, took her son’s hand. “But he let you down.”
“What about you?” God, it infuriated him she never blamed her husband for the losses, the scrimping, the humiliations.
“Oh, Cal, he let me down. And the down was harder, so much harder when he’d go so long without falling. A part of you blames me for not making him stop.”
“Used to,” he admitted. “I used to blame you for that. I know better now. I don’t blame you for anything, Ma. That’s God’s truth.”
She stared hard at him, eyes seeking, then closing. “That lifts a weight. I can’t tell you the weight that lifts, knowing that’s the truth.”
His father, Callen thought, hadn’t been the only one to make mistakes, to let people down. “I can be sorry I didn’t lift it sooner. I am sorry.”
“I made mistakes. I made mistakes when I made excuses for him, when I made them to you and Vanna.” She squeezed his hand. “I can be sorry for that, and I am. He’d tell himself he had it licked. He’d know better, but he’d tell himself that. He’d just sit in on a friendly poker game, or put a small bet on a horse race, anything really. He knew he’d slide back, but he’d tell himself he wouldn’t. He’d stop going to his meetings.”
“What meetings?”
“Gamblers Anonymous. He didn’t tell you or Savannah about going to them. The truth is, part of him was ashamed for going, for needing to go. He wouldn’t tell me when he stopped going, though I’d start seeing signs. The only thing he ever lied to me about in our lives together were those meetings—skipping them to gamble. I could forgive him for that, because the lies and the gambling were the same.
“He was proud of you, you and Savannah. Maybe you’ll never feel the truth of that—and that’s his blame not yours. Maybe you’re not going to remember the good times, and we had them. Or how he put you up on a horse the first time, brought home your first dog, taught you how to hammer a nail and mend a fence. But he did those things, Callen, and had a father’s pride in you. And your father never forgave himself for costing you and Savannah your birthright, for gambling away the ranch acre by acre.”
“It was your home.”
“I’ll tell you a secret.” She laid a hand on his arm, rubbed. “The ranch was nothing but work for me. Means to an end. I’d have liked a house like Vanna’s. Neighbors close by, a yard, a little garden. Horses and cattle and fields to plow and plant—just endless work. Your daddy loved it. You love it. I never did.”
“But you…” He trailed off, shook his head. Maybe a man could never understand women, and the strength that ran through them. Or how they could love.
“I learned well enough how to be a ranch wife, but the truth is, it was never natural for me. I love living with Savannah and Justin and that baby boy. And I’m useful to them—that’s natural to me. I can help make their lives easier, and every day I’m blessed to see how happy they are together. How my girl’s made a good life for herself. I’ve never figured out what to do to make your life easier, to make up for having what was yours gambled away.”
“You don’t need to. I can make my own. I don’t need what was.”
“I know you can. Didn’t you send money to me every single month? Don’t you still—and there’s no need for you to—”
“I need to,” he said, cutting her off.
“You can make your own, Callen, and I know you’ll build your own happy life, but the land was yours, and I couldn’t keep it for you.”
“I don’t want you to carry that, Ma. I don’t want to think I’ve left that weight on you. If it was only the land, I could’ve bought it back, or enough of it. I left to make my own, to prove I could—to myself. I came back because I had, and I missed home. Home wasn’t that plot of land.”
“I wanted you to bring me today so I could say these things, and maybe put them aside for us. He never forgave himself for losing what should’ve been yours. And when he finally accepted he’d never get it back, it was in that despair that he took his own life. I couldn’t forgive him for that.”
Katie looked back at the stone, at the name carved there. “For all the rest, I’d forgiven him. The day we buried him here, I had no forgiveness in my heart. Anger and blame. I couldn’t feel anything else. Friends and neighbors came, I said the words back to them you’re supposed to say. I said words to you and your sister you’re supposed to say. But the words I said to him in my private thoughts were angry and unforgiving.”
“But you come here, to put flowers on his grave.”
“I’d have done that whether or not I’d forgiven him. And I have. I have forgiven him. He lost so much more than some acres of ground, some buildings, some animals, Callen. He lost the respect if not the love of his daughter, he lost his son. He lost the years he might have had with his grandchildren. So I forgave him. I come here, and put the flowers on his grave and remember there were good times, and there was love between us. We made you and Savannah between us, and that’s my miracle. So I can do that, and let the rest go.”
She bent down, laid the flowers. “I don’t ask you to forgive him, Cal. But I needed you to try to understand, and try to put this aside between us. I want to watch my boy build his own good life.”
For too long, for too many times, he’d thought her weak. He saw now that Cora Bodine wasn’t the only woman in his life with steel in her.
“There’s nothing hard between us, Ma. I’m sorry if I let you feel there was. I just couldn’t stay.”
“Oh, no, Cal, you were right to go.” She dug a tissue out of her pocket. “I missed you something awful, but I was glad you left to make your own.”
They weren’t words he said easily or often, but he saw she needed them, would never ask, but needed. “I love you, Ma.”
Her eyes already swimming, spilled out tears. “Callen. Cal.” She leaned against him, pressed her face to his chest. “I love you so much. My boy, I love you so much.”
He felt her release a breath as if she’d held it for years. “Now I know you’re really home again.”
“I left because I needed to. I came back because I wanted to. I missed my ma,” he said and heard her muffled sob against his heart. “Stop worrying now. You’re getting cold. Come on, let’s get you in the truck with the heater going.”
Katie looked down at the stone, the flowers. “Yes, it’s time to go.”
“Good, because I’ve got a date with a pretty woman.” He slipped an arm around her. “I’m going to buy her a fancy dinner.”
She dashed the lingering tears away. “Would that run to a glass of wine?”
“You’ve got a taste for wine, do you?”
“I do tonight.”
“Then we’ll get ourselves a bottle.”
* * *