A Place Called Home (12 page)

Thea hadn’t even
thought
about baths. “If you’re sure,” she said gamely.

“Oh, I’m sure,” said Mitch. There was a subtle warning in his tone not to press her luck. Gina had slipped her arm through his and was nudging him to leave. “I think that’s everything.” He used his thumb to point to the bulletin board. “My mom is good for just about every emergency that doesn’t require hoses and ladders.”

“Right,” Thea said. “I’ve got it. First number on the list. Three exclamation points.”

“That was my idea,” Emilie said. “Uncle Mitch just asked me to underline it.”

“Nicely done. It stands out.”

“It’s also number one on the speed dial,” Emilie said.

“Well, then, I’d say we have a very large safety net. Go get your brothers. We’ll hang out at the strip mall before the movie if we’re too early.” She waited until Emilie took off. “It’ll be fine, Mitch. You and Regina should go.”

Mitch reached in the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a ring of keys. He removed one and gave it to her. “For the front door. You won’t be able to get back in through the garage and I don’t have a key for the breezeway anymore.”

Thea dropped it in her jeans pocket. “We’re set.” If he didn’t move soon Gina was going to pop his shoulder out of joint. “Are you taking the bike or the truck?”

“Too cold for the bike. And Gina doesn’t like the truck. We’re taking the banana car.”

Gina gave him a quick jab in the stomach with her fist. “Stop calling it that.”

“The SUV I parked behind?” asked Thea. “That’s yours?”

She nodded. “I love it.”

It was the cue Mitch needed to get him moving. Before he got into an argument over the merits of manual versus automatic transmissions, he headed toward the garage. Emilie was getting coats for the boys and no matter what Thea’s parenting skills were, Em would mother them. He felt better, though he wasn’t sure he should.

Everyone ended up on the sidewalk at the same time. Thea shrugged into her jacket while she opened the doors. “Everyone in the back,” she told them. “I have a passenger side airbag. No kids.” That should impress Mitch, she thought. She didn’t have to tell him that her knowledge came from an aggressive ad campaign she headed up for Honda and the National Transportation Safety Board. The agency even won a Clio for it. “I’ll be your chauffeur. This is the one time you can tell me where to go.” The kids giggled and climbed in. There was some arguing about window and middle seats but Thea was patient, didn’t get involved, and let them work it out. That was something she had seen Kathy and Gabe do. It seemed to work for them; at least they didn’t end up being angrier than the kids. “Buckle up.” She leaned in, helped Case with his strap, then walked around to the driver’s side. “You’re not going to follow us, are you?” she asked Mitch.

“I’m
driving,” Gina said. “Otherwise you’d have a tail.”

Mitch shrugged, unapologetic. “I can’t help it. This is the first time they’ve been out of my sight with anyone but my family or the school.” He leaned down, waved through the window. They made faces back. “Okay,” he said, straightening. “You’re good to go.” He tapped the hood with the flat of his hand. “You have enough gas?”

“Mitch!” Gina and Thea both responded with exasperation.

“Take him,” Thea ordered Gina.

“I’m taking him,” Gina said at the same time.

Thea slipped behind the wheel and automatically locked all the doors, a safeguard against Mitch trying to get in. She pressed the ignition button and the engine caught. “All set?” she asked her crew.

“Set!”

Thea backed up a few feet to clear the Xterra when she pulled out into the street. “Everybody wave to your uncle Mitch. Case, see if you can’t make that monster face again. He seemed to really like that.” They started down the block. “And don’t think you’re all going to slouch down back there so you can’t be seen by other drivers.” Of course that’s exactly what they did most of the way to the Cineplex, thus making sure it looked like Thea was talking on the phone or having an animated conversation with herself.

Gina waited until the Volvo was out of sight before she started the car. “Where to?” she asked. “The Hampton or the Fairfield? Or maybe you want to just go back in the house?” Her hand slid off the gearshift and onto Mitch’s thigh. She ran her fingertips right up the inside to his groin and cupped him through his jeans. His response was immediate and not the one she expected.

“Gina!” He moved her hand back to the shift.

“What?”

He knew he’d hurt her feelings. God, he thought, all he seemed to do lately was apologize to women. “Sorry,” he said. “I need a little time.”

