by Amy Ruttan
“Thanks, Sweet Pea.”
Sally nodded, kissed Lucy on the top of her head and left.
“Who’s coming over for dinner, Daddy?” Lucy asked.
“A friend of mine from work. She’s new to Austin. She’s a doctor.”
Lucy smiled and nodded but didn’t take her eyes off her chore. “Sorry about the glitter. I forgot that it spilled.”
“That’s okay. You’re helping to clean it up now and that’s good. Hopefully there’s none in my hair anymore.”
Lucy glanced up and peered at the top of his head. “Just a bit. Can I go outside and play until the doctor gets here?”
“Sure.”
Lucy got up from the table and he heard the back door open and shut. She was perfectly safe in his fenced backyard and he could see her from the kitchen window. It wasn’t long before her neighborhood friend joined her, and they were playing in her little playhouse with their dolls.
He checked on dinner and Sally had a done a good job prepping something out of the hodgepodge of groceries he’d bought in a panic. There was nothing for him to do now but wait. So he decided to set the table.
It was busy work and it kept his mind off the fact that he was introducing a woman to Lucy. That he was introducing a woman he’d been intimate with, a woman he was interested in, to Lucy. He’d never done that before.
Lucy had met his friends before, though, and he was trying to approach this from the angle that he and Sandra were just friends, but try as he might he couldn’t wrap his head around that, because he was attracted to Sandra.
He always had been.
And he’d made love with her. He’d thought about that night in the cabin often, ever since it happened, but he was so terrified about what it would mean to move on.
A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts and he could see Sandra standing on his porch through the screen door. She was holding what looked like a pie.
“Hey, Sandra. Come on in—the door’s open.”
Sandra opened the door and nervously stepped in. “I bought a pie on the way here.”
“I thought you would’ve baked it,” he teased.
“No. I’m the worst baker ever. My mom tried to show me numerous times, but it was a lost cause. I accidentally poisoned my dad once and sent him to the emergency room with acute stomach pains.” She laughed nervously.
Kody took the pie. “How do you accidentally poison someone baking?”
“Ah, well, when your mother tells you to grease the pan it’s best if you use lard instead of axel grease.”
Kody laughed. “Good point. Come on in and sit down.”
He took the pie to the kitchen and Sandra perched on the edge of his couch in the living room. She looked highly uncomfortable and nervous. He was glad he wasn’t the only one feeling like that.
“Can I get you anything to drink?” he asked her from the kitchen.
“No, thank you.”
He returned to the living room and sat next to her on the couch. They didn’t say anything.
“Does Lucy know I’m coming?” she asked, breaking the silence.
“She does. I told her you were my friend.”
“Naturally, and of course I am.” Her eyes narrowed and she reached out to touch his hair. “Why do you have pink glitter in your hair?”
He groaned and ran his hand through his hair again. “Damn, I thought I got it all. Long story short I touched a glitter bomb on my table and then ran my hand through my hair in a moment of stress when I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner.”
Sandra giggled. “Well, it suits you.”
“Thanks. Do you want to go meet my glitter bomber? She’s outside in the backyard, and then maybe we’ll go sit on the front porch. I don’t have chairs in the backyard of doom.”
“Backyard of doom?” Sandra asked, getting up and following him.
“It’s just full of outdoor toys and a playhouse. It’s a disaster really.” He held open the back door and they walked out into his postage-stamp backyard. “Lucy, can you come out here for a moment and meet my friend Dr. Fraser?”
Lucy popped out of her play tent and came over to them.
“Lucy, this is Dr. Sandra Fraser, and, Sandra, this is my daughter, Lucy.”
Lucy smiled up at Sandra. “Nice to meet you, Doctor. What kind of doctor are you?”
“I’m a trauma surgeon...or rather I operate on people who are really hurt in the emergency department.”
“Cool, like people who get an arm chopped off or impaled or something?”
Kody was mortified. “Where did you learn about impaling?”
“Some boy at school was talking about something he saw on the internet. So, Dr. Fraser, have you dealt with that?”
Sandra’s eyes were wide, and he could tell that she was trying very hard not to laugh at the little girl, dressed in a princess gown, asking her about impaling and lost limbs.
“I have,” Sandra said. “Metal pole, right through his belly button.”
“Cool! Did he survive?”
“Lucy! What has got into you?” Kody asked, astonished.
Lucy shrugged. “Aunt Sally tells me a bunch of stuff all the time.”
“I need to have a talk with your aunt Sally, then,” Kody muttered.
Sandra was laughing behind her hand. She was thoroughly enjoying this.
“He did survive, in fact, and he learned not to try and pass people on the road when you’re not supposed to pass, especially when you’re on a motorbike,” Sandra said.
“Cool!”
“I think you should go back and play with your friend.” Kody pushed his daughter off back toward her playhouse and shook his head as he led Sandra through the backyard gate and up the driveway to the front porch. “I don’t know what’s got into her. I’ve never heard her ask about stuff like that before in my life.”
