“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 silent.
“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.”