The Empty Nesters

by Brown, Carolyn

  Was this an omen? Diana wondered as she climbed the stairs to change clothes. Did it mean that the kiss she’d shared with Luke would only bring on a storm in their lives if she let it go any further?

  There you go, overthinking everything. Her mother’s voice was back in her head. Why don’t you just move forward?

  Diana hurried up to her room and stripped off her wet clothing, hung it over the back of a ladder-back chair to dry, and pulled on a pair of gray sweatpants and an oversize T-shirt with Minnie Mouse on the front. Mama, he’s rich, and I barely make it from one paycheck to the next.

  What’s that got to do with anything? her mother continued to argue.

  “Hey, you decent?” Joanie asked, knocking on the bedroom door.

  “Come on in.” Diana was glad for the interruption so she could get her mother out of her head. “Sounds like the storm is over.”

  “Look out your window,” Joanie said.

  Diana crossed the floor and drew back the floral curtains. “Good grief! That is one eerie look out there.”

  “Tootsie says it’s the color of a tornado, and everything has gone all still and weird. She sent me up to bring you downstairs so we can get into the cellar until it’s passed through,” Joanie told her.

  “Where is this cellar?” Diana asked.

  “Cellar is right out the back door. The noise that sounds like a freight train off in the distance is the storm coming at us. We’ve seen our share of tornadoes in Sugar Run, so you should remember the sound,” Joanie said as she darted out of the room.

  “I wasn’t thinking of a tornado at this time of year.” Diana ran down the stairs to find Luke waiting for her in the kitchen.

  “Come on.” He grabbed Diana’s hand and held it tightly when the wind tried to force them back into the house as they rushed to the cellar. He sent her down before him and then closed the door behind in a hurry.

  “I hope either the house or the motor home is still standing when this is over,” Tootsie yelled above the turmoil. “If they’re both gone, I guess we’ll hitch us a ride to town and catch a bus back to Sugar Run.”

  “That is a lot of noise out there,” Diana hollered. “Wouldn’t you be sad if you lost everything?”

  “Sure I would, but I’ve got you four kids, so I haven’t lost everything even if the storm takes the house and motor home with it,” Tootsie replied.

  Diana’s hand still tingled from Luke’s touch. Maybe her mother was right about analyzing everything to death. But when Gerald announced that he’d been seeing another woman and wanted a divorce, it had shocked the hell out of her. She’d vowed nothing would ever sneak up on her like that again. So far she’d managed to avoid any more heartbreaking surprises.

  Old wooden benches lined two sides of the cellar. Shelves, probably built when Tootsie’s mama or grandmother canned vegetables and fruit in the summer, covered the third wall. Tootsie, Carmen, and Joanie sat across from Diana and Luke. The noise got louder and louder, and then suddenly everything became so quiet that it was creepy.

  Rain and hail began to pelt the metal can over the vent on top of the cellar. Luke took a deep breath and climbed the steps. “Uncle Smokey always said that when it starts to rain, the bad part is over, so we can go back to the house now.”

  “If we’ve got a house,” Tootsie said.

  “I’m going to think positive.” Luke put his back against the door and pushed. “Y’all get ready to run from here to the house, soon as I open the door. It sounds like that hail is pretty good sized.”

  Bigger than a pecan thrown from a tree limb, Diana thought as she hung back to let Tootsie go first. If any of her friends slipped and fell or got knocked out by a hailstone, she could at least pick them up and carry them to safety. That was one of the benefits of being almost six feet tall.

  “What are you waiting for?” Luke asked her as hailstones the size of Ping-Pong balls bounced off the cellar door.

  “Are they all inside?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  She took the steps two at a time, made it halfway across the short distance, slipped on a pile of hail, and fell flat on her back. Hail and rain beat down on her for a full ten seconds before Luke scooped her up in his arms, slung her over his shoulder like a bag of chicken feed, and carried her into the kitchen.

  “What happened?” Carmen blinked several times before she could believe what she was really seeing. “Why are you carrying Diana like that?”

  Luke bent slightly forward and set Diana on her feet, then put his hands on her shoulders. “Are you okay? Is anything broken?”