Gina said nothing. She put the SUV into drive and pulled out, keeping her eyes straight ahead. Beside her, she was aware that Mitch was equally focused on the road. She doubted he was seeing anything related to the traffic. “Maybe we could stop at the bookstore first. Pick up an early edition of the Sunday paper or something. Get a cup of coffee.” She glanced over in time to see him shrug. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I don’t
know.
” The words came out like a growl, equal parts frustration and annoyance. Neither of those emotions were directed at Gina. Mitch meant them for himself. He sat up suddenly. “This isn’t going to work, Gina.”

Panicked, her knuckles bleached of color as she gripped the steering wheel. She stared at him as long as she could and still keep the SUV from crossing into the passing lane. Finally she got the nerve to ask, “What isn’t going to work?”

“Tonight. Going out. I’m not going to be good company.”

Gina’s relief that he was not breaking up with her was so immense that she put aside how much she had been looking forward to these hours alone. “Then we won’t do anything right now. What if I just drive for a while?”

It wasn’t a bad idea, but Mitch also knew that Gina’s idea of driving aimlessly had a lot in common with house hunting and property searches. “That’s fine,” he said. “Lead on.”

Over the next hour and a half they covered enough of three townships to get a flavor of the communities. Mitch concluded there wasn’t much in the way of pasture left in this corner of the county. Houses were sown here instead, rising out of furrows in the hillsides, or where woods were cleared to make the land barren and suitable for nothing but topiary inspired by Dr. Seuss. The sameness of the homes was depressing. There were no two alike and yet they were difficult to tell apart. Redbrick. Pink brick. Yellow brick. Two stories, five bedrooms, four baths. Windows the size of garage doors. White shutters. Black shutters. A deck a helicopter could land on. What grass was left on the quarter-acre lots after the driveway was poured was fenced in like a stockade. No one seemed to find any contradiction in cathedral-like windows that invited public viewing and privacy fences that fairly screamed no peeking. It seemed to Mitch that all the good stuff must be going on in the backyard.

Gina loved all of it. She made Mitch take out her phone and make notes about locations and lot numbers. He did it because it helped him keep his mind off Thea and the kids. It was easier to take info on mortgage hell than it was to remember he had already passed up one chance at athletic sex with Gina—and that happened because he’d been thinking he should be at a cartoon movie for kids, about kids, with kids. He
was
a dicksmack.

It was dark when Mitch tossed the phone down. “Let’s go get something to eat,” he said.

Gina nodded and shot him an encouraging smile. “Quaker Steak still okay?”

“I was thinking of somewhere with room service.”

Thea unlocked the front door and pushed it open. The twins barreled inside. Emilie followed more sedately. “Shoes!” Thea called after them. She kicked her own off as soon as she stepped on the carpet. “Come on, guys. A little cooperation.” Emilie’s thick-soled shoes thumped to the floor then she went off to corral her brothers. Thea had to admit the twins had been very good at the movie and the restaurant, even subdued. They had come alive on the ride home, making up for every quiet moment that had come before. “Just add water,” she said under her breath. “Insta-boy.” She hung up her jacket and then put out an arm to take the children’s coats.

“Anthea?”

“Yes, Case?” She turned away from the closet and took the foot he held out and untied the laces.

“You’re talking to yourself.”

“Was I?” She dropped the sneaker on the carpet. Case braced himself against the wall and offered her a second go at the other foot. “I live alone. Who else am I going to talk to?”

“Mom used to talk to herself and she didn’t live alone.”

Grant stumbled in, pushed by his sister, and caught the gist of the conversation. He backed up to the wall like his twin. “She said we made her crazy.”

“I don’t believe it,” Thea scoffed. She wrestled Case’s shoe off him and started on Grant’s. “Your dad made her crazy. The three of you were her absolute joy.” Impulsively she hugged Grant to her. He suffered it while his brother laughed. In the face of his stoicism, Thea found herself blinking back unexpected tears and unable to trust her voice. She knelt down quickly, bending her head to get Grant’s right shoe. The knot was tight and her blurred vision didn’t help. She felt a small hand come to rest lightly on the crown of her head. She wasn’t sure who it belonged to until she heard her name.

“It’s all right, Anthea. We miss her, too.”

“And our dad,” Grant added in a perfectly natural tone.

