Bliss and the Art of Forever (A Hope Springs Novel) (36 page)

Not knowing what else to say, Brooklyn smiled and offered, “I imagine Addy enjoys your company just as much. She’s lucky to have family close. Callum, too.”

“What about you?” he asked, as they walked toward the back door. “You have anyone nearby?”

She shook her head. “It’s just me since my husband died. What’s left of his family is all in Italy.”

“That’s right. Cal said you’re heading across the pond once school’s out. Bet you’re looking forward to that.”

“I am,” she said, though it felt as much like a lie as it did the truth.

Two hours later, the three adults were sitting at the picnic table, their meal devoured, scraps of buns and chips and chunks of uneaten potatoes littering their paper plates. Both men nursed Shiner longnecks while Brooklyn poured herself a third glass of wine.

She didn’t need it, especially since she was going to have to drive herself home, but she was so relaxed, so unbelievably at ease . . . the night was cool, and it was too early in the year to be battling mosquitoes. The patio lights threw a bright glow over enough of the yard for Addy to play.

Oh, but she could get used to this, Brooklyn mused, listening to Callum and his dad talk basketball and home improvements, watching Addy wear herself out running around with a ribbon on a stick, twirling it, whipping it, spinning with it over her head, jumping up off the ground—

And then the girl screamed.

“Oh, crap.” Brooklyn spilled her wine as she shoved out of her seat. Callum scrambled up behind her, leaping over the table while his dad circled the end and followed. They all reached Addy where she sprawled on the grass as her shrieks died and her sobs set in.

“Where’s it hurt, pumpkin?” Callum asked, checking her face, her bare arms, and her legs beneath her shorts. “What’d you do?”

“My foot, Daddy,” she said, and he reached for one then the other as Brooklyn cradled her head.

“I don’t see anything. Did you twist your ankle?” He looked at both sides of each, tugging down her socks and running his finger over the bones. “I’m going to take off your shoe—”

“No, Daddy, don’t. It hurts in my shoe.”

“Look at the bottom,” Brooklyn said, stroking Addy’s hair from her forehead. “She may have stepped on something.”

Frowning, Callum checked the soles of both tennis shoes, biting off a sharp curse that was drowned out by Addy’s cries. “There’s a hole here on the side of her heel. Looks like a nail puncture—”

“Here it is,” his father said, picking it out of the grass. “Sixteen-
D
framing nail. Bet this got dropped by the crew when they built the new storage shed. Could be more, so be careful. Addy may need a tetanus shot.”

“I don’t want a shot!” The girl screamed the words, then began crying again.

“I know you don’t, pumpkin. I’ll call Dr. Barrow and see if you need one,” Callum said. Then to his father: “She had a booster before the school year started, so she should be covered, but I’ll check.”

“Ow, Daddy,” Addy said, reaching up to swipe at her nose. “It hurts!”

“I’m sure it does,” he said, unlacing her shoe, as his father dropped to his hands and knees to search the ground. “But I still need to get your shoe off to see how bad it is. Dr. Barrow will want to know. If you poked a hole in your foot, she may need to see you and clean it up.”

“Okay,” Addy said, quieting. “But can Ms. Harvey look? And can you find my ribbon stick?”

“I’ve got your ribbon stick right here,” Vaughn said. “I’ll brush off the dirt and it’ll be good as new.”

“And I’m happy to look at your foot,” Brooklyn said, thinking Callum had an amazing handle on this parenting thing, negotiating without sugarcoating the truth of what might happen. “But I can’t do it until you let your daddy take your shoe off.”

Addy sniffled, her gaze moving from Brooklyn’s to Callum’s. “Be careful, Daddy. Don’t break my foot more.”

“It’s not broken,” her father told her, fighting a smile that tugged hard at Brooklyn’s heart. “It’s probably just scratched. Could be all it needs is an Olaf bandage.”

“And no shot?”

“That’s up to Dr. Barrow. But she has Olaf bandages, too.”

“And she has Olaf stickers.”

“Sounds to me like Olaf makes everything better,” Brooklyn said.

“Olaf does!” Addy said, nodding furiously. “If you had an Olaf you would never have to be sad.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Brooklyn said, her throat tight and aching. “I’m not sad. I’m just worried about you.”