  “Only my pride.” She rubbed her hip.

  “You’ve got red dots on your face,” Joanie said.

  “Hail coming down at about fifty miles an hour will do that to you.” Diana put her hands over Luke’s. “Thanks for the lift into the house. It was like I flew.”

  His grin brightened the whole room. “Picking you up was nothing after working out with weights in the gym.”

  “I thought you were a computer geek.” Carmen cocked her head to one side. There was something between them—vibes, sparks, whatever it was called these days—and she hoped that Diana thought long and hard before she got involved with another man. A heart couldn’t stand two hurts like what Gerald had dealt her, or like Eli was pushing off on her, herself, these days.

  “I am exactly that.” Luke removed his hands and took the towel that Tootsie offered him. “But I found out that I’m also very fond of food. Sitting at a desk meant I had to give up doughnuts, potato chips, and cookies, or else I had to hit the gym four days a week. Since I have no willpower over food, I chose the gym.” He dried his hair and handed the towel to Diana.

  Were the extra ten pounds she’d gained since she and Eli married what made him go looking for another woman? No, that couldn’t be the excuse, not when he admitted that he’d been cheating since she was pregnant, and that was only a year after they were married. It had to be something to do with her weight, though. Maybe if she’d paid more attention to her looks and the scales, he wouldn’t be leaving her.

  “Stop it,” Diana whispered.

  “What?” Carmen asked.

  “I can tell by the expression on your face you’re thinking of Eli and blaming yourself,” Diana said.

  “You know me all too well,” Carmen sighed. “I was thinking that I might start going to the Y when we get back home. Want to join me?”

  Luke had said he had no willpower over food, so he exercised. She had no willpower when it came to Eli, but the gym surely couldn’t fix that. However, it could help her take those extra ten pounds off, and she might feel better about herself.

  “If Diana doesn’t want to go exercise with you, I will,” Luke said. “Only let’s go to a real gym instead. Anyone else want to go with us?”

  “I might want to go, too,” Diana said. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”

  “Not me,” Tootsie said. “I’ll just eat what I want and get fat and lazy. Speaking of that, let’s make hot chocolate and watch a movie. We don’t get cable up here, but we’ve got a whole stack of movies in the cabinet over there.” Tootsie shivered as she started toward her bedroom. “And let’s light a blaze in the fireplace to get this chill out of the house.”

  “I’ll do the chocolate,” Carmen offered, “and make a bag of popcorn to go with it.”

  Luke picked up a box of matches and crossed the room. “Uncle Smokey always left it ready in case it was cold when they arrived. It takes the electricity a while to heat everything up.”

  “Well, I’m going to my bedroom and putting on some more comfortable clothing, and then I’m going to tell Smokey all about that tornado that passed over us. We are one bunch of lucky folks to have a house still standing,” Tootsie declared.

  “I’ll go through the movies,” Joanie offered, and gasped when she opened the cabinet doors below the television. “Oh. My. Goodness. Look at this selection, and they’re alphabetically arranged. Everything from
Steel Magnolias to seasons of NCIS and MacGyver.”

  “I love MacGyver,” Carmen said as she used a whisk to stir the hot-chocolate mixture in a saucepan. Before she and Eli could afford cable, they’d watched reruns of the original MacGyver for entertainment. She’d make popcorn. He’d have a beer, and she’d have a diet soda pop, and they’d cuddle under blankets on the sofa. That was before she got pregnant—before he had the first of what must have been several flings.

  “Then we’ll binge out on that one this rainy afternoon,” Joanie said. “We’ve got the first and second season, so that might even keep us busy through tomorrow if it’s still raining.”

  “Oh, it will be.” Luke got the kindling going under the logs. “The weather report says it’s going to do this all week, and there’s flash-flood warnings. Now I’m going to dash out to the motor home, put some dry things in a plastic bag, and bring them in here to change. These wet things are giving me chills, but at least I don’t have to try to dodge the hail. I think it’s stopped.” He opened the door and sucked air through his teeth. “The hail brought a blue norther with it. I bet it’s dropped twenty degrees out there.”