For a moment Thea simply couldn’t breathe. She fought with the shoelace, making the knot tighter instead of unraveling it. “Damn,” she swore softly. “Damn. Damn. Damn.”

“Aunt Thea,” Emilie said, “you’re swearing. You’ll have to put money in the jar.”

“I’ll get it,” Grant offered. He wriggled free of Thea by somehow wiggling out of that knotted shoe and ran to the kitchen.

Thea held up the sneaker and stared at it, realizing her vision had cleared. That fast a minor crisis had been averted; she had not wanted to cry in front of the kids and have them comfort her. “Hey, Houdini, how about the other one?”

“Who is Dini?” Case asked. His hand had dropped from Thea’s hair to her shoulder.

“Houdini,” she said. “Harry Houdini. He was a great magician and escape artist. He’d have himself handcuffed and tied up and then he’d escape out of tanks filled with water and chained boxes. Stuff like that.”

“Like David Blaine,” Emilie said helpfully. “Remember, Case? We saw that video where he was buried in a box, like, for a week or something.”

Case’s memory was jogged. His eyes grew round. “Yeah! That was cool.” Within the space of a heartbeat his expression changed and became contemplative. “Do you think Mom and Dad could do that? They saw the video.”

Emilie’s response was scornful. “They’re dead, stupid.”

A siren went off in Thea’s head. Red alert! Incoming! Phasers on stun! Emilie clamped a hand over her mouth, hiding half of her stricken face. Thea dropped the sneaker, holding out one hand to Emilie and blocking Case’s attempt to headbutt his sister. Emilie was just outside her reach, and she backed up rather than come closer as Thea held on to Case. Before Thea could move, Emilie spun around and was running full tilt toward some predetermined refuge. Grant came around the corner, jangling change in the cussing jar, and was almost upended by Emilie’s charge to the stairway.

“What’s wrong with Em?” he asked. His eyes fell on Case squirming in Thea’s arms. “You guys wrestling?”

“Not exactly,” Thea gritted as she restrained Case’s flailing arms. “Case, come on. You know Emily’s sorry. She ran away because she feels so bad.”

“She called me stupid!” He twisted his head around and caught Thea on the chin. Had her jaw not already been clenched, it would have hurt more. “Ow!” Tears sprang to his eyes, more from frustration than pain. “I’m
not
stupid! I know they’re dead! Everybody knows that! But maybe they
could
get out of the boxes.”

Thea held him close as his body went limp. A second later he was crying softly against her sweater. Over the top of his head she could see Grant was perilously close to tears himself, ready to dissolve because his brother was hurting. She motioned him to come closer and cuddled him when he dropped to the floor beside her. “They did get out,” she said quietly, rocking Case, sheltering Grant. “That’s what God promises. You learned that in Sunday school, didn’t you?”

“B-but they’re n-not here now.”

Thea took a steadying breath. “Not that you can see them, no. But when I look at you and your brother, I see so many things that remind me of your mom and daddy that it doesn’t seem they’re so very far away. I like to think they’re still watching you and that they always will be.”

Case sniffed loudly. “Then they know Emilie called me stupid.”

Thea realized she was a becoming a big fan of concrete thinking. The abstract, existential processes were years away and maybe she could leave it to Mitch to debate the finer philosophical points when Case reached that stage. “Yes, they know Emilie called you stupid. Does that make you feel better?” She wasn’t surprised when he nodded. “They’re not angry at her, though. They know she only said it because her heart is hurting, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Case remained where he was while Grant scooted away, leaving the cussing jar behind.

“Where are you going, Grant?” asked Thea.

“To get Em somethin’ for her heart.”

Thea didn’t even try to stop him. She asked Case, “How much do I owe the jar?”

“Uncle Mitch puts in a quarter every time he swears.”

Glancing at the jar, which was only about about a fifth full, Thea thought he wasn’t doing too badly. She slipped her bag off her shoulder, found her change purse and gave it to Case along with a tissue. “You put in what you think is fair. I’m going to check on Emilie.”

Grant was standing outside his sister’s room holding a tin of plastic bandages decorated with superheroes. “Great idea,” she said. “I’ll take them in and tell her they’re from you. Go on downstairs. You and Case can set up the game I brought.”