“But all your books are here,” Addy said insistently. “You have to be sad.”

Brooklyn frowned, certain the girl must be thinking about having her own books close. “They’re just here because I’m moving out of my house and don’t have anywhere to put them.”

Addy’s eyes grew wide. “Are you moving here? With us?”

Well, crap. This was not how she’d wanted this revelation to happen. She smiled at Callum’s daughter, using her thumb to stroke Addy’s tears from her cheek. “No, I’m moving to Italy. It’s very far away. Across the ocean.”

“On the globe?” Addy asked, her lips quivering. “On the other side?”

Brooklyn nodded.

“I don’t want you to move,” Addy said, breaking into another loud cry, which turned into more screams Brooklyn wasn’t equipped to deal with.

She moved out of the way as Callum scooped up his daughter and headed for the house, lingering until she had a better handle on her emotions. No need to reveal to anyone else how completely her heart was torn between the old life she was shedding, and the new one she wasn’t sure fit.

“Sorry about that,” Callum said, having returned from seeing his father off and tucking his daughter in, to find Brooklyn in the library, the light on the table at her side burning low. “That’s one sure way to sober up quick.” He’d lost every bit of his buzz the moment he’d heard Addy’s scream.

Thankfully, once he’d coaxed his daughter out of her shoe and sock, all he’d found was a bloody gouge on her heel and nothing requiring stitches or a trip to the ER. He’d left a message with Dr. Barrow about the need for a tetanus shot. She’d assured him when she’d called back that Addy was covered. And his father, after ruining the knees of his khaki Dockers, never found another nail.

The wound was easily cleaned with soap and water, smeared with an antibiotic ointment, and covered with a bandage. Two bandages, actually, which made his daughter too happy to argue about going to bed without a story. He would’ve taken the time to read her one if he’d thought she’d have stayed awake, but her eyes were fighting the weight of her lids when he’d pulled the sheet over her shoulders. Besides, it was long past eight.

In fact, he realized, glancing at the clock on the fireplace mantel, it was nearly eleven. Seemed time flew during the not-fun times as well. He rubbed his hands down his face and groaned. Brooklyn sat curled into the corner of the sofa, three books open on the arm at her side, spines up, pages down, as if she’d read to the middle of each and stopped.

“Why are you apologizing?” she asked as he plopped beside her onto the center cushion. “You’re not the one who dropped the nail in the grass. Or told her that you’re moving halfway around the world. Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” he said, stretching out his arms across the back. A lock of Brooklyn’s hair fell across his hand. He rubbed it between his forefinger and thumb. “She’s exhausted. She was snoring when I turned out the light.”

“I don’t believe for a minute that she snores.”

“She doesn’t blow the house down,” he said in response. “But she can be noisy. Like a puppy.”

Her mouth trembled, and she looked on the verge of tears. “Poor thing.”

“She’ll be fine,” he said, giving a quick tug to her hair. “Don’t worry about her.”

“Of course I’m going to worry about her.” She moved the books from the couch arm to the end table, frowning as she did. “I love her.”

“Yeah?” he asked, his heart swelling up a couple of sizes.

“You know I do.”

He thought again of having more children, having them with this woman. Then he got rid of the thought because he’d been ruined enough for one night. “You would’ve been a great mom, you know.”

It was the wrong thing to say. She closed up as if she were a book, as if she didn’t want him to read any more of her than he already had, and leaned forward, pulling away from his hand. “Well, it didn’t happen, so the point is moot.”

“I didn’t mean to bring up a sore spot—”

“It’s not a sore spot. Artie and I chose not to have children for a reason. A reason that unfortunately turned out to be prescient. And honestly, not everyone who has kids should.”

He frowned. “I hope that wasn’t a dig at me.”

“Of course not.” She shook off whatever she was feeling, and said, “You’re an amazing father. But I can’t imagine, with all that you’ve told me . . . when you learned her mother was expecting, did you ever have doubts?”

His doubts . . . they wouldn’t have fit into a freighter’s worth of containers. He’d even been the one to suggest Cheryl—how had he put it?—get rid of the problem. Funny, her standing her ground on abortion being wrong, when she had no trouble with embezzlement, or extortion, or running drugs.