  As soon as he was gone, Carmen turned to Diana, who was watching the popcorn in the microwave. “What’s going on with you and Luke?”

  “Nothing,” Diana answered, but she didn’t look at Carmen.

  “Did you hit your head when you fell?” Joanie laid the two MacGyver DVDs on the coffee table in front of a well-worn, buttery-soft leather sofa. “I call shotgun on one of the recliners.” She pointed toward a matching brown leather chair.

  “Did you?” Carmen hip-butted Diana.

  “What?”

  “Hit your head? That’s the only way you’d be addled so badly you’d lie to us about nothing between y’all. It’s plain as the flat little snout on a pig’s face,” Carmen said.

  “I kissed him. It felt good. It won’t happen again. Not only is he younger than me, but he’s rich as Midas. He’s too good a man to have his friends teasing him about a cougar who married him to get at his money,” Diana admitted in a monotone.

  Carmen whipped around, her eyes bulging. “Holy crap!”

  “What shocks you? That I kissed him or that I said I was a cougar?”

  “The latter,” Carmen whispered. “Looking at you two, no one would ever know that you’re older than him.”

  “Now, as Ma used to say on The Golden Girls, picture it: The Steakhouse in San Antonio in five years. Rebecca is married and has a new baby. Someone comes up and thinks she’s his wife and the baby is his. Imagine how embarrassed he’d be.”

  “Honey, in five years, he’ll be five years older, and no one is going to think that. You’re just borrowing trouble,” Joanie said as she sat down in front of the fireplace and flipped her wet blonde hair over her shoulder so the heat would dry it. “And besides, one kiss doesn’t mean he’s going to drop down on one knee and propose next week. It just means that y’all might like to spend some real time together after we get back home and things settle down from all this drama.”

  Carmen backed away from the stove and pulled her dark-brown hair up into a ponytail. In five years, would she be ready to kiss another man? She didn’t think so. Not even in ten years. She’d given her heart to Eli. He’d shattered it into a million pieces, and like poor old Humpty Dumpty, all her friends and all the miracles in the world couldn’t put it back together again.

  The rain fell in sheets, cold wind blowing behind it. Hoping it would let up in a few minutes, Luke tarried at the motor home. His waterproof tote bag was packed with a change of clothing and his laptop in case he got bored with MacGyver episodes. He seldom watched television, but if the women all liked that show, there was no doubt it was some kind of chick flick.

  When he gave up on the rain ever slackening off, he took a deep breath, picked up his bag, shut the door behind him, and took off for the house in a hard run. He was as wet as if he’d fallen fully dressed into a swimming pool by the time he reached the porch. Cold rainwater ran down and dripped off his chin, droplets of it sticking to his eyebrows and lashes. He hated to go inside and track mud across the hardwood floor, but it was that or stay out on the porch and freeze to death.

  “Hindsight,” he muttered. “What I should have done was get into some warm pajama pants and stay in the motor home.” He opened the door and ran in the longest strides he could take from there to the downstairs bathroom.

  “What’s the hurry?” Diana asked.

  “Don’t want to ruin the flooring,” he shouted as he passed by her in a flash. He was shivering from the inside out by the time he dropped his wet clothing on the floor. A good hot shower would warm him up before he got into dry clothing, but he didn’t want to take the time when the ladies already had popcorn and hot chocolate ready. He grabbed a towel, dried his body and hair, got dressed in a pair of flannel pajama pants and a T-shirt, and threw a flannel shirt over that. Once he’d pulled on a pair of thick socks, he hung his wet things and the towel over the shower stall.

  He went straight to the fireplace to warm his hands after he left the bathroom. “Unless you have to go out for something, stay inside. That rain is colder than ice water. If the temperature drops any more, we may be in for an ice storm.”

  “It feels like night, and it’s only three thirty,” Tootsie said as she snuggled down with a fluffy throw in her favorite recliner. “I’m sure glad y’all are here. This would be a dreary day without company.”

  Joanie handed her a cup of hot chocolate and a bowl of popcorn. “Drink this. It will warm you from the inside.”