“Well, maybe she doesn’t say it to you, but she obviously listens or talks to her aunt,” Sandra said. “She seems fascinated, though, by it. I was fascinated by it all when I was about her age.”
He cocked an eyebrow and pulled out a lawn chair for her. “So, you’re telling me that you were interested in limbs and impalement?”
Sandra chuckled. “Okay, maybe not to that extent, but I was certainly interested to know how the body worked and what was going on inside. I’m wondering, too, if she didn’t say those things for shock value because she’s meeting a friend of her father’s...who happens to be a female.”
“Good point. I don’t bring around many friends. She knows my partner, Robbie, and my best friend, Ross, who is dating Sally, but that’s about it.”
“How about Megan Coombs?”
Kody scratched his head. “Yeah, she knows Megan a bit, but not a whole lot. Megan was Jenny’s nurse. How did you know that?”
“You sent her to check up on me.” There was a twinkle in her eyes and his stomach sank.
“What. Did. She. Tell. You?”
Sandra leaned back and made a face as if she were trying to recall it, but he knew whatever Megan had told him was at the forefront of her mind. He’d forgotten, briefly, that Megan had been sort of privy to his crazy past life the one year they were in junior high school together before Megan moved away. When he’d been fourteen and dumb.
“Something about a streak?”
Kody scrubbed his hand over his face. “I’m going to kill her.”
“You took an oath to do no harm!” Sandra stated, trying not to laugh.
“I did not! She did, but I didn’t.”
Sandra was laughing, belly laughs, and Kody couldn’t help but join in.
“Please tell me you have a picture.”
“Why do you want to see a picture of my bare butt, colored purple, streaking across the football field?” he asked, curious about her inter
est.
“I don’t know. I guess it’s a case of seeing is believing?”
“Trust me. It happened, and it took forever to get all the paint out of every nook and cranny.”
She shook her head, trying to tell him to stop, but she was laughing too hard.
“I’m glad that my pain brings you so much pleasure,” he said dryly. “Didn’t you do anything stupid when you were a teenager?”
“No, not that stupid, but I did go skinny-dipping. A lot.”
“In the ocean?” he asked.
“Sometimes, but sometimes we’d drive up into the mountains and find a hot spring or something.”
“Who is we?” he asked, feeling a slight twinge of jealousy.
She shrugged. “A group of friends. An old boyfriend or two. It doesn’t seem like it, but I do have a bit of a wild side. Just that as a doctor, and the head of Trauma, I’ve learned to curb some of my wilder tendencies.”
“That’s a shame,” he said huskily. “I wish I’d known that wild Californian girl.”
Pink bloomed in her cheeks. “She’s in here somewhere, but I don’t think I’ll be doing any kind of skinny-dipping or anything like that anytime soon.”
“Right. Yeah, I guess when you become a parent you sort of have to grow up.”
She nodded. “I suppose so.”
“And there is a picture,” he said, winking.
“Really?”
“Yeah, but it’s just a blur and from the paper. My mother was so angry when she saw it. If I wasn’t bigger than her, she probably would’ve tanned my hide.”
“Did she often have to?”
He chuckled. “No, she just made it known that we’d be in a world of hurt.”
Sandra chuckled and then she sniffed the air. “Is something burning?”
Oh. My. God. “The chicken!”
He dashed inside and saw the smoke billowing out from the oven. He opened the oven carefully and pulled out a blackened chicken, one that wasn’t supposed to be blackened. The carrots matched the chicken, as did the potatoes.
He heard the window open behind him and coughing, as Sandra had followed him inside. She was opening the kitchen windows to let in some air.
Lucy came in from the backyard.
“Whoa!” Lucy said. “What happened?”
“I burned the dinner Aunt Sally prepared for us,” Kody mumbled, setting down the mess on the top of his stove and turning the oven off.
“It was a valiant effort,” Sandra said, trying not to cough.
“I promised you dinner,” Kody said. “This is not how I planned today to go.”
“Well, how about we go out somewhere?” Sandra suggested. “Is there somewhere we can walk to from here? It’s a really nice afternoon.”
“Yeah, there’s a diner a couple of blocks from here,” he said.
“YES!” Lucy jumped up and down, excited. “It’s great, Sandra, you’ll love it. The waitresses wear roller skates!”
“Oh, it’s a fifties diner?” Sandra asked.
Kody nodded. “Yeah, would that be okay?”
Sandra smiled. “Perfect.”
“Go get changed and wash up, Lucy, and then we’ll go for a walk.” Kody watched as Lucy happily pranced down the hall to do that.
“She seems happy,” Sandra said.
“She loves the fifties diner. You just made her night.”
“Good.”
“And you’ll be okay eating that?”
She shrugged. “If I can get french fries, I should be. I had some Chinese food that Megan brought last night. It was great.”
“Yes. I’m going to have to have a talk with Dr. Coombs.”
“No, don’t,” Sandra said. “She’s really sweet and I don’t have many friends here. You have to work, and I don’t want you to scare her off. If you did, I would have to kick your purple butt!”