The thought of not having Addy . . . “Yeah, well, turned out what I thought might be a complication, wasn’t.”

“But it could’ve been.”

“And I would’ve dealt with it.”

“Faced your fear?” she asked. “Let it pass through you?”

She was talking about his tattoo, the litany against fear riding the dragon’s back. He’d been coming off one of the worst times in his life when he’d inked those words. A time he wasn’t proud of, didn’t want to talk about, didn’t want her to know about. The life he’d lived . . .

There’d been drugs; he wasn’t going to deny it. But she was scratching just a little bit too close to the mark for comfort. They were talking about his daughter, and he didn’t want to think of how wrong things could’ve gone if he hadn’t gotten straight. Total obliteration.

The words he’d had inked still gave him chills. “The fear’s been gone a long time, Brooklyn. Only I remain.”

All she did was nod, and he found he was out of things to say as well. He took a deep breath. “I should probably check on the munchkin.”

“Do you mind if I do it?” she asked.

“Be my guest,” he said, telling himself the tugging sensation in his chest had nothing to do with his heart. “You know the room. It’s the one with the snowflake lights on the ceiling. And all the Olafs.”

“Be right back,” she said, her smile pensive, reflective.

Thirty minutes later he startled awake, surprised he’d dosed off. Surprised he was still on the couch, and alone. His heart thumping a worried beat, he pushed up and headed for Addy’s room, slowing as he reached the door and heard more than his daughter’s soft snores.

Seemed Brooklyn snored, too. Just as softly, more like whiffles of breath than anything. Hands shoved in his pockets, he leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb and listened. Brooklyn lay facing Addy, curled on her side, Addy similarly posed, their foreheads touching.

The bedside lamp cast a soft glow over their hair; the color of the strands was nearly the same, as was the texture, he knew, from toying with Brooklyn’s earlier, and from battling Addy’s daily. He’d never thought seriously about having more kids. Addy was a handful, and there was something about the circumstances of her conception and birth that kept him from wanting to make the leap.

But the thought of having a child with Brooklyn . . . that wasn’t why he wanted her, but he did want her. To be his. Forever. Because for the first time in his life, he was in love.

Tuesday, May 26, on what would’ve been her and Artie’s fourteenth anniversary, Brooklyn made his lasagne to serve to Callum and Addy. She’d watched Artie put the dish together dozens of times, but she’d never fixed it herself. Thankfully, she’d picked up the ingredients after school yesterday, because the preparation kept her busy all afternoon.

She chopped an onion, a carrot, a celery stalk. She sliced garlic and parboiled tomatoes, peeling off their skins before turning them into sauce. She parboiled spinach, too. She browned ground chuck and boiled lasagne noodles and drained ricotta cheese. She measured oregano and olive oil and wine.

It would’ve been easier to use a jar of pasta sauce, and no-boil noodles, and prechopped onions, but Artie would have died—no, Artie wouldn’t have been caught dead—no, Artie would’ve put in the effort, because every minute of the effort was worth it.

And not just for the flavor. He’d believed with all his heart that a labor of love brought bountiful rewards. Brooklyn didn’t know about rewards, but she did know she had to keep busy, and she couldn’t be alone. The lasagne accomplished the first, Callum and Addy the second.

At first she’d thought about a dinner party. Nothing too large. Jean, of course, and Alva Bean, because the two were seeing more and more of each other, which made Brooklyn ridiculously happy. Dolly and Mitch Pepper, because Dolly was becoming an unexpectedly good friend—and just as Brooklyn was getting ready to leave Hope Springs, which made her ridiculously sad.

Lindsay Webber, so Addy would have a playmate, and because including Kelly’s mother, who Brooklyn knew didn’t have many friends of her own, even if she did have her eye on Callum, was something Artie would have done to be kind. Vaughn Drake, so he wouldn’t be alone with Shirley still out of town. Except the way Brooklyn’s numbers were working out, Vaughn and Lindsay would be paired as dinner partners, assuming Brooklyn claimed Callum for herself, which wasn’t even a question.