  “Thank you, darlin’!” Tootsie held the mug in her hands to toast them before she took a sip. “I heard y’all talking about MacGyver, so let’s get him on the television. I like him really good, but the actor I really like is that handsome George Eads that plays Jack Dalton. Now there’s a man after my heart. He kind of reminds me of Smokey.”

  Luke set his laptop on the end table, took a throw from a rack sitting behind the sofa, and settled down to see what this television show was all about. He’d seen George Eads in a few episodes of CSI, so maybe it wasn’t totally a chick flick.

  “Before we get started, thank you to whoever cleaned all the water off the floor,” he said.

  Diana raised a hand. “That would be me. It wasn’t a big job. You were almost flying.”

  “I tried.” He liked the idea that Diana had cleaned up after him. That was almost personal, even if it was just water from the floor. “I should’ve stayed out in the motor home.”

  Tootsie sipped her hot chocolate and then set it on the table between her and Joanie. “That’s nonsense. Water can be mopped up off floors, and we’d have missed you.”

  Diana settled in between him and Carmen, her hip touching his. Joanie picked up the remote and started episode one. He was immediately drawn into the show, but he enjoyed watching Diana’s expressions as much or more than anything else. Joanie hit the pause button after they’d watched two episodes, and they all made sandwiches to eat in the living room while they watched MacGyver use paper clips and plastic straws to get out of tight places.

  At ten o’clock, Tootsie yawned and said, “You kids can watch this until dawn if you want, but I’m going to bed.”

  “Me, too,” Carmen said.

  Luke looked at the hard rain still pounding against the window. “Guess I’ll get a cold shower on the way to the motor home.”

  “Nonsense!” Tootsie spit out one of her favorite words. “You can sleep on the sofa until it lets up.”

  “I’m getting partial to that big king-sized bed. I’ve got plenty of dry clothes, so I’ll just run between the raindrops.” He got to his feet and rolled the kinks out of his neck. “Anyone want to walk me out to the motor home?”

  “Honey, I love you, but I wouldn’t get out in that weather for Jesus,” Tootsie said.

  “Then I guess I’ll go by myself. If I don’t make it in for breakfast, y’all can figure I slipped and fell,
bumped my head on something, and drowned in the pouring rain,” he teased.

  “Poor baby,” Carmen shot back as she gathered up the empty cups and bowls.

  “Enough about bumping heads and dying,” Tootsie said. “I don’t want to go to another funeral for at least ten years. And now I’ll have the hymn they sang at the service today stuck in my head while I’m trying to sleep.”

  “Which one?” Carmen asked.

  “‘I’ll Fly Away,’” Tootsie answered.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Tootsie. That was insensitive of me to bring up such a thing after this morning,” Luke apologized.

  “Accepted. Now good night to all y’all.”

  “Good night,” all four of them sing-songed as she left the room.

  Luke stood up to leave next and said, “If it’s still raining tomorrow, maybe we can watch some more of that show. I liked it.”

  He darted outside before anyone could say anything, and sure enough, he was soaking wet all over again by the time he reached the motor home. He went straight to the tiny bathroom, hung his dripping clothing on the hook on the back of the door, and took a quick hot shower. When he got out, he dressed in sweat bottoms and a shirt and crawled in between the sheets on the bed. It took a few minutes to warm up a spot, but once he did, he fell right to sleep. He dreamed about Diana for the second night in a row. This time they were both older and sitting on a porch swing watching a couple of little children play in the yard. He knew they were Rebecca’s kids, but they were calling him Grandpa.

  He awoke, shivering in total darkness. Rain was still coming down like it meant business, but the electricity was out. Using a flashlight, he located the closet and was packing a bag again when he found an old yellow slicker hanging at the very back. He put it on, picked up the bag he’d packed, and ran from the motor home to the house. He built up a blaze in the fireplace, and using the quilt from the back of the sofa like a sleeping bag, he stretched out on the floor. He was warm and dry, and the fire threw off enough light to keep it from being so damned dark. Hopefully by daylight the power would be back on, but if it wasn’t, they could survive. He shut his eyes, and hoping that he’d pick right up on the dream he’d left behind, he went to sleep.