“My dad has a purple butt?” Lucy asked, sneaking up behind them.
Kody laughed. “Not since high school. Now, why don’t we go have some dinner at the diner?” Which, given the state of his unpreparedness for dinner in the first place and the disaster of not being able to focus on a chicken dinner, was what they should’ve done right from the very start.
* * *
The dinner at the diner was exactly what she needed. She’d forgotten how much she liked french fries. And Lucy really seemed to be enjoying herself. Truth be told, Sandra was too. She hadn’t planned on eating fries in a diner. She’d been hoping to spend time with Kody and Lucy at their house, where they could talk about things without having to shout above The Big Bopper and Buddy Holly.
Still, it was fun.
And she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun.
Lucy was an absolute delight and Sandra found herself longing for something more, which she couldn’t have. She and Kody had made a promise that they didn’t have to commit to one another.
She wasn’t sure about opening her heart again because of Alex, and he was still grieving his late wife, but now there was a part of her that wished she hadn’t made that promise. She wished that she could be hopeful for something more.
After their dinner, they wandered just a bit beyond the fifties diner and found a soft-serve ice-cream shack, which literally looked like a dirty old shack on the outside, except for the side of the building, which had been transformed by a mural artist, who had painted a beautiful sunrise. Just like the sunrises that she often experienced in the morning from her kitchen.
Inside the shack was an immaculate soft-serve ice-cream place that served up sugary twists of cool, soft ice cream. They all got a small cone and slowly walked back to Kody’s house, Lucy skipping ahead of them. They decided to take a walk to the local playground, so that Lucy could burn off some steam on the swings and the slides.
It was like something out of a dream.
It was something she’d always imagined in her deepest, most sacred dreams. It was something that she’d never thought would happen, especially when her doctor in San Diego had told her she wouldn’t get pregnant.
She could get used to a Sunday like this more often.
Don’t get too attached.
Her anxiety reminded her that the last time she’d got too attached that man had broken her heart.
“Why do you want a divorce? I thought we were happy?” she demanded.
“We were, but then I got stressed, Sandra. All the fertility treatments... There was no spontaneity to our sex life. And you turned into a totally different person.”
“It was the hormones, Alex. You know that. You’re a doctor!”
“I’m sorry, Sandra. Adoption is not for me and I’m not even sure I want kids.”
Her world dropped out beneath her.
“You don’t want kids? You told me you did when we got married.”
“I don’t know. But I know I don’t want to adopt. You can’t have children and you want a family, and I’m not sure I can support your decision. I’m not sure I’m the right man for you after all.”
“Hey, you okay?” Kody asked, waving a hand in front of her face.
“What?”
“You zoned out there and seemed so sad,” he said.
“Just thinking about something. Something that is not important.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Pretty sure.”
They had come to the park and Lucy was running straight for the activity equipment while Sandra and Kody found a park bench. She’d finished her ice cream off and just enjoyed a nice summer evening in a park, listening to the cottonwood leaves rustling in the evening wind.
“It’s so beautiful here,” she said.
“Austin is a beautiful city. Although your stretch of land just outside the city is beautiful too. I’d rather live out there than in the city lim
its.”
“Maybe one day you will.” She smiled at him. “Maybe one day you’ll get your pilot’s license and you’ll need a big piece of property for a landing strip.”
“If I can afford that after I get my pilot’s license. Do you know how expensive flying lessons are?”
“Yes, but pilots make a lot of money.”
“Commercial pilots, but I don’t think that air-ambulance pilots do. Not around here when there are a lot of hospitals for people to get to. Maybe up north, but, even then, there’s the high cost of living.”
“So you’ve thought about this?” she asked.
“Of course. Jenny and I were making plans to do just that, until she got pregnant. Besides, I’ve lived in Texas for so long now I don’t even think I’d be able to handle negative forty and days of endless night. And my sister is here and Jenny’s parents and...”
“And?” she asked.
“You.”
She felt the heat bloom in her cheeks. “I don’t want to be a reason to hold you back from your dreams.”
“You’re not. We all have to grow up sometime and I’m a paramedic. I love my job. I love being the first one on the scene and helping where I can. I love thinking two steps ahead so that I can get the patient to the hospital alive, so that you doctors have a better chance of saving that patient. I’m the first one there and I’m their best shot. I like that. I like being able to be a part of saving lives.”
“And as one of those doctors, we do appreciate those who do a good job, like you and your sister. You make our jobs easier.”
He grinned at her. “That’s the first time a doctor has ever thanked me.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “I guess we don’t really get a chance to socialize often with doctors.”
She didn’t say anything more.
“Daddy! Look, it’s Grandma and Grandpa.”
Kody’s spine stiffened and Sandra saw the older couple who she’d first seen the day after the mudslide, walking across the park toward them.
“Your in-laws are here?”
“Yes,” Kody said, and she could hear the stress in his voice.
“Go talk to them.”
“Yeah, okay, I’ll be back in a moment. I’m not... I’m not ready for them to meet you.”